COMMUNION SERVICE
Readings: Psalm 17:1-7, 15, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21, Genesis 32:22-31
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, August 6, 2023
We reach the final installment of our Patriarchal Ponderings. We conclude with a story about confrontation. An actual physical, one on one, wrestling match.
I recall growing up on Saturday afternoons there were wrestling matches on TV. Some folks loved to watch. Others found it rather amusing. Little did we know back then that wrestling would become a huge media circus and make international stars out of folk with names like “Hulk Hogan” and “The Rock.” However famous such characters may be, the most influential wrestler of all time was a man called Jacob, the same guy we’ve been thinking about the last few weeks.
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 hearts of the ladies 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 really 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 even suggest that the figure he wrestled was the pre-incarnate Christ. 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 were 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. There’s so much that could get us down and keep us there if we let it.
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 Hogwarts, 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 attacker’s 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 heaven’s 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 amid 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!” We learn far more from our struggles than from those times when things are just too 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 during 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 amid 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 an anonymous author writes:
“As I grow older, I’m aware that each major struggle I undergo takes on familiar characteristics. 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 destroy the angel, whose intent it is to bless him.
The angel gently allows Jacob to defeat himself. Jacob, remembering the consequences of stealing his brother’s blessing, stifles the angel’s 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 that strange thing about this wrestling match between Jacob and God. Who won? It would be ludicrous to suggest that God could 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 “Israel,” the name eventually adopted by the nation. God’s purposes were achieved. God won!
But Jacob didn’t lose. Jacob also won. He gained the blessing. Jacob is listed among the names of great people of faith in 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 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.
To be a disciple means that there are occasions when we must take on the role of being a wrestler. 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. Find food for the fight and strength for the journey around a table laid with bread and wine. Seek for God’s blessing amid the struggles and refuse to give up till the blessing is yours.
As we have followed this series of ‘Patriarchal Ponderings’ we have discovered that, though these mothers and fathers in the faith are far removed from us, by great gaps in time and culture, they are characters of flesh and blood who seem to struggle with many of the things we still wrestle with in our own lives.
Family, faith, commitment, understanding the actions of those they travel through life with, being a community, discovering the boundaries, forgiveness of self and acceptance of others. The stuff of everyday life.
It is worth the effort to read and grapple with these stories from long ago. They will challenge us. There are things in them that are hard to accept. They are accounts with many layers, written from the perspective of those who were anxious to paint a picture that offered a particular perspective on life’s meaning and purpose.
We approach them from the position of being a Christian community that believes these stories were laying a foundation from out of which our own faith traditions would be born. There is so much in the New Testament that simply does not make sense without an understanding of these Old Testament narratives.
But… what I love about these stories… is that the struggles of the Patriarch’s, though very different in nature to our own dilemmas, still have the power to resonate with our lives. Hagar and Ishmael… people on the boundaries. Yet still God calls them family. Abraham, who struggles to understand his call and often takes matters into his own hands rather than trust God. That “Mount Moriah” moment when he learned that sometimes, to find yourself, you have to lose yourself and sever your attachment to those things that may be detracting from your love of God.
Abraham’s unnamed servant who displays to us an attitude of prayer that allowed God’s plans to be worked out through his service. Isaac, who finds love, but then has to deal with the family dynamics of feuding twins, one of whom, ultimately acts towards him with great disrespect and steals his brother Esau’s’ birthright. And Jacob… who as we have seen, was no saint. Faith for Jacob truly is a wrestling match, wrestling with himself, wrestling with the consequence of his actions, wrestling with God.
May the promises of Scripture inspire us.
May we continue to wrestle with questions of faith and discipleship.
Let us seek to help each other as we travel along,
(or maybe even limp along),
a road that leads towards better days.
And to God’s name be all glory.
AMEN
The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D..
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