Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. And let us pray.
O Lord, send forth your word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Now, I find the historical narrative of God wrestling with Jacob to be one of the more fascinating stories in the entire Bible.
Luther compared it to the event of a father teasing his son. Luther writes, God plays with Jacob, doesn’t sound like playing in the text. Luther says, God plays with Jacob to discipline him, to strengthen his faith just like a godly parent takes from his son an apple with which the boy was delighted.
Not that the boy should flee from the father or turn away from him, but rather that he should be incited to embrace his father all the more, and to beg him, saying, Father, give me back what you have taken away. Then the father is delighted with the test, and the son, when he recovers the apple, loves his father all the more ardently on seeing such love and such child’s play gives pleasure to his father. So according to Luther, then, the example of Jacob demonstrates to us that God is at times accustomed to play with his saints.
And as far as God himself is concerned, it’s quite childish playing. But to us whom he tempts in this way, it appears far different. Really, Luther? Far different? To us whom are afflicted and tempted and tried in this way, it appears far different? Of course it does.
No toddler likes it when you hold the sippy cup or the stuffed animal just out of their reach, taunting them just a little bit. It makes them feel frustrated. It makes them feel helpless.
They scream at you. They cry to get it back because there’s nothing else they can do. They are helpless.
And whether you’re two or 52, helplessness is one of the worst feelings. Just like a child doesn’t like to feel helpless by hands of an older, a taller, a stronger brother or sister, we Christians don’t like to feel helpless. Not in our lives, not before our God.
And so we want something. We want anything to give us a bit of control. We try to take credit for the strength of our own faith.
We try to take credit for the genuineness of our repentance, for the intensity of our praise. We’ll try anything not to feel helpless. But we are helpless.
So Luther draws a jarring parallel, comparing God assaulting Jacob in the middle of the night to God assaulting us, his children, with the various trials and afflictions in our lives. Language like this feels out of place among many Christians today. It’s a thought that makes us uncomfortable.
We so naturally jump to the assumption that anytime something is difficult in my life, it must automatically be coming from the work of the devil. We scarcely even give it a moment’s thought. Our instinct is to blame God whenever we’re uncomfortable, as if he’s being negligent, as if the only way a God should ever act is by making us healthy and wealthy and generally comfortable, prospering us in whatever life choices we’ve already made for ourselves.
And then when things don’t go the way that we think they should, well then, like a toddler, we threaten to turn our back on him, tempted to issue the ultimatum that if God doesn’t start to answer my prayers when and how I want him to, well God, then I’m going to be done with you. Tempted to try to incite a response from God through threats, through manipulation. Luther says God’s wrestling with Jacob gives us a different way to look at it.
Rather than growing weary or angry with God in the face of hardship, or when you think he’s taking too long to answer, conquer him. Rather than giving up on him when times are tough, beat him at his own game, for nothing gives God more delight than to be conquered by his children. Yes, there are times in our lives where we feel helpless before God, but that’s not failure on God’s part, as if he’s just arbitrarily toying with us like some capricious bully.
We feel helpless before God because we are helpless before God. We are dead in our trespasses and sins, and sometimes because we’re so blind to that reality by ourselves, he needs to make it abundantly clear to us. He doesn’t want us to throw in the towel, he wants us to fight back, he wants us to wrestle with him, for we are his Israel.
After the night of wrestling, God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, which literally means wrestles with God. And not only Jacob that one night, but generations of his descendants would be called Israel, those who wrestle with God. We are Israel today, those who continue to wrestle with God.
But we don’t wrestle by means of physical strength, we wrestle by means of a relentless faith, a trust that never gives up. That’s the widow in today’s gospel reading. Jesus emphasizes in the parable that God actually wants to be conquered by the faith of his people.
That’s why he named them Israel, the people who wrestle with God. Jesus told this parable, and we’re told explicitly, he told this parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. And then he tells a parable about a woman who pestered the judge into fulfilling his vocation and giving her justice.
She wrestled with him until he relented, and he was an unrighteous judge. How much more will God, your heavenly father, who unlike the unrighteous judge actually delights in you coming to him, how much more will he respond to you when you cry out? We are called to be Israel today, called to struggle with and to wrestle with God, called to cling to him and to not let him go until he blesses us like Jacob did that night so long ago. But we don’t wrestle with God as if we could ever bend him to our will, as if we could ever conquer him in such a way that he becomes subject to our whims.
Rather, whatever opposes us, Luther says, is conquered when we simply turn it over to him in prayer. He might not respond as quickly as we would like, but like the judge in today’s parable, he will ultimately respond. He will ultimately meet our needs.
And so Luther described this time of waiting to God’s response as a time of wrestling, clinging to our Lord in faith until he answers our prayer. He even described it as a time of exercise. He wrote about the comfort that we have that God does exercise us in such a way, that he exhorts us to fight back.
He shows that such fighting is a most pleasing sacrifice to him. He wants us to conquer him, because ultimately, we’re not the ones doing the conquering. This is not up to our strength.
This is the work of God in us. The God who took on human flesh to sacrifice that flesh, to allow the forces of evil to conquer that flesh in order that he might defeat death and win for himself our place in his eternal kingdom. The God who rejoices in victory through what always looks like defeat.
That is the God who is at work in us. He is the one who is the strength of our faith. He is the one who enlivens our hearts and our hands to cling to his promises, to trust his goodness and his mercy, even when our eyes and our experience tell us something different.
Luther rejoices that God exercises the faith of his children. Just like eating an exercise of how an earthly child grows into a healthy adult, so also our Lord feeds us and then exercises the new creation in us, so that our souls can grow healthy and strong. So be fed and nourished by God’s word, through the promises he makes to you there.
Be fed and nourished here at God’s altar, where you get more than just the scraps that fall from the master’s table, you have a seat at the feast itself. Here you receive pardon and peace in the body and blood of Jesus. Here you get the food to sustain you throughout all your days of pilgrimage.
And then having been fed, don’t expect to get lazy and fat, prepare for exercise. And exercise isn’t always pleasant. The act of lifting weights strains your muscles to the point where they tear.
The microscopic holes all over your muscles that are there after a workout regenerate, fill with new muscle. The gaps bring in new tissue. And after it’s all said and done, you have more muscle at the end than you had at the beginning.
That’s why nutrition is important to working out. Your body needs the nutrients and the hydration to rebuild the muscle. So also when God exercises you, be fed and nourished by God’s word and sacraments because they provide us with the nutrients necessary to strengthen our faith.
And when difficult circumstances and challenges come our way, embrace them as God’s exercise for your faith. And even more than that, as strange as it sounds and as hard as it might be, rejoice in the exercise. Like an athlete who relishes being challenged physically, who knows that pushing the body and its muscles to their limit will ultimately strengthen them, rejoice when God wrestles with you.
For there you learn to trust him. There you are shown your own inability and weakness. There you learn to rely on the strength of Christ alone.
Consider it pure joy when you face many trials because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. And rejoice in hardship, knowing that suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
So when life is challenging, and it will be, and when you feel reasons to doubt God’s love for you, when you wonder if God is listening to your prayers, remember your name, O Israel. Wrestle with your God. Cry out to him.
And if Satan tries to convince you that God isn’t listening, remember the persistent widow. Remember that you have been encouraged, no, you’ve been commanded to pray, and God has promised that he will hear you and answer you. And if it seems like he’s taking too long, cling to him in faith like Jacob.
And don’t let go until he listens, for he has promised that he will hear you, he promises to answer. Capture him with his own words. He himself is the one who said, whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
So take him captive in his own promises. Cling to his word in the face of every obstacle, for he delights to be conquered by his children. You are Israel.
So wrestle with your God. Do not lose heart. Do not give up.
The promise is already yours. Hold him to it. The one who spoke this word is faithful.
He will keep his word. For our God does not wrestle with you because he wants to overcome you, but so that you might prevail against him and thus receive your reward. In Jesus’ name, amen