Homily, October 19 2025, Rev. Holly Cardone

Wrestling in the Dark

October 19, 2025

There are stories in the Bible that don’t give us tidy answers wrapped in a bow. They just leave us with more questions and mystery. Jacob wrestling at the river Jabbok is one of those stories.

Who was he wrestling with? Was he wrestling himself, God, or an angel? Was he wrestling with a shadowy reflection of his past? The text doesn’t tell us. What it does tell us is that this is a defining moment in Jacob’s life—as a man, as a patriarch, and as a spiritual being.

In the ancient world, river crossings were dangerous. They were where the physical and the spiritual worlds crash into each other. Ancient stories often tell of travelers who had to face spirits or divine beings to cross safely. Usually they offered a sacrifice, or fought, or bargained their way through. But in this story, Jacob doesn’t make an offering. He just wrestles, all night. No winner, no loser and by dawn, he’s been blessed with a new name and marked with a wound. He walks away limping.

It’s as if the story is saying, you don’t enter the promised land without struggle, or pain. Without a mark to remind you that transformation always costs something.

Up to this point in Genesis, Jacob has been wrestling his whole life. First with his brother Esau in the womb, then for his father’s blessing, then with his uncle Laban, then his wives, then himself. The man at the river is just one more face of that same wrestling.

The name Jacob receives is Israel. The name born from the fight means “one who struggles with God.” Kent Dobson says it’s “a name born in struggle, just as the people of Israel would wrestle with their own identity and their understanding of God.” To be part of Israel, literally and symbolically, means to struggle with God. It means to live in that tension between what we believe and what we actually experience.

That’s our birthright too, because struggle is essential. Sometimes, our dark nights of the soul, or our wrestling with God, leaves us limping, but it also leaves us blessed. The future blessing, the promised land, cannot be separated from the struggle.

The dark night of wrestling is a dimension of every human life. Each of us has a river we have to cross. We all have a past. We all have regrets, relationships that haunt us, choices we wish we could redo. We all have those nights when we can’t sleep, when the weight of our lives presses down, and we find ourselves wrestling in the dark with God, with our conscience, with our fear. We all long to come home—to peace, to forgiveness, to the truth of who we are. Jacob doesn’t get there by avoiding the struggle. He gets there through the struggle.

Six or seven hundred years later, another story gets told. This time Jesus tells a parable about an unjust judge and a persistent widow.

The widow lives under Roman occupation, under corrupt leadership, under a justice system that favors the wealthy and powerful. She’s one of the most vulnerable people in her world: a woman alone, with no husband, no protection, no rights. She’s easy prey for people who want to exploit her. But she doesn’t give up. She keeps showing up at the judge’s door demanding justice.

The judge, Jesus tells us, doesn’t fear God or respect people. He’s the opposite of what the law calls for. The Torah says, “You shall not abuse any widow or orphan” (Exodus 22:22) and that God “executes justice for the orphan and the widow” (Deuteronomy 10:17–18). This judge ignores all of that. He doesn’t care. But the widow and her persistence wear down the judge. She just won’t stop asking for what she wants. He doesn’t grant her justice because it’s the right thing to do. He grants her justice to get her off his back. 

And Jesus says, if that’s what an unjust judge will do, how much more will a loving God do for those who cry out day and night?

This isn’t a story about nagging God until you get your way. It’s about persistence. About faith that doesn’t give up even when the world is unjust and God feels silent. It’s about refusing to lose heart. It’s the crying out for God, struggling with our feelings of loss and abandonment, prayer, that keeps us connected to God, during the darkest of times. 

Prayer isn’t about changing the situation. Sometimes situations and circumstances change. But more often than not, prayer changes us. Prayer can quiet the mind long enough to hear what we need to do next. Prayer can stop us from spinning out, help us discern when to be still and when to act. Prayer is how God works through human hearts and minds.

Maybe the widow’s persistence and Jacob’s wrestling aren’t that different. They both involve standing their ground in the dark. Both are acts of courage and forms of faith. Both involve pain and exhaustion and the refusal to give up.

Jacob limps away from the river, marked forever by that night. But he’s also blessed, his new name is a reminder that God was in the struggle all along. The widow walks away with her dignity intact, having faced the system that wanted to silence her. She embodies a faith that refuses to die, even in the face of indifference.

And maybe that’s what Jesus is asking of us, to keep showing up in the darkness. To wrestle and persist and pray. To not lose heart when God seems far away or when the systems of this world seem unchangeable. Wrestling in the dark changes us. It makes us into the kind of people God can use to create the kingdom of heaven here and now.

When we wrestle with our fear, our pride, our resentment, we begin to see more clearly. When we pray for justice, we open our hearts to become the hands and feet that help bring it about.

The blessing is in the limp and the faith is in the persistence. God’s kingdom is born out of struggle.

So if you find yourself wrestling in the dark, remember Jacob. Remember the widow. You’re not alone. God is in the struggle with you. And when the dawn comes, and it always does, you may be limping, but you’ll also be blessed, renamed, and ready to walk toward the promised land.

Amen.