Coming Face-to-face With God

Written by Ed Kauffman

Coming Face-to-Face with God

Genesis 32:22-32

July 31, 2011

Ed Kauffman

How do you prepare to meet a person you haven’t seen for 20 years, especially if that person happens to be your brother from whom you fled to save your life?  And it was your fault he was mad at you; after all, you had taken away both his birthright and his blessing.  He had every reason to be angry, and you know it.

Yet in those twenty years, much has happened.  You spent fourteen years working to acquire your wives, Rachel and Leah, and then another six years building up your flocks, much to the dismay of your father-in-law and his hired hands.  But with a little breeding trickery you have managed to gain great flocks of sheep and goats, many slaves and all the trappings of a wealthy lifestyle.

Your family now consists of 11 sons and a daughter.  And your wives, while still bickering somewhat over your attentions, are clearly with you and have left their father’s household behind.  They conspired with you to sneak off while your father-in-law was away, because none of you were sure how he’d take your leaving.  To make matters even worse, one of them, Rachel, took the household idols from her father’s house and brought them along when you left.  Your father-in-law was not happy and when he caught up to you  accused you of stealing, but when he went looking for the idols, she sat on them and claimed she was on her monthly period so she couldn’t get up, and of course, he couldn’t touch her to move her.

And so, you parted finally on good terms, with all your flocks, servants, and family and are headed home eager to show off what you have accomplished in these past twenty years.  But now you discover that Esau is coming to meet you, and your past rears its ugly head.  And not only is Esau coming, but he has 400 men with him!  What’s that all about? 

So what should you do?  Turn and run – but it’s hard to run with flocks and family, and besides, God told you to go back home.  Is God’s promise about to be thwarted again?  If Esau wipes out your family, where is God’s promise to Abram then?  Should you prepare to fight – but fighting isn’t really an option either.  Well, maybe you could bribe him.  After all, you took things from him, maybe if you gave him some things back it would appease his anger, which must have smoldered all these years.

And so Jacob puts together an appeasement package.  And what a package it is - 200 female goats with 20 rams, 200 ewes and 20 rams, 30 female camels with their colts, 40 cows and 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 10 males.  And to make it even more impressive, he groups them by animal and spaces them out, so that Esau will meet up with them over a period of time.  In each case, he instructs the shepherds to tell Esau that these are a gift from Jacob, and that Jacob is coming along behind them.

But the question remains, how do you meet someone who was ready to kill you 20 years ago?  A number of years ago I ran across an article written by a former friend of mine.  We had been close friends in high school, sang together in choir, and he had decided to attend the same university I attended, coming a year later.  And so we roomed together, which was a huge mistake!  Being friends was one thing- living in the same small dorm room was a whole different matter.  Thankfully it had only lasted a semester. While we had seen each other several times since then, we had not parted on very good terms.  And now I discovered he was living about three hours away, in a city I traveled to on occasion.  And so, with some trepidation, I wrote him a note, thanked him for the article, and suggested we might meet up sometime.  And we did, and reestablished our friendship, recognizing each of our roles in the past.  He even noticed my cautious approach.

But that was nothing compared to Jacob’s dilemma.  And for all his preparation, Jacob still had to come to terms with his own part of the story, and so we are told, he sent his wives and maids and children and all that he had across the stream, and spent the night alone.  And wrestled.  After all these elaborate preparations, Jacob is still left to face this night alone.  As Bill Long says in a commentary on this passage:

"Preparations to face our private demons can themselves be daunting; perhaps that is why we seldom engage in the struggle. But then, after the preparations are made, the struggle begins. And the struggle must be alone. You may be the most gregarious person in three counties; you, like Jacob, might have two wives (hope not!) and eleven children. You might be surrounded by assistants, helpers, an entire army of paid supporters and "yes men." But these are rather worthless for you, because the struggle for the soul, the struggle to discover personal identity must be engaged in solitarily. And, it is at night. The nighttime is symbolic of the unclarity, darkness and uncertainty that stalks the process of self-examination. We might literally not have to face our demons in the night-time, but we certainly will walk through valleys of confusion, interior turmoil and despair as we deal with them. And, in addition, the struggle takes all night. What are things that keep people up all night…  Despair does. Tears do. Physical pain does. Conflict does. And, when you have wrestled all night with something you are exhausted. That is what it means to wrestle with the "man" who is in your path."

Much has been written about this struggle that Jacob engages in all night.  Who was this man?  Was this a literal man, or is this a way of portraying the inner struggle that Jacob endured that night?  What does it mean to wrestle with God?  But if you have ever struggled, wrestled, for a night with something that touches you deeply, you know that it really doesn’t matter if it is a literal person or not, for the struggle is very real, even if it is only in your own mind and it can leave you exhausted.

And so Jacob wrestles all night.  And that struggle is timeless.  It’s portrayed in novels, movies, and plays.  It’s Luke facing the Dark Side, it’s Frodo or perhaps Gollum struggling with the ring, it’s you and I facing our own personal demons and situations.  It is struggling with God, and when we struggle with God, we are often forced to come face to face with our own inadequacies, past histories, and future uncertainties. 

And so it is with Jacob.  All of his past deeds confront him.  Even his name, Jacob, which means “the grabber or supplanter” seems to haunt him.  And he can’t figure out who exactly he is struggling with, and so he asks for his antagonist’s name as well.  And in the morning, he emerges from the struggle with two things.  One of them is a limp, a reminder of the struggle.  Every struggle we encounter in this way leaves a mark on us, a reminder that we have struggled.

But he also emerges with a new name.  No longer will he be called Jacob, but rather Israel – one who strives with God.  It is a new identity, a new face to present to the world.  And ironically, when he finally comes physically face-to-face with Esau, with that which he dreaded most, it is Esau who runs to meet him, embraces him and tries to refuse the “gift” Jacob sent on ahead.  It is Esau who appears most gracious and even offers to travel together.

In an interesting side note, Jacob and Esau are shown meeting together, and in one sense reconciling – Esau forgiving his brother for all he had done to him.  But Jacob declines the offer to travel together and in fact, doesn’t even go to the place where Esau is heading.  In fact, we are not told of their meeting ever again. 

So what are we make of this wrestling?  Jacob portrayed it as “meeting God face-to-face.”  And certainly when we wrestle with those things that weigh upon us, it is like meeting God.  But does it really make sense – wrestling with God?  In an on-line post, Nathan Aaseng, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Eau Claire, WI tells of his encounter with this text.

"A while back I was struggling with the lectionary text of Genesis 32, the famous all-night wrestling match between Jacob and God.

I had seen many creative efforts to explain what could possibly be meant by a story in which a human fights with and prevails against God. I had tried several, myself.

It is such a ridiculous premise that even the best efforts fell short of providing me with a satisfactory explanation.

On the day that I was struggling with this text, I received a free copy of the premiere issue of a magazine called Our Iowa.

Inside was a story about a high school wrestling match between Ogden and Humboldt. Humboldt had a senior on their team with Down syndrome. He was not capable of wrestling at a competitive level and posed no challenge at all to any wrestler. But the coaches asked if anyone on the Ogden team would at least give the boy a chance to get out on the mat.

An Ogden wrestler offered to take him on. He not only wrestled him for the entire six minutes, but allowed his opponent to beat him on points. He gave the Humboldt kid the thrill of not only competing, but of raising his arms in victory. Both wrestlers got a standing ovation, and there was hardly a dry eye in the gymnasium.

And for the first time, I understood what that Genesis story of a man wrestling with and prevailing against God was about.

The unique message of Christianity is that God is not an impersonal force, or a terrifying presence to whom we cannot relate in any meaningful way. God is not a person who expects only praise and sacrifices and groveling from us and has no further use for us. God is ready and willing and eager to get down and dirty with us."

One of the things I liked about the art work I choose for the bulletin front is that I think it portrays this message in dramatic fashion.  It is an art piece depicting Jacob wrestling with God.  Yet the wrestling could almost be a dance.  God could easily crush us, take us down and pin us, leave us in defeat.  But God doesn’t want to crush us.  God wants us to prevail over those things that might pin us down.  Yes, we will often come out of the struggle with a limp, but we will also emerge with a new name, ready to move ahead.

So who won?  Well, it’s hard to say.  And perhaps it doesn’t really make a difference, for perhaps it is in the struggle that we gain, and it is in losing that we win.  I think Jesus said something like that as well.

Ranier Maria Rilke wrote a poem entitled, "The Man Watching."4  The latter part of the poem says:

How small that is, with which we wrestle,

What wrestles with us, how immense;

Were we to let ourselves, the way things do,

Be conquered thus by the great storm—

We would become far-reaching and nameless.

What we triumph over is the small,

And the success itself makes us small.

The eternal and unexampled

Will not be bent by us.

This is the Angel, who appeared

To the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

When his opponent's sinews

In that contest stretch like metal,

He feels them under his fingers

Like strings making deep melodies.

 

Whomever this Angel overcame

(who so often declined the fight)

He walks erect and justified

And great from that hard hand

Which, as if sculpting, nestled round him.

Winning does not tempt him.

His growth is this: to be

Deeply defeated by the ever-greater One.

 

Wrestling with God is not easy; it may leave us wounded and limping, but it can also bestow on us a new name.  Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it cannot grow and produce.” 

 

Amen.