Homily for Tuesday, 9 July 2019

Readings of the day: Genesis 32:23-33; Psalm 17:1b, 2-3, 6-7ab, 8b, 15; Matthew 9:32-38

Tuesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of St. Augustine Zhao-Rong and Companions, Martyrs

This homily was given at the Kateri House Women's Residence Chapel of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Is anybody here a fan of sports like wrestling, martial arts, or the maybe-not-so-new-anymore phenomenon of mixed martial arts? I must confess that, although I enjoy all forms of wrestling in venues like the Olympics, I have never been a fan of these kinds of sports as commercial products.

Yet today the Book of Genesis introduces us to Jacob the Wrestler, or maybe Jacob the Kickboxer or Jacob the Mixed Martial Artist. In one corner, we have Jacob the Decisive Underdog, whom none of the bookkeepers are giving much of a chance. In the other corner, we have the Undisputed Heavyweight (but Mysteriously Weightless-at-the-Same-Time) Creator-Champion of the World… God.

One would have expected this bout to go less than one round, but from the opening bell Jacob miraculously stays in the match. As expected, Jacob takes a beating from God (or the mysterious man who represents God in the ring against Jacob; nobody is really sure), but this match continues on and on. Jacob and God wrestle all night long, “until daybreak.” God injures Jacob’s hip, but Jacob still will not give up. Finally, the referee signals the end of this epic match, and announces the unanimous winner, barely able to believe the judges’ decision: “The winner of the Fight of the Centuries is… Jacob”!

Not only has Jacob defeated God (or God’s “mystery man”), on an injured hip to boot, but because of this win Jacob receives a new name from his opponent, God himself. Jacob is to be known as Israel, which means literally, “One who contends (or wrestles) with God”: “For you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed,” God says to Israel, the man whose victory named and built a nation.

This match results in Jacob gaining a new name, Israel, but God (or his mystery man in the fight, whoever he is) never reveals his name. This is maybe just as well; Israel is content to receive a blessing, and to have escaped this all-night barn burner with his life. In recognition of Jacob’s unprecedented emergence alive from a “face to face” bout with God, the place of the match is renamed Peniel, which is a play-on-words on “face to face” in Hebrew.

What does all this mean for us today, though? In one sense, Jacob-Israel was the first to encounter God “face to face” and to have survived, but he would not be the last. We believe as Christians that we have had the ultimate “face to face” encounter with God in Jesus Christ and, thankfully, we did not even need to fight him. Unlike Jacob-Israel, we did not sustain even an injured hip. Instead, Jesus chose freely to encounter us in our weight class; in the limitations of our human flesh. Jesus chose freely to bear our injuries; our sin; our death on the cross so that we might be saved; so that we, too, may yet contend “with God and with humans” and live to fight another day. Because of God, and God’s Son Jesus Christ, we, like Jacob-Israel, have a chance to be, for the ages, heavyweight champions of the world.