What does it mean to strive with God? Where does it happen, and who can we expect to be when it’s all over?
Jacob, “the swindler.” Jacob, the one wrestling all his life. Struggling with his brother even within their mother’s womb. Jacob, the one tumbling out at birth, still holding on to Esau’s heel.
Jacob, the one left all alone now on the banks of the river Jabbok. Undoubtedly, agonizing over what daybreak will bring to him, and how he will ever face his twice-swindled brother and live. Jacob, left only with himself. Left only to wrestle in the dark, against the one who refuses to tell us his name. Jacob, the one who will not let go, who will not give up.
The one who prevails and yet cannot walk away from this so-called victory whole. Jacob, who sees the face of God and lives—A better man for the encounter, maybe. But, most certainly, a man who is only able to walk away limping as he goes.
This wounded Jacob, this one now known to us as Israel, offers us a different vision of what it means to strive with God and prevail. A vision that might look very different from how we imagine our lives should go. A vision for ourselves and what it means to not give up—for what it means to be faithful—that might look very different from the way we hope it will work out for us in the end. A different vision that perhaps challenges us to let go of the idea that if we keep on working at what’s wrong in our lives, that if we hold on in the struggle, we will finally win unscathed and completely changed. That we’ll finally become the people we always thought we should be, the kind of people that we thought God always wanted us to be. That, if we’re faithful and don’t give up hope, we’ll finally be able to fix everything that is wrong in our lives—that we’ll be healthy again, that our loved ones won’t be sick anymore, that our once-happy relationships will be just the way they were before, that we’ll be able to leave our nagging doubts behind us, that we can finally just shut all of our problems up and shut them out of our lives.
In Jacob, we are called to let go of the idea that striving with God and prevailing means that our fears and doubts, our grief, hurts and disappointments in life will suddenly vanish. Called to let go of the idea that prevailing in the trials of our lives always means walking stridently forward. Called to let go of the expectation that getting it right will finally mean getting our feet back under us again.
All of this is not to say that transformation and healing does not happen. All of this is not to say that hope does not matter in our lives. But it is to say that, at a fundamental level, transformation does not change our woundedness. We cannot wrestle with God and ourselves, and expect that our victory will mean an end to the struggle and suffering in our lives. We cannot expect that we will endure the trials of our lives to one day find that all of our hurting has finally left us alone.
Rather, Jacob shows us that being faithful, that not giving up in our struggling and striving, finally means finding that we are forever marked by the wounds of that great struggle. Seeing the face of God and living to walk away from it means that our woundedness will most often be more evident than it ever was before. Seeing the face of God is to see that we have always been limping, that we come to victory in life and death already beaten.
This is what it often means to live from day to day. This is what it means to journey with God. For Christians, this, too, is what it means to pray. For we come to our prayers limping as we go. Alongside our joys and celebrations, we pray listening to what cries out in our lives. We pray paying attention to our wounds, to what is hurting, to what is broken inside of us and around us beyond repair. Wrestling with them as we go. Holding onto them even in the dark, even when we cannot name them. Embracing them, holding onto them in love even when they break us.
We pray faithfully limping. In faith, trusting that God’s justice will somehow prevail. Somehow trusting in a love that runs to meet us even as we limp ahead.
Trusting in a victorious God who comes to us already beaten, a God forever marked by the wounds of our great struggle. Christ lifted up before us not on the throne of judgment but on the bloodied tree, a body broken, with wounds that not even resurrection could erase. A God—holes in his hands, wound at his side—limping to meet us, too.
Alleluia.
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