The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 3, 2008

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Genesis 32:22-31, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT

The sagas of the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob provide a grand sweep of stories of faith, trust, betrayal, love, suspense, intrigue, and forgiveness. A lot has happened to Jacob since we last met him. He has worked for this future father-in-law Laban for seven years in order to marry the beautiful Rachel. Then only to be tricked by Laban who substitutes his older daughter Leah on the wedding day. Jacob works another seven years for Rachel. The trickster Jacob has been tricked himself.

After a total of twenty years of working for Laban and now with two wives and eleven children he tricks Laban in order to leave. It is a large company of children, wives, servants, and flocks as they begin their journey. Then Jacob learns that his twin brother Esau is coming with 400 men. He fears Esau is coming to exact his revenge for Jacob’s trickery of the porridge/birth right scheme and Isaac’s stolen blessing on Jacob rather than Esau. He splits his company and sends flocks ahead of him as a peace offering for his brother to spare his life. In order to protect his families, he then leaves alone, by himself. By now you would have thought that Jacob would know better than to sleep alone in the desert.

So today we have the wonderful story today of Jacob wrestling with the man, or sometimes called the angel. They strive with each other through the night, each clinging to the other, each seeking to win. In the end, Jacob is wounded and yet prevails. He asks for blessing and is given a new name, Israel.

For the ancients the name carried power over a person such as in the story of Moses, God will not reveal the Divine Name to Moses, only I am who I am. The angel does not give his own name, rather he changes Jacob’s name because he has contested with men and with God and has prevailed. Jacob, the great trickster and cheat, becomes Israel, with the meaning of He who strives with God.

Jacob/Israel has persevered. Jacob has wrestled and has prevailed. He gives his name to the angel in the risk of faith that he will be blessed. In the contest of wills and bodies he is wounded and will always have a limp. But still he is blessed. We will continue to follow this great saga in the weeks ahead.

We often talk of wrestling with demons, of any variety of sorts. I prefer the language of wrestling with angels, in that angels are struggling to help us find our better selves, not just lose a part of our weaker or sinful self. When we wrestle with angels, the angels are on our side, trying to help us see what our potential is, what our possibilities are, how much God loves us despite everything else going on in our lives.

This type of wrestling with angels is risky business. It demands a faith that will endure wounding in order to receive blessing. It demands strength in order to allow for weakness. It demands confidence in order to allow for humility. To wrestle with the angels is no easy matter. It demands the risk of faith.

Above all, wrestling with angels requires a faith in self and faith in God’s mercy to allow us to continue. Jacob wrestled with all his might during night with the angel. Jacob wanted the power of a name to use over the angel. Instead he received a new name himself that changes his life and the life of the world forever. Jacob becomes Israel. Israel, which will become the nation of Israel in twelve tribes that will produce kings such as David and Solomon, from whose lineage the Messiah will come. This is what is at stake that night in the desert.

I believe we each wrestle with the angels. We wrestle with the will of God in our lives. We wrestle with the desires of the flesh over the desires of the spirit, to use St. Paul’s dualistic language. We wrestle in order to become what God yearns for us to become.

I have wrestled with my share of angels. I have wrestled with them in my faith and in my life. I have wrestled with angels and I have been blessed. But before the blessing, there is always the wounding; the continual sign and reminder of my humanity and God’s mercy for me. We are given a limp, perhaps as a new awareness or insight or even physical change, as a symbol of our striving with angels. Our wounding, our limping, can take many forms.

Each of us have different angels with whom we wrestle to bring out the best in us, the person God yearns for us to be so that we can truly feel and know that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

We wrestle. We are wounded. We are blessed. And like Jacob/Israel we walk into the new day with a limp but with the promise that God has blessed us in ways yet unimaginable; with blessings yet unseen, unknown.