Genesis 32:22-31
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, and yet my life is preserved." 31 The sun rose upon him as
he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
Growing up as a boy in South
Alabama, there was absolutely nothing I could do about the sort of things I’d
inevitably like as a child. For example, I can remember watching The Dukes of Hazzard with my cousins at
Grandma’s house on her color, console television, and I can distinctly remember
thinking we were going to grow up to be just like Bo and Luke (of course I was
going to grow up to be just like Bo). I can remember watching Hee Haw and listening to radio stations
in the car like 95.5 WTVY and spending most of my early years under the musical
influences of folks like George Jones, Hank Williams, Jr., the Judds, and
Sawyer Brown. Of course there was also the food: collard and mustard greens, fried
chicken, butter beans, cornbread, butternut cake, fourteen-layer chocolate
cake, chocolate pound cake, well…a lot of cakes and things that are generally
referred to today as “soul food.” But of all the things that flavored the
environment of my lower-Alabama upbringing, there was one thing that
highlighted those early years of boyhood: wrasslin’ (that’s what they call
professional wrestling in the less-articulate parts of this country).
My cousins (David and Brad) and I
would sit on the floor around Grandma’s TV and watch the likes of “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, Jake “The
Snake” Roberts, “Bullet” Bob Armstrong, The Ultimate Warrior, and (of course)
Hulk Hogan. We’d watch as they’d clothesline, leg drop, body slam, and suplex
one another all over the squared circle, and we’d watch as they’d give
over-the-top interviews with “Mean” Gene Okerlund, shouting and making crazy
faces as if the grand soap opera in which they were playing a part was real
life. Then we’d try to copy everything we saw them do. Grandma’s living room
floor was the ring, and the two couches on either wall were the ropes
(specifically the top rope, which was really the only one that mattered). We’d
grapple on the floor, stand on the couch and drop elbows on one another, and—if
grandma’s hadn’t cut a switch to stop us—we’d jump up and do a leg drop just
like Hulk Hogan would.
Well, one fateful day, during one of
our living room wrestle-manias, I was getting up from a close-quarters
clothesline or coming out of a headlock, when I was punched right in the
mouth…but it wasn’t the closed fist of one of my cousins that hit me. I was
punched square in the mouth by the exposed wooden arm of the couch. I don’t
remember if I lost a tooth or if I bled at all, but I do know that my front
teeth have never been the same since; they’re all crowded and a little twisted.
That may have been my retirement match from living room wrasslin’, but it was
certainly a time when wrestling left me changed in a very real sense.
While there’s no Hebrew word for
“pile driver” or “power bomb,” we’ve witnessed in this morning’s Scripture an
ancient, Hebrew account of a wrestling match. Jacob—son of Isaac and grandson
of Abraham—is on his way to meet his brother Esau. Now, Jacob isn’t on his way
to some casual reunion with his brother. No, Jacob is on his way to meet with
his brother in hopes that the two of them may be reconciled. You see, Jacob had
been wrestling with his twin brother since birth. We’re told in Genesis 25:26
that Esau was born first, but Jacob (whose name can mean “he who takes by the
heel”[1])
was holding on to Esau’s heel. Just a few verses (and some time) later, we’re
told that Jacob tricked Esau into surrendering his birthright over a pot of
stew when Esau was hungry.[2]
In chapter 27 of Genesis Jacob (along with the help of his mother) tricked his
father Isaac into blessing him instead of his brother Esau. This infuriated
Esau, who then in the heat of his anger swears to kill his brother Jacob.[3]
So, Jacob and Esau didn’t exactly get along.
In the intervening years, Jacob
takes a few wives, has some children, angers one of his fathers-in-law, Laban,
through his characteristic trickery, and eventually patches things up with him.
Then, we come to chapter 32 of Genesis, and Jacob attempts to make some sort of
peace with his brother and sends him all sorts of gifts in the hope that they
will somehow make up for his former treachery. It is in leading up to this reunion with his
estranged twin brother that we find Jacob this morning.
We are told in verses 22 and 23 of our text: “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.
He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he
had.” While some see this as a cowardice move on the part of Jacob,
sending his wives, children, and belongings ahead of himself as some sort of
shield,[4]
it may very well be an attempt to simply be alone with his thoughts, a chance
to wrestle with the weight of what is about to take place when he meets his
estranged brother, a chance to struggle with what it means to seek help and
forgiveness from one whom he had treated with such impertinence, a chance to
grapple with the emotional enormity of seeking reconciliation and a
relationship with one whom he had used in plots for his own blessings. Jacob,
we are told in the first half of verse
24, “was left alone.”
Jacob isn’t left alone for long,
however, for we’re told right away that “a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” There’s
no literary flourish here, no grand introduction or theme music as a way of
breaking this mysterious wrestler into the narrative. No, we’re simply told
that “a
man wrestled with [Jacob] until daybreak.” Who is this man, this figure
cloaked in the darkness of night? According to the prophet Hosea, this man is
an angel.[5]
As one scholar puts it, Jacob is actually wrestling with himself: “The attack
of the assailant is the accusation of his own conscience, opposing, denouncing,
and condemning the kind of life which Jacob had led up to this point.”[6]
Perhaps Jacob’s own words in verse 30
tell us who this wrestler is, for “Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For
I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’" Jacob
believes he has wrestled with God, and despite the fact that this stranger
seems to be unable to simply overcome Jacob with a divine feat of strength and
the notion that he cannot continue the struggle into the light of day, I
believe that’s exactly who Jacob met that night by the Jabbok.
Jacob, in his stubbornness, refuses
to yield to this man, and it is in the midst of his stubborn struggle Jacob is
struck in the hip. The blow did not break Jacob’s determination, but it did
leave him changed. It left him blessed and with a new name, Israel—a name with
a verbal root so rare we can only guess at its meaning by the man’s words in verse 28: "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have
striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed."[7]
Jacob’s wrestling with God has left him changed, but is there any other outcome
when one encounters the Almighty “face-to-face,” when one wrestles with the
Almighty? Or to put it another way, is there really any other way to be truly
changed than to wrestle with God?
You see, before Jacob’s encounter
with God at the ford of the Jabbok, Jacob lived by his own rules, looking out
for himself, taking advantage of others in order to attain blessings,
inheritances, and wives that he desired. Before his struggle with God, Jacob
was known as the one who grabbed the heel of whoever was ahead of him, the
trickster who used his cunning to fool others into giving him what he wanted.
But after this struggle with God, Jacob is renamed, left with a humbling limp
to remind him of his striving with God. Israel crosses the Jabbok to meet his
brother as a changed man, as one who has met God and lived to tell about it, as
one who began to leave behind his former, selfish ways in order to live into
the promised blessing of God.
An encounter with God cannot help but leave us changed. One cannot say he
or she has struggled with God and not change. Furthermore, one doesn’t change
or grow in his or her faith without struggle, without the occasional rumble
with God. You see, the life of faith isn’t always sun beams, golden streets,
and crystal seas. A life lived in reality, in the reality of this world, is
riddled with strife and difficulty for those who seek to see the face of God,
for it is not easy to live by faith. There are those times when our
selfishness, our ignorance, our desire to simply stay where we are because it’s
comfortable gets in the way of what God has for us. So we wrestle with God. We
declare that we aren’t going anywhere, that we aren’t going to change the way
we think, and that we know enough, we’ve seen enough, and we’re not about to
yield to any new challenge or any new calling that God may put in our path.
We wrestle with God, though we may name it other things. We may claim to
wrestle with post-modern theology. We may claim to wrestle with change that we
don’t like. We may claim to wrestle with those things that seek to change our
“old time religion.” We may claim that what we’re really wrestling is anything
but God calling us into a deeper relationship, calling us to leave behind the
things that once defined us, but so often that is exactly who and what we’re
wrestling—and we don’t want to submit, to “tap out.” Like Jacob, we are determined
not to be changed, not to be defeated. Like Jacob, we refuse to give in because
to do so is to admit that we’re wrong, that we’re weak, and that we’re going to
have to acknowledge that there is something out there greater than what we had
previously believed. Like Jacob, it sometimes takes something drastic,
something painful to change our course, and in the end it leaves us different,
marked as one who’s struggled with something or someone.
We may not always walk away with a limp, but we always walk away from a
struggle with God changed. Perhaps you’re in the midst of your own struggle
with God. Maybe there’s something you’ve been struggling with for some time,
but you simply refuse to submit because that would seem too weak. Perhaps
you’re ready to throw in the towel today, to surrender yourself and everything
that defines you to the One who has the power to change your life forever. If
you’re here today, at the ford of your own Jabbok, at the highpoint of your
wrestling match with the Almighty, let me encourage you to surrender to God. It
may seem like giving up, it may seem like the loser’s way out, but if Jacob’s
story teaches us anything it’s this: when we surrender to God and allow God to
change us, God will use us to do great things. May you surrender to God today
and be changed. May you surrender to God and lay down your life and all that
defines you, so that you may begin to be transformed by God into the person God
longs for you to be.
There may be some of you here today who would say, “I’ve never had to
struggle with God.” To you I say this: when we take our faith seriously, when
it permeates every place of our lives, we cannot help but wrestle with God. To
grow in faith is to wrestle with God, to come to places in our lives where we
cross barriers that once kept us from knowing more of God and hearing God’s
voice call us further along in the work of the kingdom. If you’ve never
wrassled with the Almighty perhaps it is because you’ve been skirting around
the hard questions for far too long, because you’ve been too comfortable with
your own level of faith and discipleship, because you’ve been “saved” and
that’s good enough to keep you out of hell and secure for yourself a spot in
heaven. May you step into the ring with God today. May you cease avoiding the
struggles that will change you and call you into a deeper relationship with
God. May you know what it’s like to wrestle with the Almighty, to surrender
more of yourself, and be changed. May we all submit more of ourselves to God as
we wrassle with the Almighty, and may we grow more and more with each round we
surrender.
Amen.
[1]
see NRSV margin for this verse.
[2]
Genesis 25:29-34
[3] Genesis
27:41-45
[4]
Grace Fi-Sun Kim, “Proper 13,” Preaching
God’s Transformative Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year A. Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, KY (2013) p.340.
[5]
Hosea 12:4
[6] G.
Henton Davies, The Broadman Bible
Commentary: Volume 1. Broadman Press: Nashville, TN (1969) p. 236.
[7]
John H. Walton, NIV Application
Commentary: Genesis. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI (2001) p.607.
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