Genesis
32:22-31
August
3, 2014
William G. Carter
The same night
Jacob 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 Peniel, 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.
This
is a story for anybody who tosses and turns at night.
Often
the Bible speaks in broad daylight: “Look at the birds of the air and the
lilies of the field.” We cannot see them after dark. Only when the sun is up do
we see the birds and lilies, admire their beauty, and reflect on how God takes
care of them.
A
large crowd gathers around Jesus, hanging on every word he speaks. They are so
enchanted with his sermon that they lose all sense of time. When their stomachs
start growling, the Lord decides it is time to feed them with loaves and
fishes. Breaking what they have, he blesses it and gives it away. Everybody is
fed and there is plenty left over. To observe all that, it must happen during
daylight.
But
this story of Jacob, it’s a night time story. It happens in the shadows when
nobody else is around. He has sent away the women and the children, delivering them
across the Jabbock River. And while he is alone, he wrestles all night in the
dark.
It
doesn’t take much imagination for Jacob’s story to become our story.
The
child lies in the crib, whimpering with pain. Medication won’t help. The fever
won’t break. She begins to cry again, and it’s four in the morning. What do you
do? Wrestling in the dark.
You
toss and turn in bed, can’t sleep. The rumors are out there and you can’t do
anything about them. You thought those people were your friends, but they have
made up a story about you, lied about the details, and show no remorse about
doing you harm. Should you confront them? Or should you tell the truth, and
risk looking as small as they are? You don’t know what to do. Wrestling in the
dark.
The
news comes about the person who works with you. He’s been arrested. You can’t
believe what people are saying. The reporters are looking for a quick story to
jump start the evening news. There is no proof of his crime, just one person
who accused, and conspirators who were ready to jump on the case. You worry
about him. Will he crack under this unfair situation? You sit in the shadows,
turning over the matter in your mind.
Your wife taps on the door. “Are you OK in there?” she asks with
concern. Wrestling in the dark.
When
was the last time you had a sleepless night? Then you can understand this
story.
Here
is Jacob, totally on his own. He has been trying to outrun Laban, his father in
law. That man turned out out be more trouble than he was worth. Jacob put in
twenty years of hard work for him, gained a couple of wives and a truckload of
kids. He tried to get away from the guy, but Laban kept chasing after him. What
a pain in the neck! They finally shook hands, made mutual gestures at one
another, and parted ways.
Then
Jacob discovered his twin brother Esau is not far away. Running away from Esau
was the reason he got stuck with Laban for twenty years. The report is not
good. Esau has four hundred men and a long memory. He’s really looking forward
to seeing the brother who stole his blessing. What will Jacob do? Well, he is a
schemer, after all. He pulls an impossible number of livestock out of his
herds, gift wraps them, and sends them ahead to Esau. Maybe he can soften up
the old warrior.
This
is when he sends away his women and children. After twenty years with them, he
decides to think about somebody other than himself. Get them out of the combat
zone, he figures. No reason to put them at risk too. Especially when Esau has
four hundred men. No reason for one of his own kids to act like a hero. He
sends them off, along with everything he possessed. No defenses, no more
bribes, no more con jobs, no more anything.
Jacob
is alone. Completely alone. Except as we heard from the story, he isn’t alone
at all. There’s Somebody Else in the dark, somebody who is never named. And he
wrestles with Jacob all night long. Each of them holds his ground. Neither one
of them has the advantage. They are evenly matched.
Now,
before anybody rushes off to name the unnamed wrestler as “God,” consider what
that would mean. That means that when people wrestle with God, they are evenly
matched. Each one tries to get his own way. God desires to do his will. Jacob
wrestles to win.
It’s
worth reflecting on what it means to wrestle with God in the dark. When you
worry about your child, or your reputation, or your friend, or whatever it is
that consumes your energy and stirs up your fear, could it be that you are
really wrestling with God? Not the God who smiles on us in the sunshine, but
the God who comes upon us in the dark. The God who has stayed in the shadows, observing
us, but now steps into the ring.
Years
ago, on retreat in a beautiful desert canyon, I came upon a grizzled young man.
He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. From the hills outside of Denver, he
said. He went to the desert canyon every second week of July. “This is where I
come to slug it out with God every year,” he said. I looked at him strangely
and he said, “I come here to tell God that I don’t want to do what He wants me
to do, and then God tries to convince me other otherwise.” I thought he was
strange, and then about midnight I heard a shout from the direction of the
man’s cabin: “No, not that. Not again.”
Do
you ever think of prayer as a struggle? As a wrestling match? Do you ever pray
that hard? Like Jesus in Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he dies. “No,
not that,” he says. “Let that cup pass. But if it is your will, I will do it” The
Gospel writer says when Jesus prayed like that, he agonized. He knew that God
never makes it easy.
My
good friend Jim - soft-spoken, kind-hearted Jim – on the anniversary of his
ordination to the ministry every year, he goes off by himself to pray. He reads
the same passage of scripture that somebody read to him. He stares at the
shoreline and says, “Do I really want to keep doing this? Digging weekly
sermons out of the Bible, visiting hospital patients who never get well,
listening to one broken heart after another, coping with fools, testifying to
God’s goodness day after day? Do I really want to do this?” He calls it the Annual
Re-Negotiation. One of these years, I expect him to return with a limp.
That’s
what happens to Jacob. In the wrestling, he is wounded. His Night Time Opponent
reaches to touch his hip and sets it out of joint. Jacob will hobble now for
the rest of his life because he has been wrestling with God.
Did you know this story
is in the Bible? A lot of people are uncomfortable with it. They want a god who
makes them feel better. They want a god who sands off the splinters from the wooden
cross. They want a god in whom there is no struggle, no ambiguity, no
incarnational weakness. What they want is a god who will give them success, a
god who would never wrestle with anybody, much less wound them. They want a god
who takes all the mystery out of life, a god who exists to help us without
challenging us. They want a god to bless their hard earned opinions without
pushing them beyond their prejudices. They want a god in whom there is no
striving, only sunshine. Give us that old time, sunshine religion!
Well, that’s not going
to happen.
I commend to you a
brand-new book by Barbara Brown Taylor called Learning to Walk in the Dark.[1]
I read it this summer on the beach in broad daylight. Barbara is an
Episcopalian priest and she says, “I’ve had enough of sunshine religion, you
know, the kind of yellow plastic faith where everything is easy. That always
struck me a fake,” she says, “simplistic and innocuous.” To say God exists only
to give you what you want - another piece of chocolate pie, for instance – that’s
not the God of the Bible. It is something far less that we have invented as a
way of softening what kind of God we really have.
So back to the River Jabbok.
Jacob is wounded in the fight but has one more move up his tunic sleeve. He
grabs onto his Night Time Opponent and will not let go. “Let me go,” bellows
the shadowy wrestler. “No,” says Jacob, “not until you bless me.”
They banter about names.
“What's your name?” screams Jacob to the Shadowy Wrestler, but he gets no reply.
He asks again, but is ignored. So Jacob hangs on all the tighter. He will not
let go. That’s when the Wrestler gives Jacob a new name. “You are Israel,” he
says, “the one who wrestles with God and has prevailed.” Then he blesses Israel
– and he is gone. The blessing, the name, the wound – all are strange gifts.
They came because Jacob wrestled them down.
On the night before he
faces his brother Esau, he is most vulnerable. He has no props, no armaments,
no possessions, no community. But he has the blessing of God as stands up and limps
toward the dawn. You can’t help but wonder that is really what God wanted all
along. Jacob wrestles, holds on, is wounded, is blessed – and in the end, his
struggle has made him a different person.
Frederick
Buechner describes the scene this way:
The darkness has faded just enough so
that for the first time he can dimly see his opponent’s face. And what he sees
is something more terrible than the face of death – the face of love. It is
vast and strong, half ruined with suffering and fierce with joy, the face a man
flees down all darkness of his days until at least he cries out, “I will not
let you go, unless you bless me!” Not a blessing that he can have now by the
strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can
have only as a gift.
Power, success, happiness, as the world
knows them, [come to those ] who will fight for them hard enough; but peace,
love, joy, are only from God. And God is the enemy whom Jacob fought there by
the river, of course, and whom in one way or another we all of us fight – God,
the beloved enemy. Our enemy because, before giving us everything, [God] demands
of us everything; before giving us life, he demands our lives – our selves, our
wills, our treasure.[2]
So
here’s the picture of Israel, the one who wrestled with God. He loses the
match, but hangs on to win the blessing. He begs for God’s name, but receives a
new name himself. And he sees the terrible, awesome Face of the One who loves
him so much that he sends him limping into the dawn. Jacob hobbles forth with
nothing to protect himself and everything to gain. Because that’s how it is
when you wrestle with God.
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