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Extreme Makeover                        Gen. 32: 24-31                   October 21, 2007

I must admit, I'm not a big fan of the "Extreme Makeover" television series. I have never have been able to figure out why people would subject themselves to what appears to me, anyway, to be a pretty humiliating experience - plastic surgery, of all things, in front of a national TV audience. It strikes me as just another example of our culture's focus on superficiality.

The "Home Addition" spin-off of the show is at least somewhat more appealing. While criticized by some for glamorizing a rather excessive suburban ideal, the "surgery" on this program performed on houses rather than people and the families targeted for the makeover are, at least on the surface, pretty needy folks.

And, just to prove that our obsession with things beautiful on the surface has its limits, I am pleased to report that yet another spin-off, "Extreme Makeover Wedding Edition" was cancelled after just one episode.

Though it was cancelled, I understand, not because the producers had an Epiphany and thought better of it; no, it was cancelled because the ratings were so poor that no advertisers would sign on.

Speaking of Epiphanies, however, our text, this morning, is about just such an occurrence. It is the conclusion of the story that begins with the passage that inspired the anthem the choir just sang - the familiar account of Jacob and his ladder; and ends with Jacob's life-changing wrestling match on the banks of the River Jabbok.

Or, to put it a bit differently, our text is, in fact, the story of an Extreme Makeover. We could possibly call it "Extreme Makeover, Old Testament Edition."

Jacob, when we meet him in this passage, is on his way home. He has been living, essentially in exile, with his uncle and father-in-law Laban, along with his two wives and thirteen children, and he is ready to move on. But to do that, he knows he needs to be prepared to meet his brother, Esau. These two twins haven't seen one another in 20 years, and the way they parted company was anything but positive.

In fact, the last time he saw Esau he cheated him out of his heritage, so Jacob is pretty sure that his reception at home will be difficult at best. And to make matters worse, when he sends his messenger ahead to see what was going on, he hears that Esau is coming. The messenger says to Jacob, "We went to your brother Esau; he's coming to meet you, and he's bringing 400 men with him."

Not surprisingly, Jacob is frightened. You don't normally bring an army of 400 men to a friendly family reunion.

So, Jacob divides his family into two groups, and divides his flock into two groups, figuring that if Esau comes and attacks one, maybe the other will be safe.

And then, as we often do when we're afraid, Jacob cries out to God in prayer.

"Oh God of my father Abraham," Jacob prays, "God of my father Isaac; Oh Lord who said to me, 'Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,' I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness that you have shown your servant. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and the mothers and the children."

After he does all of this - after he sends his family to the other side of the river and prays his desperate prayer - Jacob finds himself alone.

It's nighttime, we're told in the text, and a man wrestles with him 'till daybreak.

Not just any man.

On the contrary, Jacob, in the midst of this struggle, concludes that the person he is really wrestling with is God. Yet, in a unique turn of events, Jacob is not defeated by God. Even though his hip gets dislocated, Jacob succeeds in literally wrestling a blessing from God. "I will not let you go unless you bless me," he says.

And bless him God does. "I will bless you," God says to him. "From now on, you will be called, Israel, which means, 'let God rule your life.'"

Which, we later learn, is exactly what Jacob - or Israel as he is now called - does. Not only does his encounter result in a truce with his brother Esau, Israel now rightly inherits the promise he dreamt about - the promise God made to Abraham and Isaac that he and his descendents are the Nation God chooses to reorder the course of history.

It is important to remember that Jacob, prior to this epic wrestling match, was not a person of particularly good character. Not the kind of person you would choose as a role model for your children.

The stories describing his early life are wonderfully graphic.

Esau, his twin brother, born seconds before h im, was the rightful heir, you may remember. So one night Jacob tricks his older brother into to giving up his whole inheritance, his whole birthright, in exchange for a bowl of stew.

And later, when his father is on his deathbed, he once more cheats Esau - this time stealing his father Isaac's final blessing by tricking the old man into believing that he was his brother.

Why, Even his name - Jacob - means, depending on the scholar you read, either cheater, manipulator, little liar, clever conniver, cunning or slippery.

All of that changes, however, when God encounters Jacob that night and wrestles with him until the break of day. Jacob is no longer the cheater. Instead, he becomes Israel, which means "The one who has striven with God."

Jacob learns, that night, that even with his weaknesses, even with his failures, even with his sorry track record, God can work with him and through him. He learned the wonderful truth that God works, every day, with imperfect people.

For Jacob's whole life he had been cheating, and cheating again. For his whole life he had been manipulating people. For his whole life he had been clever and cunning; and that night, in that wrestling match with God, God touched him. God touched him in such a way that he was changed.

God, you see, is in the business of performing "extreme makeovers." Not with hammers and nails and certainly not with plastic surgery, but extreme makeovers, nonetheless.

God blessed Jacob that morning, and Jacob became what God had intended him to be from the beginning. An instrument of God's work; a doer of God's will. Jacob became what he was all along.

Fast forward to the present with me for a moment.

Let me tell you about Michael Gates Gill. He was a man who had it all: a big house in the suburbs, a loving family, and a top job at a major New York advertising agency, where he earned a six-figure salary.

By the time he turned sixty, however, he had lost everything.

First, he was fired. "Downsized," in the business-speak of modern, corporate America. Next, an affair and an unplanned baby ended his twenty-year marriage. And finally, he was diagnosed with a slow-growing brain tumor. Gill had hit bottom.

Then one day, as he sat in a Manhattan Starbucks with his last affordable luxury-a latte-feeling sorry for himself, a 28-year-old, African-American Starbucks manager named Crystal Thompson offered him a job.

That moment completely changed his life.

"I was forced to see a new reality," Gill writes in his popular book and soon-to-be movie titled How Starbucks Saved My Life.

The new reality meant moving from drinking lattes in an expensive business suit to serving them in a green apron and black Starbucks baseball cap.

It also meant becoming a gentler, happier, more humble man than he had been in the past.

And perhaps most of all, it meant working and living in an environment where words like respect, kindness and dignity are repeated over and over again. These are things Gill never received - and rarely gave - in his high-powered advertising career. And they are things he now must learn to give - and accept - on a daily basis.

Michael Gates Gill - "Mike," as his Starbucks coworkers and customers call him - is careful to point out, in his book, that he was not on a spiritual journey. Nor was he looking for revelation.

Nonetheless, his experience changed him. Because a young woman who grew up on the rough streets of New York was willing to give him a second chance, he was able to discover the person that he was intended to be. The person God created. "Maybe I was climbing Jacob's Ladder," he reflects one evening as he climbs the stairs to his third-floor walkup apartment.

At some level, each one of us needs to climb that ladder, and then have that wrestling match with God.

"Jacob does what all of us must do, if, in the end, we too are to become true," writes Benedictine nun and writer Joan Chittister. "He confronts in himself the things that are wounding him, admits his limitations, accepts his situation, rejoins the world, and moves on."

What a prescription for an "extreme makeover":

• confront the things that are wounding us,
• admit our limitations,
• accept our situation,
• rejoin the world, and move on.

It is what Jacob learned on the banks of the River Jabbok, and at some level at least, it is what Michael Gates Gill learned at Starbucks.

At some point, each of us needs to find a way to follow that same prescription. For some of us, it takes a wrestling match with God. For others, it takes the loss of a job or a broken relationship, for others it may not be that dramatic, but at some point, we all need to get there. We must become Israel - we must let God rule our life.

And however that turns out to happen, the message of the text is clear: the blessing of God awaits us. We need only receive it. We need only be open to becoming who we are; what God created us to be.

                                                                             AMEN