JACOB'S WRESTLING MATCH

Reading: Psalm 17:1-7, 15, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:22-33, Genesis 32:22-31
Preached at First Presbyterian Church Baldwin, NY, on July 31st 2011

A PDF printable version can be found here

Are any of you are familiar with the Wrestling programs on Television. The W.W.F. and W.C.W. and all the rest of them. Do you know who the most famous wrestler of all time is? The Rock? Jessie Ventura? Hulk Hogan? None of the above.

The most famous wrestler of all time, the one who has had more written about him, who has had the account of his one and only fight read in places where they have never heard ‘Wrestling Federations; the most influential wrestler of all time was a man called Jacob.

Jacob was born fighting, holding onto his twin Esau’s ankle as he came out of the womb. He fought and won the birthright that should have been his brothers by right. He fought to win the heart of the lady he loved. He was ready to fight Esau again should his twin brother seek to get his birthright back.

That’s how we find him at the beginning of our bible account. Getting ready to meet Esau. Jacob has a large family and many possessions. He splits them into groups so that if they were attacked, not all would be lost. Always the wrestler, he has alternative strategies up his sleeve. “I will win Esau over with gifts, and when I meet him, perhaps he will forgive me!”

As we’ve noted before, Jacob isn’t a particularly ‘godly’ person. Despite his visions of ladders descending from heaven and his life being the recipient of numerous promises and blessings from God, he is constantly maneuvering and manipulating, often without any thought of how his actions may have been hurting others. It’s almost as though God needs to finally get a grip on him and teach him that there was more to life than serving his own desires!

That seems to be exactly what happens. As he seeks to cross the river, Jacob is set upon. His attacker is sometimes described as a man, sometimes as an angel. Some suggest that the figure he wrestled was Jesus. The assailant’s exact identity is unknown. Yet when the bout is over, Jacob recognizes that it had been no normal fight, but that he had been struggling with God. Verse 30: "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved."

That’s why Jacob is the most famous wrestler of all. He wrestled God and survived to tell the tale! Out of the struggle he gained a new name, Verse 28 tells us "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." He was also left with a limp in his walk having suffered a dislocated hip in the fight. Orthodox Jews today still avoid eating the muscle of the thigh, in honor of Jacob’s wrestling match!

Jacob never intended to be a wrestler. Neither do most of us. Even those who enjoy watching bouts on the television would feel very nervous if it was they who were actually in the ring with some big bad bone-crusher! Yet life has a habit of throwing us into the ring, time and time again. A sermon I saw on this passage had for its title; “Life’s a wrestling match”.

Life surely can be that way. A wrestling match. A struggle. A fight. Things come along and get a hold of us. Health problems. Money problems. Family problems. Personal struggles and private battles. Corporate problems and things we face together. It’s not all sweetness and light, is it? There’s so much that could get us down and keep us there if we let it.

Our dilemma is much like Jacob’s, in that some of these struggles are things we have bought upon ourselves. It has been our own selfishness, or unprepared-ness or sometimes just plain stupidity that has got us into a mess. We’d like to have a magic wand to wish it all away, but this isn’t Harry Potter, it’s the real world. Other struggles just seem to come at us from out of nowhere. “Didn’t see that one coming!”

One thing I like about this story is the vagueness of the attackers identity. Could be a man, could be an angel. Could be some manifestation of the pre-incarnate Christ or personification of the Holy Spirit. Could be something as earthly as the river in which Jacob stood, or as heavenly as the river of life that is pictured flowing through heavens garden.

We are not given an exact identification. But we are told that in some mysterious way, God is mixed up with it, involved in it, and a part of it! There are struggles in our lives that we can name and others that we cannot seem to get a handle on. Dare we believe that in the midst of our struggles, God is involved?

Dare we, as did Jacob, get such a grip on our struggles that we have the audacity to pray, “Out of this, there will yet be some blessing, some insight, some treasure that I have yet to glimpse and make my own!” Is it not the case that we learn far more from our struggles than from those times when things are just to easy?

These struggles may indeed leave us limping as we go, yet even that can be a reminder to us that we have wrestled and made it through to the other side. Whilst Jesus Christ promises us that in His name we have the victory, we are never promised that we should travel through the battles without receiving any scars.

I wonder, if through faith, we can see that in the midst of these struggles, we are not alone, but in the same mysterious way as God was mixed up in Jacob’s struggle, God is also there in the midst of our conflicts. Sometimes it can be about conflicts in relationships. Sometimes it can be about getting ourselves to live as God wants us to. Sometimes it can be a conflict going on inside of ourselves. In these different situations the mystery is that we can actually be wrestling with God.

Reflecting on this passage one writer reflects on the journaling that they had started to do at the end of each day.

“Finally I’ve found a space to be alone at the end of a hard day. I’ve just begun to relax when suddenly some monster out of the darkness jumps me and my face is in the mud. I’m pitched into battle with something I cannot see, but which, if I don’t struggle with it, shall be my downfall.

As I grow older, I’m aware that each major struggle I undergo takes on these same familiar characteristics. And so Jacob wrestling with the angel becomes an increasingly poignant metaphor for me. Every personal conflict begins to look like that one, with it’s many forms:
It’s a struggle in the darkness.
It’s a struggle with the unknown.
Jacob wrestles an angel who seems just as afraid as he is.
Jacob wrestles his own fears.
Jacob tries to kill the angel, who’s intent is to bless him.
The angel gently allows Jacob to defeat himself.
Jacob, remembering the consequences of stealing his brothers
blessing, stifles the angels blessing.
Jacob and the angel eventually collapse in exhaustion.
In the light of the morning Jacob discovers, that through wrestling
with God, he has been wrestling also with himself.

Inevitably, such a struggle leaves me wounded and I will limp forever afterward. But it’s not until later that I realize that I wasn’t wrestling with some other creature, but with that which we may call the spiritual, or the holy, or even the divine. And it is then that I realize that I too, have been blessed. The strange thing is that I never really remember who won!”

There’s the strange thing about this wrestling match between Jacob and God. Who won? It would be ludicrous to suggest that God would lose! The intent of the angel is to bless Jacob, to establish him in a new relationship with God. This is a defining moment, marked by Jacob’s name being changed to that of “Israel”, the name eventually adopted by the nation. God’s purposes were achieved. God won!

God won, but Jacob didn’t lose. Jacob won. He gained the blessing. Jacob is listed in the ‘Hall of Faith’ of Hebrews Chapter 11. Despite his many failings, weaknesses and subsequent sorrows, there remained an underpinning of faith that enabled him to rise above his often-misguided actions.

Such a faith does not come without struggle. It would not come to Jacob, which implies that neither will we reach a maturity of faith, without conflict and struggling and wrestling with both the things of God and the circumstances that life brings our way.

There is a line in the Presbyterian Confession of Faith of 1967 that reads, “Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage”. So, too, is faith. Faith grows and life becomes enriched only as we commit together to worship, work, study and pray. There are no short cuts on the spiritual road God places before us.

There are things in our lives we need to work through with God. There are things God seeks for us to let go of, and we don’t want to. There are things that will come our way that will catch us totally by surprise. They may be pleasant, or they may be harsh.

So take courage. Be empowered by the Holy Spirit. Seek for God’s blessing in the midst of the struggles and refuse to give up till the blessing is yours. May the example of Christ encourage us. May the promises of Scripture inspire us. Let us seek to help each other as we travel along, (or maybe limp along), the road that leads towards better days.

AMEN

Rev Adrian Pratt