“Wrestling with God”
A Sermon Preached by the
Rev. Jean Niven Lenk
Sunday, July 31, 2011
First Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ
Text: Genesis 32:22-31
In just six weeks, on September 11, this nation and the world will mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorist acts which took almost 3,000 lives. That evening, in this sanctuary, the Stoughton Clergy Association will hold an interfaith community Service of Remembrance, and I hope that you will not only come yourself, but also bring your family, friends, and neighbors.
It is hard to believe that it has been almost ten years since that fateful day, a day which tested the faith of people then, and continues to do so now. With so much pain, so much despair in the world – then and now – some want to know how they can even believe that there is a God.
For Christians, I think it can be especially difficult to proclaim the love of a merciful God and the promise of resurrection and new life in Christ when we face life-altering events, whether on the national or international level as was September 11, or in our own personal lives. I suspect that at one time or another, many of us have had our doubts about matters of faith. We begin to have doubts when we experience a job loss, a debilitating illness, the death of a loved one. We begin to have doubts when we hear of inexplicable tragedies such as last week’s mass murder of almost 100 people in a bombing in Oslo and an attack at a Norwegian youth summer camp.
And doubt certainly seized the hearts and minds of faithful people everywhere when that first plane disappeared into the side of the North Tower on that beautiful blue September morning 10 years ago. PBS addressed the subject in its Frontline special “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.” The show focused on the question “Where was God on September 11?” For some, God was right there in the rubble of the twin towers. But for others, even people of faith, God was among the missing.
An Episcopal priest who volunteered at Ground Zero said, “God couldn't be counted on in the way that I thought God could be counted on. ... God seemed absent. ... I was left with nothing but that thing we call faith. But faith in what? I wasn't so sure."
A woman whose firefighter husband died that day said, "I can't bring myself to speak to [God] anymore because I feel so abandoned. I guess deep down inside I know that He stills exists, and that I have to forgive and move on. But I'm not ready to do that yet."
For many of us, faith is like a wrestling match with God; we want to both hold on to and also rail against the Divine One; we want to both believe in and also turn our backs on God. And for many of us, we desperately want to know that God loves us but have difficulty accepting that love because we find it hard to love ourselves.
That is what happens in this morning’s scripture lesson from Genesis, when Jacob literally wrestles with God.
Jacob is one of twin sons born to Isaac and Rachel, and he entered the world with one hand grasping the heel of his brother Esau, who was born first. His parents memorialized that scene by giving him a name meaning “he grasps the heel,” or figuratively, “he deceives.” And a grasper and deceiver Jacob grows up to be. His father Isaac favors his older brother, Esau, who is an expert hunter and outdoorsman. Jacob, on the other hand, is quiet and withdrawn, preferring to stay indoors and, with the help of his mother Rachel, cook up plots to deceive his aging father and cheat his older brother.
Jacob carries out a ruse to get from his father Isaac the blessing that rightfully belongs to the first-born Esau; the blessing in which Isaac transfers the covenantal promise passed down his father, Abraham; the blessing that will one day produce a whole nation of God’s favored people. The blessing is Esau’s birthright, but Jacob grasps it, as surely as he grasped his brother’s heel at birth. And his deceit costs Jacob. He must run for his life from Esau, who vows to kill him.
In this morning’s passage, Jacob – ever the trickster and deceiver – attempts to hide from the approaching Esau by crossing to the other side of the River Jabbok and taking cover in the thick brush. But as he huddles in the darkness alone, someone jumps him, and the two men begin to wrestle. The struggle continues throughout the night, even past daybreak, even when Jacob’s hip is knocked out of joint. Jacob will not let go, but neither will his foe. And Jacob realizes that he is not grappling with Esau, nor with a stranger – he is wrestling with God.
“I will not let you go, unless you bless me,” Jacob says to God. The last time Jacob had asked for a blessing, twenty years previously, it was to his father Isaac, who – old and blind -- had asked, “Who are you?” Jacob, the con man, had told him “Esau.” How many times over the years had that scene replayed in Jacob’s mind, how many times had he remembered with guilt and shame how he had deceived his father and stolen from his brother?
And now, it is God who asks his name. God knows, of course, but God wants to hear it from Jacob. And this time, perhaps for the first time, Jacob claims his name, fully owning up to his identity. And this time he is not stealing the blessing that belongs to someone else; he is asking for a blessing that befits him. But before Jacob can receive God’s blessing, he must stand before God in honesty about himself – with all his faults and frailties exposed and acknowledged. When he does, when Jacob finally admits who and what he is, that is the moment that God works – renaming him Israel, one who strives with God.
Author Annie Lamott writes in her book Traveling Mercies,[i] “God loves us exactly the way we are and God loves us too much to let us stay like this.” And that kind of divine love is at the heart of this struggle between God and Jacob. God had long ago told Jacob -- the Liar, the Cheat -- that God would be with him and protect him and bless him. And even though Jacob has continued to live up to his name, grasping and tricking his way through life, God still loves Jacob.
In that wrestling match, God is not so much fighting Jacob, as God is holding Jacob as he struggles within the embrace of those divine arms. And Jacob is not fighting God as much as fighting himself, wrestling with all the deceitful ways he has acted, wrestling with all the ways he has separated from his loved ones and also from God, unable to accept the Love that will not let him go.
The late preacher, theologian and activist William Sloan Coffin once defined faith as “being seized by love.”[ii] It’s not a gentle image, but it is an apt description of what happened to Jacob beside the Jabbok River so long ago, and it describes what happens to us even when our doubts overshadow our faith, even when we feel abandoned by God or can’t bear the truth about ourselves. God comes to hold us in spite of our resistance, our struggling; God comes andwith divine arms seizes us, that we might be forgiven, healed and transformed with a love that will not let us go. Amen.
