How Do You Face the Unfairness of Life? You Remember This.

It all feels so sad, and so unfair.  Every time, I see the date.  I realize what happened.   

You see this week, I’ve been reading hundreds of resumes as we look for who will succeed our office manager, Lynn, as she retires. And on so many of them, I notice the date, the date of their last job.   I see a lot of dates in March or April when everything began shutting down.    And seeing that, this pandemic hit home in a whole different way. 

Yes, lots of folks have gotten terribly sick, too many.   And too many of those, sick, have died.  But you don’t have to get sick for this virus to wreck your life.   This virus may not take away your health, but it might have taken away your job, your financial security, even threaten to take away the roof over your family’s heads.

And yet, lots of us haven’t been hurt like that at all.  Now, we may not be able to travel.  We may have issues with our kids’ schools.   But we can still put food on the table, pay the bills.  And some folks have even done better in the pandemic.  The founder of Zoom made the list of the billionaires this week for the first time ever.

But life has a lot of unfairness like that.  Heck, I’d like to still have hair or look like Brad Pitt.  But hey, that’s life.   But these days, the pandemic can show just how serious that unfairness can be. Heck, even the virus doesn’t treat you fairly.   Some people the virus doesn’t affect at all.  But others, the virus sickens, even kills.  And the doctors still don’t know why.

So, when the unfairness hits us, hits you, where is God in that?   How is God working in those times when you face the unfairness of life?   In this story, God shows you the way.  So, let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Genesis 32:22- 33:4

How do you face the unfairness of life?   More crucially, how does God face it?   When you face the unfairness, sometimes the brutal unfairness of life, how do you find your way through to hope, to peace, to even joy?  Here God tells you.   You realize.  The picture is always bigger than you see. And in that picture relationship trumps winning every time, in fact only relationship leads to justice.  And in that bigger picture of relationship, nothing, not even unfairness gets wasted. 

But before you can see that bigger picture, you first have to see how our smaller picture thinking gets in the way, how it hurts us more than we realize.  And to understand that, you need to understand how the man in this story, Jacob, dealt with the unfair hand life dealt him. 

In fact, he got his very name because of that unfair hand.  You see, Jacob had a twin brother named Esau, but Esau came out first.  Jacob came behind so quickly he was born with his hand literally on Esau’s heel.   So, his name Jacob literally means just that, “may he be at the heels.”  But come on, what sort of name is that?  May he be at the heels?   It’s literally a name that destines you to be always second place to your brother, just like you were at birth.

And sadly, that’s how Jacob’s life goes.   First, his brother, Esau, as the one born first (albeit by less than two seconds) gets the lion’s share of the family’s wealth.   But beyond that, Esau also got the lion’s share of their father, Isaac’s love too.  Esau was a man’s man, a hunter and outdoorsman, and his dad, Isaac loved that.  But Jacob liked to hang around the kitchen with mom.  And daddy Isaac did not like that much at all.   And Jacob knew that.  He knew that his own dad really didn’t like him that much, certainly nothing like how he adored his brother, Esau.   Talk about unfair! He doesn’t get a fair share of his family’s wealth.  He doesn’t even get a fair share of his father’s love. 

So, how does Jacob react?  He decides.  He will do whatever it takes to not just even the score. He will do whatever it takes to win.  So, he first gets his brother to give up the lion’s share of the inheritance for a bowl of soup (clearly Esau isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer).   But that isn’t enough.  He wants his dad’s blessing too, even if it means stealing it from his brother.   And so, he goes to his blind dad, and tricks him into thinking he is Esau, just so he can get those words of affirmation, that blessing.      

But you do something like that, you are not going to get away with it.  And Jacob doesn’t.  When his brother, Esau, finds out, he vows to kill him.  And Jacob has to flee.    He will never again see his father and mother.  Not only has he lost his brother’s inheritance, he has lost his own.   His obsession with winning has left him with nothing.   So, why does he do it? 

Why does anyone want fairness?  Why do you want fairness?  You want someone to see what you see.  You want someone to see that the way things are, is not just, is not right.  And because of that unfairness, no one is seeing the truth of who you are, the value of who you are.   You simply want someone to see you and the rightness of your cause.  

But here’s the problem.  Jacob goes beyond simply wanting fairness.  He doesn’t want to just be seen.  He wants to be seen as the winner, the one who has gotten ahead.   But in his obsession with winning, he loses everything.   But even if he had won, if he had gotten everything, he still would be lost.  Jacob’s picture of what he needs is far too small.  

And yet that small picture drives so many lives.  If I just get this job, this relationship, this family, this whatever, then I’ll have won.  Then I’ll have what I need. It can even drive those who have been unfairly treated.  You can think.  If I can just get my piece of the pie, what’s rightfully due me, or even more than that, if I can just win.   But it’s never enough.  The writer Oscar Wilde said it well.  “There are two great tragedies in life.  The first is not getting what you want, and the second is getting it.” 

 Yet as Jacob flees, one thing he hasn’t lost, something he maybe didn’t even realize he had. He doesn’t lose the love of God.  No, God finds him, and in a dream of a ladder to heaven tries to give Jacob, the bigger picture.  He promises him a future of blessing.  Yet, even then, Jacob doesn’t get it.   God is inviting Jacob into a relationship, but still all Jacob wants is to win. 

 So, after the dream, he offers God a deal where for whatever God gives Jacob, Jacob will get to keep 90% and God will get to keep 10.   Even with God, he simply wants to get a win.

 So, Jacob flees, and sets up shop with his mom’s brother, Laban.  And there he meets his match.  He wants to marry Laban’s daughter, Rachel.   And he agrees to work seven years for free  to earn her hand.  But Laban tricks Jacob into instead marrying his older daughter, Rebekah. 

You see.  In those days, you didn’t see the bride at the marriage ceremony.  The veil never came off until after the marriage. So, when the veil comes off, Jacob realizes.  He got married to the wrong sister.   Laban has won, and he has lost.

But Jacob doesn’t give up, he works another seven years, to win the wife he wants.   And then, in an ingenious livestock breeding scheme, Jacob figures out how to win the best of Laban’s flocks and, thus his wealth, for himself.   But again, Jacob loses.  He gets found out, and he has to flee.   Now at least this time he flees with his wives and his flocks.  But he has nowhere to go, nowhere to go but home, home to his brother Esau, the brother who vowed to kill him.

And that’s where we take up the story.   Jacob has already heard that his brother, Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men.   And being Jacob, he has sent sheep and goats on ahead to hopefully buy his brother off.  Still, he fears the worst.   And at that moment God shows up. 

But this time, God shows up in a way Jacob will understand.  God shows up to give Jacob a win.  But God doesn’t just give it.  No, God and Jacob wrestle over that win all night.   Do you know how long a real wrestling match lasts, even in the Olympics?   It lasts about six or seven minutes, and that’s with two breaks in between.  Why?  Because wrestling is brutally exhausting.   But God and Jacob don’t wrestle for just a few minutes.  They wrestle all night long.   God knows Jacob needs that.  Jacob needs to feel he earned that win.  And Jacob does until the twist comes. 

For right, before the win, God gives Jacob a wound.  The translation says here that God struck Jacob.  But the word is literally touched.    Basically, God touched his hip, and ripped the whole thing out of joint.  Then Jacob gets it.

Have you ever played a game with a child, and given the kid the win?  Maybe you were wrestling on the floor, and that four-year-old pinned you down.   Or maybe you had a race where that six-year-old broke past you at the finish line.   Why did you do that?   You did it for the same reason, I’ve done it with my son.  You didn’t care about the win.   You cared about the relationship.       

And Jacob gets it.  God will give Jacob the win because God wants the relationship more.  And to celebrate that relationship, God gives Jacob a new name, Israel, the wrestler with God.   And that name has power.  For God is telling Jacob in that name.   I see you.   I see your hunger.  I see your passion to win.  And yes, I see how it messes you up.  But I see too the wounds from where it comes.  In fact, the wound I gave you shows you that. 

And in that moment, Jacob becomes free.  He realizes.  He never needed the win as much as he needed the relationship.  He needed to know that God saw him, really saw him, in all the pain, and the hurt and the injustice.     And that’s how true justice comes too.   Sure, it may require some wins along the way.  But before the wins come the relationships.   For it is in the relationships that people see; that people see each other, that people see the wounds, the pain, the injustice.  And then the justice comes.  I’ve seen that again and again in our work building relationships in Bold Justice, with other people of faith, with public leaders, how through those relationships, through seeing that pain, wins come.  

Now, we still live in a world of broken relationships, a world where unfairness still reigns too often.  But in this story of God’s feigned loss, of God’s pretend weakness, God points you to another time, where God would lose in order to win, not just Jacob, but everyone and everything.        

In Jesus, God did become weak for real, even vulnerable unto death.    And while that night God saw Jacob.  On that cross, few saw Jesus.  Instead they saw a criminal, a man to be despised or mocked.   And while Jacob was wounded so that his heart might be healed.  But Jesus was wounded even unto death, so that you might be healed.   And Jesus held on to that cross, so he could be blessed, but so you could be.  He held on to give you a new name, beloved son, precious daughter, beloved child of God.  He lost everything so you might win, so you could see yourself as God sees you, beloved and precious.    And in that love, God will, in the end, heal and restore every wound, every injustice.  But until that day come, you now know God has seen you.  God has called you his own.  And nothing, no injustice, no evil, not even death will ever take that away. 

And the more you know that love, the more peace and hope and joy come even on the darkest of days   For, now you know.  The darkness will never be the end of the story.  The light of God’s love will.   That is the bigger picture.   And in the light of that, you can work with joy and hope to see the justice, the goodness that Jesus died to give.   For you know, even on the darkest of day, no darkness will ever be able to withstand that light.