And Don't Let Go

Scripture: Genesis 32:22-31

My grandfather was a man of faith in matters large and small.

With respect to larger issues: He believed in Jesus Christ. He believed in the Methodist church. He believed in hard and honest work. He believed in helping the poor. And he believed that my grandmother was the most beautiful woman in the world and that God had brought them together.

With respect to smaller issues: He believed in the nutritional value of hard-boiled eggs and cottage cheese. He believed in the St. Louis Cardinals. He believed that my grandmother could not smell the cigars that he smoked when she wasn’t looking. And he believed that professional “big time wrestling” was real.

I remember, at the tender age of five, watching wrestling with him on television. He had a very old television set, perhaps the first in the entire universe, and it was about the size of an aircraft carrier. On top of it sat a giant set of rabbit ear antennas that were wrapped in aluminum foil to achieve “better reception.”

My grandfather cheered for the good guys and cursed the bad guys and I was puzzled by his habit of reaching over to cover my ears after he had sworn. But, other than that, everything was clear and simple. The good guys were very good; the bad guys were very bad; and the moral clarity of the struggle was heightened by the fact that the wrestling occurred in black and white.

The story of Jacob’s wrestling match, which we find in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis, is perhaps not so clear and simple. Hebrew Bible scholar Terence Fretheim has observed that the meaning of this text “is so elusive that a variety of interpretations is credible.”

Indeed, the text invites many questions and possible answers: Who was Jacob, anyway? Who was he wrestling with? Why does Jacob get injured? Why does the man give Jacob his blessing? And, of course: What are we supposed to learn from this story?

Well, let’s start with Jacob himself. We know Jacob was a patriarch of the Hebrew people, a man much favored of God, and the one who the Lord blessed and called Israel. We tend to remember him as a strong, great, and giant figure.

But Jacob had his weaknesses and his small and petty moments. He came into this world by hanging onto the heel of his brother Esau during the birthing process—a predictive if inauspicious beginning. While Esau became a great hunter, Jacob stayed at home and lazed around. He manipulated his brother into giving up his birthright. And he lied to his father.

It could be argued that Jacob’s foibles distinguish him from a lot of the other major players we meet in the Bible. Many biblical figures show us both greatness and weakness—David, Solomon, Peter, and Paul, for example. But some of their struggles may not feel much like our struggles.

Most of us do not use forced labor to build temples to foreign gods—like Solomon did. Most of us do not have a soldier under our command sent to the front of a battle so our sworn enemies can kill him and clear the way for us to marry his wife—like David did. Most of us do not execute the evil policies of an ruthless empire—like Paul did. There is something grand and spectacular and Shakespearean about flaws of this magnitude.

Jacob, in contrast, screws up in ways that are more petty and less glamorous. He thinks only of himself and what he wants. He resorts to manipulation, trickery, and deceit when it suits his purposes. He hurts people he loves and who love him.

But then God comes to him at a time when Jacob has gotten himself into such a desperate place that he is literally sleeping on the ground and using a stone for a pillow. The Lord speaks to him and brings him a vision and Jacob understands that he must change his life. So he sets out to make peace with the brother he betrayed. And, along the way, a “man” appears in the middle of the night and wrestles him to the ground.

Now, who is this man? Well, several very different answers present themselves. One answer is that Jacob was wrestling with God. A lot of textual evidence supports this interpretation. Jacob identifies the man as God. The name the man gives Jacob—Israel—means “he struggles with God.” And the man’s puzzling insistence that the encounter end before morning becomes less mysterious if we remember the biblical precept that Jacob could not have survived seeing God face to face in the full light of day.

But this interpretation raises a fairly nettlesome question: how could Jacob, a mere human being (and not a particularly powerful or impressive one at that), wrestle God to a standstill? We might argue that God was simply toying with Jacob—just as parents pretend to grapple with their children on the living room floor—but the scripture does not accommodate that view. Remember, the Bible says that the man “saw that he could not overpower Jacob.”

This may explain a second interpretation—or, perhaps more accurately, a tradition—that shows up in sermons and art and literature and that depicts this encounter as one between Jacob and an “angel.” Of course, this approach has problems of its own. One whopper is that it doesn’t square with the text. After all, the Bible knows how to tell us when it is talking about an angel (by saying "hey, this was an angel") but it doesn't do that here.

Furthermore, this explanation asks us to believe that a human being could wrestle an angel into submission. Does that seem likely to you? Well, give it a try, if you like, and let me know how it goes.

So some scholars have suggested a third possible answer to the question of who this man is. This man, they say, is indeed God, but God in truly human form. They emphasize that, in this story, God does not appear to Jacob “in all of God’s glory.” Instead, God comes to Jacob as a man and “stoop[s] to encounter Jacob at his own level.” Terence Fretheim writes: “God does not play games with Jacob; God actually struggles with him … God commits to a genuine encounter, entering deeply into the struggle with Jacob with a kind of power that doesn’t simply overpower him.”

Reasonable people can disagree, but I find this idea attractive for a number of reasons. It is consistent with the text. It resonates with all of the other passages in the Bible that portray the extremes to which God will go in pursuit of us. And, finally—and I think this is particularly interesting—this interpretation understands the story as one that, like many other texts in the Hebrew Bible, anticipates the figure of Jesus Christ. After all, the mysterious man is at once wholly human, because he can genuinely struggle with Jacob, and wholly divine, because he can ultimately prevail over and bless Jacob as well.

What of the struggle itself? What are we to make of that? Maybe the point here is simply that all of us will wrestle with God at one time or another. And, like Jacob, we may find ourselves in the midst of such a struggle before we know it and when we least expect it. Many different circumstances might bring us to the ground: illness; financial distress; depression; addiction; the loss of someone we love—just listening to the evening news can usher some people into a full-fledged religious crisis. Certainly, the story can be read as saying that all of our paths may lead us to a place where we find ourselves wrestling with God. But I believe that it says much more, as well.

In my view, this story also says something important about the physicality of faith. We tend to conceive of our struggles with God as mental and emotional processes. But what happened to Jacob didn’t happen in his head: he had the wrenched hip to prove it. No, this story is about throwing all that we are and all that we have—every atom of our being—into our engagement with God. Or, as Jesus reminded the lawyer, we are summoned to love the Lord with “all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength.”

This is not only essential theology. This is brilliant psychology. Because, sometimes, the only way we can prevail in our struggles with faith is to act as if we had it. And when we do, something incredible often happens. When we love, and forgive, and serve, and visit the sick, and feed the hungry, and tend our flocks it is as if we reach out and grab a hold of God. And, when we do that, God grabs back.

And that leads me to what I believe is the central meaning of this story: that we worship a God who loves to engage with us, who loves to struggle with us, who loves to have us wrapped up in his everlasting arms. In this sense, the most tragic mistake we can make is to disengage, to abandon the struggle, and to walk away.

Surely, one of the saddest stories in the Gospels is that of the rich young man who asked Jesus what he would have to do to be perfect. On hearing the unwelcome news that he would need to sell everything he possessed and give the money to the poor, the disenchanted youth turned his back on Jesus and walked away.

Wrestling with God can be hard. But there are things far worse—like stopping. For, when the struggle ends, the opportunity for God to work in our lives may end with it.

You see, this is why Jacob was blessed. He was blessed because he did not walk away. He was blessed because he did not give up. He was blessed because he hung on fiercely through all of the long, cold night. He was blessed because he would not let go.

And that, I think, is what this scripture hopes to teach us. Are you facing serious challenges? Hold on tight, and don’t let go. Are you struggling—perhaps now more than ever? Hold on tight, and don’t let go. Are you despairing over a world full of pain? Hold on tight, and don’t let go.

Do you seek after joy and rest and comfort and the peace that passes all understanding? Hold on tight, and don’t let go.

And don’t let go.

And don’t let go.

Amen.