Last week we discussed Jabob’s Ladder: the patriarch’s dream in which he saw the heavens opened and a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it.  This week, we have another legendary story in Jacob’s saga.  As he prepares to be reunited with his long-lost brother Esau with whom he had a falling out (to say the least), we get the strange tale of Jacob wrestling with “a man” until daybreak.  Jacob struggles with this person until dawn asking for the man to bless him.  Two things happen at the end of the story that I want us to think about this morning.  First, Jacob is struck on the hip leaving him with a limp.  More pertinent, though, is verse 30, which reads, “So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’”  Did you catch that?  God?  Really?  The stranger with whom Jacob wrestles with till daybreak is God?  What is the significance of this?

One of my favorite books on theology is Faith Seeking Understanding by Daniel Migliore.  He uses the story of Jacob metaphorically to describe the task of theology.  Dr. Migliore writes, the theological task is a struggle — we are like Jacob wanting to be blessed, but we often walk away with a limp.

 Is this not all of us — each and every one of us?  We have not seen God in the flesh, but we worship the God made known to us through the incantation: the fully human (and fully divine) Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.  Our task, as Christians, is to follow his way and fulfill his will.

But it’s not always easy.  The things that happen to us throughout our lives certainly pose a challenge.  There are those who make a different claim, though.  There are some people who say that once you become a Christian, everything is sunshine and rainbows.  Life becomes perfect.  When things go wrong, they smile and say well, this is just part of God’s plan.  It is what I call a Pollyanna spirituality — optimism gone amok.

Let me tell you about Arlene…  Arlene is a friend of my in-laws: a close friend of my wife’s family.  Cindy was unable to come to John Drews funeral yesterday, because she had to attend the funeral of Arlene’s son.  This is the second son she lost.  Both of her sons-in-law died.  She has a brother who spent 15 years in prison.  One of her daughter’s is a recovering alcoholic.  She has another family member who died from a drug addiction.  This is clearly someone who has experienced more than her fair share of pain and loss.

Being a Christian isn’t a shield that protects you from the pain that we all experience from time to time throughout our lives: the loss of a loved one, financial difficulty, uncertainty about what the future holds, drug addiction, alcoholism, a terrible medical diagnosis, depression, the list is endless.  Being a Christian is not some sort of safeguard from these events.  And, furthermore, if you think that such pain is part of God’s plan, then you have all the more reason, like Jacob, to wrestle with your faith.

We all do time in the gutters as Oscar Wilde so beautifully said — some of us more frequently than others, some of us longer than others.  Believing that God is going to protect you from all harm gives you all the more reason to wrestle with God when such things happen.  It is almost as if the person of no faith has it easier.  They can simply explain it all away by saying, “It happens,” but they do not use the word it.  (Rather, it is a word that rhymes with “it”.)

In fact, if your faith is constructed upon a foundation that is entirely optimistic — that believes that God will only provide you with a life full of joy and happiness, and all good things — if this is what you believe, then you are in danger of losing your faith, because, at some point, you will do time in the gutters.  On the contrary, a mature faith is one that understands this — one that knows that there are no guarantees in life, that sadness and pain are part of the human condition, and it usually comes when we least expect it.  We wrestle with God when this happens, and we often walk away from the battle with a terrible limp.

But true faith knows that even though we walk away injured, God still walks with us.  God still loves us.  God still cares for us.  God will still guide us.  God will be with us no matter what happens.  Again, we must remember the words of William Sloan Coffin, whom I quoted a couple of weeks ago: God provides minimum protection, but maximum support.

It is not a cop-out to say you will never understand the ways of God.  God, the creator of the cosmos, is far beyond human understanding.  We will never fully comprehend the height, the width, the length, and the depth of our creator.  But that does not mean that we cannot trust — that we cannot believe that no matter what happens, God will be with us.  To quote the great American writer Norman MacLean. “We can love completely [or better yet trust completely] without complete understanding.”  And furthermore, isn’t that what Jesus’ name actually means?  He is called Emmanuel: “God with us.”  God is with us all the time through our joy and sorrows, through our mountain top experiences and are sojourns in the valley of despair, and everything in between.

Ask the questions.  Search for the answers.  Walk with God, even if you walk with a limp from time to time.