Wrestling Rings

It had been a long time since Jacob travelled this road. Twenty years had passed since he fled his parents’ home in fear for his life because he had tricked his brother, Esau, out of a blessing and out of his rights as the first born. On that first journey he had stumbled across an outdoor sanctuary of standing stones and had used it for a campsite. In that place, which he did not recognize as a holy place, Jacob slept. Afraid that his murderous brother might be just behind him….certain that an uncertain future laid just ahead…Jacob slept.

As he slept, God came to Jacob and promised to be with him…promised to bring him home at last to his parents’ land…promised to bless him with descendents so numerous that they could not be counted. But Jacob was a trickster, known as a deceiver, and so he didn’t put much stock in promises. He woke up and turned God’s unconditional blessing into a bargain. He said, “If God will be with me and take care of me and feed and clothe me and bring back in safety to my parent’s land, then this will be my God.” Even though he named the place Bethel – the house of the Lord and the gateway to heaven -- he didn’t think much about the blessing after that day.

He went on to his mother’s home in Haran and married the daughter of his uncle Laban in exchange for seven years of labor. Actually he married two of Laban’s daughters – Rachel and Leah – and he actually worked fourteen years for their hands, but Rachel was the one that he loved. It was just that Laban was as big a trickster as Jacob and he had deceived him into marrying Leah as well.

Jacob got him back, though. Jacob stayed six more years with Laban after his marriage term and convinced Laban that he would only take as wages the blemished sheep and goats from the flocks. Of course, Laban agreed – he would be able to keep the best of the flock while Jacob took the worst of them. But by using some creative breeding techniques Jacob was able to make all of the sheep and goats blemished. Jacob told his wives it was God’s doing, but we know better.

So did Laban. And his sons. And when tensions started to rise Jacob realized that it was time to leave. It was just like when he ran from Esau – he left very quietly and very quickly. Only this time Jacob was travelling light. He was a wealthy man now with flocks, servants and children to move as well.

He didn’t escape Laban. Laban caught him, but God was still looking out for Jacob. Why? I don’t know. But God told Laban not to threaten Jacob. So instead of a violent confrontation they just had a huge argument that ended with the two of them setting up a heap of rocks. They agreed to use the rock marker as a boundary which neither of them would go past.

Laban said, “May God watch you while we’re apart.” Not “May God bless you,” but “May God watch you,” because, you see, Laban didn’t trust Jacob any further than he could throw one of those stones in the heap. So Laban left and Jacob was left with his back now against this pile of rocks beyond which he could not pass and his face set toward…well, it was set toward Esau.

He was stuck between a rock, or a pile of rocks, and a hard place. The last time Jacob had seen his brother he was planning his death. Now he was going back. Jacob sent messengers ahead to Esau to let him know that he was coming back in peace. But the messengers returned saying that Esau already knew and he was coming to meet Jacob with 400 men. That was bad news. So Jacob split his company in two hoping that one half might make it while Esau destroyed the other.

Then Jacob did a strange thing, something he had never done before, as far we know. Jacob prayed to God. Oh, God had come to Jacob before. And Jacob had made a bargain with God before. But Jacob was praying to God now. He remembered the promise God made to him at that lonely sanctuary twenty years before on this same road. Jacob prayed for his life because he was afraid.

Jacob reminded God of the promise to “do him good” (which God had never really said) and of God’s promise to return him to his homeland and to bless him. Jacob reminded God that it would be really hard to keep this promise if he were dead.

God didn’t answer. So Jacob sent some of his wealth ahead as a bribe to Esau and sent his family on across the Jabbok River and he stayed on the far side as night fell across the land. Jacob, whose strength and wit and trickery had pulled him through every time before…who had accumulated a great caravan of wealth and a family…now stood alone, waiting for daybreak.

Then there’s an intermission in this story. It’s almost as if we can’t stand the tension anymore and we decide to switch on Wrestlemania. Because suddenly, out of nowhere, a man appears and he and Jacob start wrestling. What’s up with this? This is totally unexpected except that you can imagine that there is some wrestling going on within Jacob as he waits for the sun.

This guy is pretty good, too, because he keeps up with Jacob all the way up to dawn. And we know that very few people can beat Jacob at a contest. He’s a master at the game. But this man lasts until daybreak and then he strikes Jacob on the hip and dislocates it, but he still can’t overcome Jacob and he finally has to say, “Let me go. It’s daylight.” Almost as if to remind Jacob that he’s got somewhere to be.

Jacob can’t let any contest end without getting something out of it so he says, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.”

"What's your name?," says the man.

"Jacob," he answered.

The man says, "Your name isn't Jacob anymore - it's Israel, because you don’t just struggle with humans and win. You also struggle with God."

Then a curious Jacob asks, "What's your name?"

But the stranger responds, "Why do you ask my name?" as if to say, "Don't you recognize me, Jacob? I am the one who comes to you in the night, who meets you in your darkest moments, who promises to walk with you through your trials. I am the one who you have struggled with all of your life. And I am the one who blesses you in spite of yourself."

With that the man gives Jacob another blessing without being forced to. The only one who has ever given Jacob a blessing he didn't fight for was the God who spoke to him on this same road twenty years before. And Jacob knows that he is on holy ground, that he has been found out and named. His true identity had been revealed. All that he had done throughout his checkered life was not just a struggle to make his way in the world. It was a struggle with God. And though he wasn’t the man God might have wanted him to be – though he had failed and fallen – God would not let him go and would not let him force a blessing out of God. So he called the place Peniel which means "the face of God" because he had seen the face of God and survived.

Jacob left the place limping and later that day he saw the face of God again. For when he met his brother Esau coming to meet him with his 400 men, Esau met him with tears instead of spears. And Jacob said, "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God."

Peniel - a place to meet and struggle with God. A place of challenge. A place to meet God face to face.

You might think the last thing you need is another wrestling ring in your life. The world has more than enough wrestling rings and more than enough trials. The world doesn’t need to know that it has struggles, but it does need to know that the struggles we face are meant to be something more.

So here we are in this sanctuary, coming to hear a word of grace. Sometimes we come and sit down in the pew and wonder how in the name of heaven we can be a child of God…Sometimes we feel lost and want to know what it takes to be a follower of Jesus Christ…Sometimes we stand to sing a hymn and we don’t feel like we are worthy of the words…Sometimes we feel weighed down by sin.

Then…Then, when we hear the band play or the choir sing, when we hear the words of assurance and comfort in a prayer or in the words of the Bible, when some poor preacher like me dares to preach a sermon through which God can speak, when we are touched by a neighbor in a pew, when we take the bread and wine…Then…do we see our struggles in some new light? Do we start to believe that God uses ordinary, sin-laden, needy people like us? Do we start to believe that God really does mean it when God says, “You are mine”? Do we begin to recognize, “Hey, if God can use an old trickster like Jacob, then maybe God can use somebody like me”? Do we begin to see that the wrestling that we have been doing is giving us an opportunity to see God face to grace?

I don’t have to tell you that there are struggles in this world. Maybe you have been struggling with God this week and maybe it has been painful at times. Maybe you are limping away. But wrestling is really a challenge - a challenge to move on to new windows and new opportunities for growth. When we meet God it is not only in comfort, but sometimes in fruitful disturbance, as when a farmer turns the soil, breaks it up, so that new life can come again in the spring. Peniel was a place of wrestling.

This place has been a Peniel. This sacred place has been a place of grace and a place of struggle. It is a place where we gather to continue to be very ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary things God has us doing. And the promise to us is the same as it was to Jacob - God will be with us and God will not let us go until we recognize that we are a holy people.

We are bound together in a holy business, you and me. We don't know what we're doing and we sure don't deserve to be doing it. But we walk this road together, limping along at times, but always marching with the greatest power of all - the power of God's unmerited, extravagant love, poured out on unlikely characters…even us. Thanks be to God.

Genesis 32:22-32
In that night, Jacob got up and he took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed toe Ford of the Jabbok. When he had sent them across the wadi, he sent across all that he had. So Jacob was left all by himself. Now a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not prevail over him, he struck the socket of his hip so that Jacob’s hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him. He said, “Release me, because dawn has arrived.”
But Jacob said, “I will not release you unless you bless me.”
He said to him, “What is your name?”
He answered, “Jacob.”
The man said, “You name will not be Jacob any more, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and you prevailed.”
Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask for my name?” And he blessed him there.
Jacob called the name of that place Peniel because, “I saw God face to face but my life was preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel and he was limping because of his hip.