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W


hen I was a kid, on Saturday mornings I’d turn the television on, plop myself down in the fam- ily room and watch Big Time Wrestling, sponsored by a Cincinnati department store. It was really bad television. Both the wrestlers and the store spokespeople were bad actors. Nothing could have been more fake.


But the wrestling match that takes place between God and our ancestor Jacob is a far cry from those fake experi-


Welcome to big time wrestling


ences (Genesis 32:22-31). It draws us into the most real experience that we, as individuals and as a people, have ever known. This wrestling match is your wrestling match. This wrestling match is our wrestling match.


Family shenanigans


The story begins with our father Jacob, a guy who really was quite the deceiver, having just tricked his Uncle Laban out of the best animals of his flock. Not long before that, he’d tricked his brother out of their father’s blessing. Instead of Esau getting the blessing and money he should have received as the elder brother, Jacob got it. So now this hypocrite, this deceiver, our father, is on his way back home.


Laban had chased him for a while because of what Jacob had done. After they somehow ironed things out, Laban gave up the chase. But Jacob’s brother Esau hadn’t forgotten about his deception and was waiting up ahead to confront him. It’s amid all these family shenanigans that Jacob has the wrestling match. And indeed this is “big time wrestling.” Jacob is wrestling with God.


Genesis initially tells us Jacob is wrestling with a man, but later we discover that this match is with the divine. Jacob sends his family across the Jabbok River, and when he is alone, he confronts the divine figure. This story from Genesis is really quite odd. It likely has its roots in ancient folklore in which divine and human figures battle with each other at river crossings at night. It also may have roots in etiologies, ancient stories that tried to explain the origins of things: why, for example, a certain place was called Peniel and why the Israelites didn’t eat the


Uetricht is pastor of First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Muskegon, Mich. Follow his blog at www.firstlutheranmuskegon.com/category/bills-blog.


What, you thought


it would be easy? By Bill Uetricht


thigh muscle on the hip socket. We would miss the profoundness of this story, however, if we stopped at concerns about the origins of ancient things. This story is really about us: our father and our beginnings. Who we are, the story of Jacob and his wres- tling match would have us know, is a community that wrestles with God and even wins sometimes. It’s not that we defeat God. We don’t even get to know


God’s name. We ask, and God says it’s none of our busi- ness. God is still God and we are not. God learns our name, but we don’t know God’s name because who God is is much more than we can ever grasp or understand and cer- tainly much bigger than our ability to control. Yet we still win. We are gifted with the covenant. We win in that God will not let go of us. We win in that God has chosen us, not because we are anything spectacular but because God does that kind of thing. God blesses us and makes us God’s people.


We are ones who wrestle


Did you notice Jacob becomes Israel? Israel is the name of God’s people. This isn’t a private story about a private experience. This is a story about our peoplehood. We are the people who struggle, who wrestle with God. That’s our identity.


Oh, we thought it was going to be easier. We thought being the ELCA and negotiating social issues would be


28 The Lutheran • www.thelutheran.org


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