The Leek and Meerbrook Team Ministry

Sermons

Two falls & a submission

Matthew Parker 7th August 2008

Picture the scene if you can. I sit in front of a black and white TV set at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon anticipating the football results, Brucie and Anthea Redfern and spaghetti hoops for tea. It’s dark outside already and I am watching World of Sport, ITV’s answer to the BBC’s sports programme, Grandstand. Dickie Davies presents from under his carefully coiffured hair-do and Burt Reynold’s moustache and at 4pm on a Saturday he announces from Wolverhampton Civic Hall one of the great sporting phenomena of the 1970s – all-in wrestling. Beefy men like Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, Kendo Nagasaki, Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy, wrestle one another to the ground in half nelsons, grunting and sweating like the hippos they largely resemble. It was all horribly fascinating and whilst it was generally agreed that it was faked, wrestling was tremendously popular with children and, strangely enough, with elderly ladies too; the latter often seen at the ringside waving their handbags and baying for blood. "Greetings, grapple fans," said commentator Kent Walton as Dickie Davies handed us over to Brent Town Hall for another bout of grappling.

Grappling is what I want to think about today. All in wrestling might not be the image you most easily associate with a relationship with God, but bear with me as we look at two falls and a submission in one the strangest but most evocative stories in the OT. We heard it as our first reading from Genesis.

Jacob (son of Isaac and who, in time, will be father of Joseph and his eleven brothers) is in mortal fear of his brother Esau whom he has tricked and cheated out of his birthright. It looks like a fight is looming and Jacob doesn’t think he’s going to win. But it is not Esau he will end up fighting. His wrestling partner will be someone very different. Jacob comes to the ford for the brook at Jabbok and he sends his family and servants across be he remains behind, alone. Then shockingly, he assaulted by a "a man" who seems to appear from nowhere. Jacob and the man wrestle all night. This is no faked histrionics, this is serious grappling. Who is the stranger who attacks Jacob by the brook at Jabbok? The answer is not completely clear. This is a story obscured by the darkness of night or the uncertain half-light of dawn. Jacob demands the man’s name but the man refuses to give it. He remains a stranger at the Jabbok ford and yet in this curious encounter, Jacob feels that he has somehow met God.

……. I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared

And the man with whom he wrestles also suggests that this is a divine encounter too.

you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome

So Jacob wrestles with God and he acquits himself pretty well, he goes quite a few rounds and the contest is close to a draw. Indeed the stranger cries, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." He’s had enough wrestling with Jacob but Jacob won’t let go of God now he’s got him and he demands a blessing from his attacker.

Now I don’t know what Dickie Davies would make of this particular wrestling match. It is a story both primitive and sophisticated. It is story about beginnings because Jacob is given a new name – Israel, more of which in a moment. But it is also a story that might shed a different perspective on our own relationship with God. I want to commend to you grappling with God.

Jacob’s encounter with God is not a exquisite little religious moment. He doesn’t hear lovely soft music and come all over with a nice warm spiritual glow. There is grunting and sweating, grappling and brawling going on here and Jacob is determined to get to the bottom of it all. He will not let God go until it he gets what he wants. Now this may not seem to be quite the thing. Surely, our relationship with God should be at the very least and because we are English, polite. Who are we to wrestle with God? After all, he is God and we are mere human beings. Won’t he be, well, cross?

But sometimes that’s what faith is like. The answers don’t come easily. We want to believe, we want to be blessed in our lives but it’s hard to make sense of it all. So we can abandon the effort or we can get into the ring and do some serious grappling. God’s big enough to deal with our doubts, questions, anger and confusion. What do we think God wants of us: that we should be polite or honest? This grappling you can find throughout the Bible. "Why do the wicked prosper?" Jeremiah asks God. In the Psalms comes the cry: "Why have you rejected us for ever?" and on the cross Jesus says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why, why, why? This not polite talk but deep grappling with faith and the world and where God might be in it. So you and I don’t need to hold back on the tough questions and the deep searching. We need to hang in there with God and not let him go until he blesses us. The experience may well be bit bruising and tough but at the end of it Jacob gets three things.

He gets a new name – he is no longer Jacob, the tricky character. Instead he is Israel the carrier of God’s good news for his people for the future. When we encounter God we are given a new name, we are transformed, changed because we have seen God and struggled with him and won through and we too become people with good news to tell.

Jacob gets a name and he gets a blessing. Every encounter with God leads to a blessing. If we persevere with the grappling, the questioning, the wondering, we will be blessed and that is the best thing of all – to be blessed by God, to prevail and discover his love and grace.

Jacob gets a name and a blessing but he also gets a limp. This is the strangest part of the story but it may be the most important detail of all. Jacob’s hip is put out of it’s socket and he limps after the encounter. Being the one who carries the good news carries a cost too. Being a follower of Jesus Christ is costly too. Jesus offers his disciples life and life in all its fullness but he also offer them a cross that they must bear. Baptism begins a journey of great joy but it is all a journey of great challenge.

So Jacob got what something he wanted – a blessing, something he didn’t expect – a new name and something he doubt would rather not have had – a limp, that marked him as touched by God. In this baptism we will pray for God’s blessing on Minette, it will not be a new name we give but it will be her Christian name and she will be marked too – not you’ll be glad to hear by virtue of an all-in wrestling match but with the mark of the cross because in Jesus, God has put his mark upon us.

And my prayer for Minette and for us is this: that there will be in our Christian journey a serious grappling with faith. Don’t give up until you have found him and won him and been blessed by him. Charles Wesley wrote a beautiful but little sung hymn about Jacob’s wrestling match with God. One verse goes like this:

In vain thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold!
Art thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know.