Something New!
What bothered you? What confused you? What challenged you? What encouraged you? What is new to you?
Introduction
We have some really fun readings this week. From Romans, there’s the beginnings of Paul’s argument about God’s continued faithfulness to the Jewish people, culminating in his describing the Jewish people as the tree of faith, into which Gentiles have been grafted because, as in the gospel’s telling of the feeding of the five thousand, in God there is more than enough to go around. The Jewish people can remain God’s chosen people even as non-Jews are welcomed into the family of faith, since God’s love, like in the miracle of the loaves and fish, is so vast that even when every human is included in God’s love, there is still more left over than it seemed like there was in the beginning.
That’s a beautiful picture, but what really drew me in today was the story of Jacob’s renaming to Israel after a wrestling match with God.
Jacob Wrestling with God
As this story goes, Jacob had worked for Laban his uncle for over 20 years, and he decided it was finally time to go home. So he gathered up all his family and his slaves and his wealth and set out to cross the Jabbok River, likely in modern day Jordan. Now Jacob is convinced that his brother Esau—the one he scammed twice—still wants to kill him, so he sends across gifts for Esau, then sent his family and his wealth across, so Jacob is safely by himself on one side of the river while he bravely sent everything and everyone else across into danger. So brave.
While there, a man shows up and starts wrestling Jacob. And they wrestle all through the night until dawn. At one point, the man notices that Jacob was about to win, so he dislocates Jacob’s hip, but even then the match seems to end in a draw. And Jacob, for some reason, says, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.” So Jacob gets a new name, “He wrestles God.” And this comes to be the name of the people who are his descendants.
Wrestling Against or Wrestling With?
Now there’s a lot in this story. Jacob walks away with a limp, which means he literally can’t run away from his problems any more like he’s done his entire life. He has to go and confront his brother and the wrong he has done to Esau, which he does. And the brothers end up reconciling as brothers in the next chapter. But this story also sets up an interesting identifying characteristic of Jacob’s descendants behavior: they wrestle God. This is such an identifying characteristic that some scholars think that the term “Palestine” derives from an ancient Greek translation of Israel: the place of the palaestīs—the wrestlers.
Wrestling Against
But this phrase—”Israel”, “He wrestles God” has no explicit preposition, so there are basically two ways people have taken this passage, and I think both apply. One is to wrestle “against” God, something that seems obvious from the rest of the Biblical narrative. God’s people are in somewhat of an antagonistic with God, as they often don’t listen to God, or they complain to God, or they seek after other gods, and so on and so forth. That feels a lot more like “wrestling against God”.
Wrestling With
But there’s another sense to take this wrestling that I think is more important to recognize, the idea of wrestling “with” God. This is the kind of sentiment expressed in Moses talking God out of God’s anger when God’s people are wrestling against God. Or when Jeremiah tries to negotiate God’s call to prophesy a message from God that Jeremiah knows the people won’t want to hear. But I think the best example is the way the Jewish people interact with Scripture, and that’s shown really well in the story in the Jewish Midrash of the Oven of Akhnai.
Oven of Akhnai
The setting for the story is about 50 years after the destruction of the temple, and the rabbis are debating a certain oven, one that is constructed out of segments with sand between them rather than as one piece. Rabbi Eliezer, in his interpretation, has decided that, because the oven is not a “complete vessel,” it is not subject to ritual impurity. Meanwhile, all the other rabbis disagree, and say that even though it is made of separate pieces, it is still an oven and is subject to the same ritual impurity as any other oven.
As the rabbis gathered together to discuss the issue, Rabbi Relizer was steadfast in his assertion that the oven is always pure, and the other rabbis were equally steadfast in their disagreement with him. Eventually, a frustrated Rabbi Eliezer says, “If I’m right, then this tree will prove it!” And the tree in question was uprooted and moved some 60 yards away! But the other rabbis replied, “A tree is not proof of your argument.” So Rabbi Eliezer said again, “If I’m right, then this stream will prove it!” And the stream in question began flowing in the other direction!. But the other rabbis again replied, “A stream is not proof of your argument, either!”
So Rabbi Elizer says to them yet again, “If I’m right, the walls of this building will prove it!” And the walls of the building started to lean in and fall around them. But another rabbi, Rabbi Yehoshua scolded the walls, saying “What do walls have to do with a dispute about the Torah? Stay out of it!” And the walls stopped where they were, because of their respect for Rabbi Yehoshua, but neither did they straighten back out, because of their respect for Rabbi Eliezer.
Finally an exasperated Rabbi Elizer calls out to heaven saying, “If I’m right, Heaven will prove it!” And the divine voice spoke out of Heaven and said, “Rabbi Eliezer is right! The oven is pure!” But Rabbi Yehoshuah stood up and said to the voice, quoting Deuteronomy 3012, “The Torah is not in heaven!” And the rabbis ruled against Rabbi Eliezer in the matter of the oven.
Years later, yet another rabbi, Rabbi Natan, had an encounter with Elijah the prophet and asked Elijah, “What did the Holy One do when Rabbi Yehoshua said that?” And Elijah replied, “The Holy One smiled and said, ‘My children have triumphed over me; my children have triumphed over me.’”
Wrestling Faithfully
After that the story takes a turn into a moral tale about the danger of verbally mistreating someone, as Rabbi Eliezer is ostracized and lots of drama ensues because of how the other rabbis treated Rabbi Eliezer. But I think the important part of the story is what it teaches about how we interact with Scripture—namely that it’s good to faithfully wrestle with this book that God preserved for us.
A lot of times as Christians we’re tempted to treat the Bible as if it is God. We start to assume that everything in it is meant for our good and something to be emulated. But, if you’ve paid attention the past few weeks, you’ll have noticed that many of the readings, especially those of the Hebrew Scriptures for the last couple of months, are pretty awful. People behave badly, are treated badly, and it overall doesn’t always feel like the God we see in those passages is the God that we know—the God of reconciliation with all people seems far away from those passages.
And I think those stories are an invitation to wrestle with those stories, to really dig into them and confront them rather than pretend they don’t exist or, even worse, try to implement them. But I think there is a way to faithfully wrestle with these stories and the God who appears in them, just like so many people in the Scriptures have done, what the Jewish rabbis of the post-Temple era did, and what faithful followers of God across time and space have always done.
Because sometimes we see in these stories a God who makes us deeply uncomfortable. It’s ok to call God out on it. Other times we see actions taken by people we’ve thought of as heroes of faith and find out that they’re kind of terrible. It’s ok to call that out too. When it really comes down to it, a good chunk of our Scriptures—especially the work of the prophets, the books of the writings, and letters of the apostles—are recordings of people wrestling with God and figuring out how to be faithfully followers of God in their eras and situations. It’s no different for us, because we’re doing the exact same thing today.
When we were grafted onto the tree of faith, we were also grafted into this heritage of wrestling God—and hopefully we wrestle “with” God more than we wrestle “against” God. But the wrestling is part of who we are. And I think we’re more than “allowed” to wrestle with God, but the story of Jacob encourages us to. So challenge God, challenge Scripture, and do so in faith, because that’s how we learn the heart of what it is to live as witnesses to the reign of God in this time and place.