Homily for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, 2020

By Rev. Ernie Lewis

Genesis 32:22-31

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:13-21

Jacob has finally untangled himself from his duplicitous father-in -law, Laban, and is moving cautiously, with his wives and flocks, into the land of his ancestors, now controlled by his brother Esau. He pauses, hearing rumors that Esau is coming for him and sends his entourage ahead across the river Jabbok while he remains by himself. There he makes camp.

It’s a wild and desolate place, a low bluff leading down to the river.

The only light is from the dying embers of the campfire and the tiny sliver of a waning moon.

A stranger appears.

They begin to fight.

The silence is broken only by the occasional distant bark of a jackal,

Grunting, loud breathing, and the dull thud of flesh against flesh.

The two men are locked in what appears to be a struggle to the death.

They writhe and lunge at each other, over and over.

Each tries to get some purchase, some handhold, some decisive advantage as they grab and grasp at sweat-slick bodies.

From time to time, they pause, breathing hard, only to dive at each other and begin again.

All night, until the moon sets in the west, the jackals return to their dens, and the first hint of dawn appears in the eastern sky, they struggle, neither able to get a decisive hold on the other.

Finally, they simply lie in the sand gasping, like fish jerked suddenly from the water, immobile with exhaustion.

They can only eye one another, too drained to continue.

Then, like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky, the stranger springs up, grabs the leg of the other, and jerks it violently! There’s a scream of pain, and the sickening sound of tendons tearing and muscles shearing off bone.

Yet he struggles upright, and with a sudden burst of strength borne of terror, “pins” his unknown opponent to the ground, and throws the entire weight of his body upon him, immobilizing him completely.

That one, trapped under the weight of Jacob’s body, pleads for his name……….and gives him a new name: ………“Israel”, and a blessing!

It confirms a new identity and a calling to a new direction.

“I have seen God face to face”, Jacob muses, “and yet my life is preserved”

He limps off into the new morning, the first day of the rest of his life.

But……for the rest of his life, he will bear the mark of that long dark night of wrestling.

Every step he takes from this point on will remind him of that struggle.

He’s a “marked man”.

Marked by God!

This is an important story!

What makes it so important is that it is OUR story too, yours…. and mine!

It’s the story of every one of us who has ever wrestled with matters of faith and belief.

Some have called it “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

It’s the story of sleepless nights and anxious days! Questions like, “Does God exist and, if so, does God really care about me, love me……….

unconditionally?” “Really?” Questions like, “Is God willing and able to forgive me and walk with me through whatever these days and enable me to deal with the things I fear and that haunt me?

It’s the story of faith when it becomes REAL and PERSONAL! It’s the story of faith the comes when there is no plausible alternative! It’s the “end of the line” kind of faith.

     It’s the kind of faith that emerges from struggle

     It’s about coming to the staggering realization that not only is God REAL, but that God’s LOVE is REAL! It’s much, much more than just a habit or series of claims we recite by rote which are too often the stuff of our usual, often casual, unthinking, unexamined routine practice of what we like to call “my faith”!

It’s even about those terrifying times of our unbelief!

Have you ever wrestled with God?

Have you ever found yourself facing a situation in your life in which you felt you simply must find some resolution…….the urgent realization that to continue the status quo is intolerable?

Has that gnawing sense felt to you like a very deep and profound hunger for “something more”?

Have you ever felt yourself wrestling with “Something” or “Someone” you can’t quite name or identify to the point that you just become tired, discouraged, and can see no way ahead? You simply want to give up?

Surely most, if not all of us, have.

I believe many of us struggle with these issues, particularly these days when the future seems unclear if not menacing and unthinkable. We all have feelings of dis-ease and anxiety. Day after day goes by in anxious sameness!

We may actually find ourselves asking, “Where is God in all this mess anyway?”

Even for those of us who deeply believe that God IS, that God cares for and loves us, and that God somehow knows what we go through, that wrestling can be long and painful!

For any of us who do NOT believe any of those things or who are really unsure about them, the times of wrestling can become very painful , frustrating, and overwhelming!

Yet, as Pastor Casey so powerfully reminded us last week, nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING! “can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.”

That is the blessing! The blessing of faith and peace!

But that does not mean we do not struggle!

     Neither does it mean that we SHOULD NOT struggle!

As with Jacob after a night of struggle, a blessing is received and the dawn breaks!

And we are changed.

Nothing suggests that God’s response to our wrestling and struggles for faith might be anything as dramatic or physical as Jacob’s limp!

Far from it!

In fact, there may not be any obvious change that others can identify.

     But we cannot wrestle with God and walk away unchanged!

I need to ask myself this morning an important question: 

Do I bear any marks that I have honestly wrestled with God?

Do you?

Amen