Kingdom Harbor

This past Sunday we baptized our son, Isaak David, in a beautiful service under an oak tree next to our chicken coop in our neighbor’s horse water tank. Peter and Joy Herzog stood up as Isaak’s godparents, Peter leading worship and Joy reading scripture. My Peter played piano and I plucked the banjo while a rooster crowed a couple times (thankfully not three).

Earlier that morning, I was the guest minister leading two services at Lake Minnetonka Shores (Presbyterian Homes). I asked a favor of all those elderly souls, letting them know about Isaak’s baptism that evening. I told them of our desire to wrap Isaak in a big, warm, soft, pure white blanket as he comes out of the baptism waters, just as the Scriptures say that “all who are baptized have put on Christ like new clothes” (Gal. 3:27).

I passed the white blanket around the room, asking each person to pray for and bless Isaak, as they touch and pass the blanket along. They were moved by this opportunity to be part of our special service later that day. And I was thrilled to tell our congregation that this blanket we were wrapping around Isaak had been pre-blessed by the prayers and love of a hundred grandfathers and grandmothers that morning.

The weather was beautiful, the music was fun, and I was a nervous wreck as I tried to share the message God had placed on my heart just for Isaak. Instead a water-themed Scripture passage for the occasion, I was led to a desert text and a message inviting Isaak (and us all) to a faith that embraces wrestling with God, truth, doubt, disappointments, etc. My text was Genesis 32 where Jacob wrestles all night with God and walks away with a limp and new name.

Thankfully, we captured my sermon and parts of the service on video, and you can watch the highlights below. I will post an abbreviated transcript below as well. Enjoy these photos and short video of my message. We love you, Isaak David!

SERMON TRANSCRIPT:

“Let’s get ready to rumble!” is the famous catchphrase of world of professional boxing and wrestling announcer Michael Buffer, used at the beginning of a professional wrestling match. Isaak and I started wrestling some time back—rolling around on the floor, headlocks and tickle torture, and all the rest of the classic dad moves. We grunt and we giggle. I often pound my chest like Tarzan and then I begin with that classic refrain. But you’re at a baptism service and it may seem strange to use that as the intro and the sermon title. But I think it fits better than we think—especially if you were listening to those scriptures we just heard. 

As soon as Jesus and the peaceful dove of God’s presence lowers on the waters of his baptism, his identity is affirmed and then what happens next? He’s led out into the Wilderness where he is wrestling with temptation and lies of the Devil, the struggle commences. So while baptism gives us a new identity and a new beginning, it also invites us into a new Journey full of struggle and wrestling.

Today I want to talk about this very peculiar text from Genesis 32. We read that a man came and wrestled with Jacob until the dawn began to break and when the man saw that he could not win the match he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. The man said, “let me go for the dawn is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” 

Baptism is an invitation to four things that I see in this text. Let’s look at each of them.

First, baptism is an invitation to a faith that wrestles that wrestles through struggles, through doubts, through bad experiences with church people. There’s so many reasons young people are struggling and walking away from faith and the church.  And there’s legitimate reasons and I’m sympathetic to them and I want to be a part of drawing them back. But often the process of “deconstruction” is simply a matter of growing up with a Sunday school faith and then going off to college where one starts wrestling with the faith and the claims of scripture. You have really good questions and sometimes you have really legitimate doubts. Here’s my message: don’t walk away as soon as you have a frustration, a doubt about the veracity of scripture, you are hurt by a church relationship, or realize so many people who claim to follow Jesus are hypocrites or jerks. Instead of walking away, wrestle through it. 

Second, we read that the man wrestling Jacob, who we know is God himself in human form, says “let me go the Dawn is Breaking.” But Jacob says with bold defiance, “I will not let you go until you bless me!”  Now let me tell you what this is not saying. This is not Jacob making selfish demands on God, saying “I’m not letting you go until you give me a new car and a big House.” This isn’t some random “bless, me bless me” prosperity gospel moment. No, Jacob’s story is one of a God who has entered into a covenant with his people Israel, with sacred promises made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob is holding God to his end of the deal, saying, “I’m not letting go of you until you prove true to your word. God,I know your promises and I know your truth, and I I believe you’re a faithful God who will keep his Word. So I’m not letting go until you are faithful to the Covenant.” 

Now you and I will probably never be wrestled to the ground by God in a shadowy human form, but you and I do have many opportunities to hold on to God’s promises when life gets hard, when the diagnosis comes, when death knocks on the door, when a relationship breaks down, or you find your child in the ICU for 30 days. These are moments when we can despair, or choose to grab hold of God’s word, his promises, his truths and not let go.

Third, Jacob limps away from this encounter with God. He comes away from this wrestling match with a with some kind of a wound, a limp, that he’ll carry the rest of his life. I want you to think about your own life. We all have moments that have marked us deeply—spiritual wounds, emotional wounds, physical wounds, relational trauma. Here’s my invitation: we all are going to hobble through life but the question is will you have a sacred, sanctified wound that’s been placed in the hands of Jesus and touched by God?

Or do you keep your pain to yourself and God at a safe distance? There’s some people who get hurt and then they get bitter. They walk from God and shake their fist at Him.  But we all have an opportunity to let God touch the wound, to push on the hip socket, making it a holy wound.  That painful experience or emotional scar could have ruined us. It could have knocked us down never to get up again.  But when we let God touch that wound it becomes a sacred wound and we walk away with a holy hobble. 

It’s our prayer that God’s hand was reaching down and touching our family in the painful experience we went through with Isaak this past year. God’s hand was on the wound, on the pain, and on the healing process. So now we can walk forward and talk about it as a time that God showed up, and not as a time where we felt abandoned in our pain. It’s a sacred wound that has left us all walking with a bit of a holy hobble.

Fourthly, this story ends with Jacob being given a new name. The name “Israel” fittingly means “he who wrestles with God.”  We are not giving you a new name today, Isaak. Instead, baptism is an opportunity to remember your given name. You were given the name Isaak David—actually, it was David Isaak until the ninth hour of Labor when your mom pulled a power move on me and I couldn’t fight with her.  It was going to be David Isaak but now it was Isaak David.  We want you to remember throughout your life that we named you Isaak David because you are a source of great joy and laughter, and you bring so much laughter into the world and into the lives of others. Aand you are David—“a man after God’s own heart.” 

In summary, baptism is 1) an invitation to a faith that wrestles; 2) an invitation to hold on and not let go of God’s blessings and promises; 3) an invitation to let God touch all the broken places and painful wounds in order to walk on with a holy hobble; and 4) an invitation to remember your name.