“When You Wrestle with God” [Following God in Real Life Summer Series #9] - Fr. Pete's Sermon for August 2nd, the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 32:22-31

I am a proud graduate of Huntington High School in Huntington, WV. Go, Pony Express! When I attended in the early 1970s, it was fairly well integrated. But only a decade or so before that, Huntington also had a segregation-era Black school that operated from 1924 to 1961. It was called Frederick Douglass Junior and Senior High School.

The school was named for the great African-American leader, who was born into slavery in Maryland and later escaped to freedom, becoming one of the greatest moral voices in American history, primarily on abolition. In his autobiography, Douglass writes about being sent as a young man to work for Edward Covey, a man known as a “slave breaker.” Covey’s purpose was not simply to get the most work out of out his slaves. His purpose was to crush the spirit.

Douglass later wrote that he felt broken in body, soul, and spirit. Then one day Covey attacked him, and Douglass fought back. The struggle lasted for hours. Douglass did not escape slavery that day. His outward circumstances did not change. But something changed inside him. He later described that fight as the turning point in his life as an enslaved person. The struggle did not give him freedom immediately, but it helped him remember who he was.

That is one of the deep truths about struggling in life. Some struggles wound us and leave marks we carry for the rest of our lives. But sometimes, in ways we don’t choose and can’t really explain, struggles also reveal who we really are. They expose what we fear, what we love, and what we are willing to hold onto. Sometimes, through the long night of struggle, we emerge changed. In today’s story from Genesis, Jacob is in that kind of night.

We’ve been traveling with Jacob for several weeks now in our Summer Sermon Road Trip through Genesis… deceiving his brother Esau, running from the consequences of his choices, dreaming about a ladder to heaven, being deceived by Laban.

Now, after years away, Jacob is on his way back home. That means he must face Esau, the brother he deceived, the brother whose blessing he stole, the brother who, last time Jacob heard anything, wanted him dead. So this is not merely a family reunion. It’s a reckoning.

Jacob sends gifts ahead. He divides his family and possessions into groups, hoping that if Esau attacks one group, another might escape. It’s typical Jacob: strategizing, calculating, making contingency plans. Still trying to manipulate the outcome and survive by cleverness.

And then, that night, Jacob is left alone. No servants. No family. No animals. No clever plan to hide behind. Just Jacob, under the darkness, beside the river Jabbok, with everything unresolved. And there, in the middle of the night, someone wrestles with him until daybreak.

The story is strange and mysterious. We are not told exactly who this figure is at first. A man. An angel. God. The text lets the mystery remain. What we know is that Jacob wrestles through the night, and when dawn approaches, the stranger touches Jacob’s hip and wounds him. Still Jacob struggles. He says:

“I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” That is a desperate prayer from someone who has spent his life grasping for blessing and who now refuses to release the only one who can truly give it.

Jacob has been grasping since birth. He came out grasping his brother’s heel. He grasped for the birthright. He grasped for the blessing. He grasped for Rachel, for flocks, for security, for survival. But this night is different. This time Jacob is not manipulating. He is holding on.

There’s a kind of grasping that comes from fear, the kind that tries to control everything and everyone. But there is also a holy holding on, the kind that says, “I do not understand what is happening, but I will not let go of God.”

Some of us know that prayer. We have prayed it in hospital rooms, in seasons of grief, when our faith felt thin and words were hard to find. We have prayed it in the dark hours when we were not sure what would come next.

“I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Not because we felt strong, but because letting go felt impossible to even think about.

One of the gifts of this story is that it gives us permission to wrestle with God. Sometimes people imagine faith as peaceful certainty: a calm heart, a serene face, a person accepting everything with grace.

And sometimes faith does look like that. But sometimes faith looks like Jacob at the Jabbok: struggling, limping, refusing to release God until some blessing can be found in the struggle.

Faithful people do wrestle. We wrestle with grief, prayer, Scripture, the church, family wounds, old regrets, unanswered questions, and the future we cannot control.

Wrestling is not the opposite of faith. Sometimes wrestling is faith. Because the person who wrestles with God has not walked away. The person who argues with God, cries out to God, questions God, clings to God through the night—that person is still in a relationship with God. And relationship is where transformation happens.
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At daybreak, the stranger asks Jacob his name. In Genesis, names matter. Jacob’s name means something like “heel-grabber” or even “deceiver.” His name carries his history, his patterns, his old way of being in the world. “What is your name?” “Jacob.”

And then comes the blessing: “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”

Jacob becomes Israel. That name literally means “one who struggles with God”! Jacob doesn’t win his wrestling match. He doesn’t overpower God. He doesn’t walk away unharmed. In fact, he walks away limping. Jacob becomes Israel because he stays in the struggle long enough to be changed by it.

That is the strange mercy of this story. The wound and the blessing come together. Jacob limps into the sunrise blessed, but not untouched. Changed, but not unscarred. He will carry that night in his body for the rest of his life.

Some of our blessings come with a limp, don’t they. We would not choose the struggle. We should not glorify suffering. Pain is not good simply because pain exists. But we can tell the truth that some of the deepest growth in our lives comes through things we would never have chosen. Compassion often comes with a limp. Wisdom often comes with a limp. Courage often comes with a limp. Forgiveness often comes with a limp.

The limp is not a failure of the blessing. Sometimes the limp is evidence that the blessing was real.

Frederick Douglass emerged from his struggle with Covey still enslaved, but inwardly changed. Jacob emerges from his struggle still facing Esau, still uncertain about tomorrow, but no longer the same man who entered that night.

That may be the good news for us this morning. The struggles we face may not resolve quickly. The grief may not lift all at once. The questions may remain. The road ahead may still be uncertain.

But let’s not assume that nothing holy is happening in the struggle. Let’s not assume that wrestling means we have failed at faith. Let’s not assume that a limp means we missed the blessing.

Jacob crossed the Jabbok in the dark as a frightened man trying to survive. He crossed into the morning as Israel, wounded and blessed, limping toward reconciliation.

And perhaps that is how faith sometimes works. We hold on through the night. We receive the blessing we did not know how to ask for. And by the grace of God, we rise to meet the morning changed. Amen.