Sermon:  “Don’t Be Afraid of Demons
                 in the Desert”

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

Many of you, like me, saw our Brookfield production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” right? Again, as a preview of “coming attractions,” next week’s sermon is about Joseph and his brothers, Jacob’s 12 sons.  But the past 3 weeks in church have been the prequel to that great story.  We’ve been following the story of Jacob – how he stole his brother Esau’s birthright and had to flee for his life from his home in Judah 450 miles north, into what is today Turkey.  There he had to live and work with his Uncle Laban for 14 years.  He came away with 2 brides and 2 concubines and was able to have 12 children with them.  (Today’s text says 11, but that’s because they didn’t count Dinah, Jacob’s daughter.  Baby Benjamin, Rachel’s youngest, was yet to be born.)  In any case, in today’s lesson, Jacob is finally on his way home.  Prosperous and middle-aged, he is finally returning, not quite knowing what kind of welcome to expect from his family.  He probably doesn’t know whether his parents, or his brother Esau, are even dead or alive.

And this is where we find Jacob today, wrestling with this mysterious man in the desert – whether he is mortal or supernatural, an angel or a demon, or perhaps even the Lord God himself – this we can’t know for sure.  What we do know is that wrestling with demons in the desert is very hard work – whether we do it figuratively or more literally, as Jacob does in today’s text.  In any case, when the man who wrestles with Jacob there by the banks of the Jabbok River says this – for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed – when he says this, he is referring to much more than one short midnight wrestling match.  He’s referring to the whole journey of Jacob’s life – Jacob was born, scripture says, as the second twin, holding on to the heel of his firstborn brother Esau.  He was fighting his destiny and literally wrestling from the moment he was born.  And so this scheming Jacob does wrestle Esau’s inheritance away from him. 

We remember how, when Jacob’s trick is found out, he continues wrestling – with his conscience, with demons of guilt, as he stops in the desert. That’s where he has his famous dream of the angels going up and down the ladder.  And over the 14 long years he has to work for his Uncle Laban to win his bride Rachel, I’m sure he wrestles mightily with demons of his own impatience.  Finally, in today’s lesson, he’s on his way back home again, wrestling with demons of worry – but as usual, he keeps himself busy wrestling himself, and his many possessions, into the best position to keep them all safe.

Listen to early in chapter 32, where Jacob plans to meet his brother:  ³Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Esau…[and] ⁶The messengers returned… saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and 400 men are with him.” ⁷Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies, ⁸thinking, “If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it, then the company that is left will escape.”

When Jacob hears his brother is coming out into the desert to meet him with 400 men, he is right to be worried, since Esau had made a vow to kill him.  But listen to how Jacob strategizes to sacrifice part of what he has to save the rest:  ¹³…from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau, ¹⁴ 200 female goats and 20 male goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams, ¹⁵ 30 milk camels and their colts, 40 cows and 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys. ¹⁶These he delivered into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass on ahead of me, and put a space between drove and drove.”… ¹⁹He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves… For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me.”

You know, we read in the Bible about someone like Jacob – out of the very distant past, the primitive tribal history of ancient Israel – and we think it is all very strange and very different from our lives.  But when you stop to think about it, we are not so different from Jacob as this story finds him – surrounded with his wives and children and servants and many flocks of animals – which are really just the contents of his wallet, you see, his material wealth.  These things represent his life savings, everything he owns and everything he cares for in the world.  He travels with all his worldly goods in a great herd around him, conveniently following on foot, or “on hoof.”  And though we have a few modern advantages – like ATM cards instead of sheep and Dodge Caravans instead of camel caravans – we actually are a lot like him.  If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit we like to feel secure and protected and surround ourselves with the things that make us feel loved and safe.  Like him, we might be tempted to believe the family and friends and things we have accumulated are the source of our salvation, and not God. 

It’s true, isn’t it, that many of us in middle age invest a lot in our future –we buy homes and insurance policies, we save up money for the kids’ college, we pay for music lessons, soccer camps, and math tutors.  It’s all about strategic planning – ensuring a good life for ourselves and for our families.  We hope to hold on to a good job, one with health insurance and vacation and other important family benefits.  But for many of us there comes a time – like that night in the desert for Jacob – when despite all of our precautions, despite all of our hard work, we find ourselves and our families out in the open – exposed, vulnerable.  The times we’re living in now are like this, I think.  Many of us – like the people our youth mission trip will serve up at H.O.M.E. in Maine – many of us are living with financial worries far greater than any we’ve ever had before.  These are the demons we wrestle with in the night, when we begin to feel alone, vulnerable, exposed – in a strange desert land that no longer flows so freely with milk and honey.

It’s at times like this that we most need to remember that all our blessings come from God – all we are and all we have are gifts from heaven and not something we can earn, or buy, or steal from our brothers.  We might even pray as Jacob does at that critical moment when his future and livelihood seem the most at risk.  Hear what he says in that prayer:  “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, … ¹⁰I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies. ¹¹Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children.  So Jacob prepares his best plan, but he also prays with great humility to the God of his ancestors, as they had done for generations before him.  He acknowledges that his family’s safety is in the hands of the Lord who made them, who gave them all good things, even life itself.

The truth Jacob discovers as he prepares to wrestle again with his brother in the wilderness is the same as the truth the 5,000 learn out the wilderness there with Jesus.  When we are willing to help one another, when we are willing to sacrifice some of what we have for our brothers and sisters, we do have enough.  That’s what Jesus was able to teach his disciples when they found themselves alone and hungry in the wilderness, wrestling with demons of worry out there in that desert place.  They learned that God does provide whenever and wherever people remember to love one another and share generously of what we have, as the brothers and sisters we were meant to be. 

But the story of Jacob and Esau reminds us that Jesus did not invent peacemaking.  The final scene of that story, in Genesis 33, is a real miracle of peacemaking.  I encourage you to read it, because it’s a happy ending to Jacob’s long desert journey, a joyful reconciliation of brother with brother.  In verse 4, we read, Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.  In that moment, all of Jacob’s worries and fears melted away – and God’s vision for his divided people, for one brief moment at least, was embodied in two brothers, finally reunited and at peace. 

This is the promise of peace that lies before us, too – if we are willing to give and to share with others in Christ’s name – as families, as a church, as a community, as a nation, and as a world.  I hope this will be one of the lessons our youth will learn when they go on their mission trip this week – as they take off in their own caravan into the wilderness away from the comforts of home.  They will see how people make do with much less than most of us have in our community.  And they will be able to experience, for themselves, the very real joy of sharing what they have with others.  That is the dream of justice and reconciliation that God has for this world – the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus gave to his first disciples and that he leaves with us. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

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Genesis 32:3-21

3Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, 4instructing them, “Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have lived with Laban as an alien, and stayed until now; 5and I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male and female slaves; and I have sent to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.’“ 6The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” 7Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies, 8thinking, “If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it, then the company that is left will escape.”

9And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, and I will do you good,’ 10I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies. 11Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children. 12Yet you have said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.’“

13So he spent that night there, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau, 14two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, 15thirty milk camels and their colts, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. 16These he delivered into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass on ahead of me, and put a space between drove and drove.” 17He instructed the foremost, “When Esau my brother meets you, and asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?’ 18then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob; they are a present sent to my lord Esau; and moreover he is behind us.’“ 19He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, “You shall say the same thing to Esau when you meet him, 20and you shall say, ‘Moreover your servant Jacob is behind us.’“ For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me.” 21So the present passed on ahead of him; and he himself spent that night in the camp. 22The same night  

Genesis 32:22-31

22[Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” 29Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Genesis 33:1-4

33Now Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. 2He put the maids with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all. 3He himself went on ahead of them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near his brother. 4But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Matthew 14:13-21

13Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” 18And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.