The Rev. Dr. Barbara Ewton                                          

First Congregational Church of Verona

A: Easter 7                                                       

Struggling With God

Genesis 32 22-30

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the river Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel – which means he struggles with God – because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." Jacob said, "Please tell me your name." But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."

            Picture this: It’s pitch dark. You’re all alone – you can hear the far off sounds of children trying to stay awake, and women trying to get them to sleep. But they’re all across the river because you know the danger in this darkness. You’re afraid. Afraid for your life. Afraid for your family. Afraid of your brother.

Suddenly you sense an arm springing out of the darkness and wrapping itself around your neck. Your heart is pounding and your throat tightens: each breath you take could be your last. Is it a nightmare? A flesh and blood reality? Does it matter? Your heart might stop either way.

This story of Jacob's night-long struggle is intense enough by itself. It’s even more so if you read it against his other dream story - that of Jacob's ladder. That time Jacob was passive, content to watch angels coming to and from God without asking a single question. He named the place of that dream too: "Bethel," he called it: the house of God. He prayed then too, but it was more bargaining than praying. Back then, Jacob was little more than a boy, alone and afraid in the dark.

Now this is the adult Jacob, still frightened to be sure, but this time part of a wrestling match. One of the questions we need to ask is with whom or what was he struggling? With God? Or an angel? Both the Hebrew text and most translations say he wrestled with a man. Might the man have been Jacob himself? Was he struggling with his own fear? His real status as the second son? His way of always looking out for himself first? What we do know about this struggle is that it was painful, it was draining, and it left Jacob marked forever with a visible mark – a limp caused by the injury inflicted in the dark.

We also know of an invisible mark that resulted from the struggle: Jacob may have limped away in the morning, but he limped away with two extraordinary convictions: 1) that he had struggled with none other than God, and 2) that he had finally won his own rightful blessing. That at last he knew his inner self: his true and well-earned name. Jacob had become one who learned what we all yearn for: the name by which God knows us, the one that names the connection between each of us and God.

The question of names remained, though. The stranger, after all, refused to give his. While he wrestled all night long, Jacob knew three things: that he was not going to let go until some good came of the struggle. That the fight was long, and it was hard, and it hurt. And that, even with family and friends and wealth close by, life had forced him to fight this one alone.

It’s an exciting story, but little more than that unless we can recognize our own struggles in it. Maybe your struggle right now is with illness or anxiety or loss. Maybe it is a huge life threatening one or maybe it’s about something small. The point here is that it’s about whatever it’s about, but it’s also about discovering your whole self. In every moment when we struggle with ourselves or with life or with God, we either win or lose a blessing and that blessing is nothing less than the knowledge of who we were born to be.

We are born to struggle. Early on, we struggle against the parents who name us, and would have us be who they want us to be. Later on, we struggle against the institutions who name us with titles, and then expect us to become representatives of their values. And of course we always struggle against the conflicting needs and desires that co-exist within us.

But we are born also knowing that this learning your true name may be a struggle, but it doesn’t have to be a grim or hopeless one. There's as much truth as irony in the old saying that what doesn't kill you makes you strong. When Jacob struggled, he won a new name and a new meaning for his life. "Your name will no longer be Jacob, the man said to him. Now that’s a good thing right there because Jacob is a name that means “the one who holds the heel” – the second born twin, the one doomed by the dictates of his culture to always be second best.

Jacob’s name would be Israel – a word that was put together to mean “he who struggles with God. “ And after he learned his real name and his real destiny, Jacob called the place of the struggle, Peniel because it was where he saw God face to face, and lived to become someone he’d never known he could be.

What does this say to us? It isn’t - and it is - prophecy that we’re looking for here. Because while prophecy often concerns itself with the future, it is mostly concerned with the deepest meaning of the present. Listen to what Isaiah said about Jacob and his God:

[I am] he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:

Fear not, I have redeemed you. I have called you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you...

When you walk through the fire, [you] will not be burned...

For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.[1]

“I have called you by name. You are mine.” But even in the face of an amazing promise like this, there’s always a choice. Do we trust this promise? Do we see our own struggles as random and pointless – the whole world’s against me kind of thing – or can we find a way to trust the hint of blessing unfolding in the darkness?

Put a little differently, here's the choice. Either we can struggle mindfully and prayerfully with crisis – and our wrestling, like Jacob's, may result in unexpected and unimaginable grace. Or: we can give up, let go, and simply never know who we might have become, what we might have been able to do.

In the Genesis story, Jacob, the one who once was merely clever, had grown wise enough to insist on his blessing, and grown trusting enough to not let go until he received it. Yes, he was injured. But he was also blessed, and that is what always makes the difference. His wound would be sacred – a reminder of the time he learned his own God-given name, and his own God-given birthright.

Later it would be so with Jesus, born of Israel: born to be the holy one whose struggles and wounds and death live on today as sacred – reminders of his Godly birthright as the savior, the Holy One of Israel.

The One known to us in the breaking of the bread. The One who invited us to always remember that moment when he chose the ultimate struggle: the moment when he gave his life so we might know that we carry the undying spark of God's life within us. Thanks be to the God of Jacob, the God we meet face to face, even here, even now.   Amen.