19 Pentecost

October 18, 2025

 

Genesis 32.22-31; Luke 18.1-8

+ Last week in my sermon, I mentioned a word.

 

Ekphrasis.

 

Ekphrasis was a word I recently heard about from a colleague of mine Concordia College in which an artist responds artistically to a piece of visual art.

 

For example writing a poem about a painting or a photograph.

 

That is ekphrasis.

 

Well, we’re going to use another form of ekphrasis today, in which we are going to look at this.

 

This very famous piece of art.

 

This of course is Dore’s very famous etching of Jacob wrestling with the angel—the same story we just heard in our reading from the Hebrew scriptures.  

 

Most of us know this well.

 

We have seen this countless times.

 

And for most of us, THIS is the image we have in our heads when we think of Jacob wrestling with the angel

 

It’s compelling for us because it is detailed.

 

And, it’s compelling because we can relate.

 

When we see this, we see ourselves in it.

 

It is a story we often personalize.

 

More importantly, it’s a story we know.

 

Let’s face it.

 

We’ve been there.

 

We have done it.

 

We too have wrestled with God.

 

We too have struggled with God.

 

We have too have had those late night shouting matches with the angel.

 

And in almost every situation when we have done it, we have come way limping.

 

There’s a similar midrashic story you have heard me share many times.

 

But I love this story as much as I love the story of Jacob and the angel.

 

I’m sharing it again this morning, because it sorts of echoes our reading from Genesis today, which is another story I love.

 

In this story, there was once a very wealthy king.

 

He was a good king, who loved God dearly.

 

One evening, he was walking in his beautiful garden, admiring the trees and the flowers and the plants.

 

And as he did so, as the joy and beauty of it all came upon him, he found himself singing psalms to God.

 

The psalms just seemed to well up from within him.

 

Suddenly, an angel appeared to him.

 

It was a mighty, beautiful angel and the King was amazed.

 

He was so excited that an angel of all things appeared to him!

 

Just as he was about to exclaim his joy at the angel, the angel raised its hand and struck him hard across the face.

 

It actually knocked the King off his feet and threw him into the dirt and mud.

 

The King was shocked.

 

He had never been struck before!

 

And he was confused.

 

As he looked up from the mud, his clothes torn, the angel’s hand-print on his  face, wracked with pain, he cried, “Angel, why did you strike me? What did I do wrong? Here I was singing God’s praises in this beautiful garden and then you struck me! Why would you do such a thing?”

 

The angel replied, “Of course, you can sing God’s praises as you wander about in your beautiful garden, dressed in fine clothes, with joy and happiness in your heart. That’s easy. But now, try. Try to sing God’s praises after you’ve been struck across the face by an angel.”

 

We’ve been there too.

 

We know what it feels like to be struck down when we have been most happy.

 

I am of the opinion that we haven’t earned our stripes as believers in God and followers of Jesus unless we have the limp, or the hand print of the angel upon our cheeks.

 

Unless we’ve emerged from that struggle, bleeding and limping, we still live in some kind of halcyon understanding of God.

 

Because what this struggle is really about is about deconstruction.

 

It is about facing God for who God really is and not the God we have created for ourselves.

 

Our wrestling with the angel is about being forced to see that God is not that sweet bearded man in the sky on a throne giving good things to good people who do good and meting out pain and punishment on bad people who do bad.

 

God, as you have heard me say a million times, is NOT Santa Claus in the sky not is God a genie granting us wishes.

 

Let me tell you, wrestling with God and being slapped by God quickly destroys those human-made images of God quickly.

 

The God we know and struggle with and come way from limping is so much more than any of that.

 

And sometimes the realization of that is what truly causes us to limp and bleed.

 

As you have heard me say a million times, God answers all prayer.

 

But the answer is one of three things.

 

Whata re they?

 

Yes

 

No 

 

Or not yet.

 

And often our struggle with God involves accepting whatever the answer is to that prayer.

 

 And in our limping away from our struggle we realize that maybe we have been praying about the wrong thing.

 

Our Gospel reading is a prime example of that.

 

What does the widow in Jesus’ parable pray?

 

“Grant me justice against my opponent,” she prays.

 

This also a truly interesting story.

 

This widow, who would not take no for an answer, persisted.

 

She too struggled with the angel.

 

This widow, who, in that time and place without a man in her life was in bad shape, was demanded to be heard.

 

This widow who had been taken advantage of (someone cheated her of her rightful inheritance) did not let discouragement stop her.

 

This widow prayed day and night.

 

She struggled.

 

She wrestled.

 

She lashed out and shook her fists at God and others.

 

And what happened?

 

God heard her and answered her.

 

And the answer was “yes.”

 

God turned the hearts of the unjust.

 

That, definitely, speaks to us right now.

 

That is what we should be praying for right now in this country.

 

See, God is definitely speaking loudly here to us through this scripture.

 

We could pray that those we despise are destroyed and burned to ash.

 

We could pray that destruction is brought upon those we fight against.

 

But the answer is usually (hopefully) no.

 

However, maybe what we should be praying for is justice, not only against our opponents.

 

We should be praying for justice in all things.

 

In all ways.

 

We definitely should be praying for justice in this country and this world.

 

Please, God, turn the hearts of the unjust! And grant us justice!

 

The scriptural definition of “justice” is “to make right.”

 

So, to seek justice from God means that something went wrong in the process, and we long for “rightness.”

 

We too need to be praying hard, over and over again, for justice.

 

We too need to keep struggling.

 

We need to keep wrestling with God in the garden.

 

We need to shake our fists and stop believing in a god made in our own image, with our own limitations and biases.

 

Because the fact is, God—the real God, the living God—loves us.

 

Even when we are wrestling with God.

 

Even in those moments of engagement, just like in the Dore painting, God loves us.

 

And knows us.

 

And knows our very prayers before we ask.

 

The struggle, if we notice, is about us.

 

The angel could end that battle at any moment.

 

But chooses not to.

 

The struggle itself is important.

 

It is vital.

 

It is what sometimes needs to happen for us to realize we have created expectations for ourselves that are not God’s expectations.

 

We sometimes need to struggle to realize that we not in control of anything.

 

Sometimes we need the struggle—and the limp, and the slap—to remind ourselves that there is something planned far beyond our understanding.

 

Sometimes we need to stop trying to control the situation and the world.

 

And God.

 

Because we’re not going to win on that one.

 

And sometimes we have to simply believe that God does know us.

 

That God knows best for us, even when it seems like God does not.

 

Sometimes we simply have to lean into God’s love instead of fighting it and controlling it.

 

 

Maybe then, our struggles will be seen as less of a battle.

 

Maybe we will see it less as a fight, head to head.

 

Rather, maybe we can see all of this as something so much more.

 

Maybe we can see it instead as . . .

 

…an embrace. 

 

Amen.