The Week of March 20th, 2022
>>>>>> Jacob Gets A New Name Genesis 37:22-32 <<<<<<
Sermon Noodles and Devotional Guide
In verse 28, the English translation says that Jacob “prevailed” in his wrestling with God. However, the Hebrew word actually means “power” and by the context Jacob received power by receiving both a new name and a new wound. How does the word “power” as opposed to “prevailed” change your understanding of the passage?
The translators of the passage betray their own approach to spiritual growth and development. The immature ego has to say we wrestle with God and prevail. We don’t. We get annihilated in all the right ways.
In verse 31, the English translation has Jacob saying “I have seen God face-to-face, and my life has been preserved.” This is a very curious translation since the word in Hebrew means “To strip, plunder.” Again, I think the English translators of the passage reveal their own approach to spiritual growth and development—God strips away, plunders us! Gives us a new name—in other words, not just an update of our internal operating system but a whole new system!
Western Christians are content to live with what Richard Rohr describes as a lower level of religious development, “one that is obsessively concerned with order, control, safety,... and certitude.” Western Christianity is disenchanted, hyperrational, and devoid of mystery. It runs smoothly - weekly worship services with liturgical options for every taste and programs for every age level. Our Christianity may be smooth, but it fails to create awe. We offer information, but there are few wise elders. We have a great deal of knowledge, but few of us experience the depths of mystery.
Cheryl Bridges Johns
The mystery is that contained in our wounds are also our greatest gifts.
What if you have certain sensitivities that make you vulnerable to be wounded in a certain way? What if God brought you into this world with certain sensitivities—like a passion for music, or cooking, or a love of animals, or being really good at color and design—and those sensitivities are both your super power and your Achilles heel.
What normally happens is we get wounded as children, usually through dysfunctional families but also through our own sensitivities, and we develop certain childhood survival strategies.
I talk a lot about these strategies because while they help us in the war of childhood survival, as adults they operate to sabotage growth and development. For example, we get wounded as children usually we have one of three responses:
The conformist—our fear of abandonment is real, and the major response to the fer of abandonment is to let go of our uniqueness and fit it. Conform.
The victim: its always someone else’s fault, we are never to blame.
The rebel: against everything except other rebels.
Diving into these wounds and letting them work us like the angel worked Jacob is what in spiritual direction circles we call sacred wound work. When we don’t flee from our wound or even ask God to heal it, and allow it to teach us what it has to teach us and be changed by it, it becomes not just a wound but a sacred wound.
As Pesha Gerner says— (the) coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again
where I find them, the old wounds, the old misdirections, I lift them one by one close to my heart and I say holy, holy.
Sacred wound work is one of the most transformative spiritual practices. As we say in men’s work, “If you don’t learn how to transform your pain you will inevitably transmit it to others.” Sacred wound work is where God teaches us about life and we even may get a new name, a new identity.
But a word of warning—it takes a great deal of healing work to get to the place where the wound can become a sacred wound. My guess is the vast majority of us are not ready for the work because we are still responding with our childhood survival strategies—the loyal soldiers and inner critics and escapists and the like. They keep us from doing this work.