Holding on until the blessing comes

There’s an often-quoted story of an interview between Dan Rather and Mother Teresa. Curious about her prayer life, he asks her what she says to God when she prays. “I don’t say anything,” she answers. “I listen.” Surprised, Rather follows up “Ok, then what does God say?” “He listens.”

I think a lot about this story in my own prayer life, and in my life as a pastor, family member, friend and neighbor. It also gives me a new understanding of a Bible story I think about a lot, too. That story is about Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, coming home from exile. Twenty years before, Jacob betrayed his brother Esau by stealing his inheritance, and Esau was so angry he wanted to kill Jacob. Jacob fled for his life, but twenty years later, God told Jacob it was time to come home. To get back to the promised land, however, he had to face his brother Esau at least one more time.

The night before he crossed over into his brother’s lands, Jacob camped alone in fear for his life. The Bible says a man came to his camp and wrestled with Jacob until dawn. “Let go” the man said, “for the day is breaking. But Jacob said ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’.” (Gen. 32:26) Jacob was wrestling with God, but he did not know it until he received a new name for his tenacity. The new name God gave him that morning was “Israel,” which means, “the one who wrestles with God,” or, alternatively, “God wrestles.” If Dan Rather were to ask Jacob how he prays, he might say “I wrestle.” If asked what God says in return, Jacob might answer “he wrestles.”

So much of the time, the life of faith comes with a commitment to wrestle with God and with each other. Whether one is a parent or a spouse or a sibling, whether one is taking care of a stubborn parent or a loved one with a mental illness or addiction, we often have to wrestle and hold on with all we’ve got before we receive the blessing God has in store.

I think that’s true in our communal life, too. To be a community means being willing to wrestle with each other until a blessing comes. Recently, a guest speaker named John Lash asked fifty people at Nacoochee Presbyterian Church what makes for community. “Trust” someone said. “mutual support,” someone else offered. “Respect.” “Love.” “No,” Mr. Lash replied. “All those things are great, but they are not community. Your community is the group of people you can’t easily get away from.” In other words, community is the people with whom we wrestle.

If we think about our life together this way, maybe the reason we get off track is that we don’t wrestle with each other the same way we wrestle with God. To wrestle with God is to hold on come hell or high water, but when it comes to wrestling with each other, it feels like we’re trying to put each other down until someone lets go. It’s as if the community we’re wrestling for looks like one person, one household or one family unencumbered by anyone else.

That may be the blessing for which many of us wrestle, but it has nothing to do with the blessing that comes from God. Jacob’s new name doesn’t come with a new freedom to get away from his brother Esau. He still has to face him if he is to receive God’s blessing, and it is when Esau hugs his long-lost brother in peace that God’s blessing comes to fruition. If community means wrestling, then let us wrestle with each other not to put each other down or let each other go, but to hold on until the blessing comes.