英語で聖書のお話
2017年9月17日に、Zach Motts宣教師（World Gospel Mission）をお招きして
「みんなで英語を楽しみましょう」という楽しいイベントを開催しました。そのイベントのなかでZach Motts宣教師が「英語で聖書のお話」をしてくださいました。
Zach Motts宣教師は、アメリカ出身なのですが、奥様が日本人なので、英語はもちろん日本語で大人にも子ども にもメッセージができます。
ユースクラスや教会全体のお楽しみゲームが得意。漫画を読むのが大好きで、 ディズ二のアニメソングはほとんど歌えます。納豆が大好き！なんでも食べられます。
奥様はバイリンガルでお料理の得意な日本人で、イングリッシュ＆クッキングクラスを開いたりもなさいます。
とっても可愛い男の子と女の子のお子さんがおられます。
当日のメッセージを以下にまとめましたので、ぜひお読みください。
Wrestler in the Dark(Genesis 32:24-31) メッセージ：Zach Motts宣教師（World Gospel Mission
Good morning. It is good to be with you today.
We will begin by reading a bit of a mysterious passage from Genesis, Genesis 32:24-31
Message
In today’s world, there is a lot of doubt about religion and God. There are hard questions that we cannot answer, like if God exists, why is there evil? There are bad examples of religious people in the world doing very terrible things. Modern people trust truth from scientists and doctors, but is there truth in religion? Is there truth in these old books? Does it help us to believe in God?.
Houses in ancient Israel usually had flat roofs. Often there was a ladder or staircase leading to the roof. The roof was made of beams laid across from wall to wall, and covered with mud and thatch.
When we look at the Bible, we find that it is not quite asking the same questions we are. For the people in the Bible, the question is not whether God exists, but which god should be followed. The question is not “Why is there evil if God is good?” as much as where is God when evil happens? Is God far away? Does God care? Have I been abandoned by God? Our modern questions and the questions the Bible is asking are related, but the emphasis is a bit different.
So, in the passage we read today, there is a very strange, mysterious answer to some of these questions. This passage is about Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, people who were very important to the Jews, people who the Jews remembered as their spiritual fathers. But the stories about Jacob are not stories about a nice person. Jacob is a rather broken individual. He tricks his blind father. He tricks his twin brother out of the family inheritance. He tricks and gets tricked by his father-in-law, Laban. His wife, Rachel, is a thief. Jacob is a swindler, trying to get as much as he can out of every situation. He is a person who is knows how to get what he wants and he knows when it is time to leave town. He ran away from home because his brother threatened to kill him for tricking him out of the inheritance. Now he is running away from Laban because two tricksters do not get along very well in the same village.
In the time Jacob was away from home with Laban, Jacob got rich. He got rich, he got married, and he had a bunch of kids. Jacob was successful. Life for him was about getting rich, and he got rich. Yet, he could not make the relationships in his life work out well. He kept winning at the game of getting money, but he was bad a getting along with other people. So, we find Jacob choosing to run away whenever relationships got too difficult.
But, in the passage we read today, Jacob has come to the end of his running. He is trying to go back to the land of his father, Isaac. He has been chased by his enraged father-in-law behind him toward his homicidal brother in front of him. He can’t go backwards, but if he goes forward he will have to face his brother Esau. Esau is a strong man. He is a hunter. He loves the outdoors and eating deer. He knows how to kill things.
As Jacob gets closer to his hometown, he hears news that Esau is coming to meet him, and Esau is not alone. He has a bunch of men with him. That sounds like an army to Jacob. Jacob does not know what to do. He can’t go backward, and he can’t go forward. So, he decides to make another gamble. Instead of meeting Esau directly, Jacob sends his servants and cattle and everything he owns in groups ahead of him. When they meet Esau, they are supposed to say they are a present for Esau. If Esau attacks one group, maybe the other groups will be able to escape. Last, he sends his family out to meet Uncle Esau, hoping that Esau will have mercy on them. Now, everyone is gone. Everything he fought so hard to own could be destroyed by his brother’s revenge. He is in a bad place. Jacob is stripped of his success. He is alone in the dark.
It says Jacob was left all alone, but then it says he was not alone. All of the sudden, out of the darkness, a wrestler appears. Who is this person? Is this Esau? Is it a robber? A ghost? A monster? Who knows? Jacob is suddenly in a fight for his life. He is alone in the dark and he is rolling and struggling with this stranger from the shadows, this mystery man clothed in midnight. They are fighting and sweating, punching and kicking, pulling hair and biting. Jacob the trickster must wrestle or die.
They fight and they fight, but neither can get the upper hand. The stranger pulls out his special move and pops Jacob’s hip out of joint. Even so, Jacob will not let go. He holds on with his hands even as pain shoots through his body. “Let me go!” says the stranger. “No,” Jacob replies, “Not until you bless me!” Huh? What do you mean Jacob? You don’t ask a robber or a murderer to bless you. That is not what robbers and murderers do. And, usually, people who bless other people do not need to be wrestled. Nobody wrestles with the Pope to get a blessing. Why do you want a blessing from this stranger? At your weakest moment, when everything is going wrong, in the dark, all alone, this ninja drops out of nowhere and attacks you. He makes you weaker than you were before. Why do you want a blessing from someone like this? He won’t even tell you his name after he popped your hip out of joint.
Yet, in verse 32 we read, “So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.” Eh? What? Huh? Jacob, when did you see God? Where was God in the middle of this crazy duel in the dark? You met God in the middle of that? You think you saw God through that wrestler, that man from the shadows? How was that God? You were all alone, in the dark, scared for your life, and this stranger attacked you and made you weaker. Look at your hip! You can’t even run away anymore if Esau comes to kill you. Isn’t God supposed to make you stronger? Isn’t his blessing supposed to
give you the power to defeat your enemies and be successful and have lots of money? You are weaker than you were before, Jacob. You are limping.
Yet Jacob pants in the dark, “I saw God face-to-face.” “I saw God face-to-face.” That was what was important to Jacob. It was not about finding a God who would fix all of his problems. The story of Jacob is not a story about ideas like whether or not God exists. It is not there to answer all our questions. It is not a story about a God we can contain or control or completely understand. It is a dark, strange story about an encounter that a man had with God during the blackest night in his life. It is about an encounter. Jacob is alone, but he finds he is not alone. This stranger does not fix all Jacob’s problems, he will still have to go meet Esau, but he is there in the dark. The stranger is with Jacob, even though Jacob does not understand what is happening. When does Jacob realize who he is wrestling? I do not know. But the God he encounters is close, solid, face-to-face with Jacob, so in the chaos of the night Jacob reaches out and holds on. He grabs ahold and says, “Bless me. Don’t leave me. Bless me.”
Jacob wrestles with God in the dark. Do you ever feel that way? I have. The world does not work the way you thought it did. Everything is going wrong. You scream for help, but the answer is unexpected. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. You hope for someone to fix the problem, but find yourself wrestling in the dark. Throughout the Bible there are voices of people who wrestle with God, who are trying to understand where God is or why he doesn’t do something when we are standing in the dark, when we are lost in suffering. Job and Jeremiah and Ezekiel struggle and wrestle with God. The world does not make sense, but they grab ahold of God and do not let go. The God they meet isn’t always the God they expect; he doesn’t answer all their questions and leave them with no doubts, but they find that God is there with them.
Somewhere in the middle of Jacob’s fight, Jacob realizes who he is wrestling with. We do not know when that is, but somewhere in the struggle, Jacob realizes “Oh, God is here. God is with me. I am not alone.” “I have met God face-to-face and that is what matters, even though I am weaker, even though I had to struggle to realize it.” In the middle of the struggle, Jacob finds God, and that makes all the difference to Jacob. When he realizes who he is fighting, what does Jacob ask for? “Please make my brother go away”? “Please fix my hip”? No, he asks for a blessing. “Could you please give me a good word? Is there grace for me? Can Jacob the trickster, the swindler, the con-man who has made a mess of his life, who has broken so many relationships, who is weak and scared in the dark, can I meet God and receive a blessing? Is there grace for a messed up person like me? You are not the God I thought I would meet, but I will not let you go. Is there a blessing for me?” And Jacob finds, in the dark, in the middle of his problems, there is a blessing for him. There is grace for Jacob.
That is the hope that the Bible holds out for us. What if God was a God who would meet us in the middle of life, not just in the happy times? What if God was willing to be with us, to find us, to bless us when we are scared and alone? Maybe not everything will work out the way we hoped, but this God will not leave us alone. In the middle of the struggle, what if we find God face-to-face.
Jacob’s story is in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, there is the story of Jesus. Christians believe that when you look at Jesus, you get the clearest picture of who God is. That Jesus and God are one. Yet, when we look at Jesus, he is not the God we expect. When we think of God, we think of power and miracles and bright beams of light. Where do we find Jesus though? We find that he is God with us, walking around with people, going to weddings, eating meals. We find him praying alone in the dark in a garden, struggling and weeping and praying before he goes to die. We look and we see him captured by his enemies, weak, broken, bleeding on a cross. How can that be God? He is like us, he is God who wrestles with God, he struggles, he takes human cruelty and violence upon himself and bleeds and dies on a cross. Is that God? Where is the power? How is he supposed to fix our problems? What good is a God who dies? Even so, Christians look at these stories, painful stories, mysterious stories, and say, “Ah,there is the face of God. Ah, I have met God here. He was not who I expected, but he found me here. There is Jesus, the God who is close enough to grab a hold of, the God who is with us, the God who gives grace and love and forgiveness when we do not deserve it. In that beaten, bloody face, there is the face of God: a strange face, a mysterious face, but Ah! God has met me here.”
Stories like this do not answer all of our modern doubts about whether God exists or how a good God can allow evil? They are stories of encounters, meetings. These stories extend hope to us that the unexpected God who loves and blesses and wrestles could find us in the middle of our struggles. What if? What if there was a God who could meet us right where we were? What if there was a God who would love us and bless us in the middle of whatever our struggle is today. I think living in that story, in that hope, would make all the difference.
Let’s pray,
Dear Lord Jesus,
Thank you for this time we could look at the story of Jacob this morning. I do not know what each person here is struggling with or where they are in life, but I believe you are with us today and that your grace streams out toward us. If there are those who feel alone, in the dark, exhausted today, I pray your blessing upon them and that they would know your closeness today. If there are those who are looking for hope or a new story to live within, I pray that you would meet them in an unexpected way and that they would be able to find the goodness that comes from following you. Thank you for being the Immanuel, the God who is with us. Please bless each person here as we go from this place today. In your name I pray, Amen.
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