Laurie Ann Kraus Genesis 32:9-15, 22-32; 33:1-11

Self-Validation: Spiritual Antibody #3

For how many of you in this room is your best always good enough?

Think about that’¦and listen:

It is the final hour of a pastors’ retreat. We have
reached a conclusion of baptismal name-calling. Pastors one-by-one
are invited to sit in the center and declare the “name” they had claimed from the bible, from which they
had been given the “authority” to teach and preach. The exercise is going
swimmingly until a young pastor walks to the center and sits down. We
wait. Silence. We wait. More silence. Protestant impatience with
silence begins to express itself: creaking chairs, clearing throats,
watching watches, and a visual counting of the bodies that are left
to be named. He finally shifts his gaze from his hands to a place
over our heads. “I’ve looked for my name for three days.
It isn’t there.” That cracks the silence. What does he mean,
“It isn’t there?”
Everything necessary for our salvation is expected to be there.

“It’s not that I didn’t want one of those
names. But they aren’t strong enough. Strong enough to undo
the one I have. My father gave it to me. Over and over again. My name
is…” His gaze sinks down to his fingers. “My
name is….’Not good enough.” There is silence, deep enough to drown in. Tears
rise. We watch and listen, helpless on the shores of this grief, this
dangerous confession of inadequacy. He has voluntarily stripped naked
and plunged in over our heads.¹

This morning we have read part of the story of Jacob, whose name
means’”supplanter. After a lifetime of living down to
the name his parents gave him it is at last time to face his past,
and begin to live his own life, instead of the one he stole from his
brother Esau. He has been given a new name, but he alone can decide
whether he is worthy to live into it. What will he do? And what will
we do? Because we know the flaw, the danger in both these stories,
the pastor’s and the patriarch’s: if we are not good
enough, in the end, it is no one’s fault but our own. No
matter what legacy of inadequacy we have inherited, what name we have
been given, it is up to us, and no one else, to claim our place as
God’s beloved child, and to live as if we believe it.

This morning marks our third exploration of five spiritual
antibodies against compassion fatigue; five spiritual practices we
are seeking to learn to incorporate into our lives so that we may be
peaceful, purposeful, and joy-filled, no matter what the
circumstances of stress or threat around us, in our professional and
personal worlds. We have in the past weeks considered how no one of
us’”not even Jesus!’” is immune to the effects of stress
in our lives. We have explored intentionality and considered
what our personal mission and values are. We looked at relaxation, a prayer-like state of bodily self-regulation that helps us to
remain unclenched in the presence of real or perceived threats, so
that we can be in touch with our higher self, and not be a slave to
the alligator brain that tells us to fight or flee in the presence of
danger. Today we consider self-validation, the third spiritual
antibody. In order to be spiritually healthy within, no matter what
the outside circumstances, we must become capable of loving. When the
rich young ruler asked Jesus how to live divinely, Jesus asked
him’”what is the greatest commandment? And the man responded
correctly, We must love the Lord our God with all our hearts and
all our minds and all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. For many of us, this golden rule has called our attention to two
things: loving God, and loving our neighbor. What is often
neglected’¦as yourself. . .is key to the first two
actions.

For if we do not love and trust ourselves, we cannot hope to know
how to love a neighbor, a friend, a partner, a child, an enemy. And
if we cannot love our neighbor whom we can see, we cannot love God,
whom we can’t see. The spiritual practice of self-validation
is neither vanity nor self-aggrandizement, it is believing that we
are God’s worthy child, so that we can in all circumstances
act that way. Why does it matter? Because when we don’t
believe we are good enough, that our best is good enough, we become
dangerously addicted to the praise of others. And if we cannot get it
freely, we will, like Jacob, be forced to take it from others. We all
know people like this; who feel better by running you down; who take
credit for what someone else has done, who need adoration so
desperately to fill up the empty inside that they will take from
anyone and everyone whatever they can, and be enraged that it is
never enough. To love God and to love others we must love ourselves,
and be in charge of our own sense of worth. it is believing that we
are doing our best; and that our best (which is all anyone can do!)
is always good enough.

This morning’s reading is about two boys who never believed
their best was good enough, two children who , hating each other,
never learned to love themselves. And now after long years of
struggle and competition, they must face each other; now they must
face themselves.

Jacob is first’”as always!’”to see his brother Esau
approaching. Now, suddenly, he is no longer the new man Israel, the godwrestler, whose name and power were won at such great cost
in the dark struggles of the night. Now that he sees his brother, he
is again the supplanter, a brother-wrestler, the child who fought
with his own blood and fled his home in fear of his life. Last night,
he strove with angels and prevailed. This morning, he is only Jacob:
and he carries with him to meet his brother all the history of what
he was and what he has tried to become, and the guilt that long years
have never been able to erase. He cannot love his brother because he
has not learned to love himself.

And then there is Esau: always oldest, always second best. Have
you only one blessing? he cried in anguish upon discovering his
brother’s treachery, when his life and his hope and his power
were stolen at Isaac’s deathbed. Bless me, me also, father! But Isaac, feeble and broken, outmaneuvered on every side, had
very little left to give his son except regret. Indeed, the blessing
of Esau was a blessing of regret and deprivation and poverty: a
blessing of bitterness and Dis-ease—

Away from the fatness of the earth shall your home be. Away
from the dew of heaven on high’”
You shall serve your
brother, and when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your
neck.

Neither brother can avoid this meeting, for God knows that, until
the brothers face each other, neither brother will ever be whole.
Esau is coming, with four hundred men and the yoke of his brother,
the yoke of righteous indignation and of bitterness. Jacob has
prepared well for this confrontation, as well he might, but he is
still afraid. Messengers had gone before him, and spies had
ascertained his brother’s strength. His wives and his children
have been separated for safety’s sake, and drilled in the
proper courtesies. Gifts, lavish gifts, have been prepared.
Jacob has choreographed and calculated this meeting with all the
conniving skill at his command, and he is as ready as he will ever
be.

Seven times he bows himself to the earth, the story tells us,
grovelllng before the power and the justice of his brother, who now,
as was foretold, will at last break his yoke. Fearfully, he falls at
Esau’s feet, his new name and his hard-won identity all but
forgotten in his fear. He is ready for anything’”but in truth,
nothing has prepared him for what is about to take place.

But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his
neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Coming up from those waters of grace, Esau looks around and
gestures: brother, what is all this…stuff? What are you trying
to say? Coming up from the waters of grace, Jacob looks up, and
sees before him the embarrassment of riches, the obsequious excesses
his shame has manufactured, and his heart sinks. Standing in his
brother’s embrace, he sees himself for what he is, still the
same old Jacob, trying to bamboozle and overwhelm…but then,
anointed with his brother’s tears, he grasps for the
“Israel” within, and answers Esau plainly: it is….to find
favor with my lord.

And Esau roars with laughter, and shouts out his freedom from
Jacob’s yoke: I don’t want it! I have enough! Keep
what you have. With four hundred men he rode out to take back by
force what his brother had stolen from him: but when he saw Jacob, he
discovered that he was free. He does not want what his brother has,
he is his own man: and the yoke of Jacob has been broken not on the
killing field, but by Love. Come home, he bids his brother,
and waits.

And Jacob-Israel, weeping, looks upon the face of the brother whom
he has supplanted and hated and feared, and sees, to his surprise,
not the face of an enemy, but the face of the angel, the face of the
man with whom he had wrestled by night, his own face, the face of
God. It is himself he has hated, all along, and finding in his
brother’s face only love and acceptance where he expected to
find judgment, he turns at last to the one he has forgiven least in
his life, sees himself as he truly is, and begins to love.

Back in the room where the young pastor sat in silence, having
confessed his true name:

In a room, full of lifeguards, a pastor is drowning. Then comes
a stirring sound as a handful of women and men rise and circle the
drowning man. An ancient tradition, the laying on of hands, takes
place. One voice rises, then turns into two voices, then unison, male
and female. "You are my beloved son. With you I am well
pleased.” We are deeply immersed in a renewal of baptism.
What we witness is a rebirth.

What does it take for us to know we are God’s beloved son?
God’s daughter? To believe it?

The first time I participated in a Compassion Fatigue workshop, we
were asked to practice self validation by writing ourselves a letter,
a letter of praise and love, with no criticism in it, a letter from
the beloved. To my surprise and dismay. I couldn’t do it. Any
letter of love from God to me must include a description of my
shortcomings, a strongly worded suggestion to shape up and try
harder, a hint of disappointment that I had not measured up to
God’s, that is, my own harsh standards. I tore up several
attempts, looked at my Blackberry, and decided I needed to go return
some emails. When I came back to the room later and listened to my
friends reading their letters aloud, I realized I was standing on
holy ground, and I felt sorry I had refused the opportunity to write
my own blessing. This morning, I invite you to stand on holy ground.
. .to take the paper that has been provided in your bulletin, and to
inoculate yourself with the love of God, by loving yourself. And let
us pray, in these fine old words of Hildegarde of Bingen

Good people, most royal greening verdancy, rooted in the sun, you shine with radiant light. In this circle of earthly
existence, you shine so finely, it surpasses
understanding. God hugs you.
You are encircled by the arms of the
mystery of God.