There's a strange story in Genesis 32:22-32 about the patriach Jacob's meeting with a divine being. Was it an angel, or a pre-incarnation second person of the Trinity, as some have suggested? We're probably meant to imagine the former, but let's call him the Divine.
Jacob's wrestling match takes place before a fateful meeting with his brother Esau. He has every reason to suppose that Esau hates him and wants to kill him. Jacob has prepared an elaborate series of gifts for Esau. He's tried to keep his family out of danger and divided his flocks so if Esau falls on the one, at least he might get the other away. It's a huge moment for him, and right at the pivot of his story is this meeting with the Divine.
It happens at a ford. Fords in the ancient world were seen as the gateways into the lands to which they gave entry. So this was a borderline, a threshold; he was stepping over from one life into another life, and he had to do battle before he could cross over.
Jacob had struggled all his life. When he was born, the story is that he came out clutching Esau's heel: he couldn't bear to be second. He stole the blessing of the first-born from their father Isaac. He battled with Laban, his father-in-law. He wrestled all his life and now he's wrestling with God. And he won't give up: he has to prevail. Even when he's injured and in pain, he says, "I will not let you go until you bless me."
In that moment there's a shift in the whole mood of the story. We're just told, "Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak." Until now it's been a dark and spooky tale. It's a life and death, violent struggle in pitch darkness. But it changes: Jacob has lost, but the struggle to prevail becomes a struggle for blessing. And God allows him to fight and honours him in his struggle. When it's over, God marks him with pain, because Jacob has to come to a point of acknowledging that he needs him; but even then, the relationship endures.
As well as Jacob's story, and Israel's story, this is about human beings wrestling with God. It pictures the point at which instead of fighting against God, we fight to hold him.
One of the great hymns of the Methodist Church, by Charles Wesley, is based on this story. Wrestling Jacob begins:
Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee;
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.
It focuses on Jacob's demand that his opponent tells him his name. There are the repeated lines, "Wrestling, I will not let Thee go, Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know."
There are many people today who are a long way from being Christians, but who are haunted by God. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, "God has set eternity in human hearts." Francis Thompson, the 19th century poet, was a troubled man, a drug addict and alcoholic who lived rough on the Embankment in London. He wrote a great poem called The Hound of Heaven, imagining God as a great hound, like a bloodhound, tracking him down in spite of all his efforts to escape: "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years..." God doesn't stop. He marks us with a reminder of his existence, just as he marked Jacob when he left him limping. It's sometimes irritating, sometimes painful, but God wrestles with human beings for human beings.
Charles Wesley's hymn ends with that moment of knowledge: "Your nature and your name is love."
In the story of Wrestling Jacob, we can see a foreshadowing of Christ's incarnation and suffering. He wrestled for us and with us too; and if we ask him to bless us, he will welcome and forgive us.
