Anybody here struggling with their faith? Or ever struggled in the past? (It’s okay, I don’t actually expect anyone to put their hands up. And good for you for putting your hands up, if you did.) It’s an unfortunate reality that we don’t talk enough in church about when we’re struggling with God. We seem to think of it as something shameful, as an indication that we’re losing our faith, or we look at it as a kind of disobedience. How dare we question what God is doing? Isn’t that impertinent, or rebellious? We hide when we’re wrestling with our faith, we worry that others will find out and judge us, or worse, that God will.
And then along come our readings for today––Jacob struggling in the middle of the night by the river in Genesis, and the widow persisting in her struggle for justice from the judge in Luke. We tend not to lift these two up as role models of our faith, since they don’t seem to trust God enough to just let things unfold as they should. Their interactions with God fly against what we’ve been taught is the proper response to God, which is reverence, humility, and acceptance. The widow, for one, doesn’t quite seem to accept her place. You’d think that one refusal from the judge would enough. The judge is, after all, educated in the law, appointed by the leaders, and the ultimate decision-maker. The widow is, well, a widow. She’s not nearly as educated as the judge, she clearly has no powerful people in her family, she’s on the bottom rung of the social ladder. The judge, who sets himself up as God, could cast her out or have her ostracized, or even sentence her to stoning for disrespecting him. She should trust and accept his judgement, but instead she returns, not once, not twice, but over and over again, to plead her case, wasting her time, and his, risking his wrath.
And then there’s Jacob. It’s pretty much a given that Jacob was not struggling with an actual “man.” It’s the middle of the night, he’s all alone, camped by a river whose very name is synonymous with the word “struggle,” and this “man” appears out of nowhere and starts wrestling with Jacob? It can only be God or God’s representative. And what does Jacob do? Does he give in and say, “okay, you win!”? Nope, he keeps wrestling. He does not demonstrate any degree of reverence, humility, or acceptance in the face of God. God could strike him dead, right there and then, and yet Jacob grabs hold of this divine being and refuses to let go!
And what is God’s response? How does God react to this persistent struggling and refusal to accept what would appear to be the will of God?
God steps forward into the struggle with Jacob, and God blesses Jacob. And in that encounter, Jacob’s life is changed. Jacob’s name is changed from one which means supplanting, as Jacob did to his brother Esau, to Israel, which actually means “struggles with God,” and was given as the name for all of the descendants of Jacob, the people of Israel. God not only lets Jacob live, God blesses Jacob and his descendants because he has struggled with God.
How weird is that? When we wrestle and struggle with our faith, when we argue with God and get mad at God and question God, far from punishing us, or calling us disobedient or rebellious or impertinent, God responds to us with a blessing. This is what Jesus says in his parable about the widow - while the unjust judge finally gives the widow what she is persistently struggling for, the supreme judge, our very just God, is so much more willing, when we persistently struggle in our relationship with the divine, to bless us.
Which means that we should not be ashamed when we struggle with our faith. We shouldn’t hide when we’re wrestling with some deep, personal, theological questions, like why does God let people die from cancer, or why does God allow suffering or abuse or violence, or why does God allow systems of injustice to carry on instead of sweeping in and getting rid of all evil? Because these are important questions, and they belong to a tradition that is thousands of years old of faithful people trying to make sense of God and the world. Instead of hiding these questions, we can engage in our struggles openly, in broad daylight, in public, trusting that at the end of our struggles, God has a blessing waiting for us.
Now, I’ll admit, this is a different way of thinking about our faith journey. But it is biblical, and it can deepen our relationship with God. For one thing, to question God, to wrestle for answers, to demand answers even, is to exhibit a tremendous amount of faith in God. After all, we’re not just shouting questions into thin air. Wrestling with God can only be done if you believe that there is someone to wrestle with, someone who is going to stick around for the struggle. Because that’s what God does. After Jacob wrestles with the “man,” and after he is blessed by God, he renames the place he is in as Penuel, or Peniel, which means face-of-God. In Jacob’s wrestling, he came face-to-face with God. Overwhelming, yes, but isn’t that why we struggle in our faith? Because we want to know the truth, because we want a meaningful encounter with God, because we want to make sense of this relationship between the divine and us? We struggle in our faith because we have faith, because we have not yet quite given up hope, and in that wrestling, God comes to us, engages with us, and shows God’s own face to us.
But we have to persist. This kind of struggling can take months, or even years. It’s not always over in one night, like it was with Jacob. It’s more like the widow, going again and again and again to the judge, striving, wrestling, struggling to have a genuine encounter. (Part of my own struggle is why that struggle has to take so long.) But when we persist, once again, we are blessed. God shows God’s self to us. We come face-to-face with the one who made us and sustains us.
We might limp afterwards, to be sure. There is no way to come face-to-face with God and be unchanged. Maybe that’s why sometimes we shy away from the struggle. When we wrestle with God, when we struggle with our faith, things get out of joint. Often it’s our preconceived ideas of who God is, or who we are. But what is a limp compared to being blessed by God?
If you have never struggled with your faith, you will one day. And if you have already experienced that struggle, you probably will again. But when you do, remember that it’s okay (and that you can talk about it). God will meet you in that struggle, not to punish you, but to bless you. The struggle will probably take longer than you want, but keep at it, like the widow. Don’t let go until you have demanded a blessing, like Jacob. Because God will hear you, God will come to be with you and struggle with you, and God will bless you. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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