And he does, and the minister says. “Wow, a Lamborghini. Could I have a ride? By the way, what’s a blessing?”

I want to talk about blessings this morning. We Presbyterians are not very good at them, but a blessing plays an important part in this story of Jacob wrestling with the angel.

In doing so, I’m going to read a chunk from a chapter of a book by Rachel Naomi Remen. A psychiatrist, she works primarily with the dying.

Her parents were Jewish but secular Jews. They thought of religion as the opiate of the masses. But her grandfather, her mother’s father, was a profoundly religious man, even profoundly holy. Maybe religion skips a generation sometimes. After writing the best seller, KITCHEN TABLE WISDOM she wrote a book called MY GRANDFATHER’S BLESSINGS.

To bless another is to offer them refuge from an indifferent world. Everybody has this capacity. A blessing is not something one person gives another. It is instead a moment of meeting. It is a place or moment in time where two people acknowledge their true nature and worth and strengthen what is whole in each other.

She says, “By making a place of wholeness within our relationships we offer others the opportunity to be whole without shame and become a place of refuge from everything in them and around them that is not genuine. We enable people to remember who they are.”

This is the basic work of her life with the dying. She said it’s a 2-way street. There is a mutuality to this kind of blessing.

Something clicked for me as I was thinking about the issue of blessing. Parents rescue their children but grandparents are refuges for them. Friday night I was with a family from out o0f state. We were at a restaurant and their two boys, 4 and 3, were like God. They were everywhere at once. The parents said they had only one day to see southern Oregon. Should they go to the coast or Crater Lake. I thought, if they go to Crater Lake the boys could easily disappear over the rim. There would be no getting them back, so I said, “The coast is lovely in the summer.” Parents have to be quick to the rescue, but Grandparents are the big laps for children and they don’t, as a rule, get overly involved in what parents take so seriously. They let go and provide safe places for grandchildren.

Listen to this from Dr. Remen on Jacob:

Almost the last story that my grandfather told me was about a man called Jacob who had been attacked in the night as he slept alone by the bank of a river. He had been traveling, and when he had stopped to make his meal and settle down to sleep, the place had seemed safe enough. But it was not so. He awakened to find himself gripped by muscular arms and pinned to the ground. It was so dark that he could not see his enemy, but he could feel his power. Gathering all his strength, he began to struggle to be free.

‘Was it a nightmare, Grandpa?’ I said hopefully. I often suffered from nightmares back then and had to sleep with a nightlight on. I moved closer to my grandfather and took his hand. ‘No, Neshume-le,’ he answered, ‘it was quite real but it happened a long time ago. Jacob could hear his attacker’s breath, he could feel the cloth of his garments, he could even smell him. Jacob was a very strong man, but even using all of his strength he could not free himself and he could not pin his enemy down either. They were evenly matched and they rolled on the ground and struggled fiercely.’

‘How long did they struggle, Grandpa?’ I asked with some anxiety. ‘A long, long time, Neshume-le,’ he replied, ‘but the darkness does not last forever. Eventually it was dawn and as the light came, Jacob saw that he had been wrestling with an angel.’

I was astonished. ‘A real angel, Grandpa?’ I said. ‘With wings?’

‘I don't know if he had wings, Neshume-le, but he was definitely an angel,’ he told me. ‘With the coming of the light, the angel let go of Jacob and tried to leave, but Jacob held him fast. ‘Let me go,' the angel told Jacob, ‘The Light has come.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’ The angel struggled hard, for he wanted badly to escape, but Jacob held him close. And so the angel gave him his blessing.’

I was very relieved. ‘Did he leave then, Grandpa? Is that the end?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ my grandfather said, ‘but Jacob’s leg was hurt in the struggle. Before the angel left, he touched him on the place where he was hurt.’ This was something I could understand; often my mother did this, too. ‘To help it get better, Grandpa?' I asked. But my grandfather shook his head. ‘I do not think so, Neshume-le. He touched it to remind Jacob of it. Jacob carried it all the rest of his life. It was his place of remembering.’

I was very puzzled by this story. How could it be that one might confuse an angel with an enemy? But Grandfather said this was the sort of thing that happened all the time. ‘Even so,’ he told me, ‘it is not the most important part of the story. The most important part of the story is that everything has its blessing.’ In the year before he died, my grandfather told me this story several times. Eight or nine years afterward, in the middle of the night, the disease I have lived with for more than forty-five years declared itself in the most dramatic way imaginable. I had a massive internal hemorrhage. There was no warning at all. I was in a coma and hospitalized for months. The darkness and the struggle lasted for many years afterward.

Looking back on it, I have wondered if my grandfather, old and close to the time of his death, had not left me with this story as a compass. It is a puzzling story, a story about the nature of blessings and the nature of enemies. How tempting to let the enemy go and flee. To put the struggle behind you as quickly as possible and get on with your life. Life might be easier then but far less genuine. Perhaps the wisdom lies in engaging the life you have been given as fully and courageously as possible and not letting go until you find the unknown blessing in everything.

Who has blest you in life? Not patted you in the head but really blessed you?
Who reminded you of who you really are? Was it a grandparent, a mother, a best friend from sixth grade? Your ex-wife or mother-in-law? It could be anyone.

What kind of wound was opened up? The Sufi poet, Rumi speaks of our wounded places and the place in our life where the light regularly comes in.

What kind of scar was transformed?

Here’s a story about that from Cynthia Audet :

Growing up I had a scar on my face — a perfect arrow in the center of my cheek, pointing at my left eye. I got it when I was three, long before I knew that scars were a bad thing, especially for a girl. I knew only that my scar brought me
attention and tenderness and candy.

As I got older I began to take pride in my scar, in part to stop bullies from
taunting me, but mainly as a reaction to the assumption that I should feel
embarrassed. It’s true, I was embarrassed the first couple of times someone pointed at my cheek and asked, “What’s that?” or called me “Scarface.” But the more I heard how unfortunate my scar was, the more I found myself liking it.

My friends liked it, too. They made up elaborate tales about how I’d gotten it in
a fight or from a dog attack. They laughed at their stories and thought I was all the
more interesting because I could laugh with them.

When I turned fifteen, my parents on the advice of a plastic surgeon decided it was time to operate on what was now a thick, shiny red scar. As my father
drove me home from the local mall, he explained that I would have the surgery
during my summer vacation, to allow time for it to heal.

“ But I don’t mind the scar, really,” I told him. “I don’t need surgery.” It had been years since I had been teased. And my friends, along with my boyfriend at the time, felt as I did, that my scar was unique and almost pretty in its own way.
After so many years, it was a part of me.

“ You do need surgery,” my father said, his eyes on the road, his lips tight.

“ But I like it,” I told him. “I don’t want to get rid of it.”

“ You need surgery,” he said again, and he lowered his voice. “It’s a deformity.”

I don’t know what hurt more that day: hearing my father call my scar a deformity, or realizing that it didn’t matter to him how I felt about it.

I did have plastic surgery that summer. They cut out the left side of the arrow leaving a thinner, zigzag scar that blended into the lines of my face when I smiled.
The following summer they did the same to the right side of the arrow. Finally, when I was eighteen, the surgeon sanded my cheek smooth.

In my late twenties, I took a long look at my scar, something I hadn’t done in
years. It was still visible in the right light, but no one asked me about it anymore. I
examined the small step-like pattern and the way it made my cheek dimple when I smiled. As I leaned in awkwardly toward the mirror, I felt a sudden sadness.

There was something powerful about my scar and the defiant, proud person I
became because of it. I have never been quite so strong since they cut it out.

Rabbi Harold Kushner once wrote:

"My favorite prayer in the Bible," says Kushner, "is the one Jacob offers just before wrestling with the angel in the book of Genesis. He's at the same river bank where as a teenager he had prayed a very immature prayer: 'Keep me safe, make me rich, and I will thank you and worship you like crazy.' Now 20 years later he comes back much more mature. There's no bargaining; there's no Santa Claus list. His prayer is simply: 'I have to do something hard; I know it's right and I'm not sure I can do it. If you help me, maybe I can do it. If you leave me on my own, I know I'll fall on my face the way I have every other time I've tried to do this.' For me, that's prayer," says Kushner. "It doesn't change the world. Jacob is about to meet his brother Esau who has said, 'The next time I meet you I'm going to kill you.' Jacob doesn't ask God to turn Esau into a pussycat. He doesn't ask God to strike Esau with amnesia so he'll forget his anger. Rather, Jacob says to God: 'I've spent my whole life running from confrontation. I'm tired of running. Help me face up to this and get through this crisis." Kushner says with confidence, "That's prayer: Don't change the world [God]. Don't take away my problems. Don't make my road smooth. But give me the grace to walk it, no matter how rocky it is." (in Questions of Faith p. 14)

It has been said that there are only two kinds of people in the world. Those who are alive, and those who are afraid. We cannot control things, but fearful people try to do this all the time. It’s a sickness with them. The only living is in letting go. Trusting that Life will find its own way in its own time. (Remen 167-8)

Roberto Assagioli has said of living, “There is no certainty. There is only adventure. Even stars explode.”

Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav [the modern-day Slovak city of Bratislava], died of tuberculosis at the age of 48 in 1810. Reb Nachman was the great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. His favorite saying, the saying he believed contained the secret of life was this saying: kol haolam kulo gesher tzar m'od, gesher tsar m'od v'haikar lo lefached klal, “The whole earth is a very narrow bridge, a very narrow bridge, and the secret is to never be afraid.” It was Reb Nachman's secret. It is the first secret. It is also the secret that makes all the other secrets possible.

Rabbi David Zaslow taught it to me as a song –

Life is a very narrow bridge, a very narrow bridge a very narrow bridge, Oh, life is a very narrow bridge and the secret is never to fear.

Four years ago B.J. Holland came to worship here and I asked him to speak for a few minutes. He had just voluntarily taken himself off of dialysis so he knew time was short. But he was feeling good that morning and he was serene as he talked about how much serving this church and community had meant to him. He pointed to the memorial plaques in the back of the sanctuary and said his name would be up there soon. David Cook teenager obsessive fear of dying.
It was a whole year later that I heard what a profound experience of blessing that was for someone. Lorraine Cook spoke of being in attendance that morning along with her son David. David, at the time was a teenager with an obsessive fear of dying. But sitting there listening to B.J. go on without any fear at all changed something in David. B.J. didn’t know it but he was giving a final blessing. He reached out and touched David right there on the wounded place

Now, I asked you how you have been blessed. Let me ask you now, how have you blessed the world? Yes, it’s easier to do it if you are older. It comes so naturally as you’re letting go. But young people can do it too –

Here’s a story that proves that. It’s told by Joe Slevcove of San Diego,

When my wife, Beth, and I moved from the suburbs to a warehouse loft in
the center of a large city, Beth embraced every aspect of urban life — even the
sirens, the parking problems, and the car alarms at night. The homeless people
made me nervous, but Beth learned their names. The only neighbors who bothered her were the guys who ran the tattoo parlor across the street. They got into traffic-stopping fights, harassed women on the sidewalk, and intimidated men. They were the reason Beth didn’t walk on that side of the street. For two years she glared out our window at the row of men sitting in front of the shop and fantasized about shooting out their tires.

Then one day she called me at work to tell me she was getting a tattoo. She’d
never wanted a tattoo before and had even taken pride in being one of the few people in our group of friends with no body art. Though surprised, I said OK. Later she called me back and announced, “I did it.” When I got home, Beth excitedly showed me the delicately inscribed words “Love thy neighbor” on her wrist. She explained how she’d marched across the street and gone into the tattoo parlor. The walls were covered with drawings of skulls, bloody knives, naked women, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Manuel, the proprietor, was working on somebody’s backside. Beth introduced herself as his neighbor and asked if she could watch. He said sure.

After a while, she went outside and sat in front to study the world from their
perspective. The guy next to her asked what she was getting done.
“ ‘Love thy neighbor,’ ” she muttered. “Why?” he asked.

“ Well, you guys are my neighbors, and I’m having trouble loving you. You
kind of scare me — you know, with the fights that break out over here and all.”

He ushered her back into the shop and announced, with complete sincerity,
“ Manuel, dude, we’re scaring our neighbors! We got to stop fighting.”
Manuel was defensive — until Beth explained that she didn’t want to change
him; she just wanted to get this tattoo. Manuel showed her a picture in a
magazine of “Love thy neighbor” tattooed on a man’s inner forearm — with
bloody knives in the background.

“Not exactly,” said Beth. After they’d settled on a design, Manuel began to do his art on her wrist. Then he stopped. “How do you spell thy?” he
asked shyly. “I didn’t go to school.” The other tattoo artist piped in, “Dude, it’s not because you didn’t go to school. It’s because you don’t read the Bible!”

From then on Beth would wave to the tattoo artists as if they were old pals.
The music from across the street was not so grating to her nerves. No more fights broke out. The sidewalk felt safe.

Four months later, Beth took our car in for an oil change and saw Manuel talking to the repairman behind the counter. As she began to remind him who she was,
he stepped forward and gave her a warm hug. “Hey,” he said to his friend behind
the counter, “this is my neighbor, the one I was telling you about.”

Life is a very narrow bridge, a very narrow bridge a very narrow bridge, Oh, life is a very narrow bridge and the secret is never to fear.

Amen