In today’s reading from Genesis we meet Jacob again in the 32nd chapter, and we discover that he’s preparing to meet his brother, Esau. It’s been 20 long years since Jacob left home, and the circumstances in which he had left home were anything but positive. In fact, as Jacob remembered the deceit, the trickery, and the manipulation in which he had cheated Esau out of his inheritance, he wasn’t sure what the reception would be. Then news came that brother Esau was coming and he’s bringing 400 men with him.
Now you don’t need 400 men in order to have a friendly family reunion. Jacob was frightened. It was in great fear and distress that he began to figure out how he could meet this challenge, how could he handle was ahead of him. So he divides his family into two groups, and he divides his animal flock into two groups, and he thinks if Esau comes and attacks one, maybe the other will be safe. Then he cries out to God in prays, and this prayer is very different from the prayers he had as a young man, because rather than bargaining with God he says in his prayer that he is not worthy of God’s love.
So he’s done everything he knows to do. He’s made his preparations. But then Jacob, having sent his family on the other side of the river, finds himself alone. And while he was alone a man wrestles with him till daybreak. As the long hard night of struggle goes on, Jacob discovers that the person he is really wrestling with is God. As he wrestles, the God/man does not overpower Jacob, but Jacob in fact seems be holding is own. But just before daybreak the God/man touches the hip socket of Jacob’s and his hip is disjointed. Now Jacob has the God/man in a hold and the man says, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replies, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
What is it that Jacob wanted more than anything else in life? What is it that we, in the deepest longings of our being want more than anything else in life? We want to be accepted, we want to be blessed. We want to know the favor of God. We want to know that what we are doing with our life is pleasing to the one who made us, that our life has purpose and significance that honors the God.
What Jacob wants more than anything is this blessing. But the way in which Jacob has sought to get the blessing all through his life led to brokenness. He’s been competitive. He’s been one who has sought to win at all costs. He has tried to get the blessing by cheating and by deception and now he is fleeing for his life, with the fearful prospect of war with Esau. And now he wrestles and he struggles with God.
There are two things for me are important to remember about this story. First, it was night. How many times, in the dark places, has the night seemed to go on forever as we waited for tomorrow, when we didn’t know what tomorrow would bring? In illness and uncertainty, about a job or about a family member or about something that we really cared about and were concerned about or were worried about, the night can seem endlessly, endlessly long. Its night and Jacob is alone. This night Jacob face to face with his fears and with God. And he says to the one with whom he wrestles, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
I remember when my father had bone cancer and he knew that sometime in the near future he was going die. I knew he was afraid but never wanted to talk about it. One time when we was visiting us here in Washington DC he told me as we were saying good-night for the evening that he didn’t like the night. He felt that the darkness brought uncertainly and that it meant the end. What he really looked forward to was the morning when the air was fresh and clean and the sun is shining brightly. At night my father found himself wrestling and wondering, ‘What is going to happen to me in the future? Can I trust God? Can I count on God for whatever the future holds?’
And then comes a moment of truth. The man says to him, “What is your name?” Simple question, easy to answer, isn’t it, unless you know that Jacob has lied about his name in order to get ahead. Jacob has pretended to be something that he’s not. Jacob has felt that he was wasn’t good enough and he pretended to be Esau when his father Isaac blessed him. The God/man says, “Tell me your name?” And Jacob answers; this time is honestly and answers “Jacob.” Which means the heel, the deceiver. That’s him. That’s who he is.
The man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,” and in this renaming, Jacob is acknowledged, and in the new name, Jacob is told that, even with his weakness, even with his failures, even with that sorry track record, God works with imperfect people. He works with Jacobs, and he makes them Israels. Israel in the Hebrew means, “The one who has wrestled with God.”
The second significant part of this wrestling with God is that Jacob had been wounded in the wrestling. So Jacob moves in to the next stage of his life as one who has wrestled and struggled with God and bears the mark of that struggle. Jacob becomes a changed person as he discovers that God has prepared the way for him. So what immediately happens when the new day comes Esau meets him with peace, and forgiveness, and Jacob’s life has a new beginning.
Pastor Nathan Aaseng from Eau Claire WI tells this story as he was getting ready to preach on this very story of Jacob wrestling with God. He picked up a new magazine he had received called Our Iowa. Inside was a story about a high school wrestling match between Ogden and Humboldt. Humboldt had a senior on their team with Down syndrome. He was not capable of wrestling at a competitive level and posed no challenge at all to any wrestler. But the coaches asked if anyone on the Ogden team would at least give the boy a chance to get out on the mat. An Ogden wrestler offered to take him on. He not only wrestled him for the entire six minutes, but allowed his opponent to beat him on points. He gave the Humboldt kid the thrill of not only competing, but of raising his arms in victory. Both wrestlers got a standing ovation, and there was hardly a dry eye in the gymnasium.
The message we should take from this story is that God is not an impersonal force, or a terrifying presence to which we cannot relate in any meaningful way. God is not a person who expects only praise sacrifices and groveling from us and then has no further use for us. God is ready and willing and eager to get down and dirty with us. Of course God could squish us like a bug in a nanosecond. But for our benefit, God is always available to wrestle with us, at whatever level we are capable of wrestling. God sent Jesus into the world to wrestle with us, and Jesus allowed himself to get pinned to a cross.
This passage is one where Jacob and all us wrestle with God. But it is also about how God wrestles with us. God knew who Jacob was. God knew his less then stellar past, yet God blessed Jacob and gave him a new name, a new purpose in life. God stayed with Jacob. The point to remember is that God is continually wrestling with us. God knows our own less-than-stellar past. And yet God is still there with us, blessing us and loving us. Amen
Pastor Tom Knoll
Wrestling with God
Previous post: It Could Happen To You
Next post: Lutheran Christian Podcasts: The Greatest Commandment