In a helpful book on preaching (yes, I still read them), Kenneth Gibble reminds those of us who dare stand in the pulpit that people in the pews have been wrestling with God all their lives. "Preaching," he says, "is not bringing the truth of God to ignorant souls, but rather entry into conversation with people who have already been asking questions about ultimate reality."
This week's sermon will involve a deep dive into history's most famous wrestling match. You can read about it here, but to understand the whole story invites this longer reading. If you've not read the story of Jacob recently, I encourage you to pause for a few minutes and re-acquaint yourself with this troubling narrative.
The list of people who use the metaphor of wrestling with God to describe their own spiritual experience is long and distinguished. Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, has written a fine book, Called to Question, in which she describes her disillusionment with the pat certainties of her religious tradition. She mentions the too-easy answers, and recalls the day she decided to launch her own spiritual journey, venturing outside her own tradition: "the day I began the perilous journey from religion to spirituality, from the certainties of dogma to that long, slow, personal journey into God. That day I began my own wrestling match with God, which no catechism, no creed, could mediate."
God, we believe, transcends category in order to come to life at its most human, into your life and mine, in its extremes, at birth and death, but also in the everyday, the common, the betrayals and disappointments, the occasions of deep gladness. God comes into times of betrayal and separation, but also reconciliation and reunion. God comes to us, and like Jacob, will go so far as to wrestle us to the ground and will not, does not, let us go.
Unfortunately, sometimes that wrestling match results in a limp, much like it did for Jacob. This weekend we'll explore the grace in it all and trust that we, too, might be able to wrestle a blessing out of the struggle.
See you this weekend.
