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Completing the Work that God Starts

The Rev. Canon Elizabeth C. Knowlton
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
August 3, 2008
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 13  – Year A

If someone asked you who you are, how would you answer?  Would you give your occupation?  List off your greatest talents and achievements?  How do you think others would describe you if asked?  In western culture there seems to be a tendency to identify us by what we do, rather than who we are in relationship with.  While how we act is certainly an important facet of who we are, it is rarely the complete picture.  The more gifted we are, the greater the temptation is to describe us only through our giftedness.

I recently watched the 1998 film, Hilary and Jackie.  You may remember it.  It tells the story of the complicated relationship between two sisters.  The oldest, Hilary, starts out as a gifted musician.  She wins musical competitions at an early age for her skill playing the flute.  She is serving as an example to her younger sister, who only wants to grow up and be like her.  Jackie is in the background and barely noticeable as the film begins.  Until, when at an early age, she picks up the cello.  We see her early fascination with the instrument, and she quickly begins to show a prowess that leaves the older Hilary quickly on the margins.  Instead of being at the center of the stage,  she is crammed in a car, trying to practice her flute, while her sister has private lessons with a world renown professional.  We come to know that the young girl  is in fact, Jacqueline du Pré, still considered one of the finest cello players to ever hold the instrument.  Hillary has been supplanted by the new genius in her family. 

Jacqueline makes her debut at sixteen, and is soon largely gone from day to day family life, touring the world to share her prodigious musical gifts.  By her early twenties she meets another legendary musician, Daniel Berrenboim.  They eventually marry and forge an extraordinary musical parternship, compared in the press to the likes of Clara and Robert Schumann. 

Jackie has overshadowed her older sister, and the film gives one the impression that while Jackie is clearly the more talented musician, that there has also been a stark reversal for Hilary.  That if only she had not been born into this family, she would probably have felt gifted and talented, rather than supplanted and second best.  Jackie is portrayed as a temperamental artist at best, who is happy to have outpaced her older sister. It feels like a modern retelling of the story of Esau and Jacob.

That story is one we know well.  Jacob the deceiver, tricks his older brother Esau out of his birthright, steals his father’s blessing, and then flees to escape his wrath.  He is visited by a vision during his flight which shows the angels ascending and descending from heaven.  During his time away, he is tricked himself.  He marries the wrong woman, Leah, and then works another seven years for his true love Rachel.  He then spends time growing in his success.  Gaining property, livestock, having children to carry on his name.  His supplanting of his brother in some ways has worked very well for him. 

But, there is also a sense that to flee Esau and never return to his homeland will leave his life incomplete.  That he must in fact return.  To stay away leaves him a prisoner to what he has done.  He will forever be the deceiver, the thief of blessings.  To those around him and to himself, he will never have a full picture of who he is before God.  To see that will mean he has to face his brother.  It is as he prepares to face Esau again that we find him sending his two wives, two maids, eleven children, and all of their assorted paraphernalia across the Jabbok River.  Jacob is left alone.  He is aware that Esau has every reason to want to take his life, and that how he will be received the next day is unknown.  He is in a place of great vulnerability.  And that is when the unknown man leaps out from the dark and wrestles him until dawn.

He struggles in what seems like an equal match until the dawn is near.  But the unknown man seems to tire and shifts the fight by striking him on the hip and demanding to be released.  But, Jacob is too tenacious to just let go.  He demands a blessing.  He will not let this night of struggle come without some benefit to himself.  He also will know the identity of who and what he has been struggling with. The man will not say who he is, but does yield the blessing.  He also gives Jacob a new name.  Through the struggle, Jacob is no longer merely the deceiver and the supplanter.  He is now Israel.  The way he views himself and how he is know by those he is in relationship must change.  The acts of deception have not gone away.  But he has transcended a view of himself that is sole based on what he has done.  He has survived the struggle of the night and emerged as a new person.  But the struggle has not been easy, and he will always limp.

Jacqueline du Pré  encountered her own dark struggles in the night.  They left her wounded, to the point where she was barely recognizable.  After brilliant and early acclaim, she contracts multiple sclerosis and finds herself gradually unable to play the cello.  At one point, she asks her husband, “would you still love me if I can’t play?”  He replies, “you wouldn’t be you, if you couldn’t play.”  Jackie, through her great gifts has lost something larger of herself in the process.

As the disease progresses, she eventually finds herself completely incapacitated, bound to a wheelchair, and estranged from her husband.  And that in fact becomes the angel that she wrestles in the vulnerability and tragedy of her illness.  Who is she aside from these gifts?  How can she know herself or be known in the world separate from her musical genius?  How can Jacob be known apart from the deceptive cleverness that has earned his financial prosperity?

It would be wonderful if we could come to these insights about ourselves without stuggle or loss.  But the reality is that it is often only when we feel our very life is at stake that we are prepared to engage in the hard struggle.  It is then that we are willing to suffer the crippling wounds that will lead us to a new view of ourselves. 

And the answers are not only found in the largely private struggles in the dark.  Meeting ourselves and God face to face is only the beginning of the transformation.  Ultimately, who we are is found in the reconciliation of relationships that the point of separation.  For Jacob and Jackie, they need to reconcile with their older siblings, the ones they have supplanted.

Jacob ultimately meets Esau in fear and trembling.  And rather than punishing him, or killing him, Esau will embrace the brother who has wronged him.  It is hard to imagine that the story would have ended the same without this moment of forgiveness.  The struggle with God was predicated on Jacob’s vulnerability, but his transformation was solidified by the reconciling love offered by the one he had hurt.

Towards the end of the film, stripped of all outward success, Jacqueline is finally able to have peace when Hilary embraces her.  Gone is the judgment of her simpler life and lesser musical talent.  It is Hilary that gives Jackie a different image of herself.  She is not just a musical genius, but is in fact the child who played with her on the beach.  It is that fuller and more complete image of herself that Jackie is able to receive at the end.  She has lost much, but through that loss she has also encountered an opportunity for healing and reconciliation.

We have these same opportunities in our own lives.  They may not be the dramatic stories of betrayal and reconciliation from the patriarchs or musical genius.  But, we have all felt ourselves supplanted.  And we have all found ourselves trapped in limiting portrayals of who we are.  Often the only way we break free from these is through vulnerability and wounding.  We may have our encounters with God that leave us feeling as if all we can do is limp forward.  But those limps, those difficulties in fact are grace filled.  It is often at those moments when we have “lost” everything that we in fact find ourselves. 

And that finding is not alone.  We need the grace of forgiveness to show us a different reflection of who we are.  We may begin the transformation in the dark of night, but it is in the embrace of our brothers and sisters that we find peace.  And it is in our extension of forgiveness that we find it as well. 

The reality is that we often only meet one another after the wounding has happened.  Our limps may be all too obvious, our failures too well known.  We may or may not know what happened during the struggle of the night that our brothers or sisters have just endured.  But if we have the courage to embrace one another, wounds and all, then we are finishing the work that God has begun.  Whether we are Jacob or Esau, we are all part of the reconciling work of God. 

Amen

Comments? Contact Beth Knowlton at: BKnowlton@stphilipscathedral.org

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