Lent 2 – Reminscere (March 8, 2020)
“When God is My Opponent” (Genesis 32:22-32)
The wrestler waits on the sidelines at the tournament. He waits in anticipation to see who his first opponent is going to be. He’s a good-sized kid. 5 foot 10. 180 pounds. Rock solid. Confident. He’s been the best wrestler on his team all year long. He expects to do very well in his matches at this event. His name is announced. His opponent’s name is announced. They step up to the mat. And our wrestler sees his opponent. He’s massive. This is no kid. This is a gargantua! 6’4” and at least 285 pounds. This is not fair! He’s in the wrong weight class. The coach approaches the referee and protests. There must be some mistake. “Nope,” says the referee. “No mistake.” And he blows the whistle for the match to start. And our wrestler knows he’s about to be destroyed.
Now, of course, this would probably never happen in an actual wrestling tournament. But just imagine if you stepped up to the mat and found out that you weren’t about to face just any run of the mill big dude. You were about to face God. God is your opponent. You were going to have to wrestle God. You would expect to lose … and lose badly.
This brings me to Jacob. God was his opponent. Of course, that’s not revealed to us at first. The text introduces this wrestler as simply a man. He appears out of nowhere and challenges Jacob who was all alone on his side of the Jabbok River. He steps up to the mat, that is, the place where Jacob was camping after sending his family and servants across to the other side. Jacob recognizes this man as God, since at the end of this strange encounter, he says, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” That’s why he named the place “Peniel” which means “the face of God.”
God could have completely overpowered Jacob. And yet Jacob is determined to obtain a blessing from him. Jacob knows that the Lord had given to him the promises of his grandfather Abraham. That happened 20 years earlier in the vision of the ladder to heaven that Jacob had at Bethel. In that vision, the Lord said to Jacob, “In you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed … I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen. 28:14-15). The promise of the Savior would come through the line of Jacob. Yet, now here God is fighting with him. He no longer seems to be on his side to bless him. The Lord is with him, to be sure, but as an opponent and not an ally … or so it seems.
Compare the Canaanite woman in our Gospel reading today (Matthew 15:21-28). Jesus ignores her cries. The disciples ask Jesus to get rid of her. Even Jesus sounds like a bigot … an anti-Canaanite! He compares this woman to a dog! He is clearly not on her side … or so it seems.
Have you ever felt as if God was your opponent? The way everything was going in your life, you concluded that God must be fighting against you? Or at least completely ignoring you? What do you do when God is your opponent? When you have to fight against God?
In spite of appearances, the Lord was not Jacob’s opponent. He was there to strengthen Jacob’s faith. Jacob needed this, especially considering what he was about to face next … someone else who really was his opponent. Jacob was about to encounter his brother Esau whom he hadn’t seen in 20 years, and Jacob figured that Esau may still have murderous intentions towards Jacob after Jacob deceived his brother out of his birthright. And so, God “sandbags” in order to revive Jacob’s faith and confidence. Here’s how Luther describes it in his Genesis commentary:
“God plays with him to discipline and strengthen his faith just as a godly parent takes from his son an apple with which the boy was delighted, not that he should flee from his father and turn away from him but that he should rather be incited to embrace his father all the more and beseech him, saying, ‘My father, give back what you have taken away!’ Then the father is delighted with this test, and the son, when he recovers the apple, loves his father more ardently on seeing that such love and child’s play gives pleasure to the father.” (Genesis vol. 6)
The Canaanite woman’s faith is even more remarkable. Unlike Jacob, she is outside of the covenant people. She is a Gentile. She had nothing to count on. No promises of God. No word from the Lord. Perhaps she even knew what judgment awaited her people for their idolatry from bits and pieces of what she may have heard from the words of Israel’s prophets. Yet she audaciously comes to Jesus and confidently asks for help … and after holding out for a bit – like the father and the son and the apple – Jesus praises her faith and responds to her request to heal her daughter.
Our problem is that when God seems like our opponent, when it seems as if he is fighting against us, we throw in the towel far too soon. We give up. We throw our hands up in despair. We are too pious to wrestle with him in prayer and demand a blessing. Or we think that our problems are not big enough to bring before Jesus and to beg for his help. Why should I bother to pray? Does God really care about me? Does God really care about my problems? It sure doesn’t seem like he does. No matter how many times I’ve asked him to take this illness away, no matter how many times I’ve asked him to help me in school, no matter how many times I’ve asked him to heal my broken relationships, no matter how many times I’ve asked him to stop my addiction, no matter how many times I’ve asked him to help me overcome the sins I wrestle with, nothing ever seems to change.
This is when we remember that Jesus never gave up when it seemed as if his Father was against him. Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” and yet he never despaired. He continued to trust in the words he heard twice from heaven, “You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased.” He allowed his earthly opponents to get the best of him, allowing them to nail him to the cross. He doesn’t leave them limping away, like Jacob and his out of joint hip socket, but he only has words of forgiveness for them from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Our Lord’s battle was with more than just those who were persecuting him, beating him, mocking him, and crucifying him. He was wrestling with our sin piled upon him and all the evil forces of hell lined up against him. And when he rose from the dead, he proved that he had won his match.
Because Jesus overcame all these forces in his struggle, we now have access to God. Paul writes, “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (Romans 5:2). We are justified by faith. Not guilty. Forgiven. “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). And all the wrestling and struggles that we endure God uses to strengthen our faith. “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5).
Jacob crosses the Jabbok stream to meet his brother. Jacob is a new man, ready to trust in God’s promises, knowing that God is not his opponent, that he has seen God face to face and yet his life was preserved. God had given him a new name. His name was changed from Jacob to Israel. Jacob means “deceiver” and that was his reputation. But now, he will be known as Israel, which means “he strives with God.” Now, he will be known for his struggle of faith with God.
You and I go through the waters of the font and we come out on the other side as new creations, new people, given the Spirit and faith to trust in God’s promises. We are given a new name. The Holy Trinity marks us with his name in Holy Baptism. And the name we were given us by our parents takes on a new significance. We are named at the font as one who has been brought out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God.
God is not our opponent. He is on our side. We can come to him with both humility and confidence … recognizing the awesome power of the one to whom we pray, yet at the same time trusting in his loving promises to us. We can wrestle with him in prayer even when it doesn’t seem like he is listening, even though he is. You and I can count on God’s merciful care for us in spite of all appearances to contrary, and say “Christ is my Savior. I am baptized in the blood of God’s Son. I have fed on the precious body and blood of Christ. I can firmly cling to these things. I am content with these truths, even if it seems as though God and the whole world is against me.”
This place is our Peniel. This is where we see the face of God, hidden under Word and water and bread and wine. Jesus is really here for us … not to wrestle with us … but to forgive us, so that we will one day meet him in that Peniel where we will truly see God face to face … and not die, but live forever.
INI
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