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Secrets in the Dark
A Life in Sermons
By Frederick Buechner HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Frederick Buechner
All right reserved. ISBN: 0060842482
Chapter One
The Magnificent Defeat
The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob's thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then he said, "Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Tell me, I pray, your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his thigh.
-- Genesis 32:22-150;31
When a minister reads out of theBible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the -people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being read but only what they expect to hear read. And I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson -- something elevating, obvious, and boring. So that is exactly what very often they do hear. Only that is too bad because if you really listen -- and maybe you have to forget that it is the Bible being read and a minister who is reading it -- there is no telling what you might hear.
The story of Jacob at the river Jabbok, for instance. This stranger leaping out of the night to do terrible battle for God knows what reason. Jacob crying out to know his name but getting no answer. Jacob crippled, defeated, but clinging on like a drowning man and choking out the words, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." Then the stranger trying to break away before the sun rises. A ghost? A demon? The faith of Israel goes back some five thousand years to the time of Abraham, but there are elements in this story that were already old before Abraham was born, almost as old as humankind itself. It is an ancient, jagged-edged story, dangerous and crude as a stone knife. If it means anything, what does it mean? And let us not assume that it means anything very neat or very edifying. Maybe there is more terror in it or glory in it than edification. But in any event, the place where you have to start is Jacob: Jacob the son of Isaac, the beloved of Rachel and Leah, the despair of Esau, his brother. Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Who and what was he?
An old man sits alone in his tent. Outside, the day is coming to a close so that the light in the tent is poor, but that is of no concern to the old man because he is virtually blind, and all he can make out is a brightness where the curtain of the tent is open to the sky. He is looking that way now, his head trembling under the weight of his great age, his eyes cobwebbed around with many wrinkles, the ancient, sightless eyes. A fly buzzes through the still air, then lands somewhere.
For the old man there is no longer much difference between life and death, but for the sake of his family and his family's destiny, there are things he has to do before the last day comes, the loose ends of a whole long life to gather together and somehow tie up. And one of these in particular will not let him sleep until he has done it: to call his elder son to him and give him his blessing, but not a blessing in our sense of the word -- a pious formality, a vague expression of good will that we might use when someone is going on a journey and we say, "God bless you." For the old man, a blessing is the speaking of a word of great power; it is the conveying of something of the very energy and vitality of his soul to the one he blesses; and this final blessing of his firstborn son is to be the most powerful of all, so much so that once it is given it can never be taken back. And here even for us something of this remains true: we also know that words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion within the human heart that can never be reversed.
So the old man is waiting now for his elder son, Esau, to appear, and after a while he hears someone enter and say, "My father." But in the dark one voice sounds much like another, and the old man, who lives now only in the dark, asks, "Who are you, my son?" The boy lies and says he is Esau. He says it boldly, and disguised as he is in Esau's clothes and imitating Esau's voice -- the flat, blunt tones of his brother -- one can imagine that he has almost convinced himself that what he says is true. But the silence that follows his words is too silent, or a shadow falls between them -- something -- and the old man reaches forward as if to touch the face he cannot see and asks again, "Are you really my son Esau?" The boy lies a second time, only perhaps not boldly now, . . .
Continues...
Excerpted from Secrets in the Dark by Frederick Buechner Copyright © 2006 by Frederick Buechner. Excerpted by permission.
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