Wrasslin' God Genesis 32:22-31, Luke 18:1-8

Professional Wrestling is a major entertainment industry featuring larger-than-life
characters like “Stone Cold Steve” Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker
and over-the-top story lines with clearly defined bad guys fans love to hate
and good guys who, though temporarily down are never out
and who always manage to come through in the end
with a gut-wrenching airplane spin and thunderous body slam.

Championship wrestling, as it used to be called,
came on at 5 p.m. Saturday afternoons when I was growing up
but it was considered by my mother to be in a class with The Three Stooges -
inappropriate viewing for impressionable boys.
That didn’t stop my older brother John
from trying out his “airplane spin” technique on me on a regular basis.

These days, professional wrestlers are national, if not global, stars
The current crop of bad guys certainly act nasty and brutish
but they don’t seem quite as fierce as the guys I used to see
(when my mother wasn’t around), guys like the Great Bolo who wore a mask
or Haystack Calhoun who weighed in at 600 lbs and wrestled in overalls.
The good guys are still partial to cowboy hats
and tend to be free of facial hair but they don’t seem quite as heroic.
Still, on the rare occasion they forget the cameras,
you can still sometimes see
a good, old fashioned ear bitin’, eye gougin’, arm twistin’ wrasslin’ match.

In our story this morning from the book of Genesis
we have one of these ear-bitin’, eye gougin’, arm-twistin’ wrasslin’ matches
but unlike TV, it’s not at all clear who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy.

In one corner we have Jacob, the younger twin to Isaac and Rebekah
who’s life has been, in many ways, one long wrasslin’ match
from the moment he left Rebekah’s womb holding tight to his brother Esau’s heel.
At his mother’s urging Jacob buffaloed his old blind father
into blessing HIM instead of Esau.
He stole his brother’s blessing and then took off
putting as much distance as possible between himself and his family.

After running away from home, Jacob ends up near his Uncle Laban
and takes a shine to his cousin Rachel.
But Laban tricks Jacob into not only first marrying Rachel’s older, sturdier sister Leah,
but also into putting in fourteen years hard labor for the right to marry Rachel.
In the time he’s with Laban, Jacob amasses large herds and servants of his own,
and finally he and his troops sneak away from Laban’s house
while Laban is out of town. But no sooner has he gotten free of Laban
than he hears Esau - his hapless, no-doubt-still-angry brother Esau -
is just around the bend with an army of 400 men.

In fear, Jacob takes steps, both to appease Esau AND minimize his losses.
He sends everyone away, recognizing that his moment of truth is at hand,
that his tricks, his double dealing, his ethical lapses have returned to haunt him.
That’s how he comes to be standing on the bank of the Jabbok, at night, alone.
Jacob seems like the sure candidate to be the bad guy in this match
except for the fact that all along the way, inexplicably, God has blessed him.
God has blessed him and protected him and seems to have big plans for him.
In the other corner of the ring is a mysterious, anonymous man.
Artists often depict this man as having angel wings
though the text says only that “a man wrestled with Jacob until daybreak.”

A psychological rendering of this story
would say that the anonymous grappler represents people from Jacob’s past:
Isaac – the father scorned, Esau – the brother betrayed,
Laban – the wily adversary,
and, in the end, Jacob himself – THE self -
the one unavoidable opponent with whom each of us must wrestle
throughout our lives.
The way the mysterious man seems to panic as the sun is coming up
makes him look like a vampire or something.
Maybe HE’S the bad guy in this fight,
the one who blindsides Jacob with a cheap shot to the hip
even as Jacob is in the process of letting him go.

But let’s face it. This isn’t professional wrestling.
We can’t rename the story “Smackdown at Jabbok Creek!” and expect it to sell.
It would go nowhere on Pay-Per-View TV
because it’s too ambiguous, the plot is too complex.
Is Jacob good or bad? Is the mysterious man an angel sent by God
or is he some rogue spirit working free lance?
It’s hard to tell.

I’m afraid Jacob’s wrasslin’ match wouldn’t play well on TV because TV is fake.
We like fake. We pay money for fake.
Even so-called reality shows are mostly fake.
Too much reality makes us nervous.

Jacob’s wrestling match is real.
It may not be real in the empirical, factual, “this ACTUALLY happened” kind of real
but as a metaphor for life, for how things happen, it’s as real as it gets.

There are plenty of places you can hear the message
that being a Christian means never having to wrestle again.
Let me qualify that.
There are plenty of places you can hear the message
that being a GOOD Christian
being a hard working, straight living, Bible-believing, nattily dressed Christian
means you never have to wrestle again.
If you follow the Seven Steps to Sanctification
or figure out how to be purely Purpose-Driven
then YOU get to play the “GOOD GUY” role,
be the one people look up to, the one who never makes mistakes.
You get to be the one who labels the OTHER guy bad;
the one who sits in judgment, confident that God is on your side.

The problem is that’s a Television kind of message
which means it’s a fake message.
It’s appealing on the surface.
It plays into my fantasy that if I can just pull myself up over the next ledge
I’ll find that the path levels out.
It squares with my self-delusion that one day I’ll wake up
and discover that I’m NOT my own worst enemy.
But it’s ultimately not true.
It’s a deception perpetrated by those who have books to sell
and auditoriums to fill.

The Christian life is no less a wrestling match than life in general – maybe more so -
because Jesus has a way of leading us BACK INTO the ring, time and time again.
FOR ONE THING, when we follow Jesus,
you and I can’t rest on some made up distinction between good guys and bad guys.
The Bible won’t let us. The saga of God’s covenant people is full of anti-heroes,
great leaders with terrible flaws – like Jacob, David, Peter, Paul.
Jesus himself said, “No one is good but God alone,”
There are no short cuts, no Cliff notes. No broad stereotypes that are ALWAYS true.
Daily Jesus calls us to follow him into murky water with only faith to guide us
and we do our best, knowing full well our best will be inadequate.
Still, we wrestle, we engage in the struggle
because we also know full well that God’s power is sufficient.

FOR ANOTHER THING, when we follow Jesus we not only DO NOT have the luxury
of dividing the world into good guys and bad guys,
but we also must take on the burden of looking at the world differently.
If we are faithful, WE must pay attention to things OTHERS would rather ignore.
Not because WE are good, but because GOD is good…AND just,
we who are Christian can’t help but enter the fray when we find INJUSTICE.

Jesus told the parable of the persistent widow
who wouldn’t quit badgering the corrupt old judge
until finally the judge gave in just to get her off his back.
What makes this such a powerful story is that in Jesus’ culture
widows had only slightly more power than lepers.
His audience would have been flabbergasted to hear a story about a widow
going nose to nose, toe to toe with a judge.

And yet, Jesus calls us to wrestle with injustice - not only to get what WE NEED,
but because ANY injustice for ANYONE is a tear in the fabric of God’s creation,
it is a nest of termites in a wooden support beam
that threatens to bring the whole house down,
not on just the unfortunate few but on everyone.

One of the brilliant insights that fueled the Civil Rights movement
and kept bringing Martin Luther King back into the ring
each time it appeared he had suffered his final body slam,
was the conviction that as much as black America needed to be set free
from the putrefying effects of racism
white America needed it just as much or even more.
King wasn’t fighting just so black folks could get a seat at a lunch counter vacated by whites
He was, as a Christian man, willing to wrestle both the bigoted white sheriff
AND the violent impulses of some of his own people
so that lunch counters and breakfast nooks and great dining halls everywhere
would all more closely resemble God’s banquet table
where all God’s children have a place.

Jacob wrestled God on the bank of the Jabbok River.
As a result he received both a limp and a new name.
The limp reminded him that no one struggles with God and remains unchanged.
The new name, “Israel,” reminded him that to be in covenant with God
means that we will ALWAYS be engaged in struggle,
and, consequently, we will always be changing, growing in faith.

We have the privilege of worshipping this morning surrounded by incredible beauty.
It’s easy in this beautiful place to be isolated, INSULATED from struggle.
You and I have to resist the temptation to disengage;
to sit back, wipe our brow, and think “Boy, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that.”

Sure, Jacob mostly went back to being Jacob
after he crossed the river the next morning and found Esau
ready to let bygones be bygones.
But he always had that limp to remind him of that night of struggle.
The widow in Jesus story – she got tired of being the gadfly, the nuisance,
but she wasn’t about to let injustice stand.

What about us?
Can we commit ourselves to stay engaged?
not because we’re the “Good Guys,”
but because God DOES honor the struggle,
because God WILL grant justice to those who cry to him day and night.
Against that promise, not even Haystack Calhoun can prevail.