A message about sleepless nights, struggle in our souls and holding on

 Genesis 32:22-31

A couple of weeks ago when talking about the parable of the lost sons (or prodigal son), I mentioned that there is something refreshing about hearing the stories of families in the bible. For all that we hear this day and age about “family values” that are based in scripture, for some reason, our bible stories sure like to zero in on the moments when families are cracking or people are at their worst.

Today’s story about Jacob is no different. Jacob was the younger of twin boys.  Remember, his dad, Isaac was the one who was almost sacrificed by Abraham until the angel intervened?  Right. Dad, Isaac married Rebecca who eventually got pregnant with twins.  Rebecca had a miserable pregnancy. She said it felt like the babies fought the whole time in the womb. And as the story goes, Jacob was born clutching the heel of his slightly older brother Esau.  These two brothers are in competition from the moment they were born.  Years later, they were probably teenagers, Jacob dressed up as his brother and convinced his dad, Isaac, to give him the special blessing of the firstborn son.  Esau is furious. He vows to get revenge. Jacob takes off running to the hills to Uncle Laban’s house.  

When our story picks up many years later, Jacob is married with several wives, several concubines, lots of kids, tons of animals, loads of drama. (Any of you see Joseph and the amazing technicolor dream coat? You know the song “Jacob and sons”. This is that Jacob).

Jacob, there in mid life, gets to reflecting on things and decides to send a messenger out to test the waters with his twin: “Hey Esau, it’s me your long lost twin brother. I know things weren’t so great the last time we hung out, but I was wondering if we might mend the bridge, bury the hachet, let by gones be bygones, what do you say…? 

Esau sends a message back, “ah, you want to meet? Okay. I’m on my way. With 400 men in tow. See you soon. xo"

400 men. Instead of accepting Jacob’s olive branch, Esau seems to have ignited it. This is not exactly how Jacob was hoping this would go.  Jacob is freaking out. The bible records it in detail: “How am I going to survive this!”  He panics. He splits his wives, kids, animals into two groups hoping that one of the groups will survive the attack. He prepares this nice present for Esau and sends it ahead, maybe this will help soften him up—and then he starts praying: “Look God. I’m in a mess. A real mess here. You said you’d protect me. Okay, this is the moment.” The bible records this prayer. I’m paraphrasing. But clearly Jacob is freaking out. He is haunted by his mistakes. He’s in a serious bind. He’s estranged from his extended family.  He has sent the rest of the family away to hide and he is alone. Dusk falls. And then night. And this is where our bible story picks up today. 

Justin Renteria is an illustrator and created this picture of a woman sitting at a desk.  She’s presumably a modern business woman but she has that 1950s looking housewife vibe of a woman who looks like she’s just been delivered the washer and dryer set of her dreams.  She’s beaming, but sitting at a massive, formidable desk. She’s one of those annoying images of carefree perfection. What is not immediately apparent is that her desk is sitting on top of a tank, an army tank that is bulldozing forward come hell or high water. 

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We do not always see what is going on beneath the surface. We don’t always share what keeps us up at night.  The mistakes that haunt us. The stress that amps us up.  A lot of us are wrestling something in a dimly lit space that we can’t make out the end of.  Jacob doesn’t know what the morning will bring when he meets Esau. He is between worlds, straddling the boundary between what was and what will be. We straddle those in between, liminal spaces all the time. Sometimes its after hitting send on the email, we wait. After an argument with a spouse or a sibling, we wait. In the 5-7 days before the biopsy results come in, we wait. 

We wait for something we hope for or for some higher love to intervene. With Jacob’s story, there are chapters and chapters detailing his mistakes and freak outs, but all we get is a couple little lines about his dark night of the soul.  What happened between the lines?

We know that night falls and Jacob is attacked in the dark. It is a full on fight. He wrestles with someone there on the banks of the river.  Who is he fighting? We’re not really sure.  The scripture doesn’t say. There are ancient tales in the middle east of river spirits that only come out at night—is that who he wrestled with? Some people say he wrestled God.  Some say it was an angel (the book of Hosea suggests that). If you’re into Karl Jung, maybe you’ll say Jacob was wrestling his shadow side.  

The Hebrew just says that Jacob wrestled an Ish, which simply means “man.” He wrestled for hours. Until he was exhausted. Have you been exhausted? By your pace? By your anxiety? By your anger? By your grief for something or someone who is no longer the same? All night long on the banks of that river, Jacob wrestled. He’s alone. No one is there to bear witness to his struggle with this man. Except us.  

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Why don’t we let people see the real struggle that we experience. Not in the sense that we’re supposed to bleed all over people, but we don’t let people see failure, the stress, the strain the wrestling match.  While we might prepare some well crafted answer about “failure” for an interview, that’s about it. Researcher Cia-Jung Tsay who teaches at the Wisconsin School of Business has explored the psychology around struggle and its’ role in success.  She explains that if you ask folks in the US which is more important to success: effort or talent, they are 50% more likely to say “effort is most important to success” There’s a 2:1 probability they’ll say this. But, if you ask them what’s most important in a new hire: talent or effort, they pick talent over effort 5 to 1. 

Deep down, we bias talent over effort. We think that people succeed or make it through or grow because they are naturally strong, or gritty or they were born gifted.  We don’t want to think about how they’ve fought for it: Fought for their mental health, their relationships, their craft, their career, their compassion, their faith, fought for a better world…

Journalist Jerry Useem wrote that, “You cannot find youtube videos [of the struggle]: of Yo-yo ma tediously repeating a difficult passage, or Ronald Reagan practicing his speeches in front of a mirror, or Steve Jobs unveiling a half-baked iPhone.”  He says he closest he came to finding this on youtube was an early Rolling Stones draft of “start me up” as a reggae tune which was, to say the least, a bust. 

We don’t want to see the struggle, admit it’s there or even, find the value in effort.  Jacob wrestles the man in the dark and no one is around to see it. If struggle or wrestling sets off this alarm in us, then we’ll always pull back when we’re confronted with it.  What does that mean when the going gets tough? When the conversation gets real? When the stake are raised? 

Back to our story of Jacob.  Jacob wrestles all night.  It’s not clear what the Ish is after. But these two are relentless and they will not let each other go.  By this point, Jacob has hung on long enough to be hurt.  And as dawn approaches, the Ish slams him in the hip. It’s dislocated out of the socket, maybe it pops in and out, the text isn’t clear, but it sounds bad. And still Jacob hangs on. The Ish tells Jacob to let him go. Jacob throws back “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” The Ish says alright.  He changes Jacob’s name to Israel (which means the one who wrestles with God) and then blesses him.  There is this fuzzy clue that maybe the Ish wrestling Jacob was God. Maybe, it was God that came to him, in that place of struggle in that dark night. 

As the sun rose, Jacob walked away from the river bank with a limp.  He walked the whole rest of his life with that limp. But his wound wasn’t a sign of failure, but of growth, in a sense success and in a sense persistence during a really tough time.

A lot of us are facing uncertainty in our lives.  Some of it big, some of it small. Some of it personal some of it societal.  How do we hang on? (Think of that persistent widow in the gospel story for today who hung on pestering that judge.)  For our lives thrive and flourish, we must hang on. The same goes for our lives of faith.  God isn’t always that image of the gentle shepherd or loving servant. Sometimes, God is our streetfighter who will not be wrestled into a box and who will not be wrestled into our understanding. God is the one who calls us, even pushes us to growth and to change. God is the one who loves us too fiercely to let us go. 

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The end of Jacob’s story isn’t as much of the point today.  While Jacob did indeed change, he didn’t become this whole new person after wrestling and being wounded and being blessed.  His life moved on.  He survived the night.  

The next morning, he met his twin Esau and the four hundred men. And before he could get a word out of his mouth, Esau ran to him and embraced him and they wept. They reconciled. They met each other’s families, they probably ate together and told old stories and carried each other’s kids around on their shoulders.  And then they went on their ways and life went on. Jacob had another child, Benjamin. He buried his beloved wife, Rachel. He moved his family to Egypt.  He passed the story of God’s love to his children who passed it on, in turn, to their children. 

Over the generations, the people made mistakes that they wrestled with. They struggled with God, they figured it out—or didn’t. They turned away and God took them by the shoulders and turned them back.  
Some storyteller somehow, somewhere passed this story of Jacob’s long night down to us today to remind us that this life isn’t easy. This life of faith isn’t easy. Loving God and letting God love us and change us in the midst of our pain isn’t always easy; but we stand on the shoulders of people who have known the struggle and who point to the way. We know that in that challenge, somehow, God strives alongside of us.

St. Agustin of Hippo famously wrote that “if you have understood, than what you have understood is not God.” 

This faith that we inherit and pass on and cherish has so much more to do with hanging on than with being certain.  Truthfully, our faith in anyone—including God—has to do with being willing to fight for the relationship. To risk getting hurt. To risk the dirt of the rough and tumble. To have faith of the blessing that is ours in the midst of it. 

In my own case, there are days when I believe and God’s presence shimmers with certainty. These are days when God fights with me, or alongside of me through my struggle. And then, there are days when I don’t believe, and I grasp for God in the night.

Understanding it or not, or having certainty or not doesn’t threaten my call to struggle for beauty and justice and this world. It doesn't dim my effort to be transformed. It doesn’t steal God’s presence or God’s essence from my life. 

God uses Jacob to remind us that sometimes the dark nights are long. Sometimes the wounds we carry into the morning stay with us forever. Sometimes we are unsure of where the road may take us. But, we carry God’s blessing with us along the way.