Struggling with Promises

The First United Presbyterian Church

“Struggling with Promises”

Rev. Amy Morgan

August 9, 2020

Gen. 32:22-32

22 The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.

 24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

 26 Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me."

 27 So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."

 28 Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed."

 29 Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him.

 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved."

 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

Jacob stood on the edge of the river and watched as the last of his family members crossed the Jordan River.  He had crossed this river before, as he fled the wrath of his brother, Esau.  Jacob left the Promised Land years ago as a solitary man on the run, and though he now had a large family and great wealth, he felt he should cross back into the land alone.  

But not tonight.  

Tonight, he felt restless.  He was preparing for a battle he was hoping would not occur.  Tomorrow he would meet his brother again. He would have to face up to his past and answer for it.  Jacob was returning to the land to claim the promise God had made, saying, “Return to your country and kindred, and I will surely do you good.”  

Returning to the land was as simple as crossing a shallow ford.  Returning to his kindred felt to Jacob like certain death. 

Jacob’s life, his very identity, was defined by struggle. His name comes from his struggle to be first out of the womb, a wrestling match he lost to Esau. This heel-grabber struggled to live up to his name by over-reaching his place in the family and supplanting his brother by negotiating for his birthright and stealing his blessing. Jacob goes on to struggle with his father-in-law, Laban, to attain his worldly desires of family and possessions, those same beloved things he has just shuttled across the river toward potential destruction.

And on the shore of this river, called Jabbock, a name that plays on Jacob’s and is associated with the Hebrew word for wrestling, we see Jacob struggle like never before.  

Before the physical wrestling match of this story begins, Jacob has been engaged in a spiritual struggle to believe in God’s promises in the face of a real and immediate fear. His brother Esau has every right to kill him for stealing his first-born blessing. Esau won the wrestling match in the womb, and Jacob supplanted him in a battle of wits. In calling Jacob to return home, to the Promised Land, God is sending him and all he holds dear right into Esau’s angry and resentful hands.  

It’s all well and good for God to promise that at some future time Jacob will prosper and have descendants like the sand of the sea, but what about the danger he is facing right now?  In the grand scheme of things everything may work out all right, but what is going to happen tomorrow when he encounters Esau? Jacob wrestles with his trust in God as he faces very real and present fear and uncertainty.   

We struggle with God’s promises in much the same way. It’s great to hear bible stories about God’s promises, about miracles and blessing.  We can take comfort in Biblical testimony to God’s steadfast love and faithfulness or try to remember that our faith is all about “good news” and how God works all things for good for those who love God. 

But when the struggle gets real, those promises seem highly intangible. When the savings are depleted, when the love grows cold, when the news is never good, when there are no good solutions to a problem that feels endless – promises of a future with hope ring hollow. It is then that we withdraw, isolate, and hope tomorrow never comes. 

And it is then that God starts wrestling with us.   

The real hope and promise of our faith is not that we will struggle with doubts and uncertainties and be victorious over them. The real hope is that when we’ve given up, God gets us back in the ring. And sometimes that means God has to fight us. 

In wrestling with God, Jacob discovers that he does believe God’s promises, even demanding that God deliver on them immediately, blessing him here and now and not in some far-off future. He holds on to God, who is here his adversary more than his deliverer. Instead of faith, Jacob exhibits tenacity. Even when he is wounded, even when God demands he let go, he maintains his death-grip on God’s promise of blessing. 

We are all living in a time of very real and present fear and uncertainty. From global concerns around the pandemic, politics, natural disasters, and social unrest to personal struggles with physical and emotional health, worries about family and friends, and the lack our of usual networks of support – we are all facing tangible struggles and legitimate fears. 

And some of us are at the point when we are tired of fighting, ready to plop down on the bank of the river and call it a day. We have no way of knowing what tomorrow will bring – promised blessing or greater catastrophe. We feel like we are sitting in the dark, alone. 

And that’s when God comes to us, and says, “on your feet. There’s more fight left in you.” 

Now, God doesn’t fight fair. God lets Jacob think he’s winning, lets him tire himself out all night. And at daybreak, God breaks him with a touch. In his notes on this passage, John Calvin wrote that “God assails his with the one hand, and upholds them with the other.” When God is fighting with us, God is always fighting for us. It isn’t fair. It’s gracious. 

And it leaves a mark. In Richard Lischer’s book, Open Secrets, he recalls a story about a young girl who loved to visit a convent and the sisters. “But every time the nun gives her a hug,” he writes, “the crucifix on Sister’s belt gets mashed into the child’s face. The gesture of love always leaves a mark.”

Jacob’s mark is not only physical. He is marked with a new name, a name that turns his striving into his strength. 

It is challenging to translate exactly what the name Israel means. In the version of this text we read today, it says that Jacob is called Israel because he has “striven with God and with humans, and [has] prevailed.” So we can assume Jacob’s new name somehow relates to striving. But the word translated here as “striven” has no concrete meaning. This is literally the only place in Hebrew this verb is ever found. The translation is deduced from the context and from other words with similar roots. Without getting too far into the weeds of Hebrew grammar and syntax, suffice it to say that the meaning of Jacob’s new name is fluid and complex. Some translators reduce the meaning simply to “God strives or persists,” or “God is upright.” Others turn the subject around and translate it as “The one who strives with God.” One commentator, taking into account this word’s relationship to another word meaning “to fill and release liquid,” translates the name Israel as “He Has Become A Receptacle in Which God Can Be Received and Retained.”

While it may be a semantic stretch, and is certainly a clunky expression, this translation testifies to the transformation that occurs in this episode. God strives with Jacob not just keep him in the struggle but to keep him receptive. Just as the Jabbock river is in a constant state of filling with mountain spring water and releasing it into the Jordan, Jacob’s striving has hollowed out a course through which God can flow into the world. Israel leaves the Jabbock filled with promise, retaining hope not just for his own future but for the future of the generations who will bear his name. He is broken and emptied so that he can become a receptacle in which God can be received and retained. 

This is the same process that began in the waters of our baptism. Those waters were not a promise of an easy life, of health, wealth and happiness. They were the beginning of our struggle with God. In our baptism, the love of God marked with the sign of the cross. That mark we bear means we will struggle with God’s promises, in the face of challenges and fear, allowing the waters of baptism to fill us up at times and empty us out at others. Over time, that process breaks us down and re-forms us into receptacles in which God can be received and retained and flow out into the world. 

The world needs these receptacles right now more than ever. The fears and challenges we face are very real and very present. But we who have received and retained God’s promises are blessed to be channels of God’s peace, hope, and love. We may be tired and broken from our struggle, but as we limp into an unknown future, we do so with confidence and trust that God’s promises are sure, that there is a future of hope not just for us, but for the generations who will come after. 

Frederick Buechner, in his famous sermon on this text entitled “The Magnificent Defeat,” said that “Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are his who will fight for them hard enough; but peace, love, joy, are only from God. And God is the enemy whom Jacob fought there by the river, of course, and whom in one way or another we all of us fight-God, the beloved enemy. Our enemy because, before giving us everything, he demands of us everything; before giving us life, he demands our lives - our selves, our wills, our treasure.

Will we give them, you and I? I do not know. Only remember the last glimpse that we have of Jacob, limping home against the great conflagration of the dawn. Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.”

To whom be all glory forever and ever. Amen.