Wrestling with God
Genesis 32:22-31
In our reading from the book of Genesis, we hear about Jacob wrestling with a stranger, or an angel. This is a key moment in his life story. It is an experience that changes his body – he always walks with a limp, afterwards – and it is an experience that changes his very way of being a person. After this holy wrestling match, Jacob’s name changes to Israel.
To see the importance of this, I’d like to go back earlier in the story and remember what has happened to Jacob up until now. First of all, we have that name, “Jacob,” which means “heel” in Hebrew. Jacob gets this name because he his born grabbing onto the heel of his older twin brother, Esau. I don’t know if you can go so far as to say Jacob is a heel, but on the other hand, he’s pretty grabby, especially when it comes to things that by right and custom should belong to the oldest brother.
So for example, one day Esau is coming in from the field after a sweaty day of hunting. Jacob is there, simmering some lentil stew in a big pot. He’s just added a little more salt and cumin to bring out the flavor, when Esau tramps up, as impatient and impulsive as ever. “Gimme soup,” he says, in his charming caveman way.
Jacob has some choices here. He could just hand over a bowl of soup – be nice to his brother – and let the moment go. Or say no, and let Esau find his own food. But he knows that Esau thinks with his stomach, not with his head. So he offers up a well-timed trade. “I’ll give you soup,” he says, “If you’ll give me the privileges of being the oldest.”
“Okay,” says Esau, “Doesn’t help me if I starve to death.”
And so Esau gives away his rights for practically nothing, and Jacob helps him do it.
Later, as their father Isaac is dying, Jacob outmaneuvers Esau again. Blind old Isaac calls to Esau, asking him to bring some of his favorite wild game. Rebekah, the mother, hears this. Esau is Isaac’s favorite, but Jacob is hers, so she calls Jacob and tells him to hurry and cook up some goat for Isaac. On his deathbed, Jacob fools his father into giving him the best blessings. When Esau gets there, game in hand, Isaac has eaten already, and given the blessings he had to give. All Esau gets is the leftovers.
Since Jacob has taken the blessings by trickery, and Esau can tend to have a temper, he decides its time to leave town. He flees to his mother’s brother in the East – his uncle Laban. On the way, he has a surprising experience. One night, he’s about to fall asleep, when he has a vision of angels climbing up and down a great ladder. Who remembers the song “Jacob’s Ladder?” On waking, Jacob says to himself, “God was here in this place, and I didn’t even know it.” He builds a pile of stones, and makes a deal with God. “If you bless me, I’ll worship you,” he says, intent to keep grabbing the heel of that thing he wants.
Jacob settles in to working for his uncle, and he makes the herds prosper. But Laban also gives Jacob a taste of his own medicine. After seven years of working to pay the bride-price for the beautiful younger sister he’s in love with – Rachel – Jacob wakes up in the morning to find that Laban has switched the older for the younger, and given him Leah as a bride instead. When Jacob confronts him, “Hey, we had an agreement!” Laban responds, “Oh, don’t you know our customs? The older daughter has to be married first before the younger one can marry. I can’t believe I forgot to mention it.” To marry the woman he originally wanted, Jacob has to agree to work for another seven years. Which he does. I would guess – not happily.
When we meet Jacob in today’s Bible reading, he has finally finished his fourteen years of service and has moved out of his uncle’s house. He is on his way back to face his brother, to face his past, and with a different perspective on what it’s like to be on the receiving end of switched siblings.
This time, on the return journey, Jacob doesn’t meet God as angels going up and down a ladder to heaven. Instead, he meets God as a man he wrestles with all night. Just as a side note – in Hebrew the word for angel and the word for messenger are the same. An angel would not necessarily be obvious, but could look like anyone, so Jacob might not know right away who it was who was wrestling with him. As they wrestle, the man realizes he’s losing and tries to get away, but Jacob is tenacious. He holds on until morning, demanding a blessing. “Tell me your name,” he says, but the messenger of God won’t do it. Finally, the man says, “your name will be Israel, not Jacob, because you have wrestled with God and humans, and have won.”
I think sometimes it’s easy to get caught in some of the traps that Jacob is caught in. When he is first on his ways to his uncle’s household, he thinks of God as being kind of like a divine Santa Claus, not that there was Santa Claus back then, but, he thinks of God as someone he can make a deal with, like Esau, or fool, like his father Isaac. I’ll give you an altar if you give me money and children. The ends justify the means for him a little bit. You may have heard the saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” Guess what? It’s not in the Bible. Benjamin Franklin said it. But if it were, it would be here, and it would be coming out of Jacob’s mouth.
In today’s story, when he’s at the river crossing, Jacob is left alone, without any of his accomplishments or possessions, and he has to come face to face with God. And he does pretty well. He doesn’t get overpowered by the angel, and he doesn’t let go, either. Instead, he wins a blessing from the man. But in the process he sustains a permanent leg injury. Jacob comes through the encounter changed, in other words. He has met God face to face, and it has altered him, body and soul. He has wrestled with God, and it has been costly, but it has brought him a blessing.
There are times in our lives when we might feel a need to wrestle with God. For Jacob, it comes when he is about to face his past and meet his brother for the first time in many years. For us, it may be something else that jolts us out of our sense of comfort with God, that God is someone that we can understand and make deals with. It might be a difficult loss that challenges our faith, a time when prayers seem to go unanswered, when a struggle lasts so long and we are not sure when the dawn will come. It could be an addiction, mistreatment of a loved one, or just a strange dry spell in our prayer lives. It could be a past that we would rather leave behind than face. There are times when God seems distant and unconcerned.
The question is, then, can we hold on to God as Jacob did? Can we hold on in the wrestling? Can we trust, when the evidence seems to stack up against it, that our God is a good God? Can we let that goodness shape us?
There are people out there who don’t realize that what they learned in Sunday School as children isn’t the whole picture of what it means to be a Christian. To be in a situation that causes us to question God, to wrestle with the meaning of God’s work in the world, can tear down a faith that is childish and brittle. Not that wrestling with God is easy. But sometimes that is what is required in a mature faith. The ability to challenge God, and to be ready to be changed by the experience, body and soul.
Hear this good news. God is not distant; God is near at hand. Even in those moments when having faith seems most foolish, God is with us, holding us close, ready to meet our challenges. Wrestling with God is part of the life of faith, and if we can hold on to God’s goodness, God will bless us. Today in our gospel lesson, Jesus feeds thousands with a few loaves and a few fish. The Son of God has come near and dwelt among us, bearing blessing upon blessing. We are not alone. We live in God’s world. Thanks be to God. Amen.
In our reading from the book of Genesis, we hear about Jacob wrestling with a stranger, or an angel. This is a key moment in his life story. It is an experience that changes his body – he always walks with a limp, afterwards – and it is an experience that changes his very way of being a person. After this holy wrestling match, Jacob’s name changes to Israel.
To see the importance of this, I’d like to go back earlier in the story and remember what has happened to Jacob up until now. First of all, we have that name, “Jacob,” which means “heel” in Hebrew. Jacob gets this name because he his born grabbing onto the heel of his older twin brother, Esau. I don’t know if you can go so far as to say Jacob is a heel, but on the other hand, he’s pretty grabby, especially when it comes to things that by right and custom should belong to the oldest brother.
So for example, one day Esau is coming in from the field after a sweaty day of hunting. Jacob is there, simmering some lentil stew in a big pot. He’s just added a little more salt and cumin to bring out the flavor, when Esau tramps up, as impatient and impulsive as ever. “Gimme soup,” he says, in his charming caveman way.
Jacob has some choices here. He could just hand over a bowl of soup – be nice to his brother – and let the moment go. Or say no, and let Esau find his own food. But he knows that Esau thinks with his stomach, not with his head. So he offers up a well-timed trade. “I’ll give you soup,” he says, “If you’ll give me the privileges of being the oldest.”
“Okay,” says Esau, “Doesn’t help me if I starve to death.”
And so Esau gives away his rights for practically nothing, and Jacob helps him do it.
Later, as their father Isaac is dying, Jacob outmaneuvers Esau again. Blind old Isaac calls to Esau, asking him to bring some of his favorite wild game. Rebekah, the mother, hears this. Esau is Isaac’s favorite, but Jacob is hers, so she calls Jacob and tells him to hurry and cook up some goat for Isaac. On his deathbed, Jacob fools his father into giving him the best blessings. When Esau gets there, game in hand, Isaac has eaten already, and given the blessings he had to give. All Esau gets is the leftovers.
Since Jacob has taken the blessings by trickery, and Esau can tend to have a temper, he decides its time to leave town. He flees to his mother’s brother in the East – his uncle Laban. On the way, he has a surprising experience. One night, he’s about to fall asleep, when he has a vision of angels climbing up and down a great ladder. Who remembers the song “Jacob’s Ladder?” On waking, Jacob says to himself, “God was here in this place, and I didn’t even know it.” He builds a pile of stones, and makes a deal with God. “If you bless me, I’ll worship you,” he says, intent to keep grabbing the heel of that thing he wants.
Jacob settles in to working for his uncle, and he makes the herds prosper. But Laban also gives Jacob a taste of his own medicine. After seven years of working to pay the bride-price for the beautiful younger sister he’s in love with – Rachel – Jacob wakes up in the morning to find that Laban has switched the older for the younger, and given him Leah as a bride instead. When Jacob confronts him, “Hey, we had an agreement!” Laban responds, “Oh, don’t you know our customs? The older daughter has to be married first before the younger one can marry. I can’t believe I forgot to mention it.” To marry the woman he originally wanted, Jacob has to agree to work for another seven years. Which he does. I would guess – not happily.
When we meet Jacob in today’s Bible reading, he has finally finished his fourteen years of service and has moved out of his uncle’s house. He is on his way back to face his brother, to face his past, and with a different perspective on what it’s like to be on the receiving end of switched siblings.
This time, on the return journey, Jacob doesn’t meet God as angels going up and down a ladder to heaven. Instead, he meets God as a man he wrestles with all night. Just as a side note – in Hebrew the word for angel and the word for messenger are the same. An angel would not necessarily be obvious, but could look like anyone, so Jacob might not know right away who it was who was wrestling with him. As they wrestle, the man realizes he’s losing and tries to get away, but Jacob is tenacious. He holds on until morning, demanding a blessing. “Tell me your name,” he says, but the messenger of God won’t do it. Finally, the man says, “your name will be Israel, not Jacob, because you have wrestled with God and humans, and have won.”
I think sometimes it’s easy to get caught in some of the traps that Jacob is caught in. When he is first on his ways to his uncle’s household, he thinks of God as being kind of like a divine Santa Claus, not that there was Santa Claus back then, but, he thinks of God as someone he can make a deal with, like Esau, or fool, like his father Isaac. I’ll give you an altar if you give me money and children. The ends justify the means for him a little bit. You may have heard the saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” Guess what? It’s not in the Bible. Benjamin Franklin said it. But if it were, it would be here, and it would be coming out of Jacob’s mouth.
In today’s story, when he’s at the river crossing, Jacob is left alone, without any of his accomplishments or possessions, and he has to come face to face with God. And he does pretty well. He doesn’t get overpowered by the angel, and he doesn’t let go, either. Instead, he wins a blessing from the man. But in the process he sustains a permanent leg injury. Jacob comes through the encounter changed, in other words. He has met God face to face, and it has altered him, body and soul. He has wrestled with God, and it has been costly, but it has brought him a blessing.
There are times in our lives when we might feel a need to wrestle with God. For Jacob, it comes when he is about to face his past and meet his brother for the first time in many years. For us, it may be something else that jolts us out of our sense of comfort with God, that God is someone that we can understand and make deals with. It might be a difficult loss that challenges our faith, a time when prayers seem to go unanswered, when a struggle lasts so long and we are not sure when the dawn will come. It could be an addiction, mistreatment of a loved one, or just a strange dry spell in our prayer lives. It could be a past that we would rather leave behind than face. There are times when God seems distant and unconcerned.
The question is, then, can we hold on to God as Jacob did? Can we hold on in the wrestling? Can we trust, when the evidence seems to stack up against it, that our God is a good God? Can we let that goodness shape us?
There are people out there who don’t realize that what they learned in Sunday School as children isn’t the whole picture of what it means to be a Christian. To be in a situation that causes us to question God, to wrestle with the meaning of God’s work in the world, can tear down a faith that is childish and brittle. Not that wrestling with God is easy. But sometimes that is what is required in a mature faith. The ability to challenge God, and to be ready to be changed by the experience, body and soul.
Hear this good news. God is not distant; God is near at hand. Even in those moments when having faith seems most foolish, God is with us, holding us close, ready to meet our challenges. Wrestling with God is part of the life of faith, and if we can hold on to God’s goodness, God will bless us. Today in our gospel lesson, Jesus feeds thousands with a few loaves and a few fish. The Son of God has come near and dwelt among us, bearing blessing upon blessing. We are not alone. We live in God’s world. Thanks be to God. Amen.
posted by Amy Sens at 6:06 PM
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