Wrestling with God: Genesis 32:9-13, 22-30 - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

I don't know about you, but scam artists target me multiple times each day. I receive text messages about undeliverable packages, confirmation emails about expensive subscription services I didn’t buy, and requests for help transferring large sums of money from foreign bank accounts. 

Most of the friend requests I receive on Facebook are from scammers impersonating people I’m already friends with. Recently, a person reached out to me on Facebook Messenger, asking me to loan him $200 through Cashapp. He promised to pay me back the next day and make a $45 donation to the church. When I told him “No,” he became extremely irate and would not take no for an answer. I finally got fed up shut my phone off. About a week later, I noticed that the name and picture attached to those messages had been changed. 

In today’s reading, we are introduced to Jacob, who was the Bible’s dirty trickster. 

Jacob was the younger of fraternal twins. When his brother Esau was born, Jacob was gripping at his heel. (Incidentally, the name Jacob means “takes the heel”). When they were young, Esau came home famished after a long day of hunting, and Jacob convinced him to trade his birthright for a bowl of soup. When their father Isaac was dying, their mother Rebekah and Jacob schemed to steal the deathbed blessing that was supposed to go to Esau. When Esau found out what happened, he was so enraged that Jacob was forced to flee for his life. 

He goes to live with Laban, his uncle, who was also a dirty trickster. Laban convinces Jacob to work for him for seven years in exchange for marrying his youngest daughter, Rachael. But Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, his oldest daughter, and tells him that if he wants to marry Rachael, he must work for him another seven years. Later, both men attempt to scheme each other out of sheep, with Jacob gaining the upper hand. When Laban’s sons become wise to Jacob’s scheme, he’s once again on the run for his life. That is, until God commands him to return to the land of his ancestors. 

This puts Jacob in a dangerous position. If he goes home, he’s going to enrage Laban—and Esau may kill him. But Jacob knows that while he can run from Esau and Laban, he cannot run from God. 

So, he and Laban make amends, and then he sends messengers with gifts to Esau, in hopes that they might reconcile. When the messengers return, they tell him that Esau is coming to meet him, along with four hundred (armed) men. It doesn’t sound as if Esau wants to reconcile. It sounds more like Esau wants revenge.

One wonders why God would use someone as deceitful and untrustworthy as Jacob to be the patriarch of his chosen people. But God does. Jacob confesses that he is unworthy of the grace and faithfulness God has shown him. He pleads with God to deliver him from the wrath of his brother, so that God’s promises may prevail through him. 

That night, when Jacob was alone, a stranger attacks him and wrestles him to the ground. They fight all night until the stranger knocks Jacob’s hip out of joint. But Jacob maintains a vice grip on the stranger, telling him “I won’t let you go until you bless me.”  

Moyers, Mike. Israel, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57141 [retrieved September 22, 2023]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.

The stranger asks Jacob his name, and then he tells him, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” 

That’s what the name Israel means, after all: striving with God. Jacob wrestled with God and prevailed. Jacob’s audacity served him well in that he would not let God go. 

As the children of Israel, we too strive with God, and we even wrestle with God. This may sound strange to you. But is it not a struggle to trust God? A challenge to obey God?

Consider your prayer life. Are you as persistent in asking God as Jacob was—or at least as persistent as that scammer was with me on Facebook messenger? Or, when you see no outcome to your prayers, do you assume God has said “no,” and you stop asking? Are you afraid God may punish you for asking for something God doesn’t want you to have?

Jacob was a scoundrel, and he asked of God. King David was a liar, murderer, and adulterer, and he asked of God. This proves that God wants you to pray and ask, no matter what your motives may be. 

Unfortunately, prayer will not always be a peaceful, easy thing. If the sweat dripped off Jesus’s face like blood as he prayed, why should we expect anything less?  Sometimes, prayer will feel like a wrestling match with God! We don’t call ourselves “prayer warriors” for nothing. The problem for the average Christian has nothing to do with God not answering prayers, but the Christian giving up on God.

How do you feel about God coming after you, wrestling the sin out of you? Are you okay with God knocking you down, if that’s what it takes to set you on the pathway of obedience? 

If prayer and faith were without struggle, then God would be little more than a cosmic vending machine, and our religion a superstition. But struggle is part of the journey. Striving is moving forward. Wrestling is about growing. Faith is the refusal to let God go.

So, if your walk with God has been one of struggle and pain, don’t let that discourage you. If God’s only answer to your prayers is silence, that's a sign that you should keep going, and summon others to join you in the struggle.

Yours is God who wants to be wrestled with. You can wrestle your deepest pains and longings upon God until God acts. God will even allow you to prevail upon him, because God wants you to see his glory and live the life he created you for. Faith is the refusal to let God go. So don’t let go.  

And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, and I will do you good,’ ¹⁰ I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies. ¹¹ 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. ¹² 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.’ ”

¹³ So he spent that night there, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau…

²² 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. ²³ He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. ²⁴ Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ²⁵ 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. ²⁶ Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” ²⁷ So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸ 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.” ²⁹ 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. ³⁰ So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” (NRSVue)