21st Sunday of Pentecost

October 21, 2007


The High Risk of Wrestling With God


Last week at this time we were having a delightful time at lunch with our dear friend, Dr. Michael Kogan.

Michael is a renowned Jewish theologian who has just written a book that brings Jewish people and Christians together in a new and unique way.

Michael, always with a great sense of humor, sums it up by saying “I am so thankful that Jesus of Nazareth introduced you guys to the God of Abraham.”

In our conversation last week he told us that he, in fact, taught the New Testament to his Sunday School class at his synagogue.

The conversation then turned to the fact that we Christians are woefully ignorant of the Old Testament.

Think about it: we know the story of creation, we enjoy Noah’s ark, we know the story of Moses on Mt. Sinai, and each Advent we hear some of Isaiah’s prophecies about the birth of the Messiah.

We enjoy the story of Jonah in the belly of a whale and we use our imagination to picture Elijah going to heaven in a fiery chariot.

Outside of that, we tend to keep the Old Testament at arms length.

How much can we quote something from Habbakuk, Nahum, Nehemiah, or Leviticus?

But when we do hear the Old Testament readings we really have a hard time in understanding ourselves as being involved in the story.

Somehow we have gotten the notion that since Jesus came, the Old Testament doesn’t really have a significant spiritual dynamic in our lives.

This morning we have one of those kinds of stories with which we find difficulty in identifying ourselves.

Jacob is on his way home and he is dreading an impending encounter with his brother Esau.

Some years earlier Jacob had literally swindled his brother’s inheritance, and wound up having to leave the country for fear of his life.

So here is Jacob, the swindler, on the way back home to meet Esau and he is terrified, and justifiably so.

In typical heroic fashion, Jacob sends his wives, his maids, and his eleven children across the river ahead of him, placing them between himself and Esau.

So this brave Jacob finds himself alone, and is encountered by a stranger with whom he begins to wrestle.

This wrestling match lasts all night until the stranger touches Jacobs leg and puts it out of joint.

Then this stranger says: “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”

Jacob obviously has an inkling who this is and says: “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

The stranger then asks his name, and then makes an astonishing statement: “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Jacob named the place of this wrestling match Peniel and he says; “For I have seen God fact to face and my life is preserved.”

Could it be, then, that Jacob wrestled with God and won the match?

Others in our scriptural stories wrestled with God.

Moses tried every way in the world to talk God out of sending him to Egypt with one excuse after another.

God patiently put up with him, did some compromising, and finally Moses wound up leading the Israelites to the promised land.

Yet, even before that, Abraham got a visit from God in which he learns that God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abraham then, begins a debate in which he wrestles God down to the fact that if only ten righteous people are found God would change his mind.

Ten weren’t found, but God was willing to wrestle through the issue and come to an agreement.

Now moving to the New Testament: Jesus wrestled with God in Gethsemane: “Father, all things are possible to thee, remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.”

As we know the cup was not removed, Jesus did go to the cross.

Did he lose the wrestling match?

Was God deaf to his prayer?

The end result the following Sunday morning was resurrection.

St. Paul wrestled with God: He finds himself afflicted with a thorn in the flesh.

Whatever it was, Paul begged God three times for it to be removed.

God finally ends the struggle by saying: “My grace is sufficient for you.”

So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, what does all of this mean.

Is it acceptable to wrestle with God, to argue our case with him, to implore him to change his mind?

In a marvelous Jewish theological bookstore last week I saw a book that I was convinced would answer this question.

The book was entitled: Wrestling with God.

Great, that is just what I need for today’s sermon.

I opened the cover and saw the entire title of the book.

“Wrestling with God: A Jewish Theological Response to the Holocaust.”

How incredibly stunning…that even in the midst of 6 million innocent people losing their lives, the resolution was sought by it wrestling it through with God.

How easy it would have been for our Jewish brothers and sisters to have lost faith in a God that would have allowed such a tragedy.

Yet, they have wrestled it through and their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is absolutely solid as the rock of Gibraltar.

My brothers and sisters, when we are confronted with life’s unmanageability, how tempting it is to simply through up our hands, piously whine “it must be God’s will” and throw in the towel.

On the other hand, how tempting it is when God doesn’t do things in our way in our time, to create for ourselves false idols over which we can have control.

God, our heavenly Father, is not some remote deity in some heavenly place that dictates our lives and turns a deaf ear to our struggles with life.

God, our heavenly Father, loves us immensely, and he desperately desires to hear what we have to say.

God listens: God understands: God often changes his mind.

But, even if things don’t change, to wrestle with God means that we can come to terms with our lives, we can understand his love for us, we can make eternal sense out of things.

Think for a moment: the best was to come to an understanding is to take time to talk it out, take time to listen.

That is exactly what it means to wrestle with God.

In the end, it means that he loves us so much, that he simply will not let us go, even though we are struggling to get out of his arms and go our own way.

Today we are installing Jim Clark-Moore as vicar of this congregation.

Many years ago when I was in his position, Pr. White Iddings, a member of the syndical professional preparations committee stamped approval on my plans for a life of ministry, and then he said: “Son, don’t be afraid to wrestle with God.”

Those words today will take on new meaning for Jim.

But those words are for absolutely vital to the lives of each one of us.

This is Immanuel Church, but could it also be Peniel, where we have seen God face to face.