Most growth is the result of struggle. Food being digested, muscles broken down, seeds dying, growth-pains in the body. Why then do we think it wouldn’t be so in the Christian life?

Are we lazy? I know I am!

We despise struggle, we want everything ready-made. Instead of wrestling for ourselves we would rather listen to ones who have wrestled on our behalf. I know this well. A lot of people would see the abovementioned as the role of a pastor … to wrestle and then give the answer.

I cannot live with this silent arrangement. It is sickening.
It will eventually inflate the ego of the answerer to dangerous proportions.
It will delude him/her into thinking that they’re God.

The word ‘sermon’ comes from the Latin word ‘serere’ to link together. Not linking the teacher/pastor/teacher with the people! It is a linking with God, creating arenas for wrestling worship.

It should tell us something that Jesus was asked 183 questions in the gospels and that he answered only 3. Three! It seems that Jesus is into wrestling. Just think about it. He almost always countered a question with another question. No Q&A here … mostly Q&Q.

The community that Christians are a part of started when a devious man named Jacob wrestled with God – all night long – the original ‘you can do it … all night long’. Jacob wanted a blessing, in the end he got it … and an unsolicited limp. No triumphant claim to blessing/truth, rather a stuttering, stumbling kind of blessing/truth. A wound in the wrestling …

I wonder what would happen if our communities would re-imagine themselves as pilgrims engaging in a wrestling contest with God?