August 18, 2024

Wrestling

My wrestling career was short-lived. In high school, I tried just about every sport there was; I was on the football team, I ran track, I was a gymnast. But wrestling lasted about as long as it took for some sweaty, smelly guy to get my head in a ferocious arm lock. That was it. I decided quickly that wrestling was no fun.
Except for those devotees of the WWF, most of us aren’t very fond of wrestling. We’d just as soon not wrestle with the big questions of existence. We’d just as soon not wrestle with the principalities and powers of this world. Life, after all, gives us plenty enough to grapple with; we don’t need to go looking for more. We’re faced with disturbing headlines week after week about sex scandals, political scandals, and corporate scandals. We see the values of our culture changing, and familiar landmarks disappearing. Mostly, we’d like to find something solid to hang on to, and live in as much peace as we can find. We watch presidential candidates act like children in the school yard trying to pick a fight, and we recoil, acknowledging that we’d rather be, as the old saying goes, “lovers, not fighters.”
So, all things considered, I suspect that were it I, encamped alone by the river Jabbok, standing in the dark, face to face with some strange dude who I figured had divine superpowers, I doubt that I would be inclined to wrestle with him, let alone grab his arm and put him in a half-Nelson, refusing to let go until I wrested a blessing from him. Some nerve this Jacob has – wrestling with the Almighty.
What a bizarre story this is. Jacob, camped on the river, wrestles all night-long with a man who touches him and throws his hip out of joint, but Jacob holds on tight and won’t let go until he receives a blessing. So the man gives him a new name. He is now “Israel.” And, in the end, we discover that this mysterious stranger is, in some way we cannot entirely understand, none other than the Lord of all Creation. Or at least Jacob was convinced of it; he names the place Peniel (which means the Face of God), saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
Jacob, you see, was used to taking what he wanted. He stole his brother’s birthright, he conned Laban out of the best of his flock, and he and Rachel took off in the night with her father’s household Gods. So, when Jacob saw the face of Divinity before him, it was only natural that he would grab for whatever he could get out of the situation.
It is rather astounding that Jacob had the nerve to try to wrestle the Lord for a blessing, but what is even more astounding is that same Lord seemed to approve. In giving him the name Israel, Jacob is made the father of a nation, a nation which is the prototype of the Lord’s own people.
Apparently, the Almighty places a much higher value on wrestling than we do. We find accounts with similar themes in other places in the Bible. Scripture says that Job stood his ground and argued with God, called God unfair, and refused to back down. In the end, that same Lord declared Job’s position to be “truth,” and rewarded Job for his tenacity. Jesus spent a night in the garden grappling with his inner fears, and with the divine burden that had been dropped on him, trying to escape, seeking the unfathomable will of the One he called his “Father.” From the prophet Elijah to the Apostle Paul, those whose minds and hearts are seized by the power of Divinity are found wrestling – wrestling with their calling, with inner doubts – wrestling with life. It seems this is intended to be the case. Apparently there is much for us to learn, and much growing for us to do. And apparently, there is no way to learn and grow without doing some wrestling along the way.
Apparently it’s in the divine plan that we are supposed to wrestle from life – perhaps even from the hand of the Almighty – that which is of value. Anyone who has put time and effort into personal growth knows that. Psychotherapy, spiritual discipline, recovery work, marriage counseling are all clear examples of the truth we know, that growth is painful, and never comes without courage and hard work. “Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
So the Divine wrestling opponent rewards Jacob for fighting to get his blessing. There’s something a little disturbing in that. Most of us are taught from the time we’re still in diapers not to fight. We are led to believe that the peaceable and gentle folks hold the high moral ground. Even Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek.” And now, here’s Jacob, grabbing whatever he can lay his hands on, fighting for what he wants, and he gets promoted to “Granddaddy of all the children of Israel.”
For any of us who have ever been beaten up by the fifth grade bully, or cheated out of something we deserved, or beaten to the punch by some self-centered, grabby, “me-first,” line-butting idiot, we have some serious questions about this story. Our problem has to do with the use of power. We’re terribly and justifiably afraid of power abused. And anyone who becomes so used to wielding power that he’s willing to arm-wrestle the Lord of Hosts seems at the very least arrogant, and quite possibly a megalomaniac.
I believe there’s a message here for any and all of us who are inclined to shrug our shoulders against the evils of the world, turn up the TV, and plead the comfortable myth of powerlessness. I believe there’s a message here for any of us who don’t want to be bothered with difficult questions or controversial issues. I believe there’s a message here for any of us who think that life is supposed to be about fast food, no hassle checking accounts, comfortable cars, and work-saving technologies – smooth sailing, and care-free, with values clear and answers readily spelled out in black and white.
That is, I believe, the attraction of both the highly liturgical, doctrinal churches, and the conservative and fundamentalist churches. In those places, answers are easy, and wrestling matches with the Almighty are discouraged. A huge number of folks are attracted by this approach. The churches that offer “ten clear steps to salvation,” ready made answers to life’s questions, and passionate conviction about cookie-cutter Bible studies are growing by leaps and bounds. It’s extremely satisfying, not to mention comfortable, to find a lot of people around you in total agreement about matters of faith and life and society, and to have those opinions all supported by a strongly reinforced pattern of biblical interpretation.
But this is not for us. We are a church that chooses the more difficult, if less popular, path. We are a church that believes passionately in the worth and freedom of each soul seeking their own path of faith. We are a church that looks at scripture and finds there a Lord who deals with individuals in individual ways, confronts them in the midst of their particular circumstances, and calls upon them to wrestle – to wrestle with questions of truth and meaning, the questions of affluence and poverty, the questions of human worth and dignity, and liberty and justice, rather than to blindly accept what the religious authorities of the day are meting out.
That makes our path one that is not taken by many. It is a path that often leads us into conflict, and for a lot of folks, conflict is a dirty word. Not for us. Conflict is like carbon dioxide, it’s a by-product of life and growth. Ours is a path for wrestlers, those who would wrestle with life and with faith. But it is a path which we believe to be a faithful one, and to which we therefore adhere with deep conviction.
But there is a caution here for us. As I said, most of us would really rather not wrestle. We’d rather avoid conflict and struggle if at all possible. And, we find that there are many ways to avoid wrestling matches. One is to go for the easy answers, but another is to stop asking the questions.
You see, it’s easy for folks like us, and churches like ours to fall into patting ourselves on the back for refusing to accept the dogmas of either Catholicism or fundamentalism, while consistently failing to raise the hard questions and search for our own answers. It’s easy to accuse others of being sucked into Bible studies that teach everyone to mouth the same answers and close their minds, while never picking up a Bible ourselves.
A church like ours, and a faith like ours, carries with it a tremendous responsibility. In many ways it’s like the responsibility of a democracy, which quickly falls apart if the populace becomes uneducated (a catastrophe with which we as a nation are now flirting). Our community of faith cannot long survive if we cease to grapple with the questions of life, the truths of scripture, and the paradoxes of faith. If we choose, instead, to avoid the wrestling match by avoiding confronting the often complex judgements of scriptural truth, avoiding serious dialogue about controversial subjects, avoiding bringing the powers of theological reflection to bear upon the issues of our lives and our world, then we are getting no further than those with cookie-cutter answers. In fact, we may even be in worse shape than them, having become, as the writer of Revelations says, “neither hot nor cold.”
And the fight is not only an inner one. We are children of the Most High, and if so, then heirs to the promise and keepers of the created world. And sometimes that world needs powerful allies. There are times when it is necessary to wrestle whatever justice or truth one can from the grasp of the world’s power brokers. At such times, people may be called upon to throw themselves into battle against a seemingly overpowering foe. At such times, a great blessing may indeed fall to one who has the temerity to wrestle – even with the Almighty.
We recoil when we consider those who assume for themselves the authority of divinity and attempt to impose their beliefs on others. The abuse of theology, like abuse of power, can be a terrible thing. But I would submit this morning that it just may be a far greater sin to live an entire life as though one were powerless. The meek may inherit the earth, but the timid and apathetic will consign it to hell.
Are we carrying on the sacred heritage of our tradition? Are we being faithful to the principle of “soul liberty” that defines us? Are we standing up and being counted in the war against ignorance, indifference, and mindless lockstep dogmatism? Are we struggling with the principalities and powers of greed and injustice? Are we wrestling with any of it?
Well, each one of us must wrestle with those questions ourselves. But while we are at it, I would suggest that we all pray for guidance, for wisdom, and for courage; and I think we should chalk one up for Jacob, a guy with the guts to twist God’s arm.