Wrestling with God

In our parable from Luke this morning, we hear Jesus describe the plight of a woman who goes to a judge - a judge who has no respect for her, or anyone else, and who does not fear God - and nonetheless asks him to grant her justice. Jesus tells us that for a while, the judge initially refuses to grant her request, but eventually, because of her persistence, he grants her justice so she doesn’t wear him out by continuously coming to him.

Jesus certainly doesn’t condone the judge in his disrespect for both God and people. Instead, the judge provides the perfect contrast for God’s relationship with his people: if an unjust judge is willing to grant someone justice when they persist in asking him, how much more will God grant his people not just worldly justice, but holy justice - the justice of spiritual healing, spiritual maturity, that comes with a glimpse of the fullness of life with God - if they persist in relationship with him, turning to him, trusting in him, placing their whole lives into his hands, as it were. 

We find a perfect example of this in our story of Jacob wrestling with God from Genesis. The story of Jacob and his brother, Esau is a rather famous story in that it represents some very universal human themes: those of envy, greed, and even theft. Jacob had used deception to take a blessing from his father, meant for his brother, Esau. The reading we had in this story marks a transformational moment. Esau is on his way to meet his estranged brother, Esau. He’s forced to confront his life of acting deceitfully and everything that flowed from that, all the lives he had impacted, and the fact that he had not actually deserved the blessing. Yet of course, he stole the blessing precisely because he desperately wanted to be blessed. His desire was good. His method of achieving that holy desire, was, as St. Augustine would put it, a “deprivation of good.” We might call it evil, or sin.

So Jacob comes to this moment where he must stand face-to-face with his brother who is himself the accusation against Jacob, since he is the one robbed of his rightful blessing. He’s forced to come to terms with himself, his motivations, the fears that have driven him to act out of envy rather than faith of hope, and his desire to be recognized, valuable, meaningful. And here we get a breakthrough moment where Jacob wrestles with God and refuses to let go until he receives a blessing. His desire is made known: renew me Lord; overcome my broken ways and grant me the blessing I desired that I did not achieve legitimately; in your mercy Lord, see my heart, in its deepest hopes and not my broken actions. 

The wrestling and refusal to let go of course symbolizes Jacob’s transformation from relying on himself and his own ways, his cunning, his deception and the envy, jealousy, and distrust that goes along with it, to depending solely upon God’s provision. God grants him a new identity as Israel, meaning “he struggles with God.” The struggle - as those of you who have gone through it - leaves a mark: Jacob, or Israel, will walk with a limp. Yet it is this very transformation - the limp, the marks, the scars, the letting go, humility, and the wisdom - that allows him to face his brother with a transformed identity.

How many of us have been in Jacob’s shoes, or that of the widow? We’re desperate for justice, desperate for someone to recognize our value and worth, desperate to find acceptance, a place and a people with whom we belong. Desperate to be relieved of struggles we have, self doubt, breaking down, falling apart, cast adrift in a world that seems chaotic and purposeless. To whom do you turn? What are you seeking? 

Jacob’s story is really no different than any of our own lives. All of us spend the better part of our lives trying to make it in this world. We face competition for grades, then for jobs, maybe for spouses, for food and shelter. It can seem as if our very lives are contingent upon winning, being the best, of displaying enough value and worth to others so we can be recognized as deserving. The problem with these assumptions is that they condition us to think of ourselves as belonging first to this world, and then, if we do at all, belonging only to God with what we have left over or when things fall apart. So our desires, our ways of thinking, our actions, get distorted by the presumption that the world is our ultimate measure. 

God says to us: come to me all you who are weary of living this way. Ask, seek and knock and don’t stop. Persist, sustain, endure, persevere. It is in metaphorically wrestling with this reality of being made a particular person with a mission from God, of not letting go, of persisting in seeking what it is that God has provided for you, and in what he calls you to do with that, that you might be transformed; that you might find a deeper relationship with God. It is not in your own strength but actually in the struggle, your weakness, and ultimately, your dependence on God that you will find the strength to forge through the inevitable difficulties of this life. A great Christian thinker, John Chrysostom writes: “God delays that He may increase our desire, that desire may enlarge our soul, and so make it capable of receiving His gift.” AMEN