wrestling with God

I’m taking today and tomorrow off work to complete my 5 day cleaning/sorting/winnowing frenzy. The added bonus is that I get to go to daily morning mass at my own parish. Normally I go at lunch time downtown. Anyway, I digress…

Today’s 1st Reading stumped me at first hearing:

"In the course of the night, Jacob arose, took his two wives,
with the two maidservants and his eleven children,
and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
After he had taken them across the stream
and had brought over all his possessions,
Jacob was left there alone.
Then some man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.
When the man saw that he could not prevail over him,
he struck Jacob's hip at its socket,
so that the hip socket was wrenched as they wrestled.
The man then said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob said, "I will not let you go until you bless me."
The man asked, "What is your name?"
He answered, "Jacob."
Then the man said,
"You shall no longer be spoken of as Jacob, but as Israel,
because you have contended with divine and human beings
and have prevailed."
Jacob then asked him, "Do tell me your name, please."
He answered, "Why should you want to know my name?"
With that, he bade him farewell.
Jacob named the place Peniel,
"Because I have seen God face to face," he said,
"yet my life has been spared."

At sunrise, as he left Penuel,
Jacob limped along because of his hip.
That is why, to this day, the children of Israel do not eat
the sciatic muscle that is on the hip socket,
inasmuch as Jacob's hip socket was struck at the sciatic muscle."
(Genesis 32:23-33).

I think I was still a bit sleepy and I was thrown by the bits about the two wives and not eating the sciatic muscle. But then my pastor "broke open the word" for me. I love it when that actually happens with a homily.

It’s all about wrestling with God. Jacob wrestles with God and is forever changed. His name is in fact changed, from Jacob to Israel. And he never walks the same again. Fr. Rich then said something which may have been directed at me (it was a small group of us in the chapel) but if not hit home anyway. He was talking about how we are in fact changed when we wrestle with God. God usually wins in the end, and we sometimes still change our name. Like at confirmation, when we may choose to take a confirmation name. Or sometimes "our wrestling with God might end up with us putting a title at the beginning of our name." Like Father or Sister, I suppose he might have meant?

I spent a long time wrestling with God, most intensely when my mom was dying. I was so acutely aware of the suffering she was going through, and the suffering our world was going through. The war in Iraq had just started and each morning I would wake up to news of more deaths. The combination was more than I could handle or understand. My "Why God’s" turned into some pretty angry grumblings with God, as we wrestled over God’s role in the world and the existence of suffering. It was weird because in a way I’ve never felt so close to God as when I was completely and thoroughly pissed off. Anger is a very intimate emotion.

After the wrestling match? I found myself deeply into a relationship with the big guy, never to walk the same again. And maybe some day to have a title attached to the beginning of my name. Interesting……

Now, time to turn the computer off and continue on day 4 of the cleaning frenzy!