Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Mark 9:20-24 and Genesis 32:22-32

It is not a sin to struggle with faith. “Lord I believe. Help my unbelief.” Many of us can relate to the feelings of this man who approached Jesus and asked for the healing of his son. The man obviously believed enough to come and ask for Jesus’ help. Yet he was not sure he believed enough to attain the results desired. Most of us share his dilemma.

It is not a sin to struggle with belief. In fact, the sin usually is that we try to avoid the struggle by looking for a shortcut. Someone has said that vices are attempted shortcuts to meet our own needs. Let’s think about this. When someone gets caught in the addiction of gambling or sexual immorality or drugs, could this be a sign that they were trying to avoid the struggles of life?

Obsessive gambling is a destructive vice. I am not talking about playing a friendly game of poker or bridge. I am speaking of the gambling addict who risks necessary household finances for a chance to win the jackpot. Such gambling is an attempted shortcut to financial prosperity. Skip the hard work, years of discipline, careful saving, and wise investments. Just win the jackpot and live in prosperous ease.

Why are such shortcuts so attractive? When we step back and become objective, we know that these things will not truly satisfy. There are plenty of stories of those who have been destroyed by these vices. Yet they continue to attract us. Why? I suspect Jacob could tell us about the attractiveness of shortcuts.

Read Genesis 32:22-32.

Rick is a Presbyterian pastor. The story of how he became a Presbyterian is entertaining. His mother moved from the Midwest to California several years ago. She was a staunch Baptist. Thus, when the local Presbyterian pastor called at her new residence and invited her to his church, she made it clear she was not in the least interested. In fact the exact phrase she used was this: “It will take an act of God to get me to change.” Just then an earthquake hit. Being from Iowa, she had never felt an earthquake. When the ground stopped shaking, she told the pastor, “I’ll join.”

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if all our decisions came so easily? Rather than struggle with complex options we could simply find an easy shortcut. That was the pattern of Jacob’s life. Yet he learned to struggle for God’s blessings.

Jacob’s life is a map of attempted shortcuts. He exemplifies some of the common shortcuts people employ. He first tried lying and cheating, and that went on for the first forty years of his life. His second shortcut was to run away from his problems. Jacob spent the next twenty years doing this. Finally God brought him to a point in his life where there were no shortcuts available and he simply had to wrestle. Let us reflect on the value of wrestling when it comes to faith.

First, a brief review of Jacob’s life. Jacob was born a twin. His brother was a few seconds older and thus would inherit the family fortune. As a young man, Jacob learned to manipulate people and things in order to get what he wanted. In other words he became amazingly adept at scamming. How else do we explain the Bible story where Jacob tricked his blind father out of the inheritance?

Let me paraphrase the Bible story into modern imagery. Jacob and Esau were very different personalities. Esau was the strong athletic type. Jacob was a homebody. Esau smelled of gyms and sweat. Jacob smelled of herbs and spices from the kitchen. Esau was hairy. Jacob was smooth. Though twins, these two were opposites. Yet, when it came time for his father to pass the family estate on to Esau, Jacob pulled an amazing scam. He dressed in Esau’s smelly gym clothes and covered his arms with animal skins to fake his brother’s hairiness. He altered his voice enough to successfully imitate his brother. Then he went to his father and asked for the family estate.

“Dad, this is Esau; your oldest. I had the attorney draw up the will so that everything passes to me just as you wanted. Just sign here.” The voice didn’t sound quite right. Now Isaac was blind but he wasn’t stupid. He sniffed to be sure it was really Esau and caught a whiff of an athlete’s sweaty clothing. As he reached to take the pen for the signature he intentionally grazed his hand against the arm of his son. Sure enough it was hairy. Thus, he signed the document. It was done. Forty years of learning to scam paid off. It was a gamble but Jacob found a shortcut to wealth.

Then Jacob ran away in order to avoid his brother’s rage at being swindled. He fled to his uncle Laban’s home where he met up with someone as adept at using shortcuts as anyone. Laban negotiated that Jacob would work for seven years in order to marry his beautiful daughter Rachel. The Bible says that Jacob was so in love that the seven years flew by quickly. Finally came the wedding night. It was a huge traditional wedding. Preparations took weeks. The wedding was performed with the bride veiled and the groom a bit tipsy with Uncle Laban’s help. The next morning Jacob awoke to discover that he was married to the wrong sister. He was lying next to the “ugly” one, Leah. The only way Uncle Laban would agree to his marrying Rachel was in exchange for another seven years of labor.

One might expect that having been scammed by a better scam artist than himself would teach Jacob his lesson. However, over those fourteen years of working for his uncle he figured out how to use his uncle’s business to his own advantage. He essentially tricked Laban out of the lion’s share of the business. Again the family conflict built until he knew it was time to run with the goods. So we come to the night of today’s Bible story. Before we reflect on the night that Jacob wrestled alone with God I want to pause and ask a question.

How many of us can relate to some part of Jacob’s story so far? Our first reaction is to think that we are nothing like this scheming, lying, cheating Jacob. Perhaps if we pause and review our own lives in deep honesty, we might recognize some aspect of Jacob in ourselves. How many of us have tried one or more of the shortcuts to get our needs met? Perhaps more than just a few of us have fallen into a vice of one form or another. More likely we have tried to manipulate situations or people around us. Most of us can relate to Jacob when we look at it that way. Now we are ready to reflect on the night when he learned to wrestle.

When I was in elementary school I used to ride my bike through a neighbor’s cactus garden as a shortcut to my best friend’s home. Riding through the cactus garden saved me perhaps twenty seconds over staying on the paved road. The neighbor on a couple of occasions politely asked me not to ride across his property, but I did not see how my shortcut was hurting anything. So we left bike tracks in his sand. Then one day I was riding through the shortcut when I saw too late that a boulder had been placed in the very middle of the bike tracks. By the time I slammed on my brakes the bike was out of control and I ended up in a cactus.

Jacob’s rock in the middle of his shortcut turned out to be God. His past was catching up with him. Uncle Laban was behind him and his brother was in front of him. Both had good reason to despise him. The shortcuts were no longer working. It was time to pay the bills after years of running up charges. That was the night he learned to wrestle for a blessing.

Jacob sent the rest of his family across the stream. He remained behind to sort out his options. It looked as though he would finally have to face up to the consequences of his actions, but instead God showed up. A mysterious person suddenly appeared and began to wrestle with Jacob. As the night progressed Jacob realized his wrestling partner was really God. He later named the place Peniel which in Hebrew means “Face of God.” God could have let him go, but one could say that instead, God got in his face and made him get real. Jacob figured out that the only way to survive when you are wrestling with God was to hold on for dear life and ask for a blessing.

How many of us can relate to Jacob’s wrestling? Sometimes our wrestling with God takes a dramatic form like Saint Patrick being captured and taken as a slave. Sometimes it happens when our consequences come crashing down on us. Most of the time, however, our experience of wrestling with God involves some unexpected crisis.

His words seemed slow at the dinner table. His wife thought he was just tired from the stress at the office. By the next day his left side did not appear to be coordinated. Next thing she knew he was in the hospital. Blood clots in his brain. Ready to wrestle?

The phone rings in the middle of the night. She has been arrested for driving under the influence. Ready to wrestle? A mother tearfully relates that she received a call from the manager of the grocery store. Her son had been caught shoplifting. Ready to wrestle? How many of us are wrestling to find God in the midst of our circumstances?

I have good news. Not only is wrestling a good thing, not only is it not a sin, but the good news is that in the midst of wrestling we often get the blessing.

Jacob’s wrestling match with God ended with his becoming injured. His hip was out of joint and he limped the rest of his life. How is that good news? The good news comes at the very end of the story. Jacob was transformed from that night onward. His name was changed from Jacob to Israel, which means “one who wrestles with God.” He learned that his own weakness brought out God’s strength. The people of God came to recognize the power of wrestling with God and they symbolized its transforming power by treating a certain part of meat with special respect. From that day on, the hip socket was considered holy. From the hurt came the holiness.

Here is the mystery of God’s ways: Israel nee Jacob’s transformation represents what God wants to do in our lives today. To become followers of Jesus means we wrestle and get hurt. God uses wounded ones as healers. Without the wrestling and wounding there is no blessing. God wants to turn our misery into ministry.

Nikos Kazantzakis is a Greek author who reflects his own spiritual quest in his writings. Among his most famous books are Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. His spiritual quest once took him to a secluded island to interview a saintly monk named Father Makarios. He asked the monk whether he still wrestled with the devil. Father Makarios answered, “Not any longer, my child. I have grown old, and he has grown old with me. He does not have the strength. I now wrestle with God.” “With God!” exclaimed Kazantzakis in astonishment. “And you hope to win?” “No,” answered the monk. “I hope to lose.”