Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 17th July 2005

Preached by Rev Brian Parker

The Trickster

When a young man was appointed to a very senior position in the company it was a promotion beyond his wildest dreams. So much so he felt a bit frightened at the prospect of having so much responsibility.

He went to a venerable old chairman of the board to ask for advice on how to become a good senior executive.

“What’s the most important thing for me to do?” he asked the old man.

“Make right decisions” was the chairman’s reply.

The young man thought about that for a moment and said: “Thank you very much; that is very helpful. But can you be more specific? How do I make right decisions?”

The wise old man answered: “Experience.”

Exasperated, the young executive, said, “But sir, that is why I’m here. I don’t have the experience I need to make right decisions. How do I get experience?”

“By making wrong decisions”, said the old man.

Spiritual maturity doesn’t come easy. It usually comes by making lots of mistakes and by jumping on bandwagons that are going nowhere.

Spiritual maturity learns to accept mistakes and, as someone said, “even if you blow it again and again, you hang in there and keep learning from your mistakes”.

Jacob was hardly an ideal of faith. His mistake in life was to imagine that he could hoodwink God. He was a trickster who set out to get his way through deception and devious practices.

He didn’t care about making right decisions or doing the honourable thing.

The name ‘Jacob’ means ‘one who supplants’ and of course he was always out to supplant his elder brother Esau.

Even in the womb he was grabbing at his twin brother Esau’s heal to try and reverse the order of their birth so that he would inherit the blessing of prosperity that fell to the eldest son.

As we all know he eventually succeeded by tricking his father Isaac and by stealing the blessing that rightfully belonged to Esau. It was a blessing that could only be given once.

Thereafter Jacob was on the run, fleeing from his brother who was just a tad upset at the turn of events.

But he couldn’t flee from God. Jacob had received the blessing, by devious means for sure, nevertheless with that blessing came responsibilities and a duty that God could not let him forget.

In all his moral and ethical failure Jacob discovers that God is searching him out.

God pursues Jacob, not because Jacob is a fine upstanding young man, but because he can do no other. God is obligated by his promise to Abraham and Sarah, Jacob’s grandparents.

It is the nature of divine grace. God is faithful. God is love.

“Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it”.

In our mistakes and in our pride we can come to a place in our spiritual journey when we put God behind us, put the Divine is his place, in a convenient place out of the way of our ambitions or self-interests.

We may even imagine that “we have grown out of all that religious stuff”, grown away from the disciplines of faith, even to the point of not being aware of God in our lives.

The story of Jacob reminds us that God follows through on his promise “to seek and to save the lost”. No matter where we are on our spiritual journey, no matter how off course our mistakes have taken us – the Lord of all compassion and healing power, seeks us out.

The Psalmist was so aware of this truth. “Lord, you are familiar with all my ways.” He knew the Lord had the power and the goodness to save, and his loving nature would lead him to pardon and restore his soul.

“Behind and before thou dost encircle me and layest thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”

And to what purpose? It’s not just about correcting our mistakes or not making any more mistakes.

God seeks us out to challenge and lead us on to fullness of life, to a life of purpose and meaning.

“The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father”. That prophecy has a very positive and uplifting ring to it and by the grace of God it is our vision and hope.

Jacob with all his mistakes and his deceit nevertheless received a vision of angels and God’s promise that he
would bless and put his life on a right footing.

Later in wrestling with the mysterious divine stranger he received the name “Israel”, the name used in a theological sense of the people of God.

Towards the end of his life Jacob and all his family went down into Egypt to be reunited with Joseph, the son he had presumed dead.

He died in Egypt and the twelve tribes of Israel bore the names of his twelve sons.

In all of this we see God working out his good purposes in a most surprising way and against all the odds.

“Surely the Lord is in this place”. Jacob’s testimony and experience is a reassurance for each one of us.

The Lord of all consolation and good purposes is with us, no matter where we are and no matter how we feel.

For God is faithful. “God is working his purpose out.”


Amen.