Wrestling with God                                    The Rev. Dr. Patricia Ramsden

Gen 32: 22-32                                                8/21/11

 

            God, I can’t believe I lost my temper like that again.  I have to learn to control myself.  They’re good kids.  Why do I yell at them so much?  I know they’re beginning to think they can’t do anything right and that’s not true.  The look in Sheri’s eyes broke my heart.  Oh God, why can’t I tell them how I really feel?  It’s already 2am.  I might as well just get up.  I’m not going to get any sleep like this.           

I know my driving isn’t what it used to be.   I know I ran the stop sign.  I didn’t even see it and  I know it wasn’t the first time.  I know.  I know.  I know.  I don’t want to be one of those drivers who wind up causing a wreck, who shouldn’t even be on the road in the first place.  But how can they expect me to give up my license?  I’ve been driving since I was fourteen.  I’m not that bad.  I’m not.  God, it’s 2:00 in the morning.  I’ve got to get some sleep. 

            So I’m drinking again.  It’s not like last time.  I’m still in control.  Besides it’s just a friendly little drink after work with the guys.  What would they think if I always said “No, I can’t”?  Everyone has a little happy hour.  OK.  So no one is happy there --- or here.  That’s no reason to go on and on about AA.  I can handle it.  I can.  Lord, it’s 2 am.  I’ve got to get up in just a few hours.  I can’t keep going around like this.

            Maybe you’ve found yourself lying awake at 2 a.m. wrestling with thoughts, feelings, mistakes, wishes, dreams. 

            I love the way the story about Jacob goes.  It rings so true.  Did you notice in the beginning, it doesn’t say he’s wrestling with God.  It says he meets a man there on the river and spends the night wrestling with him. 

I think he met himself.  I think he wrestled with everything he had ever done, all the ways he had schemed and cheated and lied, all the ways he had hurt the people he loved.  I think that he wrestled and fought with who he was and who God called him to be.  I think we all do that, have done that, at one time or another.  This is our story as well as Jacob’s.  And so we can all learn from his wrestling in the night.

The first thing Jacob teaches us is to keep on wrestling.  Jacob doesn’t give up.  He doesn’t take an advil p.m. or a sleeping pill or another drink.  He doesn’t say, “I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”  Tomorrow may be too late.  Tomorrow he crosses the river and goes back home to face Esau, to face the past  ---- and the future. 

Besides, he’s always put off making a difference in his life.  He’s never really changed.  He’s never become the man he was created to be ---- a man of God’s blessing.   And so this time he chooses to wrestle, even if it takes all night, because he knows that at the end of the struggle, there’ll be a blessing. 

And so he wrestles with himself and with God.  Now there’s an interesting thing about wrestling.  It’s different from other sports.  In wrestling you aren’t chased down by your opponent.  You don’t stand across from him on a court or a field.  In wrestling you embrace him.  You’re on intimate terms with him.  With every move you discover his strength, your strength --- and your weaknesses as well. 

And so it is when you wrestle with God.  You become intimate with Him, more intimate than ever before.  In that dark night of the soul as you wrestle with yourself and God, He holds you in a terrible embrace of love and He won’t let go until the struggle is over and the match is won.

The other thing that makes this story so real, so painfully honest to me, is that the blessing comes but Jacob will always walk with a limp because of the struggle.   Change, real change, a real battle with yourself and with God, a dark night of the soul, comes with a cost.  The scars of the past remain.

It’s not easy to undo the habits of a lifetime.  Sometimes it may seem just too hard to hold onto the blessing of God and far easier to slip back into old ways of being.  Loving and being loved is not always as easy as we preachers make it sound.  The old wounds may start to ache in the night or in the middle of a long, difficult day and we may start to wrestle again.

Which brings me to the last point of the story.  It’s the name God gives to Jacob.  The name He gives to His chosen people.  The name He gives to us.  The name of “Israel”. 

In the Bible names are invariably important.  They describe you, tell something about you, and names are changed when people change.  The apostle Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul, Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, and Jacob becomes Israel. 

So what does “Israel” mean?  It actually has two meanings --- two very important meanings.  The first is “one who struggles with God”.  I like that.  To me that’s a sure indication that struggling with God is not such a bad thing.  It’s a normal thing.  God actually describes His chosen people as a people who will wrestle with Him. 

I think it’s because in wrestling with God we do become more intimate with Him, our understanding of who He is and what He wants and who He created us to be increases and we discover we must wrestle with ourselves to become that and so we change.  We grow.   We are blessed ---- and sometimes we limp. 

But there’s another meaning to the name “Israel” that is just as important – maybe even more important.  It also means “the one God struggles with”  You see, God will not leave us in the struggle alone.  He will not give up on us.  He will not say, “This is a stubborn and stiff necked people and I’m out of here. I’ll choose someone else.”  Instead He wrestles with us until He prevails and we become all we should be and when that happens, we find our blessing, the blessing in Him, of being a child --- a people – of God, for His is a love that wilt not let us go, a light that followest all our way, a joy that seeks us through our pain that life may richer, fuller, be.