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. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 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. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 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.” 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. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.
(Genesis 32:22-32)
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So-called extreme sports have grown hugely in popularity over the last 20 or 25 years. Extreme sports are called that because that's exactly what they are. We're not talking baseball or hockey or even football. Extreme sports are usually sports that involve a huge amount of risk because a significant part of them is the performance of some type of stunts and because of the inherent dangers involved. I don't watch extreme sports. They don't interest me, in part because a part of the thrill involved in watching them seems to be waiting and watching for someone to get seriously injured - and waiting and watching for that to happen can evolve too easily into actually wanting that to happen. So, I avoid extreme sports. The most extreme thing I can handle in sports right now is watching the Blue Jays bullpen try to hold a lead! But I realized that - in at least one case - extreme sports goes back far earlier than the early 1990's. It seems to have its origins in the foundational stories of the Bible in the Book of Genesis. That's why I decided to call today's message "The Ultimate Extreme Wrestling Match!" - because what carries more risk than having a no holds barred wrestling match with God!
It was just a couple of weeks ago that we last encountered Jacob. Then, if you were here, you’ll remember that Jacob had a dream and his dream was a way of convincing him that he was in the presence of God. That experience gave Jacob a sense of awe. Do you remember his words: “Surely the Lord is in this place!” Then last week we talked about prayer and the role that prayer plays in building our relationship with God. Today I’m going to assume that Jacob has been actively praying – because in this passage today the wrestling match is another encounter with God. Once again, Jacob encounters God at night – but this is different. Rather than being an awe-inspiring story, this time God comes across as a threat rather than as a protector. This is one of the more familiar stories of the Old Testament, but it still remains rich and powerful every time it's encountered, and it’s a very mysterious encounter. It’s fascinating, for example, that the author himself never directly says that the man Jacob wrestled with is God. Most commentators believe that it’s meant to at least symbolize God; that this is a spiritual experience of some sort that Jacob is having, and maybe the broader context is important. At this point in time, Jacob is on his way to meet his brother Esau. The brothers have had a troubled and conflicted relationship, Jacob has had a history of cheating his brother out of various things that were by right Esau’s, and all that Jacob has heard is that his brother is now coming to meet him – with four hundred men! To Jacob, that sounds like an army; it sounds as if Esau is coming to attack him. So, faced with the prospect of meeting up with Esau, who might well be looking for revenge, Jacob has a decision to make: he can face whatever it is that waits for him or he can run away as fast as he can. With that on his mind, he has this strange experience. He wrestles with a man who seems to be God. What’s Jacob being taught by this very, very strange encounter with the divine? What is this image of wrestling with God teaching us?
The very idea of wrestling with God is probably one that most of us can relate to in some way. Let’s be honest - don't we all wrestle with God from time to time? Probably, in fact, more often than we really care to admit? Our will vs. God's will: surely that's a constant battle for us. Following our own path vs. taking the path Jesus points us to: that’s a decision we all have to make at some point. Temptation vs. faithfulness: do we not engage in that wrestling match on a regular basis? Just like Jacob - we wrestle with God over and over again in a variety of ways in the course of the decisions we have to make and the stands we’re called to take.
It’s important that this experience of Jacob isn’t described as a dream. It’s described to us as something very real that happened to Jacob. It’s interesting that whatever happened took place at night. Think about that. You’re out at night, it’s dark, and suddenly someone or something jumps you and you’re struggling, fighting back. It’s the start of pretty much every werewolf movie you’ll ever see! And like any good horror movie, maybe this story is meant to be unsettling and in some ways even frightening. Jacob says he came face to face with God, but it was in such a way and at such a time of day that he couldn't actually see God. I think that most of us probably have our most powerful and personal encounters with God at night – when the busy-ness of the day is over and things are quiet and God can be heard and even felt. And because it's dark the "holy mystery" remains no matter how powerful our encounter might be. I wonder if that might be the reason that we close our eyes when we pray? To blot out as much of the world's distractions as possible so that we can in fact have a powerful encounter with God. And sometimes – depending on what God’s calling us to do - maybe it is even a bit frightening.
Jacobs’ response to the encounter doesn’t seem to have been fear, though. In fact, this is where the event becomes the textbook definition of “extreme.” First, by demanding a blessing Jacob shows that he understands that this man is more than just a robber stalking the highways. Then it’s Jacob who suddenly realizes that this is God. And then – most extreme of all - rather than bowing down in surrender before this figure he realizes is no less than God, he wrestles him to a draw! A draw – WITH GOD!! Jacob recognized God in whatever it is that was happening to him in the dark, and he asked for a blessing – actually he demanded a blessing, and he was determined to get it, and he fought for it. There’s a strange relationship between physical intimacy and physical fighting. For Jacob, this face-to-face confrontation and wrestling match with God is a kind of intimacy. Rashi was a French rabbi who lived in the 11th century and he captured the essence of what was going on between Jacob and God when he reflected on the relationship between physical intimacy and physical fighting: “for so is the habit of two people,” he wrote, “who make strong efforts to throw each other down, that one embraces the other and attaches himself to him with his arms.” In this passage, Jacob made a choice. He decided that this was God, and as frightening and unnerving as the experience was, he chose to cling to God – to embrace God - and he refused to let go. Jacob had always understood the importance of blessings. One thing he stole from Esau was the blessing of his father through trickery and deceit. And now that he literally had God in his arms, he was going to get a blessing – and the interesting thing is that he did get that blessing he so desperately sought. You could argue that he lost the wrestling match – his hip was touched and wounded – but he got the blessing. After wrestling God all night, just as the sun was about to appear on the eastern horizon and a new day was about to begin – he got the blessing. Maybe God doesn’t want weak and wimpy followers who just give in, but rather followers who will stand up and say their piece. This is a little bit like Job – who spent probably 80% of the book named after him involved in an argument with God, and who came away from it with a blessing. In this case, Jacob was blessed, but even so he limped away. He had been changed; he had been blessed; he had been transformed – and he would never be the same. His wounded hip and limp would go with him for the rest of his life, and with his bad hip, Jacob now had no choice – he had gone too far to go back on a lame leg. He had to go forward, to meet Esau and to face whatever awaited him. Only by doing that could he really serve God. Jacob had learned that God was a God who blesses, but that God is also the one who ultimately prevails. Maybe the whole point of this story that God’s blessings don’t always make things perfect. We don’t always end up with more money or a great job or a fancy car or an easy life. We don’t always get our way, and we don’t always get to avoid the things that frighten us or give us pause. Sometimes, God’s blessing might even seem on the surface to be a curse more than a blessing, because it changes us perhaps in ways we don’t want to be changed and puts us on paths that perhaps we don’t really want to travel.
In 1875, in a poem called “The Man Watching,” the Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote, “How small that is, with which we wrestle. What wrestles with us, how immense.” Too often, we wrestle with small unimportant things – just as Jacob struggled with whether or not he wanted to come face to face with his brother Esau. But in the midst of those small wrestling matches, we can often all face the extreme test – suddenly finding ourselves wrestling with God, hanging on for dear life for a blessing, and then moving forward in faith to do God’s will and to face whatever lies ahead of us as we do so.
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