Pressure Points:Wrestling in the Dark: Hope That Leaves a Limp
by Jesse Wilson
Video audio
[Elizabeth clip…]
Church in midst of series on pressure points. Exploring how we hear God, see God, receive from God, respond to God when we’re under pressure, when things seem to be falling apart, when stresses of all sorts are piling up and threatening to crush us. When the grip of fear tightens. When the immensity presses in. When there is no land on the horizon. When sickness is all around.
Today we’re going to talk about hope. “Pure, naked, fragile hope.” Hope you can embrace, receive, be animated by, hold on to. Hope that lights up a dark night, hope that answers long suffering longing, hope that brings healing to deep hurts, hope that conquers death itself and carries in the resurrection body of Jesus the promise of new creation and the restoration of all things. Capital H Hope.
Genesis 32 is our text today (32:23…), the story of a man wrestling in the dark. Because for us, so often, that is when and where and how hope is born in our lives. When we're wrestling in the dark.
The main character of this story is a man named Jacob. The man who will become known by the name Israel. The younger brother of Esau. The son of Isaac, the grandson of Abraham. The father of the famous Joseph, he of the amazing technicolor dreamcoat fame, and the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Jacob, when we meet him in this particular story, has much to fear from his older brother, Esau. Twin brothers, Jacob and Esau had been at it from the get go. As Esau was being born, Jacob grabbed the heel of Esau's foot from inside of the womb and followed him out into the world. Less skilled at hunting and with softer hands, Jacob used his wits and cunning to take everything that rightfully belonged to his older brother Esau. He took his inheritance. He tricked their father into blessing him instead of his brother, to whom the blessing was meant to be given. Causing a little friction between them, to say the least.
Years have passed, while Jacob has gone away from home to win his wives and make his fortune. Esau is strong and has a large army and much wealth. Jacob has done well for himself, but is no competition for Esau. And Jacob is a day away from coming face to face with Esau for the first time since they were boys.
It isn't looking good for Jacob. Jacob's scouts report a raiding party rushing across the plains toward him, led by Esau, who has sworn Jacob's death. Jacob's sins have come to visit vengeance on him, as it were [we can identify, can’t we…?] Greatly afraid, and distressed, Jacob takes all that he has accumulated - possessions, wives, children, servants and slaves, sheep and cattle - and sends them on ahead of himself, into the unknown, praying that all he has is enough to pacify the one he fears. […like an ancient bailout package, fingers crossed…] So we catch up with Jacob, there at the bank of Jabbok river, near the border of the promised land of Canaan, all alone.
If anyone is at the end of his hope, it's Jacob.
Indeed, the hopes of the whole world hinge on Jacob's slim hope at this point in history. Because God has stepped into human history at a point when everything was spinning out of control, on every front, and made a promise to Jacob's grandfather. A promise that God will bless him and his children and his children's children, and that the wind will be at their backs as they join God in bringing that blessing to the whole world. And that blessing passed on from Abraham to Isaac. And it has been passed, in that blessing that Jacob stole from Esau, from Isaac to Jacob. And if it all ends badly, then it all… ends… badly. And in fact it looks like it will all come to a bloody end as Esau gains his revenge tomorrow. […If humanity could put her mood in Shakespearean voice, she might echo Macbeth’s words upon hearing of his wife’s death: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...signifying nothing.]
Let’s enter the scene of the Genesis text, joining Jacob there at the bank of the Jabbok, under the thick blanket of night, surrounded by the sounds of gurgling water and night insects.
And he rose on that night and took his two wives and his two slavegirls and his eleven boys and he crossed over the Jabbok ford. And he took them and brought them across the stream, and he brought across all that he had. And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.
Here unfolds one of the most mysterious stories in the whole of the Hebrew scriptures. Violent, intimate, exhausting, terrifying battle with an unknown figure, the equal of Jacob in every way. Hand to hand combat that stretches on for hours, silent but for labored breaths and soul shuddering groans.
And he [the other] saw that he had not won out against him [Jacob] and he [the other] touched his[Jacob’s] hip-socket and Jacob's hip-socket was wrenched as he wrestled with him. And he [the other] said, "Let me go, for dawn is breaking."
At twilight, as suddenly as it began, the contest is ended. With a simple touch that wrenches Jacob's hip…. [a dirty trick..? A sign of easy victory…? ]
And with that touch, the wrestling gives way to words. A conversation serious and playful at the same time.
A request.
"Let me go, for dawn is breaking." [leaving Jacob with dignity intact, in spite of his defeat…]
Terms offered.
And he [Jacob] said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
A question.
And he [the other] said to him, "What is your name?"
An answer.
And he [Jacob] said, "Jacob." [an admission, almost, owning up to his name]
A Naming.
And he said, "Not Jacob shall your name hence be said, but Israel, for you have striven with God and men, and won out."
All that he had been, and done, that his name spoke truly of, but that was tinged with shame, with shadow, is now transformed and given new and deeper meaning, a name that will be shared, in the end, by all of God’s redeemed people.
Another request.
And Jacob asked and said, "Tell me your name, pray."
And he [the other] said, "Why should you ask my name?"
A question that gives no answer and every answer at the same time.
...and there he blessed him.
A blessing, finally.
And Jacob called the name of that place Peniel, meaning, "I have seen God face to face and I came out alive."
Isn’t that the point of every dark night? Maybe only in the darkness can our vision be searching enough, our pupils dilated enough, to see God face to face. And isn’t it always out of the darkness that new life emerges, that we come out alive with a new kind of life? Out of the darkness of the soil. The darkness of the womb. The darkness of the tomb.
And the sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel and he was limping on his hip.
Do you see it? Hope has come. As brilliantly, beautifully, the sun rises for Jacob, for this man alone, for brothers in conflict, for Israel, for all humanity. Hope has come. As Jacob limps away humbled but hope-touched, silhouetted against the conflagration of dawn. Hope has come.
Between the darkness and first light, hope. God's breath hovering over the welter and the waste, hope. Between the dusk and the dawn, a naked struggle gives way to hope.
Striving and hard bargains and deceit and manipulations and grueling labor behind. An undeserved but still promised land ahead.
Where does hope hover, alight, insist? There, in the night. By the river. Unexpected. Mysterious. Just when you wanted to be alone. Close enough to smell its breath, feel its sweat. Unconquerable. But not forcing you to surrender, either. Listening to your demands. Yielding to some, yet unwilling to be mastered. Changing everything about who you've been, who you are, who you will be. And don't forget blessing, oh sweet blessing. Leaving you with hard won hope. Hope that leaves a limp, that's with you every step of the way.
What will leave a mark on us? Will it be these present troubles? Or will it be the one with whom we wrestle in this present darkness?
This is the kind of hope we need, isn't it? Hope that comes from wrestling in the night. That won't leave us, because it changes the way we walk.
Wonderful things have happened in many of our lives, and they give us hope, to be sure.... But sometimes those very things can become the source of fears…. Will we lose them? Will they last? Will they be enough?
But the hope that comes after wrestling in the night is different. Hope that comes when you're grieving the loss of a loved one. Hope that comes when your world has crashed down around you. Hope that comes when you haven't got anything left to lose, it seems. [story of Micah]
Fear can't touch that kind of hope. Every day is gift. Every good thing is gift. Every joy is gift. Every gift is to become blessing for others, for the world. It is given to be given away. That's hope that lasts, and lasts, and lasts until hope becomes irrelevant because all our hopes are realized. That’s the kind of hope that Jacob carries in his bones. That’s the kind of hope the Lord wants to deposit in ours.
[briefly recap rest of Jacob's story with Esau, concluding with Jacob's statement: "Pray, take my blessing that has been brought you, for God has favored me and I have everything."]
What stands between you and your fears? Money? People? Stuff? Your strength? Does it seem to be coming up short? Perhaps the Spirit is inviting you to send them across the river, count them as lost, and allow the encounter, the wrestling to begin.
May you make yourself vulnerable to his approach. And may he meet you as you are, and join you in your dark night, in your fear, replacing your fear, up close and personal, body to body, soul to soul, no distance between you. And may the one who brings the dawn to every dark night, bring your contest to its conclusion, perhaps as suddenly as it begins, on his terms, honoring the deepest longing of your heart, which he in fact placed there, leaving you alive (do you hear that, alive! really alive!), and with newfound hope.
What is the source of this kind of hope? And why does it come in this way? Why so often in this way?
The source is a God who loves so much, who is so committed to blessing, so committed to restoring his creation, to repairing it, to renewing it and us and including us in his work of restoration and repair and renewal, that the roundabout, mixed up, muddled way we've come into the blessing and into his love really isn't what matters to him. We are all that matters to him. He will not leave us alone (it’s not good for a man to be alone…).
Is this not a pre-cursor? The shadow coming ahead of the figure around the bend, of the other exactly as we are, but somehow more who is to come? Jesus, meeting us intimately, the love of God in flesh and blood, joining in our struggle. Jesus, so committed to blessing and all that he intends through it, that he will join us in the deathly dark of night. From the moment of his birth one not so silent night ‘til his death, when the sky goes dark.
And there will be mystery about him all along the way. And we will not want to let him go. But it will seem that he is the one who sustains the injury at our hands, not the other way around this time. Still, like Jacob, he will prevail, and be alive, and as the sun rises, we will see him walking, ahead of us into the promised land. We with our limp, and he with his scars. Hope blazing in the rising son, the dew of the night still on our feet but new light on our path. And perhaps we will remember there was a name posted above his head - king of the Jews - which was true enough. But when the wrestling is done, his real name is revealed, and truer still. King of Israel. Savior of the world.