The Divine Screw-Job
December 15, 2005
I know Jonny thinks it’s funny when people podcast their sermons (and I’m sure others do too), but…oh well. I am preaching again today, on Gen 32 (Jacob wrestling with God). The sermon is called The Divine Screw-Job (to see why, you’ll have to check out the footnote in the PDF): you can read the manuscript here. This was supposed to be a narrative sermon, and I struggled with that. I mean…I’m supposed to really like narrative, but…it’s hard. It’s hard to strike the balance between just telling the story and having people go “Huh” when you’re done, and on the other side, telling the story and then ending with a “Well hey kids - here is the moral of the story…” So, I don’t really know how I did with finding that balance. So, if you have 10 minutes, I’d love it if you would listen to this sermon, and then leave a comment with 1-2 sentences of what you think…did I have a “claim” or a “point”? Or whatever you want…thanks! Listen below.
Tags: Preaching, Seminary, Sermons
Posted in 
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
December 15th, 2005 at 11:36 am
I’m not sure about this “screw-job” business. But I really liked your re-telling of the story. Some relationship between the “then” and the “now” could make this a better sermon. As a contemporary listener, I’m left asking, “So what?” As a seminarian I get your rhetorical questions at the end of the sermon — you intend to say via negativa that struggling with God is a blessing and a curse, that the name “Israel” was a troubling new moniker for Jacob, and that God had revealed himself in the dead of night instead of on a sunny afternoon. I also understood, looking back, how these themes were woven into your re-telling of the story.
My difficulty with strictly narrative sermons is that they seem obscurantist and esoteric — only a precious few will “get” your claim(s). I think its best to ground a dramatic re-telling in the dirt of the everyday, so that everyperson can follow the trails you weave through an ancient tale. A few windows into our world — like what we might experience as the “river Jabbok” or how we might “experience God” and yet feel bruised — would really bring this sermon to life for me.
But this is your sermon, not mine. And aside from these remarks I should add that your delivery was really good. You’re good with embodiment, voice change, style, pace, and accentuation. It was also a well written sermon — good use of vocabulary and setting.
My favorite line: And then the Dawn. Gave me chills, but that’s just because I’ve read The Great Divorce too many times….
Peace brother,
- kp -
December 15th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
i’ll not give as thorough a critique as kellen - he covered the obscurity issue well enough. i took your point to be that in our experiences God is often hidden, but never completely absent. the case with jacob is that he struggled to have faith in/remember the blessings that God has promised. but God prefigures the dramatic event of his self-disclosure (forgive the pronoun) by revealing himself in a tangible way.
granted, i read the sermon and didn’t hear the nuance of your presentation, but i had to re-read to tease out what you were trying to say.
also, i’m not sure that it really adds anything to your story to make a song and dance out of the whole “screw-job”. you lay all of your cards on the table with a title like that, but that’s not really the point you are trying to make.
if your point is that God wanted to get jacob’s attention in a dramatic way, then it would seem that the wrestling match and the dislocation of jacob’s hip is a clever vehicle for the revelation. it lets jacob know who he’s dealing with. you bring us to the threshold of that point, but decide its more interesting to point out the dubious character of the “man” - i think you bailed out of what could have been great insight.
i dug the writing style though: kind of pithy. you don’t go overboard with the psychoanalysis and you don’t read into the text what isn’t there.
December 25th, 2005 at 12:43 am
Adam:
I was just wondering why, when you have so many other words available to you, that you would choose to call your sermon a divine “screw job”. I understand that a few people might know about the technicality of this being a wrestling term (I didn’t know it until you explained it in your footnote). But why take the chance that somebody will misunderstand, and think you are using foul langauge? Similarly, I was wondering why in your sermon that you chose to say that his hip hurt “like hell”? Isn’t there another way you could put this, or is it more of a deliberate attempt at challenging a system of ethics and propriety? Very interested in your response.
–Jim