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narrative lectionary

Reflections from Genesis 32… wrestling with God, being blessed in our woundedness, holding on until we receive what we need

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I see in it [Genesis 32] an invitation to wrestle with the unknown. — Victoria Emily Jones

Everything you want is on the other side of fear. — Unatrtibuted

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. — Marcus Aurelius

Every day, I turned a “you can’t” into a “you can.” — Rulon Gardner about wrestling

The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle. — Rumi

SONGS about WRESTLING with SELF, OTHERS, LOVE & GOD

by Marc Chagall

Wrestling — Louisa S. Bevington

Our oneness is the wrestlers’, fierce and close,
Thrusting and thrust;
One life in dual effort for one prize,—
We fight, and must;
For soul with soul does battle evermore
Till love be trust.
Our distance is love’s severance; sense divides,
Each is but each;
Never the very hidden spirit of thee
My life doth reach;
Twain! Since love athwart the gulf that needs
Kisses and speech.
Ah! wrestle closelier! we draw nearer so
Than any bliss
Can bring twain souls who would be whole and one,
Too near to kiss:
To be one thought, one voice before we die,—
Wrestle for this.
by Walter Habdank

Come, O thou Traveler unknown — Charles Wesley

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee;
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell Thee who I am,
My misery and sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name,
Look on Thy hands, and read it there;
But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou?
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.

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.

Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new, unutterable Name?
Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell;
To know it now resolved I am;
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

’Tis all in vain to hold Thy tongue
Or touch the hollow of my thigh;
Though every sinew be unstrung,
Out of my arms Thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling I will not let Thee go
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know.

What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then I am strong,
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail.

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath Thy weighty hand,
Faint to revive, and fall to rise;
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let Thee go
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if Thy Name is Love.

’Tis Love! ’tis Love! Thou diedst for me!
I hear Thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal love Thou art;
To me, to all, Thy bowels move;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see Thee face to face,
I see Thee face to face, and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

I know Thee, Savior, who Thou art.
Jesus, the feeble sinner’s friend;
Nor wilt Thou with the night depart.
But stay and love me to the end,
Thy mercies never shall remove;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

The Sun of righteousness on me
Hath rose with healing in His wings,
Withered my nature’s strength; from Thee
My soul its life and succor brings;
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On Thee alone for strength depend;
Nor have I power from Thee to move:
Thy nature, and Thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey,
Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

SUGGESTIONS for REFLECTING — Rev Lil Smith

  • Light a candle to remember Christ’s presence with you.
  • Sit five to fifteen minutes in silence bringing your attention to the Breath.
  • Like Jacob, we wrestle with God.
  • Notice how your body desires to wrestle with God today.
  • What words come to you in the struggle?
  • Which joint is out of socket for you?
  • Allow your attention to go to this disjointed place.
  • What does this disjointed place need to say?
  • How do you wish to respond and connect to the conversation with this disjointed place?
  • Invite God’s healing into this place.
  • What blessing do you receive?
  • What is your message from God?
  • Give thanks to God for this time in prayer and for any new insights you have received.
Greek Orthodox icon of Jabo wrestling with angel

COMMENTARY on WRESTLING

A lot of my intensity in wrestling was due to my mental preparation before the matches. I got myself into a different world. — Dan Gable

Victory goes to the wrestler who makes the next-to-last mistake. — Jackie Mason

Grappling with fate is like meeting an expert wrestler: to escape, you have to accept the fall when you are thrown. The only thing that counts is whether you get back up. — Deng Ming-Dao

No exercise brings into play all the muscles of the body in a more thorough manner, and none is more interesting than wrestling. He will find no other exercise more valuable in the cultivation of faculties that will help him to succeed in agility, strength, determination, coolness, and quick exercise of judgment. — Hugh Leonard

But it’s the wrestler who can put the fatigue out of his mind and break through the ‘wall’, like a marathon runner after 18 or 20 miles, who will survive. The key to that survival is in hard workouts that develop mental confidence to the point where you won’t submit to fatigue and pain descending upon you. — Lou Banach

Take a technical wrestler, get them tired, and they aren’t as technical. No matter what kind of wrestler get them tired, and they aren’t as technical. No matter what kind of wrestler, everyone is afraid of getting tired. It’s those who learn to perform when they’re tired that find success. — Jay Robinson

Wrestling is ballet with violence. — Jesse Ventura

Life is like a wrestling match: a lot of times, things are looking good, and then something happens, and you’re fighting from underneath. — Matt Hardy

by Chris Cook

COMMENTARY on WRESTLING with ANGEL/ GOD

Jacob called the place where he wrestled with God, Peniel — the face of God. He wrestled all night and survived.  God touched his hip and he was lame after this wrestling. He was also a changed man with a new name. God told him is name would no longer be Jacob which means deceiver or “man strives” but Israel or “God strives!” And whenever he limped, he remembered! — Grace Carol Bomer

Strange that there must be a shrinking of the sinew whenever we win the day. As if the Lord must teach us our littleness, our nothingness, in order to keep us within bounds. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Who would stick around to wrestle a dark angel all night long if there were any chance of escape? The only answer I can think of is this: someone in deep need of blessing; someone willing to limp forever for the blessing that follows the wound. — Barbara Brown Taylor

In the story of Jacob and the heavenly figure with whom he wrestles, we begin to see the elements of struggle and the unfolding, as well, of the gifts of the spirit that go with them. Jacob faces change, isolation, darkness, fear, powerlessness, vulnerability, exhaustion, and scarring. They are the price to be paid for becoming new. To struggle is to begin to see the world differently. It tests all the faith in the goodness of God that we have ever professed. It requires an audacity we did not know we had. It demands a commitment to the truth. It tests our purity of heart. It brings total metamorphosis of soul. If we are willing to persevere through the depths of struggle we can emerge with conversion, self-acceptance, endurance, faith, surrender, and a kind of personal growth that takes us beyond pain to understanding. What we see is the fullness of the self come to birth in the only way it really can: in labor and under trial. — Sr. Joan Chittister

Violence and intimacy.  The violence and intimacy of this wrestling match.  What did it sound like, how did it smell, the sweat of God and Jacob mingled in the dust?  Those who are willing to pursue God and his blessing with such force receive honor from me.  I don’t know what Jacob was thinking.  But I know I wish I had the guts to engage my God with such an intertwined closeness. — Jack Baumgartner

It seems as though I am in a struggle for at least a part of every day of my life; a wrestling match. I often feel like I’m wrestling with things like life, my health, poverty/justice issues, and most certainly, with God.
As a result, when I consider my life, I mainly think about the image in the book of Genesis of Jacob wrestling the angel. More than other stories in scripture, I resonate with this one the most…This is yet another one of those tensions in the Christian life.
Blessing and struggle.
Thanksgiving and complaining.
Comprehension and confusion.
Peace and frustration.
Joy and pain.
And because I recognize that God is in fact blessing me regularly, I also do my best to thank God even in the midst of complaining about the struggle. — Dion Oxford

This story is a profound mystery to me, but I love it because God made himself vulnerable for the sake of this man whom He loved.  — Jack Baumgartner

The Word calls us into a personal dialogue which, in many respects, is like Jacob’s wrestling with the angel (Genesis 32: 23-33). Only there, in that sort of personal involvement, do we come face-to-face with the mystery that is God. — Richard Rohr

… it happens at night when the world is dark and mysterious and the human mind is not controlled by the boundaries that usually constrain our imaginations. It is a far less peaceful encounter than the one at Bethel. It is basically a fight – some kind of spiritual wrestling match.
… It was a wounding fight and left Jacob with a limp; his inability to walk properly being a reminder of this encounter with the divine. But it was Jacob who was the better wrestler and it is the angelic visitor who asks to be released. But the tough old patriarch would not let the angel go just like that and asked for blessing.
It turns out that Jacob’s blessing was to have his name changed, a name change that recognized precisely his power and persistence as a fighter. Jacob responds to the experience as he did at Bethel by renaming the place. He called it ‘Peniel’. The final line perhaps reads as something of an anti-climax. Jacob says, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ To summarise such a nocturnal scrap as seeing someone ‘face to face’ is to understate the physicality, intimacy and vulnerability of the encounter…
But the ancient scriptures are not polite or inwardly spiritual so much as raw and rough and basic and exploratory. Reading them we should be prompted to think that some of our more difficult, sustained and damaging life-struggles were in fact struggles with angels and that our encounters with God are evident not in the way we run, skip, jump or dance, but in the way we limp towards the future, wounded and yet strangely blessed by our encounters with God. — Stephen Cherry

You do not hear much about God causing the chaos [in life], or even having a role in it. On the contrary, it is God’s job to make it stop. God is supposed to restore the status quo and help everyone feel comfortable again. Isn’t that how you know when God is present? When the danger has been avoided? When your heart stops pounding and you can breathe normal again? …It is an appealing idea, but unfortunately the Bible does not back it up. In that richly troubling book, much of God’s best work takes place in total chaos, with people scared half out of their wits: Elijah, trembling under his broom tree, pleading with God to take his life; Mary, listening to an angel’s ambitious plans for plunging her into scandal; Paul, lying flat on his belly on the Damascus road with all his lights put out. …No one in his or her right mind asks to be attacked, frightened, wounded. And yet that is how it comes, sometimes, the presence and blessing of God — Barbara Brown Taylor

Likewise, our sages ell us that Jacob’s wrestling match represented an inner struggle with his own identity. He wrestled with self-doubt and conflicting traits within himself. Was he ready and able to assume his role … We also wrestle with spiritual doubts and conflicts…
The Zohar teaches that the struggle with the angel would come to express Jacob’s … ongoing struggle between self and G‑d, between one’s ego and spirit. It symbolizes the victorious struggle to sublimate our will to that of our Creator’s will.
Contending with G‑d and man often initiates a personal search. Every great quest starts with a great question. What is G‑d, and what is G‑d not? It continues with refining and redefining one’s perception. Just as you’ve outgrown your childhood clothing, so, too, has your mind expanded its capacity for understanding. With greater maturity it becomes necessary to re-examine beliefs that have not been developed or clarified…
To reach or to exceed his personal and spiritual potentia … needs answers to fundamental questions. Why am I here and what is my purpose? How do I achieve it? What makes me different?…
Our sages teach us that G‑d communicates to us directly through our daily challenges. Life’s tests can help to refine our ability to actualize our inner potential. Adversity can be viewed as the vehicle through which we come to expand ourselves and, thereby, overcome our self-perceived limitations. The tough times can ultimately come to reveal our inner greatness. They serve to elevate us beyond what we thought we were capable of being. Conversely, we are equally tested through times of happiness and success. When things are going well, do we recognize the source of our abundance, or do we arrogantly attribute our good fortunes solely to our own efforts and skill?
Life’s tests are multidimensional; they elevate us and can heighten our vantage point to access the latent inner resources we all possess. The best criteria for evaluating an epiphany, however, are its long term effects. How much of the initial impact endures? Does it help you develop yourself to become more than you were?
Thus, “seeing G‑d face to face” is also a metaphor that illustrates how G‑d’s presence is revealed throughout life’s details… — Katia Bolotin

by Jack Baumgartner

COMMENTARY on STRUGGLE

Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion? — Rumi

Life is one long struggle in the dark. — Lucretius

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. — Napoleon HillThe most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. — Frederick Douglass

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. — Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. — Orison Swett Marden

You don’t fight your anger, because your anger is you. Your anger is the wounded child in you. Why should you fight your anger? The method is entirely nonviolent: awareness, mindfulness, and tenderly holding your anger within you. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Where there is no struggle, there is no strength. — Oprah Winfrey

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation. — Coretta Scott King

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle. —  Malcolm Gladwell

People are at their best when they are challenged. If we don’t challenge ourselves, nature has a way of giving us challenges anyway. There is great value in our struggles, and human nature has shown us that we only value the things we struggle to achieve. — Thomas Frey

by Sefira Lightstone

LEFT ME with a LIMP — Rachel Held Evans (full posting about the Bible: https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/i-love-the-bible)

It is said that after Jacob wrestled with God, he walked with a limp… So it has been with the Bible and me. I have wrestled with the Bible, and it has left me with a limp… Those of us who have wrestled know we can be wrong. … I have finally surrendered to God’s stories.
God’s long, strange, beautiful stories.
We asked questions.
God told stories.
We demanded answers.
God told stories.
We argued theology.
God told stories.
And when those stories weren’t enough, when the words themselves would not suffice, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, laughed among us, wept among us, ate among us, told more stories among us, suffered among us, died among us, and rose among us. The Word entered our story and invited us into His. The Word became flesh and said, “Watch me. Follow me.  See how I do it. This is what I desire.”
And the Word loved—
Loved the poor,
Loved the rich,
Loved the sick,
Loved the hungry,
Loved the zealots,
Loved the tax-collectors,
Loved the lepers,
Loved the soldiers,
Loved the foreigners,
Loved the insiders,
Loved the slaves,
Loved the women,
Loved the untouchables,
Loved the religious,
Loved the favored,
Loved the forgotten.
Loved even the enemy.
When words were not enough, the Word took on flesh and became the story.
I love the Bible, but I love it best when I love it for what it is, not what I want it to be…when I live in the tension and walk with the limp—
The limp that slows me down,
The limp that delights my critics,
The limp I wouldn’t change for the world,
The limp that led me to God.

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