+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This morning’s lesson from Genesis ends, I think, one verse too early, at least considering the thing I want to talk about this morning. When you hear it, you might think it a peculiar detail and understand why it may seem irrelevant, but I for one tend to think that even the most obscure bits of scripture sometimes have something to say to us. So, Genesis Chapter 32, verse 32:
Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh on the sinew of the hip.
In other words, the sciatic nerve of an animal is not Kosher, and this is a reminder of the injury Jacob sustained while wrestling with the angel.
Now, fast forward fifteen chapters. Jacob is an old man, his sons had all their drama—selling Joseph into slavery, reconciling, all emigrating to Egypt together—and just before he dies, Jacob calls his children and grandchildren to him to bless them and say farewell. And how do we find Joseph in this scene? We are told that he is leaning against his bed’s headboard. Why this detail? Maybe just to remind us that Jacob is old and decrepit, though that would seem to go without saying. Perhaps, though, it’s because he’s still suffering the limp he got from wrestling all night all those years ago. Surgical interventions to treat severe sciatica were about four millennia away, after all.
So maybe Israel himself might not have needed a reminder of the lasting effects of wrestling with God, there was always a literally painful reminder. But the generations which followed would require such a reminder, which became enshrined in their dietary law. Striving with God and man may leave a mark. Growing in virtue, subduing vice, wrestling with the demons in our own souls may create real, if invisible bruises; they may last a while, and they may not always be the most pleasant of reminders.
I should avoid getting too far into the weeds of theodicy, that pernicious problem with which theologians have wrestled since Job. The most basic answer to the problem of evil is that sin entered the world through human transgression, not divine appointment, and insofar as God allows bad things to happen, we have to come to terms with human agency, the cosmic nature of the fall, and the Will of a Providence which we cannot possibly understand and whose designs are as yet obscure to us. That may not be satisfying; join the club. When we start talking in terms of what seems fair and what seems unfair, we are responding in a natural, human way, but we may not like how far down we find ourselves by delving too deeply into that for too long. I may fancy myself a bit of a theologian, in my own dilettantish way, but I’ll leave that task to the honest-to-God mystics, the spiritual athletes among whose number I’ll never be able to count myself.
Instead, I’ll leave you with an uncomfortable question, or rather a series of them, to keep in a little cupboard back of your minds. Ask it of yourself when you know you find yourself in fine fettle, spiritually speaking, and maybe leave it in that cupboard when your soul is in some sort of acute pain. How might that sore spot be a gift? In what way was I wrestling with God? What did I learn and how did I grow spiritually? What am I given the courage and strength to do today because of this experience that I didn’t have before? Do I need this reminder—whether it’s guilt from a minor youthful indiscretion, trauma from a genuine tragedy, or something in that broad spectrum in-between—do I need this reminder still for my growth as a Christian and as a human being, or do I need God to take it away? The answer to that may be either option, that’s between you and God.
I suspect that for whatever reason, Jacob needed that reminder. Maybe when he was blessing his famously ill-behaving progeny, he needed to remember that he had been no saint himself, and maybe this made him a bit more understanding, a little more long-suffering, a little more loving.
I had a church history professor back in seminary who was trying to explain the justification for the doctrine of purgatory which developed in the middle ages and he used an interesting analogy. This by the way is not to argue for or against that doctrine; classical Anglicanism rejects it (the Article of Religion call it “a fond thing, vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather Repugnant to the Word of God”) but there have been plenty in the church since the catholic revival in the Church of England and here in Nineteenth Century that have sought to argue for it. You’re not going to get excommunicated or something for saying there is or isn’t a Purgatory, and my own opinion on the matter is neither here nor there. The point is that this professor of mine used a good analogy that I think is apposite this morning.
So the question was, how can purgatory be justified if Christ paid the wages of sin on the Cross? The best argument (at least to my mind) was that it’s not so much about doing one’s time to compensate, as it were, as it was about repairing the effects those actions had on our souls. The analogy was that of autobody repair. So the fender bender (moral evil) or the hailstorm (natural evil) made some dents, and purgatory popped them back out like a garage.
I like that image whether you think God has incorporated the Purgatory Auto Body Shop, llc. or if you believe that he can probably take care of that at the resurrection without it. I like it because I’m a bit like an old car that’s picked up some nicks and scratches over the years, body and soul. Sometimes they’re worth getting repaired and sometimes they’re just a good reminder (“don’t do that again!”)
We have some very minor damage on our car from a person who rear-ended us about six months ago. It was entirely the other driver’s fault, her car got it way worse than ours, and nobody was hurt. Long story short, the other driver was working for one of these delivery services and she didn’t have insurance, and she started freaking out. I was pretty indignant, and had it just been me, I would have proceeded to call the police at this point. But Annie was with me talked me down and we just let it go. I’m not advising anybody else to make the same decision in similar circumstances, but that felt right, and it feels right in retrospect, and now the car has a little, barely visible reminder that I married a more Christian person than myself.
So, maybe consider those dents and dings and scratches from your past run-ins, whether they’re entirely self-inflicted or the marks of an all-night wrestling match with God. You may be surprised what you learned and what you still need to.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.