This sermon was preached on Sunday 16th October 2022 at All Saints Church, Oakham.

The readings were: Genesis 32:22-21 & Luke 18:1-8

Good morning. It is a joy to be with you this morning. I haven’t been at Oakham in the morning for a number of weeks, so it is a joy to be with you this morning. If you have a Bible or your WFTWs please turn to Genesis 32:22-31. We are in the midst of the story of Jacob and Esau. As you may know, Jacob cheated his older brother Esau by tricking his father, Isaac, into giving him his blessing. Since then, Jacob has been on the run from Esau. He goes and works for his uncle Laban, and over the course of twenty years with him, marries his two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Jacob has now been called by God to return to his homeland, where his offended brother still lives. And so, Jacob sets off to his homeland. It is on his journey to see Esau where our reading picks up the story. 

‘Jacob got up, took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.’

I don’t know about you, but it is so often when we find ourselves alone that the enemy or some sort of opposition comes to wrestle with us. Jacob had a big family and would have rarely found a moment when he was alone. Yet here in the story, he sends his family ahead of him, and he is left alone in this moment. Then it seems as soon as he is alone, some mysterious man comes to him and wrestles with him, and they end up wrestling all night. Alone in the dark of the night, Jacob finds himself in this unexpected battle, this wrestling. 

I do not know what is going on in each of your lives, but maybe some of you can resonate with Jacob. You may not be wrestling with a stranger in the middle of the night, but you may share a connection with part of Jacob’s experience. You may find yourself in a dark period in your life; maybe you are alone, either physically speaking, or perhaps emotionally. And in this difficult place, you find yourself wrestling with someone or something or maybe even yourself. It’s the grief from the bereavement you’ve experienced; it’s the depression or cancer that you are fighting; the endless struggle to get a job and put food on the table. It’s the obstacle preventing you from carrying on your journey to the place you are heading. 

Being in this wrestling, in this battle, can be a hard place to be. It’s tiring and it can be costly for us. It cost Jacob a part of him, as his hip was put of joint by his opponent. To you who are in the same place as Jacob, to you I offer you the words of Jesus. ‘Do not lose heart.’ ‘Pray always and do not lose heart.’ For in the wrestling and in the hard times, God is with you. Jesus says to pray always, for it is in prayer, that we reach out to God and God draws near to us, the God who is with us and leads us through the storms and wrestles of life. It is through the power of prayer, through drawing into God, that we find the peace that gives us heart in such hard times. 

And Jesus’ instructions to pray and not lose heart are not empty words. In his parable of the unjust judge in our reading from Luke 18, we see that even he will eventually give out justice to the widow who persists with asking him. So how much more will God give us help and justice in our battles and wrestling? Jesus says, ‘And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.’ God will come quickly to us when we call to him from our dark and lonely places of wrestling. With God, we are given the light of Jesus, and his holy company. 

So God will bring us through our situations, and our wrestling will eventually turn into a good, perhaps even a blessing. Jacob kept wrestling with this mysterious man all night all the way through to daybreak. As dawn approached, the man, having dislocated Jacob’s hip, and pleading with Jacob to let him go, still found himself unable to go. Jacob would not let go of him. Like the widow, Jacob persisted in his wrestling; he would not relent. Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ He persisted in his wrestling, even when it had cost him a heavy physical blow. And he is rewarded in his wrestling with a blessing. It’s not a blessing you would expect or perhaps might hope for in this situation. It’s not wealth or prosperity or happiness, or healing for his hip. Jacob is blessed with a new name, Israel. The man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ A new name seems like a weird blessing and seems a bit rubbish, but a new name for Jacob marks a new direction and calling for his life. 

Israel means God preservers, or he who contends or wrestles with God. Jacob, now Israel, has a new life formed around his relationship with God. It is not necessarily always the easiest relationship for Israel, but God is in it and leads Israel and his descendants to greater things. Israel is led safely to Esau and to his great future, though he bore a scar of his wrestling at his hip. Israel still walked away with his blessing with a limp. 

As I think of Jacob wrestling with the man, I am conscious that we never find out his name. Jacob asked him his name, and instead of telling Jacob his name, he proceeds to bless Jacob. And so often, there are times when we don’t know the name of our enemy or saviour? We don’t know who or what we are wrestling with, nor who blesses us and how. Jacob is never given a name as to whom he has been wrestling with, however, he is moved to say, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ Peniel, which comes from the words penēy, which means face or face of, and el, which means God. He has seen God in his wrestling, he has come before God and met with him. Whether it was God in some form, or an angel, or some other person whom God sent to wrestle with Jacob – that doesn’t really matter. The important thing is recognising that God had met with Jacob in his wrestling in some form. And meeting with God is always a good thing. 

The last sentence of our passage says ‘The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.’ The sun, a marker that signifies that the night of wrestling is over, comes as Jacob has passed Penuel, the place where he encountered God. Jacob has seen his night of wrestling has come to an end with encounter with God.

And after meeting with God, Jacob was changed. That’s what happens when you meet God and come before him; you leaved changed. Jacob was a new man as Israel, with a new life and calling. Israel says I saw the face of God and yet my life was preserved. In this he knew that he wasn’t worthy or able as a human to encounter the majesty of God. It would be too much for him to handle. And in some sense, it was too much for Jacob, and he was reborn by God as Israel. The wrestling, with God present with us, though hard and costly, can lead us to a new birth and new life. That is what happens when we come face to face with God, when we encounter God in our wrestling. 

In your own wrestling, you may find God there with you. Wrestling and hardship are never easy, but God leads us through them to his blessing. Like the widow persisted with the judge, and Jacob persisted in wrestling with the man, we will find God in our persistent wrestling. God preserves and wrestles with us. 

I encourage you to persist in your wrestling. It is tough, there are no two ways about it. Losing someone is hard and that loss will always stay with us. Illness is hard. Going to endless hospital appointments and treatments can take the life out of us, rather than restore it. Scrapping together what money you have but still left to choose between eating and heating. It is tough, and the wrestling is hard. But God comes to us in the wrestling. When we persist, we find that God is there with us, often with his blessings. We meet with God and encounter with him, we are transformed and changed. We are blessed. We still might carry scars and wounds from the wrestling – that is just what happens in a fight. To become Israel is hard, and the life ahead for Israel as a person and a nation was hard. But it was a life wrestling and persevering with God. And a life with God is the greatest blessing, even if we come away with a limp.

So do not lose heart because God is with us in our wrestling, leading us through it to unexpected blessing. It usually isn’t easy and often costs us like Jacob. But we trust in God our good God and judge who is quick to help us and bless us and takes us forward in our lives in good ways, in transformed ways, in ‘God with us’ ways. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.