Sermon on 8/31

Wrestling

Many of you know that I was a football player in high school and college. As a matter of fact, in high school I participated in about every sport imaginable. I did track one year. I played baseball two years of high school. I played basketball for three years of high school. I even ran with the cross country team half time my senior year until school started to improve my condition for football.

But, by far the sport I enjoyed the most in high school and the sport that I was best at was wrestling. There were a lot of things that I loved about wrestling. I loved the trips, and going to high school in Alaska there were a lot of them. We flew to both Kodiak Island and Fairbanks my senior year. We had a lot of trips where we would leave Thursday night and get back Sunday afternoon. And, I have always loved travel and getting out of school. In a lot of ways, the wrestling team was my social life for several months every year.

What I loved about wrestling was that if you used the gifts you had and worked a little bit harder, you could be successful no matter what your natural ability was. I happen to have the coordination of an elephant with a broken ankle on a three day bender, so I had to practice a lot. Several times I would have to stay after practice and have the coach literally put my body where I needed to go through the move in order to get a specific wrestling move down. Then I would drill that move over and over again on my own until I got it down.

A lot of wrestlers had pet moves. Head and Arm Harvey. Dave Crazy Legs Seljestad. I was a generalist. I was average to good at about everything. What I would do is read my opponent well. I would find out where I had an advantage, and force the match to my strong suit. So if a person had poor conditioning I would push the pace of the match. If the guy was weaker I would muscle him around. If he wasn't too smart I would lean on him until he made a mistake and exploit it, and if he was arrogant I would play possum and then strike with full force and surprise him. And, the one time I had to wrestle a girl, I just tried to win as quick as possible and get done with the whole match.

Probably my favorite thing about wrestling though is that was one on one. In football you have teammates that can be blamed for the loss. The same is true with basketball and football. But wrestling, it was just you against the other person. Face to face. Toe to toe. And you are forced to come to terms with yourself about who you are. Your strengths and your weaknesses.

Which brings me to the story of Jacob. Jacob's name means foot-grabber. Other synonyms are supplanter, overcomer, grappler and wrestler. And now, at a moment of crisis in Jacob's life, he finds that he is wrestling with God. Wrestling for a blessing. Wrestling for a blessing that has already been promised. Wrestling for a blessing that has already been stolen. A blessing that he has been struggling and wrestling to understand all his life.

 

 

 

For those of you that remember last week, we discussed the time in Jacob's life when he bought his brother's birthright for a bowl of lentils and a bit of bread. Later he disguises himself and tricks his father into giving him the family blessing. God has saved his life from his angry brother after that, provided wealth for him, and given him a whole brood of children. Yet, as he is about to meet his brother again for the first time in decades, fear grips his heart. So he sends his wives, camels, concubines, and animals ahead of him toward an Esau he assumes is angry in case his brother wants to kill him. Then, while he is waiting behind he runs into this mysterious being that he wrestles through the night until dawn.

The truth this life of wrestling is not just something that happens between our ears. We struggle and wrestle with things all day long. We want to be calmer. Then you run into that one person that irritates you and just gets under your skin. You find your temper bubbling over from somewhere deep inside you. You wrestle.

You try and live healthier. Yet there is some show on television that looks more interesting than exercising a little bit, or you go out to eat that greasy meal instead of that more wholesome meal you know you could prepare at home.

We struggle with greed. We want that toy or that thing that our neighbor has that is nicer than what we have.

We may be retired, but we still struggle with managing our time the way that we ought to. We find that the day slips away from us, and we have not lived by the priorities we tried to set. We forget to care for the people we wanted to care for. We forget to spend that time with the Lord that we wanted to.

We wrestle with what we do, and what we want to do. We wrestle with our desire to live day by day and moment by moment following Jesus, and our desire to sin and go our own way.

We not only wrestle with the day to day stuff, we wrestle with the big issues in our lives. In fact, almost all of us wrestle with God in one way or another. A loved one dies, and we wonder why. We wrestle with God. Struggling with God trying to understand. We come to church, with expectations about how church is supposed to be. And, at one time or another, instead of finding kindness and support we find hurt and betrayal. We wonder why things are not supposed to be. We grab on to the heartache and hurt and struggle with God about why we come to church and what it is all about. We go to work, and we try and do the right thing. We find that doing the right thing hurts us more than it helps us in a specific situation. We WRESTLE. We struggle. We wonder where our blessing is. Just like Jacob.

Where is my blessing? You may ask. Where is my blessing? But even more than that some of us may need to ask another question. WHAT IS MY BLESSING? WHAT IS MY BLESSING?

Let me explain by looking at Biblical history.

Some of us, including some people in Scripture and some current interpreters of Scripture, look at blessings as simply material blessings. Those that are blessed are those that have been able to accumulate power, been able to accumulate resources, or been able to build a good reputation. This view was prominent in Old Testament times. Especially with certain misinterpretations of the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy teaches us we sow what we reap. But sometimes, it becomes easy to go from that Biblical principle to believing that if things are going easy I am blessed, and if things are going poorly than I am cursed and or abandoned by God. We see this with "name it, claim it" television sermons for example.

I think this way of thinking dominates Jacob's life. He thinks that if he just gets the birthright, things will be good. If he just gets the blessing, than life will be easier. He begins to think if he just marries the right woman, then everything will be in place. Jacob starts to think if he finds the right way to do things on the job, then he will get a better salary and he will be happy. And to a certain extent he is right. He has lots of goats. He has lots of sheep. Jacob has a whole passel of children.

Yet, strange things keep happening to him. His is estranged from his immediate family and his in laws through a series of events. He gets one more wife than he bargained for. His children and wives are constantly bickering and he spends most of his free time doing conflict management. He doesn't really have anywhere to call home. And in the middle of all of this he wonders WHERE IS MY BLESSING. My life does not seem very blessed to me.

I think we have all felt this way to a certain extent. If this happens than I will know I am doing the right thing. If that happens than I will know that God loves me or approves of me. And then we get the point where we thought everything would be ok, and we realize that life is bigger than we thought it was. What we thought was the blessing we were hoping for wasn't really the blessing in the first place. Those things that we were doing with God, we find out that we were not. In fact, we went on ahead of God, left God behind us, and went on our merry way. In fact, we were running ahead of God and his will, ahead of God and his blessing, and we feel, frustrated, incomplete, or alone. Just like Jacob.

Others look at blessings in a different way. They look at a blessing as more of a feeling of power that comes upon us. This has many forms.

Let me explain. Jacob, earlier in his life, had stolen the blessing from his brother Esau. And whereas the birthright was about receiving the family money, the blessing gave him the right to carry on the family name. It made him the official number one son. I suspect he thought that once this happened, everything in his life would fall together. That this discontent that stirred in his heart would just go away. That his insecurities and hang ups would quickly disappear. I think he thought the blessing was some super therapy or magic pill that would bring everything together for him.

A lot of us view the blessing of God the same way. Like a magic pill of some sort, that once we do the right thing or say the right word than everything would be better.

We do not have to go much farther than the Christian bookstore to see this view. Take these five purposes and everything will turn out right. Take these four steps to peace with God. Adhere to these three principles. Take seven steps to your best life now. A lot of people have been helped by books like this. But faith is not a cause and effect way to manipulate the universe. The bible prescribes no magic words to make everything better.

A blessing is not about always being right. It is not about always feeling good about everything. Now, does God's blessing include material prosperity? Sometimes. Does God's blessing include good feelings, a change of circumstances for the better, and finding ways to live a better life? Most of the time, it does. But are the health, wealth, the circumstances falling together God's blessing in and of itself. Definitely not. NO. The blessing is BIGGER, SIMPLER, and MORE ACCESSABLE than that. It is much more ordinary. So ordinary that we often miss it.

This is because the blessing is not about things at all. The blessing is about relationship. No. That is not precisely enough said. The blessing IS THE RELATIONSHIP with God. The relationship is not a part of the blessing. It was not a benefit of the blessing. It is the blessing.

In first John, chapter three the bible says this: Behold what manner of love the father has given unto us, than we should be called the child of God.

The blessing is that God looks down on you like a doting father, and whose face shines upon you. The blessing is that God looks down on you as his child and says…THAT'S MY BOY. THAT'S MY GIRL. That is my beloved child. That is my friend. That is the one I adore.

We can see this as Jacob wrestles as well. That the relationship is the blessing.

He wrestles with the angel until it is almost daybreak. He says he will not the being he is wrestling go until he receives a blessing. Eventually, he receives it. And what is his response after he receives the blessing?

It was that he was blessed because he saw God face to face. He saw God face to face and lived.

The blessing was not money. It was not physical health, in fact that worsened. It wasn't that his circumstances suddenly changed. NO. The blessing was that he saw God face to face and lived. And that was enough. That was enough.

Now there is a type of wrestling that I described at the beginning of this story that I loved. It was about success and accomplishment and all that. I had fun sharing that with you. But there is also a different kind of wrestling that I have enjoyed even more than competitive wrestling. It is the kind of wrestling I have done at home since I was a child, and occasionally when I could get away with it with the youth I worked with and the friends that I had.

I think of the most fun that I have had with my uncles, aunts and cousins. A lot of them have either be dancing or wrestling. I remember my little cousins at five years old all coming at me at the same time to wrestle. Trying to tackle me while I stood on my knees. I would pick them up two at a time and place them on the ground and they would run back and come back for more.

When my uncle, who is almost like a second father to me, wanted to show physical affection to me he would hug me sometimes. But more often, he would wrestle with me. He still does. So does my aunt sometimes by the way.

When I was a youth pastor it was sometimes the same way. Before or after youth group we would play pool on the pool table or play ping pong. But often I would start horsing around with them and I would throw them up on my shoulder, spin them around, and throw them back on the couch. And they would laugh and smile. And when I left parents would say, "He even wrestled with them". Sometimes wrestling isn't just about conflict. It is about love and acceptance and friendship. So it was with God. THE RELATIONSHIP WAS THE BLESSING.

It is interesting that the root of the Hebrew word for wrestle is the same as the root word for to hug or to embrace. When Jacob stepped into this wrestling match, he thought he was in for the battle of his life. When in fact, as he learned toward the end, he was in the loving arms of a father who loved him and whose face shown upon him. And that was the BLESSING. AND in spite of all the other things he hoped for, that was enough. THAT WAS ENOUGH.

And now the choice is yours. RECEIVE THE BLESSING. God is ready to grab on to you, love you, and never let you go. Don't run away from that BLESSING. THAT RELATIONSHIP. Even if you feel you are going to have to wrestle to get it.