Wrestling with God

I think we sometimes get the idea that the people the Bible talks about represent some sort of ideal. That just because they’re in the Bible, they must be paragons of virtue—role models we mere humans could never live up to. But that’s not right at all. The Bible is filled with so-called “heroes” who get it wrong at least as often as they get it right. There’s Abraham, who passes off his wife as his sister, putting her at risk to save his own skin. There’s Moses, who kills an Egyptian in a rage. There’s David, who commits adultery with Bathsheba and, when she gets pregnant, arranges for her husband’s death. There’s Peter, who denies Jesus three times. There’s Paul, who persecutes the Church. And then there’s Jacob, who we heard about this morning—Jacob the trickster and liar, Jacob the striver and cheater, Jacob whom God names Israel.

When today’s reading opens, Jacob stands alone beside the river. He has sent everyone else ahead—his family, his servants, his possessions. He’s afraid. Afraid that his brother will take revenge for past wrongs. Afraid that he’ll lose everything he’s worked and schemed for. The man who has always lived by his wits is finally fresh out of cleverness.

Let me back up a minute. Do you remember Jacob’s story? Jacob’s grandfather was Abraham—the man who left everything because God told him to go. His father was Isaac—Abraham’s beloved son, born when he and his wife Sarah were much too old for children. Esau was the firstborn, and his father’s favorite. Jacob came second, holding on to his brother’s heel, as if trying to pull him back. From the beginning, the two boys were at odds.

In modern terms, you might call Esau the jock of the family. He was the outdoorsman, the hunter. Jacob was the clever one, and stayed closer to home. One day, Esau came back from hunting. He hadn’t eaten, and he begged Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew. “Sell me your birthright,” Jacob said. And, without much thought, Esau agreed—his birthright for a bowl of soup.

Later, when their father was old and nearly blind, Jacob and his mother Rebekah conspired to steal Esau’s blessing. Jacob wrapped his arms in goat skin so that he’d seem as hairy as his brother, and the trick worked. Isaac blessed Jacob instead of his brother. When Esau found out, he swore revenge. And so Jacob ran for his life, heading east to stay with his uncle Laban.

With Laban, Jacob met his match. Jacob fell in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel and worked for seven years to earn her hand in marriage. But on their wedding night, Laban pulled his own trick—sending his older daughter Leah instead. Jacob discovered the switch in the morning, and wound up working another seven years for Rachel. The deceiver had been deceived. Still, Jacob prospered. A bit of continued trickery helped him along the way. He had wives, children, servants, flocks—more than he could have imagined when he first fled in fear. And after twenty years, he decided to go home. That’s where we find him now, camped by the river, with his past catching up with him.

Jacob is alone. All that remains is the dark, the fear, the sound of water, and the long wait for the morning. Then, out of nowhere, a stranger appears. No introduction. No warning. Just a sudden struggle. The two wrestle through the night, locked together, neither gaining the upper hand.

Who was the stranger? We don’t really know. Some say it was an angel. Some say it was God. It’s a scene more dreamlike than real. But the wrestling match was real enough to cause injury. Dawn approaches. The stranger says, “Let me go.” And Jacob, true to form, wants something in exchange. He says, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

The stranger does as he asks. Every past blessing of Jacob’s life was achieved with trickery, by pretending to be someone he wasn’t. But this time the stranger knows exactly who Jacob is. And still he blesses him. And he gives him a new name, his true name: Israel, “one who strives with God.” Jacob believes that he has seen the face of God. He survives the encounter, but he walks away limping.

He walks away limping. And he walks toward his brother. He had spent his life running from every reckoning, but this time he moves forward. He expects anger, perhaps vengeance. But his brother welcomes him with open arms. After all the deceit, after all the years apart, he finds grace. And, finally, he has nothing more to prove.

We live through our own versions of that night by the river. Maybe not wrestling in body, but in spirit—wrestling through fear, regret, exhaustion, and grief. There are seasons when we feel the darkness pressing close, when we hold on with desperate hope for a blessing that seems impossible. But if there’s one lesson to be learned from Jacob, it’s that holding on is worth the effort, no matter how dark the night might seem.

We’d like it to be easy. But it isn’t. Faith doesn’t excuse us from the struggle. Faith is the thing that helps us persevere. And blessing seldom comes without a limp.

We come out of our own dark nights changed, marked, maybe slower. But more human, more truly ourselves, more able to meet grace when it comes running toward us. That transformation—becoming more truly ourselves—isn’t about becoming perfect or polished. It's about becoming real. It’s about the person who stops pretending, who stops running, who can finally be known. There’s a paradox in the Christian life: we become most authentically ourselves not by doing everything right, but by wrestling with God, by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, even wounded. And when we emerge from that struggle, when we limp forward toward the grace that’s waiting for us, we’re not less than we were. We’re more. We’re finally free.