"It's like being slammed into a wall and totally destroyed. It makes you want to pull every hair out of your head. There's nothing I can do to defend myself."

And the attacks just keep coming, day after day after day.

The victim of these assaults is Lee Burke, a Massachusetts woman in her 50s. Until this abuse began, she was married and working as an executive at a real-estate company, but now she's alone and without that job. So who -- or what -- is her assailant?

It's not an abusive spouse. Not a violent criminal. Not a street punk or a rogue cop.

Instead, it's pain. Chronic pain.

Lee Burke underwent surgery for a brain tumor eight years ago, and awoke with an unforeseen and inexplicable problem -- lightning-hot headaches that knock her out for periods ranging from four hours to four days.

"It's like knives are going through my eyes," she groans to her doctor. People experiencing chronic pain often feel like they are being punished, and they are bound to struggle with the unanswerable questions, "Why is this happening?" and "Why me?"

According to The New York Times Magazine, chronic pain is defined as continuous pain that lasts longer than six months, and it afflicts an estimated 30 to 50 million Americans, with social costs in disability and lost productivity that add up to more than $100 billion every year.

30 to 50 million people. $100 billion dollars. This is some serious suffering. (Melanie Thernstrom, "Pain, the Disease," The New York Times Magazine, December 16, 2001, 67-71)

The Old Testament character Jacob knew chronic pain. In today's lesson from Genesis, he crosses a stream and immediately plunges into an all-night wrestling match with a mysterious divine being. When the mystery man sees that he cannot put Jacob on the mat, he strikes him on the hip socket and throws Jacob's hip out of joint.

The pain is like an ice pick in the side, but Jacob hangs on tight.

"Let me go," wails the man, "for day is breaking." Although he is writhing in agony, Jacob mutters through gritted teeth, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me" (Genesis 32:26).

The man asks for Jacob's name, and then says to him, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed" (v. 28). Jacob is given a new name, "Israel," which means "The one who strives with God," because he has struggled all night and endured. At the end of the very darkest night of his soul, after wrestling with a man who turns out to be God, he is given a new name and a new identity. His struggle transforms him.

Could the same be said of those of you who suffer pain today? Who suffer from illness, loss, disappointment, frustration or failure? Who are hurting right now, for a variety of reasons?

Genesis tells us that the sun rose upon Jacob as he passed Peniel, "limping because of his hip" (v. 31). Notice that Jacob's pain doesn't go away after the wrestling match is over. No hip replacement is possible, and it appears that he's destined to be a gimp with a limp. But he wobbles into the future with something worth cherishing -- an entirely new outlook.

You see, before his all-nighter, Jacob was known as "The Supplanter," the brother who grabbed the heel of his twin in the womb and then did everything in his power to supplant, trip up and replace his sibling.

All that was changed by the transforming pain of Peniel. Jacob had been afraid of seeing his brother's face on the other side of the Jabbok, but those feelings were overshadowed and overwhelmed by his experience of seeing the face of God during his long night of struggle and pain. When Jacob limped to the other side of the stream, he was a transformed man, one who was both broken and blessed.

This is what pain can do to us -- it can break us and bless us. Jacob had no interest in being "The Supplanter" after his painful struggle with God; he was done with those sly, selfish and sinister schemes. Instead, Jacob only wanted to bow before his brother and beg his forgiveness. He wanted to act in a way consistent with his new name "Israel," act like someone who has striven with God and humans, and prevailed. When he met his brother after his night of pain, the two of them were reconciled to one another.

The point of this story is not that pain is good, but that it transforms us -- sometimes in positive ways. As the apostle Paul discovered many years later, power is made perfect not in strength, but in weakness. Compassion is made stronger in suffering. Sensitivity is made sharper in times of difficulty. Dependence on God is made rock-solid in situations of struggle. While chronic pain is not part of the Lord's plan for us, he can certainly use pain -- along with all the other experiences of life -- to change us for the better.

In the end, Jacob's encounter with God at Peniel transformed his life, linking him to the Lord and to his brother in ways he never dreamed possible.

May our experience of pain do the very same ... as individuals, as families, and as a community of faith at Fairfax Presbyterian. Amen.

 

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