Co-missioners,
Today we share the last section of Adam Morton’s presentation at our recent Crossings conference. Here he’ll lead us still further down paths that few other thinkers seem willing to tread these days, littered as they appear to be with impossible contradictions. Charles Wesley and Luther will serve as Adam’s assisting guides. Together they’ll bring us by way of the Gospel to a pithy, startling, and refreshing conclusion that next to none of us will have encountered elsewhere. Who but a riotous Lutheran would venture such thoughts? If only more of us did. My pastoral memory flashes with pictures of people who would likely have found unthinkable comfort in what Adam finally says.
By the way, Adam is one of those lively speakers who sprinkles the prepared text with lots of ad hoc commentary along the way. I mention this because a video recording of his talk is working its way toward presentability. We’ll be sure to let you know when it’s available at the Crossings website so you can check it out.
Peace and Joy,
Jerry Burce, co-editor
for the Crossings Community
Wrestling Jacob and a Series of Tubes:
How the Passive Life Gets Things Done
(part 4)
by Adam Morton
Where last week’s argument ended—
Grass grows because that’s what it is, what it’s meant to be, what it’s been given to be. Birds fly because flying is their glory, the life God gives them. Waves pound the sand because that’s just what it is to be a wave, to be moved in that wavy way. And whatever willing these things do is, in this sense, good, because it is perfectly at one with the life they have been given. The wave does not try to hit the shore, and sometimes succeeds as if it were merely very good at following a rule. It isn’t following a rule. It just is, because that’s how God has made it.
And now—
V. Wrestling Jacob
Adam Morton
We are different because, unlike that wave, we are conflicted. Rather than being content to receive everything, trusting that the right action will result, we’re trying to force the action. This is why theologians get nervous about “purely passive”—well, what about my actions? What about lazy Christians? What about that bit of effort I need to put in? They’re okay with “mostly passive”—but they want just that little bit of credit, that trace of free will, that ever so slight independence that lets them impress Jesus a tiny bit—and don’t you want that? Don’t you want Jesus to be just a little bit impressed with you? That’s all I want at the end of this talk, is for Jesus to say, “well, that’s just a little bit better than I expected.”
The problem is that the more we try to be active on these terms, the less truly active we are—that is, the less active in the right, productive, good way. We get anxious, defensive, demanding credit and competing for it with others.
There’s one last thing to say here. While we remain sinners and this conflict is ongoing—between the passivity of faith and the dead, fake, frenetic activity of our unbelief—it is God who fights for us. And this is never more true than when our conflict is with God, which it must be. This is one of the great insights of the Crossings method which I have not been schooled in for all that many years, but it is a terrific insight, this notion of “the God problem,” because we do have a problem with God. All of us do. And therefore the real test of our thesis about passivity and action is at this point, in this conflict. This is the most extreme case for analyzing what we said so far about action and passivity, because it’s one thing to talk about action in general. It’s another thing to talk about what happens when our action is this desperate fight with our own Creator.
Personally, I think Christians don’t spend nearly enough time thinking on Genesis 32:22ff. , the story of Jacob’s fight by the river Jabbok. Several years ago I came across an incredible hymn about it that I’ve never once encountered in a Lutheran church, and I don’t think any Lutheran hymnal has ever included it. The hymn, from 1742, is called “Wrestling Jacob” or “O come thou traveler unknown” – and it’s by Charles Wesley. I sometimes jokingly refer to this as Methodist hymnody, but Wesley remained a son of the Church of England to the end of his life. This hymn is often regarded as one of his best—I think it is. And the great thing about it is that it’s about fighting Jesus, which is a wild subject for a hymn.
And here it is, all fourteen verses (those old hymnwriters!), all of them worth scanning—
- Come, O thou traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay
And wrestle till the break of day. - I need not tell thee who I am,
My misery or sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name;
Look on thy hands and read it there!
But who, I ask thee, who art thou?
Tell me thy name, and tell me now. - In vain thou strugglest to get free;
I never will unloose my hold.
Art thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know. - Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell,
To know it now, resolved I am;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know. - ’Tis all in vain to hold thy tongue,
Or touch the hollow of my thigh:
Though every sinew were unstrung,
Out of my arms thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know. - What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long,
I rise superior to my pain;
When I am weak, then I am strong;
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail. - My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath thy weighty hand,
Faint to revive, and fall to rise;
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand, and will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know. - Yield to me now—for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair!
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquer’d by my instant prayer;
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me, if thy name is love. - Tis love! ’tis love! thou diedst for me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee:
Pure, universal love thou art;
To me, to all thy passions move;
Thy nature and thy name is love. - My pray’r hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive,
Through faith I see thee face to face;
I see thee face to face and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove;
Thy nature and thy name is love. - I know thee, Savior, who thou art:
Jesus, the feeble sinner’s friend;
Nor wilt thou with the night depart,
But stay and love me to the end;
Thy mercies never shall remove,
Thy nature and thy name is love. - The Sun of Righteousness on me
Hath rose, with healing in his wings;
Withered my nature’s strength; from thee
My soul its life and comfort brings;
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and thy name is love. - Contented now, upon my thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplesness, all weakness I,
On thee alone for strength depend,
Nor have I power from thee to move;
Thy nature and thy name is love. - Lame as I am, I take the prey,
Hell, Earth, and sin with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and thy name is love.
- Come, O thou traveler unknown,
“Art thou the Man that died for me?” (stanza 3) What’s so interesting here is, in the first, place, how Wesley is reading Christ into the fight by the Jabbok. Christ is the one to whom Jacob says, “I will not let thee go / till I thy name, the nature know” (stanzas 3. 4, 5, 7). And as he goes on, he makes it very, very clear that the only power sustaining him in this fight is, in fact, who this person is. It is only because Christ died for him that he, Jacob—or rather the Christian he represents—can fight like this. It’s only because his name is already written on the hands of the one he does battle with that he can so struggle. It is his salvation, his election, God’s own promise that makes him to fight. And of course, the one he fights is the Lord himself.
This is the furthest thing from some airy ode to the free will. This is about truly passive faith—faith that comes from God alone and rests on his promise alone. Thus a fight that takes place purely because God gives himself in this way—to be fought?! Yes, to be fought. To the death.
This brings us to stanza 9. And while I don’t love the phrase “pure universal love” as poetry, the hymn also comes around to the only way to get past the banality of “God is love” into what this really means for us. First, “fight me.” There’s only one real clunker in this verse. We do indeed learn that the name of our combatant is love, but we don’t hear this by any “whisper in my heart,” though we may in fact feel it. We should not deny the emotional power here. But that power is in the combatant’s word—”and there he blessed him” (Gen. 32:29).
And here let me tell you a bit about my family. Around the turn of the 20th century, two brothers from Poland, ages 13 and 11, passed through Ellis Island and made their way eventually to Calumet, Michigan, where they went to work in the mines. One of the boys was my great-grandfather. The other was his little brother. My great-grandfather would become a successful restauranteur. The brother became a boxer and a wrestler. This was before the emergence of modern pro wrestling, when wrestling was still a legitimate sport. My great-great-uncle was an excellent boxer and an even better wrestler, a world champion in multiple divisions and weight classes. His career took him from Michigan to St. Paul, Minnesota to Los Angeles, and then around the world to South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, where he helped establish modern pro wrestling. His post-Ellis Island name was Walter Miller. As a wrestler he’d also be known as “Masked Marvel.”
Modern pro wrestling features masks. It also features good guys and bad guys—“heels” and “faces” to use the terminology. A heel is a bad guy. A face is a good guy. All this resonates quite wonderfully with this great story in Genesis 32. For one thing, Jacob can’t see who he’s wrestling with. Only at the end does he tumble to his identity. And then there’s the name “Jacob.” It means “heel,” as in the one who came out of the womb grasping his brother’s heel. And Jacob, of course, turns out to be just that, a heel, the opposite of the upstanding, moral guy. He is strong, he is clever, but he is not a good man.
From Canva
This is the person who is called by a new name and promise at the end of the story. Jacob the Heel, the prototype of all wrestling heels from the beginning to now, becomes the champion, the conqueror Israel who has striven with God and man and triumphed.
This interpretation by Wesley is a bit “out-there” because it doesn’t chicken out and make the whole thing about an angel. This is the Lord whom Jacob must fight.
Despite the illustration in the Luther Bible which shows an angel, Luther’s own interpretation is also that this is God. His commentary on the passage in the Genesis lectures is breathtaking, but I’ll focus in on one little bit. Luther entertains the notion that God himself may oppose his own promise, attacking it so that we cling to it ever more tightly. That is, he drives our fighting, gives us the fight. How could it be otherwise? Who could stand against him?
“There is sufficiently abundant protection in the promise of God not only against the devil, the flesh, and the world but also against this lofty temptation. For if God sent an angel to say: ‘Do not believe these promises!’ I would reject him, saying: ‘Depart from me, Satan, etc.’ (cf. Matt 16:23). Or, if God Himself appeared to me in His majesty and said: ‘You are not worthy of My grace; I will change My plan and not keep My promise to you,’ I would not have to yield to Him, but it would be necessary to fight most vehemently against God Himself. It is as Job says: ‘Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him’ (cf. Job 13:15). If He should cast me into the depths of hell and place me in the midst of devils, I would still believe that I would be saved because I have been baptized, I have been absolved, I have received the pledge of my salvation, the body and blood of the Lord in the Supper, Therefore I want to see and hear nothing else, but I shall live and die in this faith, whether God or an angel or the devil says the contrary.” LW6, 131
This is what Luther insists happened to Jacob. And not only to Jacob—to us. True faith, which is entirely, passively the work of God, fights even God to maintain itself. Jacob is drawn into a battle—God versus God, the accusation against the promise. Jacob’s old self is marked, maimed, broken. One wonders how any mortal could stand against God, but isn’t the answer obvious? God gives Jacob the fight, sustains him, upholds him, delivers himself into Jacob’s hands. Luther is more perceptive here than we tend to be. Sometimes we translate “Israel” a little incorrectly. We invent a kind of etymology for it or we misunderstand it, and we say it’s from a verb that means to strive or to wrestle. In fact it comes from the verb “surah” which means “to rule over.” Israel is the one who rules over God, who conquers God. Jacob doesn’t receive the body of Christ at the altar, but in the dead of night by the river, with a promise, a new name, a heavenly low blow, and a limp ever after. The passivity of faith has drawn him into this new and wondrous activity. And so he has taught us something memorable.
I said I’d tell you something about Christian behavior. Here it is: the one uniquely Christian behavior is to fight God and win. Many fight God. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory—passively—through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
