Given at St Mary’s, Potterne
Genesis 32. 22-32
“Oh, sorry Vicar!” People often say that when after they’ve just had a good swear in front of me. A vicar is, of course, the sort of person you shouldn’t use foul language in front of. He – or, she, these days – is a very prim and proper person who would never swear, any more than they would drink, and blushes to hear even the first syllable of the word balderdash.
Rembrandt, Jacob Wrestling with An Angel (1659). Hangs in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
And God is often perceived by the same people, in the unlikely event He exists at all, as a sort of Supervicar, very prim and priggish, in front of whom you want to be on your best behaviour—because if God does exist, and He finds out what’s really going on in your head, then you’re in big trouble.
The same people sometimes tell me that they’d like to believe in God—they envy people who have Faith, they tell me, envy the meaning and purpose our lives and envy our strong sense of community. Of course, we Christians know that we’re actually a bit more prone to isolation and drifting than that, but let’s roll with the idea… These people tell me they envy us our Faith, but they struggle the idea of a God who created life to include the harsh realities of suffering and pain. Because why would a supervicar do that?
The Bible paints a picture of God that is far from a supervicar. Far from expecting blind obedience, in tonight’s reading, God is presented as a mysterious stranger who proactively seeks out Jacob for a good bout of wrestling that lasts all night – we all know about wrestling with God all night don’t we? When dawn breaks, the stranger has not defeated Jacob, who is still battling gamely with Him, although He has been left with a limp from a blow to the hip.
Jacob’s people, the people who would later become known as the Hebrews and then the Jews, thought that God was so holy that even to see His face would result in instant death. Jacob’s story overthrows that idea—this is an intimate, sweaty, vision of God whom we can do more than just look at, we can have a good fight with.
God doesn’t want to force us into obedience; doesn’t want to crush our individuality or tell us what to think. Far from needing to mind our manners in front of God, it is God who often comes looking for us for a good wrestle, just as He sought out Jacob, in the middle of the night when our defences are down, to test what we really think and feel. When that happens, this combative wrestler is so different to how we oftentimes assume God should be like that we mistake Him for a mysterious stranger whose name we don’t know.
The stranger appears to Jacob only after he is on his own, out in the middle of nowhere, on the banks of a river, his family and possessions safely on the other side. We often need to get out of our daily routine to give God a chance to really wrestle with us. Maybe there is a special church, or a special place in the countryside, where you can really spend time with God? Maybe you should go on retreat – especially worth trying if you’ve never done that before.
And when you do make time for the mysterious stranger who is God to come to you, if the way God made the universe upsets or angers you, don’t be afraid to have a good fight with Him about it.
Amen.
Top image: An excerpt of Gaugin’s Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) (1888). Hangs in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.
