1. Early in his sermon, Tim pointed out an idea that many see in the stories we’ve covered in Genesis: “each generation just repeats and magnifies the mistakes of the generation before.”

What do you think of this idea - relative to Genesis, and relative to your experience of life in general?

Where do you see evidence of the truthfulness of this statement? Where do you see evidence contradicting it?

Martin Luther King, Jr famously said, “The arc is the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Is there room for both of these ideas to be true? How so? If not, why not?

2. As Tim spoke about Jacob’s encounter wrestling “the man” in Gen 32, he said that - if it is in face God with whom he wrestles, “Jacob is wrestling with a God who self limits, becoming weak at the point of contact.” He also spoke about “a God whose strength ends up being constituted in weakness” and “a God strong enough to lose - on purpose.”

How does this idea of an intentionally self-limiting God sit for you? How familiar is this conception of God for you?

What does it mean to love and be loved by a God is who is strong and, when needed, weak? What does it look like?

Why do you think Christian culture has often been very attached to the idea of a “fixer” God, despite abundant evidence to the contrary?

What do you think it brings to our understanding of God and of the gospel to know God as a “God whose strength ends up being constituted in weakness?” Without incorporating this truth into our conception of God, what might we miss?

3. One of Tim’s slides read, “when you wrestle with God the object is not to win, but to be defeated…” He spoke of Beuchner’s characterization of “the Magnificent Defeat,“ and also quoted Rilke saying, “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”

What do you think about these ideas? What surfaces for you as you ponder a life in which defeat is so crucial? How much does this align or clash with the ways in which you show up to your everyday life?

Why might being defeated by God be so important? What does it bring into the world/our worlds? What does it shape in us?

To what extent does wrestling with and being defeated by God feel familiar to you? Have you had experiences you might characterize that way? What has it looked like? Or, what do you think it might look like?

Do you have ways in which you recognize your own resulting metaphorical limps? If so, are you more inclined to think of your limp as a punishment or a signifier? How so? Why?