God has a Dopamine Deficiency

A sermon on Genesis 32 - Jacob wrestling at the Jabbok - preached on Oct 17th, 2010 @Emmanuel Lutheran on Baker St.:

Last week’s broadcast of the radio show, “This American Life,” featured the stories of people who have a fear of sleep. They were people who didn’t simply suffer from insomnia or were unable to do it, rather each was a story of someone with a deep seated fear of sleep; or as Wikipedia tells me, somniphobia.

Their stories were truly fascinating. The first story described the situation a chronic sleepwalker. Mike Birbiglia suffers from a dopamine deficiency. Evidently, dopamine is the chemical released in the brain during sleep which paralyzes the body so you don’t actually do what’s happening in your brain and your dreams.

Mike told the story of how he once had a dream in which he entered the Olympics in the most recently added sport to the games, dust busting. He was honored as somehow in his first day of competition dust busting he had taken home the bronze medal. On the medal stand, as the national anthem played, basking in the glory of his recently won medal; Olympic officials then approached him and told him there had been some sort of mistake, a scoring error. And rather than winning the bronze medal, he actually was going to be given the gold medal. Again, he was shocked and honored, and so he climbed up the medal stand to the top. It was then he noticed the medal stand began wobbling. And suddenly he woke up to find himself standing perilously atop a bookcase and subsequently falling towards the living room floor where his TiVo waited to break his fall. He recalled his wife asking what happened to the TiVo in the morning, and responding, “I won a gold medal.”

Other stories of sleep walking were not so funny. The story was told of someone who ran and jumped through the window of a second story hotel room, only to wake up while running down the street covered in broken glass. Bed bugs, nightmares, and the possibility one would not wake up were just some of the other reasons people gave for why they fear the night and the sleep it brings.

I think at the core of these fears, is a wrestling with the unknown, the uncertainty that the dark night skies bring. In our sleep there is a definite recognition of our lack of control, a confession of our inherent vulnerability as humans. As we toss and turn, we wrestle with our pillows and our strength and weakness.

As I listened to the stories of these people and how they have struggled to balance their fears with the inherent goodness, the replenishing necessity of sleep, I was reminded of this week’s story of Jacob wrestling in the night at the river Jabbok.

We don’t know what was running through Jacob’s head that night (Ira Glass was not yet around to help search our deeply held convictions).

Jacob is on the run, stuck between a rock and a hard place. He recently deceived his father-in-law, Laban, and had run off in the night with his daughters and much of his livestock. Jacob is now taking his family to seek refuge with his brother, Esau. Esau, the same person whose birthright Jacob had recently stolen by deceiving his father. Things are not looking up for Jacob.

In preparation for this encounter Jacob has taken his travelling party and divided them up into small groups. He intends to send them one by one towards his brother Esau. His thinking is that if Esau is still a little upset about the whole taking his rights as the first born son thing, he might take his anger out on the first groups to arrive.

Jacob has sent almost all of these groups across the river towards Esau. As the evening approaches, Jacob sends across the next to last group; his two wives, his concubines, and eleven children. This strategy is ultimately an attempt to protect himself. The last in the line is the one most likely to survive should Esau decide to attack.

Alone, preparing for the night, it would seem that Jacob is in the strongest and most safe position of all who walk with him. But as the sun sets and the darkness of night falls around him, Jacob is reminded and forced to wrestle with our inherent vulnerability.

A visitor comes in the midst of this dark night grabs, and begins to wrestle with Jacob. They wrestle throughout the night, locked in a stalemate. Finally, the night visitor says, “Let me go for dawn is breaking.” Jacob, who has been one not to avoid confrontation, seeks an upper hand in their wrestling demands a blessing before he will let the visitor go. Jacob has been able to squeeze material blessings out of his wrestling with his brother Esau and father-in-law Laban, so why should this encounter be any different? The divine visitor submits to Jacob’s request, but he gives him only a new name, Israel, the one who has wrestled with God and with humans and who has won.

Jacob always one to push his hand, goes on to demand the name of the visitor. But the visitor reveals Jacob’s weakness and wrestles back, denying this request. Even a patriarch of the faith, such as Jacob, is unable to demand the name of God. The visitor continues to demonstrate his power by ending this whole encounter; he touches Jacob’s hip and knocks it out of its socket.

The contest is over. Jacob survives his encounter with this holy visitor. Jacob walks away and wades across the river as the sun rises. But he does so both with a limp and with a blessing from God.

Perhaps we do not all suffer from an extreme fear of sleep and perhaps most of us won’t find ourselves camping alongside of a river after sending our wives, concubines, and children over to the other side. But the concept of wrestling through a dark and sleepless night is not so unfamiliar.

I think our fears in these nights lie in a sense of loneliness, that we must engage in our wrestling with our pillows and sheets alone; that the whole world might seem to be turned against us, or perhaps worse that the world might be apathetic to our concerns and questions as they peacefully sleep. Surely, there are nights in which we seek to directly question God, “Who are you?  What is this?” and there are nights when we desire to boldly demand things from God, “I deserve a blessing!” Perhaps the loneliness that pervades these nights is rooted in fears that our questions might just echo out into the darkness, that there may be no response at all.

But it is in the midst of these nights that God comes to us, and to Jacob, and engages us in this wrestling. We have the assurance that in our nights of weakness and uncertainty, God comes to us and grabs us. More than taking our hand or standing beside us, God envelops our whole selves, latching onto us just like as wrestlers cling to one another.

God engages us not only in the places and times of our weakness, but in the actual wrestling we do there, as a partner.  Our petitions and our cries in these places do not hollowly ring out into the abyss. God hears them and engages us, promising to respond to our persistent questions and prayers.

But like Jacob, the answers we seek and the demands we make are not always answered in the ways we had hoped or imagined. Jacob’s expectations for a material blessing of wealth do not materialize. Neither is his question of the visitor answered in the way he had hoped for. But these unmet expectations are not failures of God, rather they are failures of our imaginations. God hears our questions and demands and responds in ways that promote the reconciliation and love of God which often lie outside of our imaginations and hopes.

Fortunately, it seems that God has a dopamine deficiency. God is not paralyzed in night but rather works to bring about God’s dreams and hopes for us and for all of creation. These dreams come to life particularly in the midst of our darkest hours. And God continually dreams of life, reconciliation, and justice.

In this sacred wrestling God comes and transforms and changes us. We walk away limping, with scars from wrestling with the realities of life and death. But these scars are our blessings. Jacob now walking with less certainty and strength is transformed beyond merely walking with a limp. In the past Jacob was the bearer of broken relationships and deceit. He deceived and brought discord to his entire family. But from this time onward, Jacob becomes one who works for reconciliation and peace. He goes forth from this night at the river to reconcile with his brother Esau. Later he will condemn his sons for their violent actions at Shechem. Jacob the conniver becomes Jacob the reconciler. Jacob’s encounter with God in the night and ours result in radical transformation: through this experience Jacob learns the strength found in weakness, the strength found in the weakness of the cross.

We are called to this sacred wrestling, called to ask the questions of our deep and dark nights. We are not promised quick and concise answers, but we are promised God’s active presence and radical transformation.  We are called to night after night, day after day, grapple with God, through this wrestling to be a part of God’s dreams coming to fruition in the world.

I don’t want to take lightly the feeling that sometimes the cries and prayers of our sleepless nights fall on deaf ears or echo out into darkness. From time to time this is something many of us genuinely feel. But God calls us to continue wrestling in these times with the promise that God is out there with us in the dark. It is no coincidence that the night visitor wrestles Jacob on the shores of the Jabbok, the border of the holy land. Jacob wrestles this night on the edge, moving from discord to reconciliation and on into the holy land. And so, in our dark nights, we too, wrestle on the precipice of God’s greatness, where fear moves to hope, strength is found in weakness, and the new life of Christ finds us.