God who Wrestles with Us

Sermon based on Genesis 32:22-32

Jacob Wrestled

 

On our congregational retreat last week, our speaker, Bryan Moyer Suderman, offered two ways that people approach the Biblical text: 

Thy Word is a Lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path

And

Wrestling with the Scripture, Wrestling with the word.

While I love the certainty of the Amy Grant praise song, which originally comes from the Psalmist, I identify more with the wrestling metaphor from Bryan’s song and from our biblical text today.  

I am suspicious of easy answers, because they have not served my faith.  

I am dubious of certainty because–truth be told–I’ve rarely experienced God in certainty.

I am a scripture wrestler.  I am a God wrestler. I do not receive the word of God or the call of God,  unless I have examined it, argued with it, doubted it, and finally come to an uneasy peace with it.  

So, as you might imagine, this story from Jacob is a special one for me. Not just because of the wrestling, but because of Jacob’s journey up to this point.  

Jacob, grandson of Abraham, and son of Isaac, was a difficult person.  He was born a twin, his brother, Esau was just minutes older than Jacob, and so his brother received the generational wealth, the family birthright as an elder son.  This did not sit well with Jacob, and so twice he successfully managed to steal his brother’s birthright, his blessing. He traded his famished brother the birthright for a bowl of soup.  And he deceived his blind, ailing father, Isaac, into giving him a blessing on Isaac’s deathbed. 

And, it seems that bad feelings about the deception stayed with Jacob, worried him, even tormented him.  Because of this act of selfishness, Jacob was estranged from his brother and lived in fear of retribution from Esau.  

Jacob decided, after decades apart from his twin sibling, that he needed a time of reconciliation, so he headed towards his brother’s home, with his family and livestock in tow.  Jacob sent a messenger to Esau, saying, “I’m headed towards your home. Is it ok for me to visit?” And the messenger came back saying, “Esau is coming to you with 400 riders.” 

Well this sent Jacob’s imagination spinning into his worst fear– that Esau was heading toward his family with an army to destroy them.   

So Jacob came up with a plan, and sent the family and livestock across the river.  But Jacob returned to the other side of the river, furthest away from Esau and the potential conflict.  And there, on the shores of the Yabbok river, he was alone. Or so he thought. 

And there he wrestled with someone.  Here in this text we meet the same mysterious character we’ve met in the last few weeks of texts:  the angel, messenger, God character. And they begin to wrestle.  

It’s important to note here that Yabbok means crossroads.  And it’s also important to know that this river is not one that has clear boundaries.  It’s muddy, and there’s not much of a shoreline. Modern day tourists that try to get there cannot.  There are no roads to this part of the Yabbok river. Only mud. So,it’s more like Jacob was wrestling in a swamp with this angel, messenger, God character.  

So not only are they wrestling all night, but they are wrestling at an important crossroads in Jacob’s life, and that crossroads river is so completely and utterly murkey and muddy.  The metaphor and poetry of the words and their meaning are not lost on the writer and the original listener here.  

They wrestle all night long, and Jacob will not give up.  And this “someone”, seeing that Jacob would not be easily defeated, pulled out their big wrestling move.  This adversary kicks Jacob. Many texts say that Jacob is kicked in the hip. But, have you ever thought about how weird it is to be kicked in the hip?  Hardly ever happens. I think this is the translator’s way of being nice to us English readers and our Victorian sensibilities. Scholars are pretty sure that the kick was placed right between the hips, in a place that surely would end a long wrestling match.  

And still Jacob did not give up.  His adversary, after landing this painful kick, says to Jacob, “Let me go.” and Jacob refused to let him go until he had received a blessing from this mysterious stranger.  

Jacob, who stole his blessing from his brother and father, struggles with that and wanted a blessing, on that is obtained in truth and honesty.  And there, God gave him a blessing in the form of a new name, calling Jacob, “Israel” which means,”Wrestles with God”.

And now, we as people of God, as spiritual descendants of the people of Israel, are also those who are called to wrestle with God.

The fall series is about naming those characteristics of God, and here I want to name God as the one who invites us to wrestle, who identifies in our name a core characteristic–the ones who wrestle with God.  

And more than that, we are invited to wrestle with God!  The God who loves us and calls us very good, the god who cares about us on a personal level, the God who demands our hospitality is also the God who is approachable, even in wrestling match form.  

I am grateful for a God who wrestles with us.  Because the wrestling is the only way I’m here in the church.  

I wrestled with God when my Mom died.  I blamed God, screamed at God, raged at the church’s fear of my wrestling, and their fear of my questions. And I came out the other side, with a limp, a sign that I had encountered God and was forever altered by that experience.  

This week I watched a friend wrestling with God.  She came out of the closet 2 years ago, and was rejected by friends and family.  She’s at the crossroads now, wrestling in the mud with God about her healing and wholeness and whether she has the strength to re-engage the church and her family after all this pain.  

I cautioned my friend to not try to rush through the wrestling, not to try to have easy answers, and not to avoid the opportunity to understand this at a deeper level.  

And I warned her that she would walk away from this experience with God with a limp and maybe some scars, but knowing she’s been blessed by God, and seen by a God that WANTS to wrestle with her.  

Many of you are at crossroads in your lives.  With your health, with your family, with your work, and with the dis-ease of the unanswered questions of our faith.  And God invites you into the wrestling mud pit at this crossroads. God invites the wrestling. We do not need to fear God here.  This is where God does some of their best work, in the mud, in the mess and in the unanswered questions.  

Just look at Job, for example.  Job was called an upright man of God, and after being afflicted by every imaginable difficulty known to humans, Job began to wrestle and argue and shake his fists at God.  And God was silent for a bit, but did wrestle with Job in the mess of his life. Job’s life was never the same. He didn’t get his family or his wealth back. He didn’t return to the old “normal”.  He received a new normal, a new family and a new and richer understanding of God.  

Jesus wrestled with God as he headed to the cross, saying to God, “Let this cup pass from me.” On the cross, Jesus called out to God, saying “Eli Eli Lamach Sabachtani”–“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus wrestled through into his death, and came out of the tomb three days later bearing the marks of his encounter with God. And he emerged from that tomb a changed person, a Jesus who understood even more clearly what God sent him to do. 

Today’s text is an invitation to get into the mud pit with God, to wrestle, to refuse to let go of God, to demand answers, to demand God’s blessing in our lives.  And God in all that mess, within all the demands we make, God will hang in there with us.  

When we walk away after our long night of wrestling with God, we will not be the same.  We will come away changed, maybe a little bruised and 

broken, but always with a deeper appreciation for God our creator, who cares about us and calls us very good.  AMEN.