"Wrestling with God" (Genesis 32:22-3l) Sermon on 1 August 1999
Genesis 32:22-3l recounts the time in Jacob’s life when, after leaving his father-in-law, Laban, and his indentured status behind, and finally having gained Rachel as his second wife, Jacob prepares to return to the Promised Land. He needs, immediately. to work things out with his alienated brother Esau from whom he had gained the birthright, that is the privileges to receive the inheritance as the eldest, through fraud and deception of his older brother. Though he has won the "blessing," Jacob fears the wrath of his brother. Now he is not cocky self-confident Jacob but is fearful and is in flight to save his life.
Now after sending his family on ahead of him, across the River Jabbok (which is a pun because Jabbok means "he wrestles" in Hebrew) Jacob remains behind on the north side of the river, alone, as the text emphasizes, wrestling with his fears and he encounters a strange and frightening reality.
This story is ancient and subject to many layers of symbolic interpretation. The opponent in this nocturnal wrestling match is identified only as "a man." There is no description, no name, nothing that pegs his identity for us. This may point us to the earliest layer of meaning in this ancient story for it takes places at a river, at night, in that boundary time when the brighter reality of the sunlight and the clear features of day gave way to darkness, dream, and visitations from the spirit world. And in the ancient world the dark waters at night were where water sprites and watery deities often manifested themselves.
A powerful sense of mystery and danger hangs over this story.
Reading of the text of Genesis 32:22-3l.
THE SAME NIGHT HE GOT UP AND TOOK HIS TWO WIVES, HIS TWO MAIDS, AND HIS ELEVEN CHILDREN, AND CROSSED THE FORD OF THE JABBOK. HE TOOK THEM AND SENT THEM ACROSS THE STREAM, AND LIKEWISE EVERYTHING THAT HE HAD. JACOB WAS LEFT ALONE; AND A MAN WRESTLED WITH HIM UNTIL DAYBREAK. WHEN THE MAN SAW THAT HE DID NOT PREVAIL AGAINST JACOB, HE STRUCK HIM ON THE HIP SOCKET; AND JACOB’S HIP WAS PUT OUT OF JOINT AS HE WRESTLED WITH HIM. THEN HE SAID, ‘let me go, for the day is breaking.’ BUT JACOB SAID, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me’. SO HE SAID TO HIM, ‘What is your name?’ AND HE SAID, ‘Jacob." THEN THE MAN SAID, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ THEN JACOB ASKED HIM, ‘Please tell me your name." BUT HE SAID, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ AND THERE HE BLESSED HIM. SO JACOB CALLED THE PLACE PENUEL, SAYING, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ THE SUN ROSE UPON HIM AS HE PASSED PENUEL, LIMPING BECAUSE OF HIS HIP.
****** Most persons, sooner or later, experience dark, lonely struggles to get things worked out in our lives and in our souls. To be sure, there are times when blessings come upon us as naturally as the bright sun breaking boldly on the morning’s horizon: surrounded by the people of God, on the mountain top, we know that God is with us. The American cyclist, Lance Armstrong, received such a public and glorious blessing last week when he won the Tour de France. But that triumph had to be preceded by a dark, personal struggle when, cancer having spread of his lower body to his lungs and brain, the sporting world had given him up as a washed up athlete.
Earlier in this chapter we see that Jacob has come to such a dark place in his life’s struggle because 32:verses 9-l2 records his humble, God-relying, promise-trusting and deliverance-seeking prayer to God: "Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children. Yet you have said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.’"
Jacob came out of his struggle with a new name, Israel,
which in Hebrew means "fighter for God", and with a limp. His limp proved that his struggle was hard, his pain real, and this contest brutal. But the results were worth it. Jacob’s faith was confirmed. And so we ought not to despise all the bruises of life for some may be character marks bestowed from God.
Let’s note that Jacob’s struggle began as a seemingly mundane and traditional struggle between two brothers for inheritance; but this worldly fight turned out to have great spiritual significance. That is often the case. God confronts us often in the common things, the scary things, the challenging things which define who we are and what we want.
It seems to me the key point in Jacob’s struggle at the Jabbok is that he was able to exercise his imagination and thereby encounter the divine in the fearful and mundane. Spiritual persons use their imaginations to image God. Non-spiritual persons tend to be unable to exercise imagination; perhaps they are trapped in the smaller reality of their self-defined world where imagination can’t be loosed.
Imagination is a superior channel given us by the Holy Spirit so that we can image God. It is given irregardless of education and position; in truth, less educated persons have more often received the great images of God. Think of Mary, the mother of Jesus, enabled to image God as an angel; think of Bernadette of Lourdes imaging God as the Virgin; think of Joan of Ark imaging the divine in her bells. The vulnerable, and especially women, are able to image the divine more than the sophisticated and more than men in general. The great exception being Jesus who was able more than any human before or since to image God.
Even though it is fears and even damnation that may seem to want to overwhelm us, our text today says: hang on until you image God in the shadows,in the night, in the struggle. Clearly, it was later Hebrew and then Christian spirituality which configured "the man" in this primitive text into God. But that could not have happened unless Jacob was first predisposed to see the divine in his experience.
Some blessings do not come cheaply or easily. We usually begin very much like Jacob entirely focused on our self-interest and personal ambitions and welfare. But God waits in the shadows of life’s experience to turn us inside out, or better, right side up, so we can go on and go out to serve him because we have new blessings.
On the same Friday this month when JFK Jr. went to his death, Judge Leroy Johnston died in Alabama. Judge Johnston was a seemingly ordinary Alabaman jurist who beginning in the l950s with a series of ruling on civil rights cases changed forever the face of the South and of America. It was his rulings which gave protection to Rosa Parks in the Montgomery bus conflict; which gave judicial and federal protection to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Selma march. Johnston was the judge who again and again took on then Governor George Wallace and the entire white supremacist establishment to force the integration of public education in Alabama.
For his troubles he was, of course, ostracized by his class and race who had no imagination at all. His own church asked him to leave. His country club cancelled his membership. He was repeatedly threatened with death and his mother’s home was firebombed. But Judge Johnson continued to live in Alabama, doing his constitutional duty as he saw it. We can only imagine the anguish and the temptation he went through because, aside from his opinions written for the court, he never wrote any personal memoirs.
But the instances of Judge Johnson’s courageous life like Lance Armstrong’s victory over cancer, call to mind that some people can go through hell and be blessed and be stronger while others, alas, succumb to the darkness. The difference often lies in those who can imagine the good even in the darkness, who can discern the face of God in the shadows.
***** As I commented last week God has clearly put genes of resiliency into our humanity because people, and people from the most diverse cultural and historical contexts, do survive incredible challenges, but some come through them with a blessing and while others, while surviving, bear only marks of numbness and disillusionment to show for their struggles.
I think we can extrapolate from the character of Jacob some of the human traits which incline us to receive blessing even in difficulty. These traits are usually found also in the biographies of actual persons who have come through their vulnerabilities all the stronger.
Jacob had an unshakeable faith in life itself and a fundamental confidence in himself. Initially this confidence expressed itself in some unattractive qualities like Jacob’s cunning and his self-centeredness. But underlying these quite human traits was his unquenchable sense that God was promising new life and transcendent life for him and his family and that he, Jacob, would somehow receive the divine blessing. Thus he was empowered to act.
Jacob had those traits which again and again mark survivors of catastrophes: just like Lance Armstrong and Judge Johnston he was adaptable to radical changes in his context; he was resourceful in facing the new and strange; he was willing to take great risk; and he accepted personal responsibility, finally, for the difficulties which threatened to overtake him.
He was pro-active rather than reactive to life’s difficulties; more inclined to set goals than to put out fires.
And finally he was willing to imagine God as happening in his struggles rather than to deny God. And through spiritual imagination he in truth encountered the divine.
His natural human resiliency was re-enforced by the mark and protection of God.
***** Jacob established a memorial to his struggle with himself and God, by calling the place Peniel, meaning in Hebrew "the face of God." We need to mark and highlight our special times with God. We need to recall those occasions when we encountered God, perhaps in the shadowy and unfriendly nights of our souls, and were revived, renewed and finally blessed.
Holy Communion is such a marking given us by Jesus so that all along our way we shall have God with us. It is Jesus’ promise that no matter what difficulty we may be in, God is at hand to bless us. Jesus invites us to share bread with him and thereby to become sharers in Jesus’ divine prerogatives. The bread is bread for nurture now and a foretaste of the divine Kingdom; it is blessed bread to offer inner provision, satisfaction, revitalization. In fellowship with Jesus we are reminded that His heavenly Father offers us hospitality, friendship, homecoming.
A wonderful aspect of Communion is that we are finally at the moment of this fellowship told that we can put aside our struggles, or better, bring them and lay them down upon the divine table where God’s love prevails and God’s blessing overflows.
