Genesis 32:22-31 Commentary

If you are searching Hebrew Scripture for parenting advice, healthy examples of marital bliss … well, you probably shouldn’t. The Bible is not a book about functional families. The Bible, chock full of dysfunctional people, is always the story of a functional God.

Jacob’s whole life has been clouded by competition with the twin brother who had jockeyed him out of being born first. And in his youth, he hatched a plan to humiliate his brother and con him out of his first-born rights. His mother nurtured his sense of entitlement until, at his father’s death bed, Jacob stole outright the blessing intended for his brother, Esau. But that was all years ago. Jacob fled to Uncle Laban, where he married not once but twice, and fathered many children. Watching his own sons, did he ever spare a thought for his brother?

Jacob prospered so much that Uncle Laban’s sons became jealous. And work there, among them, became fraught with grumbling, unspoken tensions, silences that spoke volumes. In other words, more sibling rivalry until God speaks to Jacob and commands him to return to his family and all that long messy history of broken promises, broken relationships. “Go back.” Says God, “And I will be with you.”

Fleeing yet again, Jacob hatches a plan to divide his household into two. If Esau and his 400 men attack, well, one family may survive intact. It is the scheming of a desperate man. He sends his wives ahead of him, which means he is putting them between himself and his potentially revenge-full brother.  Again, this is not marriage advice.

After sending them away, “Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him ‘til daybreak.” (v.24)

The wrestling man is commonly assumed to be an angel or some other messenger from God, based on Jacob’s own assessment of what happened here, “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” And yet, in this morning’s text we find this disturbing line: “When the man (God’s messenger) saw that he could not overpower Jacob. . .” What kind of God is this? A God who can’t even manage to half-nelson a weary traveler after 8 hours of wrestling? How is this, then, the story about a functional God?

As any parent may attest, overpowering is often the easiest option. Don’t reason with the toddler about the necessity of the trip, just wrangle them into their car seat. “Because I said so!” And “As long as you live under this roof!” But the easiest option isn’t always the best option. It takes a patient and powerful grace to stay in the struggle. For without the struggle, relationships – human and divine – atrophy. Without the struggle we stay underdeveloped and shallow in our souls.

In the same way, God chooses to honor the relationship with Jacob. God chooses the grace of staying with Jacob in the struggle. And in this way, the story, of Jacob wrestling with God is a lifeline. The story of a God, who takes questions, doubts, fears and uncertainties seriously enough to engage them, of a God who cares enough for us to invest in the process rather than demanding mindless obedience.  Only then, we discover that, sometimes, the struggle itself is a grace.

At the conclusion of this episode, God renames Jacob. God gives Jacob – the trickster and deceiver — the new name Israel, meaning “He struggles with God.” And it is THIS name that belongs not only to Jacob but to all of Jacob’s descendants.  They are Israel. They are the ones who wrestle with God. Even in the New Testament, the church is called “The Israel of God.” The people who struggle with God, of God. We are identified, not as the ones who have all the answers. We are identified as the ones who wrestle with God. We are the ones who wrestle with God.

We are the ones who struggle with God. And we will not let go until God blesses us.

Illustration Ideas

The story is told of a small child who finds a caterpillar, brings it home, sets in up in a mason jar condo and watches as the caterpillar builds its cocoon. The child watches every day for the butterfly to emerge. One day a small hole appears in the cocoon and the butterfly starts to struggle to come out. As the butterfly continues its struggle, it looked like it’d never make it!

So, the child decides to help by cutting the cocoon with scissors, making the hole bigger. Sure enough, the butterfly tumbles out, with a swollen body and shriveled up wings. It never learns to fly and spent the rest of its admittedly short insect life crawling along the bottom of the mason jar condo.

Butterflies, it turns out, need the struggle of emerging from their cocoons. The butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly stays earthbound. Which is to say, sometimes the struggle itself is a grace.

But other times, it is just deeply painful. St. John of the Cross wrote a spiritual classic entitled, The Dark Night of the Soul, which tells the story of a frustrated wrestling with God, a sense of soul weariness, helplessness, a stubborn and persistent dismay with self, with others and, ultimately, with God.

Do you know someone who testified to struggling with this ailment most of her life? Mother Teresa. In her memoirs, Mother Teresa wrote that for the 50 years before her death, this was the normal state of her life, with few moments of respite.

Indeed, there are no shortage of people today who have had it with easy answers. Who feel that the God they were sold in Sunday School or Youth Group is, in fact, far too inexpensive for the expensive realities of the real world. When black and white morph to shades of grey.

When “why?” is not a question asked out of curiosity or boredom but attends to tears and sorrow, loss and disappointment. When prayer dries up and meaningful interactions with God and others lose their flavor. Jacob’s story for is for them.

American novelist, Flannery O’Connor, wrote “The experience of losing your faith, or of having lost it, is an experience that in the long run belongs to faith; or at least it can belong to faith. . .’Lord, I believe; help my unbelief’; is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the Gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith.”

Facing the uncertainty of an unknown tomorrow, we, like Jacob and St. John of the Cross, Mother Teresa and Flannery O’Connor, grabs hold of God and says, “I will not let go until you bless me.”