GENESIS SERMON SERIES

Wrestling Into God

Genesis 32: 22-32…..

Intern Rowanne Fairchild August 10, 2014 Skyline Presbyterian Church

At the beginning of the passage Jacob expresses cowardice. His brother Esau is coming to meet him with a company of four hundred men. Jacob, remembering how he cheated his brother out of Esau’s birthright and blessing, fears this approach is one of doom. So what does he do? He sends his wives and children ahead of him, hoping they will appeal to Esau’s compassion, and prevent fratricide. Meanwhile, Jacob stays behind on the other side of the river, believing he is safe. By the end of the night, Jacob is not the same man who sent his family ahead of him the day before.

I think the timing of Jacob’s wrestle with God is key. They wrestled at night, when Jacob was alone, and they wrestled all night. This was not a brief encounter where you can dip in and dip out as you please. This was a grueling, taxing engagement which demanded all of Jacob’s energy. And are not most wrestlings like this? As a girl growing up with brothers, I wrestled a lot. And I usually won because I was older and stronger, until they outgrew me, and although these wrestling matches were exhausting, they were brief. They were usually ended by my parents before someone got hurt. But they were moments only. They did not last the whole night.

There is a reason why night is often associated with struggle. 16^th century theologians coined the term “dark night of the soul,” referring to the spiritual season of feeling abandoned, lost in suffering as we seek the face of God. Night is often associated with fear because it is defined by darkness. In darkness it is harder to see, harder to understand what is going on, and easier to feel isolated. And yet this is when God chooses to wrestle with Jacob. He doesn’t come during the day, when Jacob can see clearly, or be surrounded by those he loves. He comes at night when he is alone and vulnerable, and God wrestles with him until dawn.

What fascinates me most about this story is that God took on the form of a man to wrestle with Jacob. He took on a form with which Jacob could engage, and still maintained His power as God. He does not come to Jacob as an overwhelming deity, or a magnificent being of light. He comes as a man and meets Jacob on his own level. He wanted Jacob to learn something by being fully challenged within his own ability. Genesis 32:25 says when the man saw He could not overpower Jacob, He touched Jacob’s hip so it became dislocated. So does God cheat? I think he might have bent the rules a bit and played into His own power. He plays His “God card” and dislocates Jacob’s hip, demonstrating that even though He came here to engage Jacob on Jacob’s level, He is still God and He still has all the authority. It is easy for this to daunt us, but stay with me in it.

So often we avoid conflict with God because we fear the change it will create. We don’t want to wrestle because we fear losing, we fear the conviction of having to live differently. Augustine of Hippo was a fourth century theologian who lived a flagrant and worldly lifestyle before he fully committed himself to the Lord. In this early season of life he prayed, “Lord, make me pure, but just not yet.” He didn’t want to wrestle. He knew he would have to confront God and come face to face with the ugliness of his own heart, and he would have to change. So he says, “I want to be pure, but just not yet. I’m not ready to give up the way I’m living. I don’t want to wrestle yet.”

And sometimes we avoid wrestling because we are afraid of the answers. We all have questions. We see this on the hearts the VBS participants made last week. We have questions, hard questions, and we want answers. But for some reason we are prone to fear those answers. We have questions about our struggles. “Why did I have to suffer that accident? Is heaven real? Why did my spouse die? Where were You, God, when I was being abused? Why didn’t You save my son from cancer?” We have all these questions, often sourced in wells of deep pain, and rather than engage with God, and wrestle with Him to the bottom of our pain, we choose not to enter the ring, and walk away.

A few weeks ago I met an army soldier who had fought in Afghanistan. He shared with me that before going overseas he wanted to be a priest, but now he won’t do that because he’s not sure if he believes in God. When I asked him what changed, he said that seeing the suffering, the hatred, and the death in the Middle East—how could there be a God who loves us? And that’s a real question, a hard question. But for now it stops there. For now, he doesn’t want to wrestle with it. Instead he makes up his own mind about the way the world works, rather than asking the hard question and wrestling through it with God.

We must not be afraid to ask the hard questions. God shows us that He is here to be engaged. He comes to where we are at, in a form with which we can interact. We don’t have to exhaust ourselves in search of Him because He enters our own space in the night of our pain, of our fear. And He is willing to wrestle with us as long as we need. Even until daybreak, when hope and renewal return. How blessed we are to have a God who wrestles with us until daybreak. He doesn’t turn away, He never condescends upon our questions, He never calls it quits. He is inexhaustible, and even as we persist with our questions, He reminds us that he remains God and holds all the power.

God dislocates Jacob’s hip to demonstrate He contains all the power. I’ve never had a dislocated hip, but I can imagine it would be excruciating. Despite this pain, Jacob hangs on like a bulldog, and demands a blessing. I imagine him thinking, “Ah no, I didn’t just go through a whole night of this for a messed up hip. You’re going to bless me. Or I’m not going to let go. We can stay here all night.” He is determined to receive something from the ordeal he just endured. And Jacob demands, even.

When in middle school I learned from Steve, my youth pastor, the story of his daughter’s birth. His wife Kathy was diagnosed with a rare medical condition which would complicate the delivery. When it came time for their daughter to be born everything started going wrong, and the doctors gave them a negative prognosis. At one point the doctors lost both Kathy and the baby, and were trying to resuscitate them both. Steve ran outside to the parking lot, which was enclosed in trees, and in the darkness he says he wrestled with God. He demanded and he prayed for the blessing of his wife and daughter, pleading with God to save them. He refused to let go until God answered his cry. And the spirit moved and pushed him and he ran back inside where both Kathy and the baby had been saved.

Through Jacob God teaches us to be relentless; to hang on tooth and nail for the blessing He will bestow upon us. And this blessing comes with a dual transformation. Jacob is crippled, and he is renamed. He is different in spirit, body, and identity.

The name Jacob means “usurper.” Someone who takes what rightfully belongs to another. We’ve seen this fulfilled in his relationship with Esau and with Laban, as he takes what rightfully belongs to both men. But now Jacob has been renamed Israel, which means “to wrestle with God and with men.” And this name defines the identity of all the subsequent Israelites. They no longer take what belongs to others. Instead they engage with God, they wrestle with Him with hard questions and for blessings.

And Jacob is changed in body. His crippling is a blessing because it serves as a perpetual reminder that he is not self-sufficient. This lesson is embedded in the practices of his people: the Israelites don’t eat the tendon of the hip socket because that is where God touched Jacob. It is a symbolic remembrance so they will not forget what God has done for them. In the same way, we must not forget when God teaches us when we wrestle with Him. It is impossible to encounter God and emerge unchanged. What we must be diligent to do is remember the changes. We must refuse to forget what God has done for us; how God has changed us.

As Jacob departs into the daylight he emerges as Israel, blessed and limping, hopeful and remembering. He has seen the face of God and lived. He has wrestled with God and been changed, and been blessed. There is a Latin phrase I love called “Coram Deo,” meaning “in the face of God.” To live in the presence of, under the authority of, and to the honor and glory of God. When I think of that phrase I have an image of God’s face, His full face seeing all of me and me seeing Him. In this space, in the face of God, we are invited to wrestle. We can hang on and persist for the blessing He is ready to give. For when we wrestle we see God’s face, and we are changed by the rawness of the encounter.