WRESTLING WITH GOD & PRAYER
Genesis 32:22-31; Luke 18:1-8
19th Sunday after Pentecost — Sunday, October 16, 2022
The Rev. Dr. Ritva H. Williams
This morning I begin with Jacob’s story because it was one of our son, James’ favorite scriptures because it spoke to his own spiritual wrestling. Jacob’s story highlights how complicated every human is, how messed up and broken, even as they are blessed with potential.
Jacob emerges from his mother’s womb as a second twin physically connected to the body of his older brother Esau. In Hebrew the name Jacob literally means “heel-grabber.” Born male, Jacob avoids traditional gender roles, living in the women’s tents and cooking. Yet he consistently bests his big brother. We read how a famished Esau carelessly trading his birthright (a double share of Isaac’s estate) for a pot of Jacob’s savory lentil stew. Mother Rebecca devises a plan to trick Isaac, her blind husband, into giving the firstborn’s blessing to her youngest son. Esau grows to hate Jacob and plans to kill him. To keep peace in the family, Jacob is sent to live with Uncle Laban in Haran. There, he wheels and deals with his wily uncle to get ahead. Jacob ends up with two wives, two concubines, and eleven children. He carefully builds up flocks of the speckled sheep promised him as wages, even though Laban refuses to give him control of them. Fed up, Jacob and family flee. Laban gives chase. Finally, in the hill country of Gilead, the two men work out a truce.
We meet Jacob this morning just having escaped his uncle’s wrath, he gets the news that his brother Esau is coming to meet him with an army of 400 men. He is afraid, not for only his own life, but for the lives of his wives and children, too. Ever the strategist, Jacob divides his camp into two. He sends one group forward, bearing gifts for Esau, while the other says behind in safety. As evening falls, he sends his wives and children to safety.
Alone in the night, Jacob wrestles as if with a man. But who? The ghosts of his past relations with Esau? Uncle Laban? his father? Is Jacob wrestling with himself? Is he wrestling with his past? His future? His faith? Perhaps the best answer to those questions is, “Yes. Yes, that’s who it is.” In the wrestling Jacob comes face to face with the God who had promised to be with him always. In the wrestling Jacob is both wounded and blessed. Jacob receives a new name, Israel — meaning one who struggles with God and prevails. Jacob prevails not by defeating God — that can’t be done — but by staying in the struggle, hanging on, refusing to give up, until he receives the blessing he so desperately needs and wants. The new person, Israel, who emerges into the daylight limps, a sign of that he has been changed inside and out.
Just as our son James told a story about wrestling with God until as he put it, “I’m not mad at God anymore,” each of us has a story about the wounds that cause us to limp through life. Our stories might involve tossing and turning through the night trying to figure out what to do next. Getting up every morning to grief and loss that are unbearable. Sitting day after day at the beside of a loved one who is dying. The slow work of rebuilding trust and putting back together a marriage or a friendship. Unrelenting struggles with addiction, mental illness, chronic disease, physical disability, social isolation, discrimination, prejudice and more. Faithfully sticking to the ordinary routines of life, work, family, and marriage. A week, a year, a lifetime of struggling with God in prayer without getting the answers we want.
Jacob’s story encourages to each and everyone of us: “Don’t let go. Hold on.” This morning, Jesus supports Jacob’s story with a parable encouraging us to never lose heart, but to persist and persevere in prayer that is embodied and acted out in daily life.
Jesus’ parable takes place in a certain city where a judge has no respect for God or for people, and a widow keeps coming to this judge demanding justice against her adversary. We are told nothing specific about the widow’s circumstances. She probably has some property and resources, but no male relatives to represent her in court. We don’t know who her adversary is, although Jesus offers a clue in Luke 20:47, by condemning scribes who devour widows’ houses. In the ancient world, as today, widows with property were vulnerable to scam artists or being sued. Widows, then and now, working in traditional male spaces faced harassment and persecution.
Jesus tells of a widow who is feisty and courageous, publicly confronting the judge over and over again no matter how many times he refuses to grant her justice. She persists and perseveres. At last the judge concedes — although he doesn’t respect God or people, he will give her justice. Our English translation makes it sound like the judge is afraid of being nagged to death. The original Greek reads, “I will grant her justice so she will not give me a black eye.” Do you think the judge was actually afraid the widow would punch him in the nose? Maybe the judge was afraid getting a metaphorical black eye on his status, prestige, reputation, or maybe even his conscience.
This judge knows his scriptures. They were the law of the land after all, and consistently teach that:
… widows, along with the poor, the orphan, and the stranger, represent society’s vulnerable, who are under divine protection, and who Torah, insists must be treated generously and respectfully … Deut 27:19 even pronounces a curse on the one who prevents justice being done to a widow.
The gospel writer tells us that Jesus told this parable to encourage the disciples to pray always and not to lose heart. The widow provides a rather curious example of what prayer looks like. She is not sitting quietly in her room or in the temple sending thoughts and prayers to a god far away in heaven. The widow prays by showing up every day in the court room to demand justice for herself! Her prayer is acted out and embodied every time she shows up. The widow’s prayer is expressed in her agency and self-advocacy, in her persistence and perseverance in pursuing justice. One commentator suggests that the widow’s prayer is kind of like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel saying “I felt my legs were praying,” when he joined the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.
Or maybe it like Pope Francis says: “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works.”
Or, like when a congregation realizes their building presents obstacles to the full participation of all persons, spends six years praying, planning, and fundraising to make the church building more barrier-free and accessible. The ground breaking ceremony is both an answer to prayer, and a call to persist and persevere in prayer until the day all can celebrate together without barriers and obstacles.
Please pray with me:
God of our lives, you are always calling us to follow you into the future, inviting us to new ventures, new challenges, new ways to care, new ways to touch the hearts of all. When we are fearful of the unknown, give us courage. When we worry that we are not up to the task, remind us that you would not call is if you did not believe in us. When we get tired or feel disappointed with the ways things are going, remind us that you bring change and hope out of the most difficult situations. Help us to persist. Amen.
