Sticking with God

St Peter’s Tewin: 21 October 2007: Stephen Fielding

‘I will not let you, go unless you bless me’. (Genesis 32:26)

This is a sermon entitled ‘sticking with God’. I look at Jacob wrestling with God, refusing to let go, and I ask, what did it mean?
I look at the three great crises of wrestling in the life of Jesus – temptations, Gethsemane and the cross - and I ask, what did it mean? I look at our own sticking with God – our faith in God – and I ask, what does it mean?

A. Jacob wrestling

The episode of Jacob wrestling comes in the middle of a story. There is a past and an immediate sequel. Jacob has form. He is a swindler, a crook and a cheat. We see him as he prepares to meet his brother Esau whom he has wronged. He’s full of fear and anxiety.

What will Esau say? What will he do? Fearful, Jacob asks for God’s help. But it’s not enough; he has to meet God. Alone on the night before the intended encounter Jacob does indeed meet God. He’s confronted by him. He is struck by how utterly different God is from him. He is not a bigger projection of himself. He realises God is holy, immensely holy. And this immense holiness grasps him, masters him, overpowers him.

What follows? Jacob is forgiven. And something happens, something mysterious. He suddenly has a new perspective, sees a new possibility and a new hope. So much so that when he meets Esau his brother embraces him. It is a moment of supreme reconciliation – so powerful, so supercharged – that both men wept. Maybe it was necessary for Jacob to be humbled before the holiness of God, to be ready to receive the forgiveness of his brother. Reconciliation with God has made possible the reconciliation with his brother. Maybe there is a pattern here. God making a reconciliation with Jacob through Jacob’s submission, and thereby opening up a new possibility of reconciliation for Jacob with his brother. It seems as if reconciliation is a governing theme here.

B. Jesus wrestling

In his life, Jesus wrestled on at least three occasions. There were the temptations in the desert. There was Gethsemane. And, supremely, there was the crisis of the cross. Three great crises.

Jesus is baptised and commissioned for his great work. His first commission is to go into the desert ‘to be tempted by the devil’. It is a struggle – an inner struggle – to be faithful to his task. Jesus must descend into the dangers that beset human beings, Jesus entering the human drama. Jesus opening himself up to the risk of human existence, penetrating right to the heart of all human history so as to be able to transform it. Jesus suffering through the human drama and his own role and mission in relation to it. He knows that all temptation involves putting God to one side, and that in these temptations, God is the issue.

God is the issue. God alone is his true Good. We don’t live by bread alone and God is not to be tempted. Only God is to be worshipped and adored. There is no other. It is a wonderful consolation that, at the end of the temptations, ‘the angels came and ministered unto him’. (Mt 4:11).

Jesus later wrestles in Gethsemane. It is an awful wrestling. ‘My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me’ Or again: ‘And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly’. (Lk 22:42,44).

The third great crisis of wrestling is the cross. It is among other things a crisis of endurance. ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ (Mt 27:46). Can he, the sinless man, bring all the sin of the world to the cross as our agent? Can he? Must he rather? Yes, for that was his purpose and he will not shirk it.

Temptations, Gethsemane, the cross. What did it mean? The supreme wrestling with God has won our salvation – that is, our reconciliation with God. This is the meaning of the great phrase from the cross ‘It is finished’. It’s over. The great estrangement from God is behind us. The way back to God has been finally and decisively secured.

C. Our own sticking with God

So then why should you and I stick with God? Or rather, why not, in the light of all that God has done in Jesus? Sticking with God might be the minimum response of a grateful heart. Still I think that God desires it – or rather that he desires us with the whole of his very large heart. And who can doubt that what God desires for us must be for our greatest good? Sticking with God brings blessing – ‘God is the strength of my life and my portion for ever’ (Psalm 73:25). Sticking with God brings reconciliation. That is, as St Paul puts it, ‘the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace’.

We can put God off. We frequently do. We make him secondary, if we acknowledge him at all. But if we will consent to be mastered by him, who loves us, then he will bless us, he will be our greatest good, as he was for Jacob and supremely for Jesus.

And finally. How should we stick with God? What might that mean?

We are, I think, to put our hands into the hands of God. To hold on tight to the arms that are outstretched to save us. We are to come to God in our prayer just as we are. Honest about ourselves, trying to rid ourselves of illusions and self-deceptions, offering ourselves to God in faith, in penitence, in hope, wishing God to take our lives and to shape them and empower them by his spirit.

It might also mean thinking of one particular relationship we have that needs healing – and asking God to enable us to understand, to forgive or better still to be forgiven.

The mark of sticking with God, come what may, through thick and thin, the mark of faith in other words, is that we are reconciled. Reconciled with God and free to forgive others and to be forgiven by them.

‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me’.

AMEN