WRESTLING WITH GOD

AUGUST 3, 2008

GENESIS 22: 22-31

Dr. Joe Kutter

In our journey with God, we experience God in a variety of ways. There are wonderful seasons of refreshment and peace. Some among us have experienced God’s healing. Most of us have experienced God’s salvation and some of God’s transformation. But, as much as we would wish for something else, there are other kinds of experience with God, experiences that God uses to grow us into the spiritually mature people that God wants us to be.

In recent months, I have been “praying the Psalms” and writing those prayers on my blog (joekutter.blogspot.com). In that process I have been reminded of what Christian masters of the spiritual life sometimes call “the dark night of the soul.” There are times when God just seems to be far away.

Today’s scripture, one of the common lectionary readings, talks about another dimension of the spiritual life. In this experience, God does not seem to be far away. On the contrary, God seems to be very, very close. But God comes close, not as a nurturing father, but as a challenging adversary, a wrestling opponent. It seems that God sometimes challenges us to test ourselves against him, perhaps as a father would take on a son in family wrestling match. There are times when it seems that God challenges us to wrestle.

The biblical story is taken from the book of Genesis. The background is this. Years before, Jacob had cheated his brother Esau out of his rightful inheritance. And now, after many years, Jacob and Esau were about to meet again and Jacob does not know how Esau is going to respond.

I think that there are two dominant emotions swirling in Jacob. The first is fear. Esau has amassed a huge force and Jacob is afraid that Esau may choose this moment to get even. Jacob has every right to be afraid.

The second emotion is guilt. He had cheated his brother and for that he felt guilty. There is a small point to be made here. Jacob had cheated his brother. He was guilty. In one sense of the word, it really did not matter if he felt guilty or not because he was guilty as a matter of fact. He was guilty of cheating his brother. Did he feel guilty? Now that he was about to meet his brother again, I suspect that the fear stirred the old guilt in his soul.

So here is Jacob, afraid and guilty. What does he do? First, he sends lots of presents to Esau. He tries to soften him up with lots of gifts. Second, he divides his people and goods and sends them away so that if Esau tries to go after one group, the other will have a chance to escape.

And third, when he is all alone, waiting to see Esau in the morning, he tries to sleep.  And as he is trying to sleep, an unnamed stranger comes to him and they wrestle with each other all night. Neither is willing to give in to the other with one exception. When the stranger says, “What is your name?” Jacob answers, “My name is Jacob.” But when Jacob asks for the stranger’s name, he refuses to answer.

There was an ancient custom which said that when you know the other person’s name, then you have some power over him and it is clear that God wasn’t giving that away. But other than that, they seemed to wrestle to a draw.

However, at the end of the night, the stranger says to Jacob, “Because you have wrestled with God and won, your name will now be Israel.” The word Israel means, one who has wrestled or striven or struggled with God. The very name of Israel means, one who wrestles with God. 

I do not mean to cause distress and I suspect that some of us are asking, “Aren’t we just supposed to submit to God?” Isn’t wrestling with God or struggling with God the opposite of faith?

And my answer is, no. The opposite of faith is to ignore God or to walk away from God. You cannot wrestle with God and walk away. To wrestle with God, you have to give God your full attention. You may be struggling with some powerful doubt or disbelief but, when you wrestle, you will pay attention to the other person in the wrestling ring. You may fear God or dislike God or even be angry with God but when you wrestle with God, you will give God your full attention.

When you wrestle with God: When you put your hardest questions to God. When you express your deepest doubts and give voice to your most troubling uncertainties or when you give your dearest hopes and aspirations to God and call on him to fulfill those hopes and aspirations, two dramatic, life-changing things will happen. You will have a deep encounter with yourself. You will learn things about yourself that you may have spent a life-time avoiding. And you will have an encounter with God who may not be like the God that you expected to meet. That is what happened to Jacob. God will assert himself and you will be changed. Jacob became Israel and you will become more the person that God wants you to be.

Let’s ask the question again. Is an argument with God or a struggle with God not the absence of faith? And the answer again is no. In fact, it is an exercise in faith.

It is the faith that if I dig deeply enough, if I ask enough questions, if I am fully honest about my own doubts and uncertainties and fears, then God will finally honor my quest with the guidance of The Holy Spirit. God will accept my struggle as a cry for help and honor that cry with His own grace. I have given up on finding all of the answers but I fully believe that in the struggle with God, God has given me portions of himself that I would have never known if I had just sat passively by and ignored the dark and hard realities of life.

I fully believe that God honors the hard questions, and the confession of deep and dark doubt, and the admission of fear and guilt, and the cry of help from a dry and thirsty soul. I really believe that there are seasons in life when God looks at us and says, “Come on big guy. Throw your best at me. Let me see what you’ve got.”  “Come on girl. Do you have issues with me? Spill them out. Make your harshest accusation. Take your best shot. Let’s wrestle.”

And what might happen?  This is my confession, my story. There will be seasons of uncertainty and confusion. You will wonder if your faith will survive the test. And then, you’ll discover that your faith has been made a little different. Your relationship with God is a little stronger, if it is not quite the same. You will likely expect different things from God than you once did but those expectations will be more in line with God’s real nature. Your faith will be deeper and stronger and different.

I am not advising you to go looking for a wrestling match with God. Only bullies who never outgrew their adolescence try to pick fights. What I am saying is, during some strange and difficult season in your life, you may find yourself in a wrestling match with a spiritual stranger. Try not to be afraid. It well could be God preparing you for the next season in your life. It will not seem like the Sunday School faith of your childhood but that would be the point, wouldn’t it. God will grow you for a more mature faith for the next part of your journey together.

I wish that I had kept the article. In school, we would call this a reference without a footnote. I’ll have to ask you to trust my memory.

The article was written by a rabbi, a teacher of the Jewish faith. And he began his article with a thought like this. He said that the highest compliment that he could pay to another teacher was to take the other person seriously enough to argue with him. The highest compliment is to engage him honestly and seriously, to meet him fully, and to disagree with him respectfully.  He said that the highest compliment is to take the other person seriously, even in disagreement. Then he went on to say, “Now I want to argue with my friend Jesus.”

What I want to say to you is this. In those seasons when you are struggling with God, if you will take God seriously enough to argue, if you will engage him honestly, if you will meet him fully, if you will listen carefully,  if you will disagree respectfully, then God will honor your struggle and, in ways not expected, give you grace for the struggle. Like Jacob of old, you may wrestle with God, and in the strangest of strange ways, you may win and you will be changed.

Let me say it again. I am not advising you to pick a fight with God. I am saying, do not be shocked when a struggle with God seems to invade your life. It is not a sign of faithlessness. God is not punishing you. Instead, it may be that God himself is preparing you for that which is to come in your own tomorrow.

In a moment, we are going to the Communion Table. So allow me to recall another wrestling match. Right after the last supper with the disciples, Jesus and the disciples went to The Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus went off by himself to pray. He said, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” The Bible says that his sweat was like great drops of blood, so intense was his agony. His meaning is clear. Jesus did not want to experience that which he knew to be coming. He did not want to endure that terrible suffering. It was a genuine struggle, a wrestling match with God. And then he prayed, “Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” There is a sense in which Jesus lost that wrestling match with God. He did not escape the sorrow if the night.

But, in losing, he won and we all won. In losing, and in suffering and in dying, he revealed God’s plan for resurrection.

Thanks be to God.