Summary: Jacob’s wrestling match with God planted the seeds of love in him, and that led to the possibility of experiencing reconciliation with his brother Esau. Like Jacob, God’s love and grace enable us to be less demanding and more gentle with other people, less stubborn and more patient and understanding, less distant and more present with one another, especially during times of hardship and conflict.
Scripture: Genesis 32:22-31
While I was a student at Palos Verdes High School in California, I was on the wrestling team. The meanest and scariest guy that I went up against during my wrestling career was a guy named Al Bowles.
Al Bowles was what we called a “stud”. He was all-everything in football, and by his sheer strength alone he was a force on the wrestling mat.
My match against Al Bowles was a long one—it went into overtime. At the end of overtime, we were still tied, so the match was a draw, a tie.
For me, it felt like a victory. After I walked off the mat, my wrestling coach, Coach House, came up to me. He said, “Way to hang in there, Intagliata. I’m proud of you for not giving up the struggle.”
Of all the guys I wrestled against in high school, the match I remember the most was the one against Al Bowles. In a way, it was the defining match of my not-so-illustrious wrestling career.
Today’s scripture from Genesis is a story about Jacob in a wrestling match, face to face with a man who turns out to be God.
It was a match that went into overtime—it lasted through the night until the break of dawn. It was an epic struggle, and a defining moment in Jacob’s life.
Let’s set the stage to see what has led to this wrestling match.
A few weeks ago, I preached on Jacob running away from his family. He had deceived his brother Esau into giving him his birthright and he had tricked his father Isaac into giving him the blessing that rightly belonged to Esau.
Having burnt all his bridges with his family, and with everyone mad at him, Jacob hightailed it out of town and ran for his life.
When Jacob stopped to rest, he had a dream of a stairway to heaven. Was this the inspiration for the famous Led Zeppelin song? I don’t know.
But in the dream God was standing on the stairway and repeated to Jacob the promises he had made to his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, that God would bless them with descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth.
Also, God said he would bless others through them. God also promised that he would be with Jacob and protect him wherever he went and bring him back to his homeland someday.
God’s appearance to Jacob on that ladder, his promises to him, and constant presence with him made Jacob’s journey a sacred journey. As I mentioned in that sermon, God is a migrant God who is always on the move with God’s people.
And now the journey continues. Since Jacob’s dream of the stairway to heaven, he has made his way to his uncle Laban’s place in Padam Aram. Working for his uncle, Jacob amassed a ton of wealth, in those days measured by animals and servants.
Jacob had become so wealthy that his cousins, Laban’s children, got jealous of him. Things got heated, so Jacob decides it’s time to skip town again and head back home.
But there’s a problem looming large over his head; he would inevitably have to face his brother Esau, who wouldn’t have too many warm fuzzy feelings about his backstabbing brother.
It turns out that Esau has already taken the initiative to meet up with Jacob on his journey home. And Jacob is understandably terrified, especially when the messengers he sends to scope out Esau say to him, “Your brother Esau is coming to meet you, and P.S., he’s bringing 400 men with him.”
It may not have looked exactly like this, but this might be what Jacob imagined in his head. The scripture says that Jacob’s reaction here is that he felt “terrified and trapped”. Wouldn’t we all, in such a scenario?
And then Jacob does what most of us would do in a situation where we’re trembling for our life—he prays to God.
“Lord, God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I’ll make sure things go well for you,’ 10 I don’t deserve how loyal and truthful you’ve been to your servant. I went away across the Jordan with just my staff, but now I’ve become two camps. 11 Save me from my brother Esau! I’m afraid he will come and kill me, the mothers, and their children. 12 You were the one who told me, ‘I will make sure things go well for you, and I will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, so many you won’t be able to count them.’”
Jacob remembers what God had promised him when he spoke to him on the stairway to heaven. And he hopes that God remembers as well.
And then Jacob conjures up a plan to use his wealth to shower his brother with gifts--some servants and a whole bunch of animals. So many animals that it could’ve been mistaken for the great migration in the Serengeti.
Hundreds of goats, hundreds of sheep, dozens of camels, cows, and donkeys. He divides them into three groups, to maximize the effect of the size of his gift to Esau.
Could we see it as a bribe? Or simply as Jacob’s love language, giving gifts. He’s hoping that receiving gifts would also be Esau’s love language. Bottom line is that Jacob wants to butter his brother up so Esau will be kind to him instead of take revenge on him.
After Jacob has sent all of his worldly possessions ahead of him, he’s left alone. And that’s where he has the wrestling match with God, who’s disguised as a man or an angel.
It sounded like a knock-down, drag out match, like mine with Al Bowles. The man tears a muscle in Jacob’s thigh, but Jacob stays in the struggle. Finally, at dawn, the man says “Let me go!” And Jacob says “I won’t let you go until you bless me!”
And with that, the man gives Jacob a new name, Israel, which means “one who struggles with God.”
Jacob then asks the man “Tell me your name.” And instead of giving Jacob his name, he gives Jacob the blessing that he asked for.
And then Jacob names the place of the wrestling match, Peniel, which means “face of God” because he says “I’ve seen God face-to-face, and my life has been saved.”
If we keep reading on in the story, we see that Jacob was reconciled with his brother Esau. They embraced and experienced healing and forgiveness.
Friends, I believe that the wrestling match between Jacob and God was a key factor in the brothers’ reconciliation.
The wrestling match was the way that Jacob came face to face not only with God but with himself. And those face-to-face encounters provided the preparation that Jacob needed to meet face to face with Esau.
In spite of the fact that Jacob ended up with a limp after wrestling with God, the struggle was a blessing in disguise to Jacob. Because it was that struggle which led to blessing.
Like Jacob, during our lives, we wrestle with God as well. And just like Jacob, we can experience the blessings that come from that wrestling.
What are the blessings that come from wrestling with God? Based on Jacob’s story, we can say that those blessings are healthy relationships: with God, with ourselves, and with other people.
First, a healthy relationship with God is born of a faith that has room for struggle. I believe that when we honestly bring our questions and doubts and fears before God, it leads to a growing, resilient, and authentic faith.
19th century Scottish novelist, preacher, and mystic George MacDonald said: you love your faith so little that you have never battled a single fear lest your faith should not be true? Where there are no doubts, no questions, no perplexities, there can be no growth.
I know that a lot of churches and pastors would tell their people the opposite, that there are clear answers for everything, and no need for questions.
And while yes, there are some promises from God that we can stand firm on and be sure about, there are a lot of things that we don’t know. There is mystery; our finite minds can’t completely understand an infinite God.
As your pastor, I’m not here to tell you what to believe without questioning it, or offer trite answers to the deep questions you may have about God and faith.
This week I’ll be getting together with three of my best friends; two of us are Christians, the other two are agnostic, and they have a lot of questions about God and about faith. I look forward to some good, honest conversations, and I know from past experience that they appreciate honesty over easy answers.
I believe that in reality, certitude doesn’t lead to growth; rather, it hinders it, it stunts growth.
I like how one of my favorite authors Brian Zahnd says it:
Certitude is a poor substitute for authentic faith. The empty slogan “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” is cheap certitude, not genuine faith.
But certitude is popular; it’s popular because it’s easy. No wrestling with doubt, no dark night of the soul, no costly agonizing over the matter, no testing yourself with hard questions. Just accept a secondhand assumption or a majority opinion or a popular sentiment as the final word and settle into certainty.
At one time or another, we will face hard questions about faith, life and death. We experienced this recently in our household. We share a house with our son Andrew and his family, including their family dog, Sebastian.
Sebastian lived for sixteen years, but a couple of weeks ago they had to put him down.
Our grandson Gabe grew up with Sebastian, and when he heard that the dog had passed away, he broke down and sobbed. Then he started asking some really hard questions. Questions like“Will we ever see him again?” Do dogs go to heaven?”
Andrew and his wife Diana couldn’t give Gabe a clear answer to his questions, because no one knows for certain the answers to them. So they told him, “We hope so, but we don’t know for sure.” “What we do know is that Sebastian will always be close to us in our hearts.”
I was impressed with how Andrew and Diana sat with Gabe, heard him out, and were honest with their uncertainty. I think that this approach to faith they are modeling for Gabe will help him to develop an authentic and resilient faith that will serve him well in life.
You see, I believe that we’re called to a faith that is measured not by certainty in pat answers. by trust in God,
Brian Zahnd says that the pat answer type of faith is what’s taught in fundamentalist theology and churches. And he likens it to paint-by-numbers. He says:
“Fundamentalism is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art.” Paint-by-numbers faith wants the lines already drawn, the colors already chosen, the outcome already guaranteed. But authentic faith is not mechanical certainty. It is a living trust in God — the kind of faith that can wrestle through the night and still refuse to let go.”
The second blessing from wrestling with God is a healthy relationship with ourselves. We see this manifested in Jacob through the new identity that came as a result of his struggle with God.
Jacob’s original name meant “deceiver”, or “heel” due to how he tricked Esau from the beginning by grabbing his heel when he came out of his mother’s womb.
And up to this point, Jacob identity has been wrapped up in that name, as he did plenty of deception. But now God gives Jacob a new name, and a new identity—he will be Israel, which means “one who struggles with God.”
Wrestling is a contact sport, and it involves intertwining your body with the other person—you get really close, intimate in a way. Jacob was alone when he wrestled with God, and in that intimate encounter his true identity was formed.
The same can happen to us when we risk getting close to God, when we make time for prayer, solitude, and silence before God, with open hands and open hearts willing to be touched or sometimes grabbed by God.
I love what the former Trappist monk Thomas Merton says about this.
“There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him, I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him. And then he says, “The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.”
Friends, our identity as people created in God’s image is rooted in the unconditional love, mercy, and grace of God. This is what we see in Jesus—when he was baptized in the Jordan River, God’s spirit hovered above him and said “This is my son, whom I love; in him I am well pleased”.
So often we see our identity through our profession, or our personality, our possessions, or our reputation, or through the roles we have in our relationships. Yes, these are all part of what make us who we are.
But our primary identity is rooted in who God is and how God sees us. Henri Nouwen says it well:
You are not what you do, you are not what you have, you are not what others say about you; you are a child of God, and that is where your true freedom lies.
When we have a healthy relationship with God and a healthy relationship with ourselves, that puts us in a position to have healthy, life-giving relationships with other people. We see this in Jacob’s reconciled relationship with his brother Esau.
Jacob began his journey of reconciliation with Esau by offering him material gifts in all those animals. In our world, material wealth is power, and it can be used for a lot of good purposes. But Henri Nouwen cautions us by saying that “power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.”
God knew that Jacob needed a change of heart that was oriented toward love so he could then offer the gift of his love to Esau. Jacob’s wrestling match with God planted those seeds of love in him, and that’s what softened both his and Esau’s hearts and made it possible for them to experience real reconciliation.
Friends, like Jacob, the love and grace we have received from God gives us the freedom to share with others. And these are the best gifts we can share with the world around us. Ultimately, people will know that we are Christians not by what we say we believe, but by our love.
God’s love and grace enable us to be less demanding and more gentle with other people, less stubborn and more patient and understanding, less distant and more present with one another, especially during times of hardship and struggle.
I’ll end with a quote from a pastor named Meg Jenista from her reflection on Jacob’s wrestling match.:
“When we are the people who wrestle with God, we don’t expect perfection or certainty from one another. Or from ourselves. When we are the people who wrestle with God, we enter into the suffering of others, not because we can fix or solve but because the entering in, the struggle itself is the grace.”
May we experience the blessing that comes through the wrestling as we journey in our life of faith with God and in our relationships with others. AMEN.
