Loading...When I was in high school, my best friend, Cheryl, and I would go to watch our brothers at their wrestling matches. Well, let’s be honest. We went to watch the other wrestlers. Our brothers were just excuses to be there.
I never really understood the motivation for these boys becoming men to get down onto the mat and grapple with one another. Their tight uniforms and head gear did not seem like much protection. The way they reached out and grabbed one another was so intimate. It looked like they used every ounce of their specific weight to overcome their opponent.
Wrestling in their weight class meant they either ate a lot or didn’t eat to meet the team’s needs. My brother Jeff was one who wrestled in the 98-to-104-pound range. I would watch throughout the week as he would strive to get to the necessary weight, often entering onto the mat weak and pale from hunger or thirst.
It was often a test of will more than of strength for these boys to contort their bodies, to lift and drop, to pin down their opponent, striving to outwit and out-maneuver them to win the match.
A very different sport to watch than the more common football, hockey, and basketball games. Wrestling was truly a one-on-one sport. The wrestler’s win or loss rested on themselves. The team counted on each of them to pull their own weight and acquire points, but it was the individual prowess of the boy that might have been one of the most important marks of their eventual manhood.
I don’t often think about the wrestling season any longer. It is a part of my past, and when I think about my motivation for attending the matches, it’s more of an embarrassment from my own adolescence. Yet when I think about our lesson from Genesis today, I have a greater grasp of what was happening on that patch of land—and I marvel at the stamina of Jacob to wrestle for so many hours and still remain strong.
So strong that it took a specific blow to his hip for the wrestling match to end. If it had happened on a high school mat, that wrestler may have been disqualified for the sneaky move, but since it was God, or an angel representing God, I guess that can be overlooked.
Many of us might look at this story and remember the sheer strength in the bodies of the people on the mat—not what we might have watched or still watch in WWF or other televised performances—but the image of the intimate struggle between two people to determine whose strength and will could outlast the other.
That physical representation of wrestling might also be something we can imagine when our mind and souls wrestle or struggle or ask questions of our faith, of our God.
I’ve mentioned before that the vestry and a few other people have been reading the book by The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers called Church Tomorrow? In it, Spellers interviews several people from the age of 18 to 44 about how they see their role in organized religion. Some identify as “NONE” – those who have no experience with a faith community; and others who identify as “DONE” – those who have left a faith community for any one of a number of reasons.
Many of these people have wrestled with what God and faith and community mean for them, and many have made personal decisions to look elsewhere for God in their lives.
I think that’s important to pay attention to, but I also think it is just a part of the stories of faith and commitment to God. I believe there are many, many people, me included who, like Jacob, wrestle with their Holy One, or some aspect of faith, or something about the institution of church.
Even here, at St. James’ there are some who have come because they felt like something in their faith was missing or was denied them in other places and spaces. They are deconstructing what they had been taught, finding that God is bigger and more inclusive than they may have learned or been told. They are redefining their relationship with the institution of the church, maybe even with God, to understand their own worthiness and value as children of a life-giving, forgiving, loving God.
Then, there are people like me, who continually wrestle—not to compete, not to win, but to dig deeper into how I understand God today, in the context in which I live now.
That has something to do with choices I’ve made, the paths I have walked, the journeys I’ve taken, and the ever-growing opportunities placed before me to see the abundance and beauty of God’s presence in the world. Some things I have experienced in the past but now am seeing in new ways. Some things that have been hidden are just now being revealed. Some things that biblical scholars and people who have different life experiences help me to observe and consider.
God places these people and opportunities in my path to help me wrestle with the divine in the world. I wonder how many of us here recognize this same invitation to struggle with an idea, a concept, a church law, a prayer, something in scripture, a sacrament to help us see a new truth or a renewed commitment to our God.
I wonder how many of us have been forced by an action we believe to have come from God to change something we have held so closely to better see what God has placed right in front of us.
Perhaps we do not walk with a limp, like Jacob did for the rest of his life. But can you think about something that has affected you so significantly you see God in a way you would never have considered? I know that for me, the study of scripture with others, of reading from a variety of translations, transliterations, and different voices has helped me find God more broadly or even more narrowly.
What I have come to know is that I can never be certain because there will always be a chance for me to be surprised.
Let me rephrase that—I can be certain of God’s presence with me -- and of me with God because it is through that relationship that I have the capability to be changed, to be re-formed, to recognize that God can and does take my personal wrestling to guide me towards a more complete understanding of what it means to live a faithful life. Putting it in St. James’ terms, it would be to more fully understand what it means to Love People. Serve People.
The story of Jacob’s wrestling with God in such a physical way is, to me, one of the most poignant stories of what it means to be in a trusting relationship with God. It is our permission to question, doubt, study, change, over and over again, to be in deeper communion with God and with one another.
As much as we need to wrestle with God to learn what we need in that moment, we also need to wrestle as a part of a team—not unlike what Cheryl’s and my brothers did in high school. Together we can learn and grow from one another, learn from different perspectives, understand how the life-experiences of others might change our own understanding of how to care for others and what that care might look like.
I appreciated in the bishop’s sermon last week when he talked about rock tumbling. How when rocks are put into a tumbler to be polished, the action of the tumbler causes the rocks to bump up against one another, smoothing rough edges, creating, sometimes, a hidden beauty or gem that could only be revealed through the experience of being tumbled and turned.
What a great description of wrestling with another—the bumping, touching, entwining, and jostling that might cause us to learn something about ourselves and about another. An opportunity to be touched and to touch one another figuratively, emotionally, and spiritually to better understand how God loves this world and how we are needed to express that love.
We might consider the story from today’s Gospel as an example of what it means to express that love. When the disciples recognize the lateness of the hour, they realize that the gathered people might be getting hungry, and they ask Jesus if it is time for them to leave and find nourishment.
But Jesus has other plans, even though he himself is in mourning after learning of the murder of John the Baptizer. Jesus tells the disciples to feed the people.
He takes the five loaves of bread and two fish and looks up at heaven to ask God to provide what is needed to feed the throng of people. The disciples begin to hand out bread and fish, and somehow, the food multiplies, feeding everyone present, with enough food left over.
We might wrestle with the idea that everyone ate from only those same five loaves and two fish. Or wonder if there were some people who were loving and compassionate, adding from their own supply of snacks and sandwiches they brought, ensuring that the person to their right or to their left would not go hungry.
If any one of them wrestled with whether they should share from their own supply, I suspect they witnessed the outpouring from others and opened their proverbial picnic baskets and passed food along.
God provided abundance for this mass of people. It may not have been the kind of miracle we were taught in Sunday School, but it was a miracle, nonetheless. When we love one another as God has loved us, we are more apt to share what we have to the benefit of the community where we are.
For some, that may require them to wrestle with the idea of letting go of something they value or need for their own sake, and they may find that it is in letting go that they find the most joy.
God welcomes our wrestling, our consternation, our inner battles and our questions that help us come to some sort of conclusion that ultimately means we are following God’s plan in our lives. When we open ourselves up to being changed in ways that express love for God and for others, we may sacrifice something that we thought we knew to become something beautiful and holy, as Jacob did when he lived his life for the rest of his life with a limp, all to live a life focused on loving and serving in the name of God.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, you invite us to wrestle with our faith throughout our lives, providing us opportunities to grow and be transformed into loving people who will serve people in your name. Help us, when we are afraid or doubtful, to see the needs around us, and to act with compassion, sharing from what we have and who we are, to ultimately show the depth of your love to the world. Amen.
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