Strutting

When I was kid growing up in Philadelphia, one of the big things was strutting. The cool kids would strut. Some people thought it was cool, others thought it made you look cocky. In hindsight I realized that you don’t actually look cool when you strut, you actually look like an inebriated pirate or someone with a leg injury. Regardless of how cool it might have been, its really ambiguous about what really caused people to strut. What many thought to be a sign of a pompous individual could have just as easily been a sign of an injured individual.
In preparation for Sunday’s sermon, I am wrestling this week with the story of Jacob grappling with God. Jacob will obviously lose that match because God is well, God. God ends this match by contorting his hip so much that even Randy Couture would tap out. From that day on Jacob never again walks right because he has wrestled with God. Jacob’s identity is changed from being the deceiver (which is what Jacob means- literally heal grabber) to the one who wrestled with God (Israel).
Some people today will never walk right again because they have wrestled with God. They have grappled with the trying touch of a God who calls them to more than they want to give. They have felt the suffocation of the call to choke out selfishness. The call to forgive and love the unlovable is more painful than an arm bar. The challenge of having faith in a God who doesn’t seem to stop the injustice of suffering, the pain of divorce or the heart break of loneliness is worse than the tightest triangle choke. Some of these people look like they are strutting; when in reality they cannot walk the same anymore. They seem to scoff at the simplistic faith and trite platitudes that float the faith of others. But are they really strutting in arrogance, or are they limping because God has touched them. And it hurt. And it still hurts. And it will continue to hurt just like Jacob’s crippled leg.
They, which is often me, wish they wouldn’t have the limp. Sometimes I wish God just wanted me to be happy. I wish God just didn’t want me to do the sins that I have the discipline to avoid. I wish following God wasn’t so difficult. I wish it was black and white. I long to go back to thinking Christianity meant just reading my Bible every day and trying not to sin. Instead I limp because the complexities of God are too great to be watered down. The call is too big. The world is too gray. And love is too hard. All because God continues to wrestle with his people and change their identity.