Sermon: Wrestling with God (Oct. 16, 2022)

Pentecost 19C
October 16, 2022
Genesis 32:22-31

INTRODUCTION

Luke will tell us at the beginning of our Gospel reading today that the parable Jesus tells is about “the need to pray always and not to lose heart.” I agree with this to some extent, but, well, that particular parable is about so much more than prayer. It’s about demanding justice, and about faithfulness. And yes, these are intricately tied to prayer. But I don’t want us to get stuck in thinking of prayer only as kneeling beside your bed, eyes closed and hands folded. Sometimes, prayer is more about listening than talking. And sometimes, prayer looks like a wrestling match with God!

Which is what our first reading will show us, in the wonderful story of Jacob wrestling with… well, I’ll let you decide who he is wrestling with! I’m going to get more into the full context of that story in my sermon, but for now, here’s what you should know: since Jacob was a baby, he has been a trickster, one who has been especially hard on his twin brother, Esau. In fact, his brother was so mad that Jacob stole his birthright and blessing out from under him, that he threatened to kill Jacob. So Jacob had to run off to family in a different town, where he acquired two wives, two handmaids, 12 children, and a bunch of livestock. But now Jacob has angered that family, too, and is heading back to his family of origin, hoping that Esau will receive and forgive him. Terrified and alone, in today’s story Jacob will encounter some unidentified being, and, as Hebrew Bible scholar Rachel Wrenn comments, the wrestling match is “perhaps the best description of the life of faith in the entire Bible.”

As you listen, recall a time when you struggled to understand the ways of God, when you really had to work at “taking heart” and finding a blessing in what you were going through, and consider where you saw God in that. Let’s listen.

[READ]

In Paul Granlund's portrayal of Jacob wrestling,
at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN,
the identity of Jacob's assailant is unclear. On close inspection,
it seems he is indeed wrestling himself!

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

There is no one in the Bible who is at once so beloved and such a scoundrel as Jacob. Jacob, whose name means, “Supplanter. Trickster.” He has spent his life, from the moment he came out of the womb, trying to cheat other people in order to get what he wanted. And yet, as today’s reading from Genesis hints at, God chooses him to be the namesake of what will become the whole nation of Israel. 

Before we dig into his story, let me set the scene for you. Jacob, son of Isaac and grandson of Father Abraham has led a life of deception and trickery, beginning with his twin brother, Esau. Now, at this point in the story, Jacob is traveling home with all his family and possessions, when he finds out his livid older brother is after him with an army of 400 men. Jacob is, understandably, afraid that he is finally going to get his comeuppance for a lifetime of cheating people. He sends his wives and children across the river, and then sits on the beach of the Jabbok river, alone, and awaiting what comes next. 

As many times as I have read this story, I am always struck by that line, “Jacob was left alone.” When I read it, I am filled with a sense of loneliness myself – who of us has not felt this way at some point? Alone and afraid. Alone and knowing that danger lurks. Alone and regretful. I can ruminate with the best of them – so when I am alone, I usually spend that time ruminating over all the problems in my life, replaying events that didn’t go as I wish they had, having imaginary conversations with people I’ll never actually have, considering all the ways I wish things had gone differently. Those alone times are never really alone, are they? We are alone with our thoughts, with our fears, with our regrets. And none of these make for very good company. When I imagine Jacob sitting there, alone, I wonder if he, too, felt and heard the noise of his fears and his regrets for being such a scoundrel throughout his life.

It isn’t long, though, that he is alone in that darkness of night. Suddenly he is very much not alone – a being comes and begins to wrestle with him. The text says it was “a man.” The prophet Hosea later comments on the story, calling it an angel. At the end, it becomes apparent that this is some kind of divine being, even God Himself. In other words, Jacob wrestled that night with God. 

I just love this image of wrestling with God, because it so beautifully puts words to my own experience of faith. I have never walked away from my faith entirely, but there have been plenty of times for me, and perhaps also for you, when I certainly felt like I was in a wrestling match with God. The match is usually punctuated by prayers such as, “Why this, God? Why now?” and, “Seriously, God??” and, “If you’re going to let stuff like this happen, I’m not sure I want to be in this relationship anymore.” Sometimes, in our more charitable matches, my prayer has been, “I know, God, that you always use things for good – would you please show me the point of this, then, and quickly? What am I supposed to learn here?” Indeed, I have, like Jacob, felt like I’m wrestling with God for a blessing: “I’ve put up with enough already, God! You had better make this worth it in the end!” 

I think a lot of times we think that wrestling with God isn’t okay for a person of faith, that having doubts or struggles somehow means we are no longer faithful. I know of a pastor who had a heart attack, and he later told his congregation that as he rode in that ambulance to the hospital, he wasn’t scared at all, because of his faith. Maybe some would find that inspiring, but I think, “Boy, then how could he possibly understand my struggles?” because I have had plenty of wrestling matches with God, plenty of times when I have struggled and feared and questioned God.

I prefer the story of Mother Theresa. Some years ago, some journals of this now saint were found and published in a book called, Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light. The book created quite a stir, because some of her journal entries expressed not the pure, unchanging faith we had all imagined of this servant of God, but rather, of the many doubts and struggles she faced from day to day. Though many were upset by this, I find it to be rather a comfort. To know that someone of such immense and illustrative faith also struggled and doubted, just like me, gives me hope for my own faith, and the various wrestling matches it faces. Indeed, we can see in Mother Theresa’s writings that it was her struggles that strengthened her faith, and made her able to continue the difficult work she was doing in Calcutta.

You see, strength of faith comes when that faith faces challenges, when it goes through struggles, when we have to question, wrestle, even doubt or maybe even rebel for a bit, but not give up. Faith matures and strengthens as it goes through times of struggle, just as our muscles strengthen when we stress them, as we do in a workout. Perhaps, Jacob needed to have that wrestling match with God that night in order to strengthen and prepare him for becoming the namesake of the great nation of Israel. 

The wrestling match in this story possesses significant fodder for conversation about faith… but let’s not forget to get to the grace that comes with their exchange at the end. Throughout the match, Jacob seems to be holding his own, until finally this divine being touches his hip socket, wrenching it out of joint. This is the last straw for Jacob, and he demands a blessing. After all this, he says, “I will not let you go until you bless me!” Gotta give it to him: dude is gutsy! After an exchange and a name change – an incredibly rich part of this story that warrants an entirely other sermon for some other day! – Jacob does walk away from this encounter with God having received a blessing. That, in itself, is remarkable, and gracious – that after that long, dark, lonely night of wrestling with God, Jacob does walk away changed. His name is something new, something that reflects a God who is on his side; his identity has changed; his faith has strengthened. He has surely been blessed for this next, difficult part of his journey as God’s servant.

But a blessing isn’t all that he leaves with. Almost as an afterthought, the story ends with this line: “The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.” Jacob has indeed been changed – personally, spiritually, and physically. He will never take another step in his life of faith without remembering that on that dark, lonely, fearful night, he was touched by God, that he was blessed by God, that he received God’s grace. And he has the limp to prove it.

That’s how it is when we wrestle with God. So often we face a challenge, a struggle, and desperately long for things to go back to the way they were before – before the fight, before the diagnosis, before the pandemic, before the loss. Indeed, we hold onto the hope that things will go back to the way they once were, back when we were happy, or at least happier, with life. But as the adage goes, “God loves us too much to let us stay the same,” and any meaningful encounter with God will always result in a change. We will walk differently, but we will walk differently because we have been touched by God, touched by blessing, touched by grace. Such a change will take some getting used to – I’m certain Jacob’s life was never the same after that encounter. But in the end, faith is a matter of trust – of trusting that God can take even a man’s struggle on the cross and turn it into new life for us, of trusting that God will lead us wherever it is time for us to go, of trusting that as we walk into the new day, God walks with us, and God’s face shines upon us.

Let us pray… Faithful God, we sometimes find ourselves drawn into a wrestling match with you as we try to understand what you are doing in our lives. Give us faith to trust you even as we wrestle, and to believe that while we will inevitably walk away different than we were before, that this, too, is a part of your magnificent plan for us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Full service HERE.