Today’s sermon is a “how to” sermon, despite its title about our ancestor being on the lam (running from the law). Most teachers of preaching say that this is “the” way to preach. Preaching, they say, is supposed to teach us “how to be a Christian.” Today’s sermon uses one of those “how to” tools for being a Christian: how to read the stories that shape our faith. Stories are such good teachers. Most children grow up on stories. Grimm’s fairy tales, Disney, Veggie Tales, Mr. Rogers. If you were lucky, like me, and came from a family that loved to tell stories, you could ask for the best kind of story of all—“Tell me a story about me!” My maiden aunts spent Sunday afternoons telling us kids stories about their childhoods in rural Minnesota, our grandmother’s childhood in Norway, and—best of all—our childhoods. When we heard those stories, we learned what it meant to “be a Krantz.” We knew what we were good at, because our grandmother and father and aunts and uncles were good at it. We knew how to handle dangerous situations and how to stick together, because we heard how they did it.

Stories. When I tell you Bible stories, you are hearing “how to be a Christian,” because you hear what your faith ancestors were good at, how they handled dangerous situations, how they fought with each other and stuck together. You learn how to recognize God’s voice in your life, because you have already heard how your faith ancestors did it. Today’s story is one of those stories. The plot details are important—the part about Jacob running away twice (once from his brother, once from his father-in-law), how he sends the wives and kids ahead and is jumped by a stranger in the middle of the night. The character development is important—Jacob always the trickster, his greed in tricking his brother out of the blessing and in stealing from his father-in-law, his stubborn hanging on.

Do you recognize any details from your life? Have you ever been so scared that you ran away—from home or a job or a relationship? Have you ever been in a dangerous situation that came out of nowhere—a co-worker spreading malicious gossip about you, bad test results from the doctor when you didn’t even feel sick, stranded on a dark road at night with car troubles? Have you ever had to work hard for something—for your fair share, to get good grades in school, on your marriage, to convince your family to let you go to college? Have you ever felt like your whole life was unraveling—near bankruptcy, the kids not speaking to you, your sciatica flaring up, a crash with the car, your hours cut back at work, and now your best friend moving away?

You might consult what a faith ancestor did. Like Jacob. Have you ever felt that, whoever the demon was that you were wrestling with, all you could do was hang on for dear life? Maybe you will see yourself in Jacob’s wrestling match. Who is his opponent? If you’ve ever seen a horror movie, you know it is vampires who can’t stand the light of day. Is Jacob’s opponent really God, or is it that nameless, terrifying thing that lives under your bed at night? Every child in the world knows there is something under there. So if it’s really God whom Jacob is wrestling, it’s a mighty scary God, who needs to be gone before daybreak. I wonder if you’ve ever wrestled with something like this. Struggled. Something so powerful that, once you’ve been in that battle, you are never the same again. Church people have a word for that. They call it “transformation.” Our story says that Jacob limps ever afterwards. He escapes from the struggle, but he’s never the same again. You get back on your feet, but things are different.

Just this week I was talking with someone about that automatic bill-paying thing where your computer pays bills online. My friend and the banking program have it worked out that income automatically goes in to her account (there is no such thing as a “paycheck”) and her regular monthly bills are automatically paid by the computer. I couldn’t do that. I need to have a more intimate relationship with the money in and the money out. This comes from the time I spent so close to the bone financially. I knew when each paycheck came in and to the penny where it all went. Most months I had $4 left, and once I remember feeling rich because I had $8. The “limp” I still carry from that time is an irrational fear that if I don’t personally receive and send on each dollar, I will run out, and my kids and I will have to live in the back of our station wagon.

If you look at your life, you will see the limps that you still carry from those times of transformation. Maybe not as silly as mine, but limps nevertheless. Adults who are afraid of dogs might have been bit or frightened by dogs as children. Children of divorce can have a hard time making relationship commitments. Serious struggles leave indelible marks on a person’s life. The marks aren’t always negative. Recovering alcoholics or affected family members often become addiction counselors. Cancer survivors volunteer to help with hospice work. Diabetics become nutritionists. I prefer to think of these limps as “marks of redemption.” One may have scars from the burns, but one has been through the fire.

Given that the “limp” thing is what—a rite of passage? a badge of honor? a natural consequence of the transformation process?—given that, do we need to ask who wins in today’s story? In the story, the concept of “winner” is pretty ambiguous. In fact, we don’t know “who” Jacob’s opponent really is (demon or God or human stranger or even his brother?). Even if we don’t know who the opponent is, we do want to know who wins, right? When the kids first starting coming to Playtime with the Pastor two years ago, I really confused them by playing non-competitive games. “Yeah,” they’d say, “nice game. But who wins?” Here is a crucial skill for putting your story next to Jacob’s story. Try to see what it has to tell you about who you are, who God is, and what the story asks of you. In Jacob’s story, the answers to these question hinges on asking who wins. If God “wins,” that’s safe, because then we’ve still got the triumphalist God—the one who is in charge of everything, who knows everything ahead of time, who micromanages our lives. It’s not so nice that the win is against us, but at least God is in charge. If Jacob wins, well, we can live with that, because it still means “God helps those who help themselves” and “God only has our hands and feet to work in this world.” While those sayings may be true and helpful on a certain level, I also believe that God respects our hanging on, even in the face of a draw. In fact, relationship—whether with God or humans—comes with certain expectations for a willingness of effort to stay with the struggle. If this wrestling match is a “draw,” it gives us a funny picture of God. A God who is vulnerable—who can’t win without a dirty trick. Was this hold legal? Would a ref have allowed it? What kind of relationship does this call us to?

Years ago, I read a shocking interpretation of this story which changed the way I pray. The writer suggested that Jacob was really wrestling for what he already had. If you recall, when Rebekkah was pregnant and the babies were very active in her, God told her that “two nations contended” in her, that the younger would receive the blessing, not the older. Before he was born, Jacob was the chosen one. Jacob cheated his brother, tricked his father-in-law, snuck out of two different towns, and sent his wives and children on ahead to appease his brother. Then he stayed up all night, wrestling with the angel of the Lord or a demon or God himself for the sake of a blessing. He was wrestling for what he’d been given before he was born. He was wrestling for what he already had. Now, for us, that means that sometimes we struggle and fight with God in prayer, but God has already blessed us. I’m inviting you to put your story against Jacob’s story. What do I hope you learn? Jacob learned that life is a struggle (and God respects that). Jacob also learned he should not give up, even it if causes him to limp afterwards. God is dangerous in this story. God jumps Jacob after dark, while he is vulnerable, anxious about his upcoming meeting with the brother he’d tricked out of the birthright. But God is also vulnerable. God can’t beat Jacob fair and square. Or chooses not to. Maybe it’s in the relationship that we grow, in the struggling that we, too, see God face to face. I think that’s what this story asks us to do. Stay with your questions of God. Continue to ask, continue to struggle, continue to fight, even if it’s with God. Even the apostle Paul had to wrestle in his faith. Listen to what Paul had to say in his letter to the Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . . I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. . . .I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind. . . . Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this?” Paul answers this anguished question, for himself and for us: it is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ who saves us, who by his life, death, and resurrection says to us, “you are already blessed, it has already been given.” Believe this, friends.