On Jacob, Wrestling and Marathons
Pr. Paul Cannon
October 20th, 2013
Genesis 32
Grace and Peace Bethany Lutheran!
The first story that we heard today was
about a man named Jacob who wrestled with God and walked away with a limp and a
blessing.
After running my first ever half-marathon
last weekend, I’ve learned a thing or two about blessings – and yes – a few
things about limping as well.
I’ve never really considered myself to be a
runner until I recently started to train for this half marathon. In fact, I never really considered actually
signing up for a race of any kind until my twin brother signed up and ran one
the year before – which I took as a personal challenge.
Of course, being a twin, we’re competitive
at everything, so even walking to the mailbox together usually turns into a
race … so the fact he ran one before me
was humiliating. I’m the older brother
(by four minutes)! I do everything
first! I was born first!
Thus, I convinced Kirstin to sign up for
this race thinking “Eh, Neal’s done it.
It can’t be that hard.”
It was.
In fact, it might have been one of the most painful self-inflicted experiences of my life.
I started the race by making the mistake of
running with my brother. He began the
race at a breakneck pace, and being the “older” brother, I had to keep up.
I was doing alright for the first 6 miles
or so. But then we got to about mile 9, and then 10, and then 11, and my legs
started to feel heavy, as if lead weights … that had just been pulled out of a
furnace were clamped to my quads. And in
every single step, I could feel my legs burn just a little bit more as each
step got progressively heavier. And not
only that, but time itself started to slow down. Ten seconds of running might as well have
been an hour.
Then came the last mile and as I approached
the finish line, I kicked it into high gear – sprinting to the end – to the
protest of every single muscle in my body, and finally cross the finish
line. And for those of you who are
curious, I beat Neal by about 20 seconds…not that it’s important or anything.
And as I slow down, I began to realize that
I was literally so tired that I wasn’t able to walk in a straight line! I could barely stand. I had to prop myself up against the snack
table as I gulped chomped down a half a banana, washing it down with a paper
cup full of Powerade.
This is where the limping comes in. The next
day, I was about as physically sore as I’ve ever been in my entire life and of
course, that morning we had to load up in the car and drive the 7 hours back
home to Illinois.
Everything was in pain. My shoulders even hurt! I didn’t expect that! On the drive home, everytime we stopped to
get out of the car, I’m sure I looked like a wounded animal trying to escape a
predator, just dragging one leg behind the other.
Here’s the funny thing though: Now, about a
week later, I look back on the whole experience and all I can think is “That
was awesome! Running 13 miles was so fun!” I look back on it like a blessing because
somehow, in and through it all, there was something redeeming about the
struggle, and coming through the other side with a limp.
And to me, that’s the story of Jacob
wrestling with God in a nutshell.
The first reading that we heard from
Genesis today is a pivotal story in the Old Testament, but we need to back up a
little bit to tell it properly.
Jacob, if you remember, was the grandson of
Abraham and the son of Isaac. Some of you might remember that Jacob was a twin
(thumbs up) to his brother Esau, but maybe more importantly, he was a conniving
trickster.
Earlier in Genesis, as his hungry brother
Esau was returning from a long hunt in the woods Jacob first tricks him into
trading him his birthright for a bowl of stew. Then the story goes, that Jacob
tricked his father Isaac into giving him a blessing meant for Esau. At this point, Isaac was old and blind, so
Jacob dressed up like his brother, put camel hair on his arms, and asked Isaac
for his all important, non-refundable blessing.
Esau wasn’t happy about this – in fact he
wanted to kill Jacob – and he ends us chasing his brother away into exile. Years go by, and Jacob gets married, has some
kids, and then gets into trouble (again!) with the people whom he was living
with.
So he decides this time to flee back home.
Back to the only place that might take him in. Back to the land of his
father. Back to face his brother Esau,
who the last time we heard, wanted to kill him.
And that’s where we pick up in our story
today. Jacob is coming home with is
wives and his kids. He’s understandably
a little nervous meeting his brother –when in the middle of the night, as he’s
all alone, a strange man appears and starts to wrestle with him.
I know that spontaneous wrestling sounds
strange to some of you … who have never lived with brothers before, but I
assure you, it happens all the time.
Regardless, we don’t know why they start
wrestling, but they do. They wrestle all
night long, until the sun is about to come up. Then this God/angel person, or
whoever it is, injures Jacob’s hip socket to slow him down, but it doesn’t
work! Jacob refuses to quit.
So this wrestler, who we now presume is
God, says to Jacob “Let me go, the sun is about to come up.”
In typical Jacob fashion, not only does he
keep wrestling – but he sees an opportunity.
And Jacob says to God “I will not let you go until you bless me.” I will not let you go. He’s like the little
kid who clings onto your leg when you’re trying to walk. He demands that this wrestler give him a
blessing or he won’t let go!
So God asks Jacob, “What is your name?” And
he tells him “Jacob.” And God does
something curious. He says, “No, it’s not.
Not anymore. From now on, your
name isn’t going to be Jacob – your name is Israel – because you have struggled
with God and with humans, and have overcome.”
From that point on, Jacob becomes
synonymous with Israel. From that day,
Jacob takes on the identity of the entire nation that was promised to his
grandfather Abraham.
This story is one of the most talked about
texts in the Bible and there is a lot of things that we could say about
it. It’s vague enough to be open to a
lot of different interpretations and it lends itself to becoming a metaphor for
faith. Maybe you’ve heard people use the
phrase “wrestling with God” before, and now you know where it comes from.
But the most interesting thing to me about
this text isn’t that Jacob wrestled with God.
I think that we all wrestle with God at some points of our lives as we
all struggle to figure out what this faith thing is really about.
Even Mother Theresea, in her personal
journals, wrote about how at times God felt distant to her, even as she was
doing God’s work in India, caring for the sick and impoverished in India. – We all wrestle with God.
To me, what’s fascinating is that Jacob
didn’t walk away from this encounter with God unscathed. Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his
life. To me, that’s the most incredible
metaphor for what our lives as Christians are like. That when we encounter the living and
breathing God – we don’t walk away unscathed.
When we truly pursue God, it affects the
way we walk. It affects the way we breathe.
It affects the way we live.
Encountering God isn’t always about traveling up to the mountain top and
have an ecstatic experience of love.
Encountering God can leave us deeply affected. Maybe even disturbed. Limping.
That’s the opposite of the popular image of
God that we have in today’s age and in today’s culture. When there are preachers out there who preach
a prosperity gospel – a word that says that if you pray hard enough, God will
make you rich, happy and healthy. This
story about Jacob wrestling with God says a different word. Jacob comes away
limping.
But he doesn’t come away empty handed. Jacob receives a blessing from God. He receives a new name. God calls him Israel. It’s a new identity for a man who has been
run out of town in the last two places he’s lived. It’s a fresh start. It’s grace.
It’s forgiveness for Jacob’s shady past.
And through Jesus, we receive these same
blessings daily. When you wrestle with the resurrected Jesus, he won’t let you
leave untouched by grace. A grace that changes who you are and how you
walk. Encountering Jesus will affect the
way you breathe and the way you interact with your neighbors and your friends.
The Christian story, and in particular our
Lutheran understanding of Christianity, points us to a God who meets us when
we’re down and out, like Jacob was, and brings us a word of grace.
It’s a word about God’s character – a God
who struggles for you. A God who died on
a cross and came out on the other side resurrected as a blessing for the entire
world.
That’s where we find our blessing as
Christians. When we encounter the risen
Christ in the bread, the wine and the water, we too receive those blessings
given to Jacob. We receive a new name
“Child of God.” We receive a fresh start. We receive grace. We receive forgiveness.
And we too limp away with a blessing.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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