Wrestling with God: Genesis 32:22-31 - 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

²²The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. ²⁴Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ²⁵When 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. ²⁶Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” ²⁷So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” ²⁹Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. ³⁰So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” ³¹The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (NRSV)

Have you ever found yourself picking a fight…with a vending machine?

You’re hungry—and you see Little Debbie’s face smiling at you from the wrapper of a sticky bun, inside the Plexiglas…

You put in your dollar (the only one you have, by the way).  You make your selection, and you watch the rotating spiral advance your snack forward, only to see it get stuck… 

What do you do?  Some people start pounding the window, or they try rocking the machine to knock loose the sugary snack…  But today’s vending machines are designed to withstand these assaults.  Many of them are even nailed to the wall so you can’t rock them.  Don’t even think about reaching up inside the machine, because the designers thought of that, too. 

So what do you do?  Do you let the machine win?  Or, do you walk away in defeat? 

Does your prayer life ever feel the like this?  You pray, believing that God is listening—but nothing happens…  Things go from bad to worse, and prayer feels like talking to the sky. 

So you start questioning: why did God allow this to happen to me?  What did I do wrong?  Why isn’t God answering?

Eventually, you reach a decision point: do you keep praying?  Or, do you give it up… because God isn’t listening?  God doesn’t exist?  Or, perhaps worst of all, because God is against you?

I really don’t think we comprehend what prayer really is.  I wish prayer were like a vending machine: faith is your coin, you put it in God, and your answer comes down from heaven.  I certainly wish it were as peaceful and beautiful as the image depicted in our stained glass window.  But Jesus paints another picture here today…

Here, you have a poor widow who had fallen victim to another’s trickery.  She goes to the local judge—a hard-hearted and remorseless individual, who couldn’t care less about her suffering.  But she never gives up—so he grants her justice, just to get rid of her.

God, Jesus teaches, is not cold and heart-hearted like this judge—and does not ignore the cries of his children.  Yet prayer demands persistence.  More accurately, prayer is persistence… 

It’s the persistence we see in Jacob, in what has to be one of the most mysterious stories in all the Bible.  Jacob is traveling at night, all by himself, when an unknown man attacks and wrestles with him all night.  Unable to prevail against Jacob, the man strikes at Jacob’s hip and knocks it out of joint.  When the daylight finally breaks, Jacob learns that his attacker is God.  Jacob is renamed “Israel,” a name that literally means “he wrestles with God.”

Together, these stories reveal the more difficult side of the Christian life—that it is not always a peaceful, contended walk through the garden with Jesus… 

It is lying awake at night, worrying about something or someone; sweating it out over some important decision.  It is the agony of crying out to God in the silence.  It’s the pain of waiting as your mind, body, and soul grow faint…  It’s the horror of free-falling into darkness.

Sometimes, God will not be your best friend.  God can be wild, unpredictable, and even threatening…

You’ll be wrestling with the devil one day and God the next—and you may not even know the difference!

Faith is a wrestling with God.  You are going to experience anger, frustration, and failure.  You will get bruised and broken.  A black preacher once said, “until you have stood for years knocking on a locked door, your knuckles bleeding, you really do not know what prayer is.”

The challenge for you is to not give up the fight, and in so doing give up the faith.  When you’re tired, broken, worn out, and afraid, you must pour all that into prayer.  In the same way as Jesus turned water to wine, Jesus can take all that restlessness and anguish and transform it into faith to be a part of all that God is doing.  You’ll be able to face your fears and carry on as trouble rages all around you.  You’ll be joined into God’s holy fight to eradicate hunger, stamp out injustice, and build communities of peace and belonging. 

Sometimes, you’ll be knocked down.  But don’t give up on the God who will never give up on you. Those who wrestle with God will be drawn closer to God.  Those who wrestle with God will be made stronger and more Christ-like.

Jesus is with you in the fight.  Look at these battles as birth pangs preceding the new and better things God is bringing to life.

Photo credit: 

Delacroix, Eugène, 1798-1863. Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48070 [retrieved October 16, 2016]. Original source: www.yorckproject.de.