Wrestling Through

Genesis 32:22–31

One time in college, I did a dumb thing. Well, I did lots of dumb things, but I’m going to tell you about one of them. I was working on a report and was in the library and wanted the picture on a newspaper article for my report. I had a scanner in my dorm room and wanted to just scan the picture for my report. However, newspapers were in the reserved section. You couldn’t check them out, or so I thought. So, I decided, I’d just tuck the newspaper into my backpack, scan it, and then return the newspaper to the library. I didn’t think they had those little security tags in the newspaper. Well, they did. When I crossed over the security pad that made sure you had check out your library books, the loud beeping went off. A librarian who always seemed to be working the front desk came over and asked to look at my backpack. I was caught. There was the newspaper. He told me, you know, you can get kicked out of school for this, you know? This is a values violation, he told me. I explained to him what I wanted to do and he was nice about it and told me to just ask next time. He even let me take the paper and scan it as I had wanted to do and return it. That happened during my freshman year. But all throughout my college career, I never really wanted to go to the library. I avoided it as much as I could. I like books. I’m the kind of person who likes libraries. But I was embarrassed about what I had done. I did not really want to see that person at the check out counter who knew the awful thing I had done. The person whom I had wronged. And so as much as I could, I avoided going to the library.

Over the last few weeks, we have been hearing stories from the life of Jacob. Each time, I’ve alluded to the early stories of Jacob tricking his brother Esau out of his birthright and blessing, because these stories are so foundational to Jacob’s life and they continue to shape him. It is important to today’s Scripture as well. Just before Jacob’s encounter at Jabbock, he learns that Esau is ahead of him. Laban and Jacob had a falling out and so Jacob and his family are on the move. It is clear that he is very nervous about seeing Esau again.

Jacob clearly was not eager to meet Esau again. The verses leading up to our passage today in chapter 32 make this clear. First he sends oxen, donkeys, flocks and slaves as a gift to Esau through some messengers. The messengers come back telling Jacob that Esau is coming to meet him. And, oh, by the way, he has 400 men with him. And this really sends Jacob’s anxiety through the roof. At this point, Jacob still doesn’t know how Esau feels. The text says, “Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies, thinking, ‘If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it, then the company that is left will escape.’” He prays again to God, asking for deliverance from Esau. And he prepares another gift. Jacob really didn’t want to see Esau. He felt like I did about walking past my college librarian. I think it is just human nature that when you know you’ve done something wrong, you don’t really want to face those who know about it, particularly the ones you have wronged.

The boogey man — for both Jacob and I had grown in our own minds to outsized proportions. We imagined the worst case scenerios of future encounters with hairy men and librarians.

In our Scripture, Jacob wrestles with a mysterious man. And this episode in our Scripture this morning is preceded by the aforemention actions of Jacob born out of anxiety. This encounter has flummoxed interpreters for centuries.

Is Jacob wrestling with God?

Is he wrestling with an angel?

Is he wrestling with someone else sent by God?

Is he wrestling with a stranger?

With his brother Esau?

With his own inner demons, anxieties, or fears?

And not only is there the question of who is Jacob wrestling, but what does the strange encounter mean?

But before we ask ourselves this question, I want to tell you about some of the scars on my body. I know you’re dying to know about them.

The fingernail of my pointer finger is curved just a little more than the rest of my fingernails. I once slammed my finger in a car door badly and the doctor removed the fingernail entirely and it grew back with more curvature.

I have a little rough patch on my right thumb and a very faint circular indentation on my forehead from a golfing accident that I’ve told you about before.

And were I to shave my beard, on my chin, I have the marks of stitches from when I busted my chin when I was a young child.

[DISCUSS: What marks do you have on your body?]

You probably have you own marks from life on your own body. I have a question for you. Would you call these imperfections? I personally, don’t like to think of things like this as imperfections, but rather, just part of my embodiedness. If you live long enough, your body will take some beatings and your body will have the scars to show. But perfect/imperfect really is the wrong sort of category to force upon the body like that. Rather, scars become part of who we are. They are part of our body. Part of our character.

I used to play quite a lot of disc golf. [HAVE DISC] Of course in disc golf, you throw discs into a chain link basket in as few of throws as possible. Often times you’ve got to curve the disc around trees or otherwise shape shots in certain directions. Depending on the dominant throwing hand and the style of the throw, discs may naturally fade to the left or to the right and to different degrees. As you grow in proficiency in disc golf, you’ll want a variety of different discs that have different flying patterns, that way you’ll have many different tools in your tool bag in order to address different situations you’ll find yourself in out on the course. The really interesting thing about disc golf discs is that they can change flight characteristics over time. Discs will hit trees hard or get scuffed up on pavement. And these nicks and bruises actually change the physics involved in how the disc moves through the air and its basic flight pattern. And so for a skilled disc golfer, a banged up disc isn’t always a negative thing. The key rather, is to know how the disc is currently flying and to have all the right tools in your bag. For instance, you’ll want — at minimum a disc that naturally turns left, another that naturally turns right. But you’ll probably also want one that turns hard left and hard right, soft left and soft right. One that has very little turn at all.

So you can see, nicks and bruises to a disc, aren’t imperfections. Rather they are just factors in the character of a disc. Now, don’t forget about this — I’m going to come back to it.

One of the things that my 4 year old son, Lincoln and I like to do is wrestle. And to wrestle, we generally clear off Christy and I’s bed and we tell Alexa to play our wrestling song and the speakers blare an announcer saying over a techno beat, “Let’s get ready to rumble.” Lincoln starts in one corner, I in the other corner. But once the announcer has said, let’s get ready to rumble, we start to move in on one another. Lincoln loves to be body slammed and thrown about on the bed. Our wrestling pretty much consists of me giving him body slam after body slam. And, of course, I’m careful not to hurt him, but I do most of the do most of the body slamming and Lincoln just gets thrown about. When the song is over, so is our wrestling match. And we join hands, lift one of them up to declare a winner. I have learned the hard way that there is only one outcome to this match. Lincoln is always declared the winner. That’s just the way it goes. He is declared the winner and has no scars to show for his wrestling match.

It is just the opposite with Jacob. With Jacob and his opponent, the struggle persisted until the wee hours of the morning and ultimately, neither wrestler could be declared the winner. Neither could decisively declare victory. Yet Jacob was marked forever — with a strike on his hip socket and is given an additional name — Israel — which means — one who strives, or struggles, or wrestles with God. It is a mark and a name that would come to define Jacob and indeed the entire character of God’s people — Israel. Strugglers with God.

On that night in which Jacob was wrestling with a man into the wee hours of the morning, I believe Jacob was first and foremost wrestling with himself. With his own inner demons. With his past. With his guilt and anxiety. And this is not to say he wasn’t also wrestling with God or with Esau or anyone else. He may have been wrestling with them too — either literally or spiritually. Yet, this was Jacob’s dark night of the soul. He had lived with Laban and his family for so long that he had been able to escape some things he had done during his youth that still lingered deep in his psyche. Esau had long forgiven him, but Jacob didn’t know that.

I wonder if when Jacob’s mother, Rebekah suggested to Jacob that he go far away to Laban’s homestead and pick a wife from there, that Jacob was actually eager to go because he had a crushing weight within — living in the presence of Esau, his brother whom he had wronged. It was like me having to walk by that library. When I got to seminary, I enjoyed the feeling of going to the library without that baggage of shame that came with walking past my collegiate librarian who had caught me trying to smuggle a newspaper out of the library. I was far away in a land where no body knew anything about that. And so was Jacob. But when you run away, you don’t really deal with the problems. In fact, you tend to pass it on in other ways. Unprocessed pain tends to manifest itself in destructive ways — addictions, abusive behaviors, numbing behaviors. In fact, all of these are just ways of running away from actually wrestling with a problem that is going to leave a mark. And they continue to linger deep within.

I believe this is a spiritual problem that we all face. We each have things in our lives that we’ve done that are wrong, that we’re ashamed of, that were far short of what God’s intention was of us. Whether we realize it or not, these things will continue to haunt us until we wrestle with them head on. If we run away from them, by whatever means, the problem will not go away. Even if another person involved forgives you — as my librarian forgave me — that doesn’t remove your own inner struggle. If you declare a cheap victory of it — as Christian people often do, just saying they have claimed God’s forgiveness, they are covered in the blood of the cross — and yet not really wrestled in a deep way — deep enough to leave a mark on your life, then while it may be true that God has forgiven you, true freedom will not come until you’ve genuinely accepted that forgiveness for yourself. And the only way to do that is to go through. To face the bogeyman. To wrestle with that which occupies mental and spiritual space in your life. It is why in the 12-step program, one major step is to make amends to people you’ve wronged. This involves going to them, admitting you were wrong, and asking for forgiveness. The immanent meeting with Esau forced this direct confrontation for Jacob. He had to go through. He had to confront the inner demons that remained after he remained away for so long, because they were still there. But friends, here is the Good News.

God is in this struggle too. Pushing you towards it, with you all through the night. God is with you both in your steps of courage to deal directly with your demons and in the opposing forces themselves. And God makes beautiful things out of difficult situations. Your wrestlings will leave you with marks of different kinds. Physical marks, spiritual marks. Limitations of different kinds. Memories. Abilities. New names. New rituals. The marks of your battle — like a disc golf disc will now be part of your character. One who struggles with God. In a very real way, once we’ve gone through, we are all named Israel. When we avoid, flee, and numb — our pain tends to be transmitted to others and/or impose harm on our self. When we have wrestled our demons deep into the night to a draw, then God transforms them into beautiful scars, nicks and characteristics of ourselves that are simply part of who we are. They are integrated into our being. They become part of our weirdness. A weirdness that we wholly own. The same God who transformed the cross — the ultimate instrument of death, into the most powerful symbol of hope, love, and redemption — will be with you in your deep, earnest and direct struggles. And God can make good out of your pain. Friends this is the redemptive promise of the gospel. It is the promise that Jacob discovered on the eve of his reunion with Esau. And it is the Good News that God offers us to take our pain all the way to the cross, when we wrestle with it, and let new life come to shape in the resurrection that comes at daybreak.

Would you pray with me?