By Jim Tune
In his memoir Report to Greco, Nikos Kazantzakis reflects on his early years as a searching, God-haunted man needing direction from God. One summer the young Kazantzakis climbed Mount Athos to visit a monastery. There he met Father Makarios, an old monk with a reputation for deep wisdom.
In one remarkable exchange, the young Kazantzakis asked the monk, “Do you still wrestle with the devil?”
“Not any longer, my child,” Father Makarios replied. “I have grown old, and he has grown old with me. He doesn”t have the strength.”
The young man assumed that the battle must be over, that the older man now must live at ease.
Not so, said Father Makarios, who explained that now, “I wrestle with God.”
“With God!” exclaimed the startled young man. “And you hope to win?”
“No, I hope to lose, my child.”
That exchange between anxious youth and wise understanding in many ways describes my own experience. In the first half of my life I saw it as a struggle, trying to make sense of my aspirations and urges, trying to have it all, conquer it all. Trying to win.
Now I often find that struggle mysteriously reversed. Now, like Jacob at the Jabbok, I wrestle with God and hope to lose. I care less and less about my identity, and more about his identity; less about making my mark, and more about wearing his. The paradox of this path is that it requires losing; it demands surrender. The only way you get here””like Jacob, broken by his own schemes””is by some limit, some loss, some failure that rattles your self-confidence.
The name Jacob literally means “he grasps the heel.” Figuratively, Jacob means “he deceives.” In those days, if Jacob appeared at the opening of your family tent, hoping to sell you a few spotted lambs, you”d think, What does full-of-deception Jacob want now? I don”t think I can trust him. I wonder sometimes why I even do business with him. What is he up to this time?
Throughout Jacob”s story in Genesis, we see him always scheming to get ahead, get the upper hand. Here is a man who needed to win. Edward F. Markquart speaks of Jacob”s wrestling match with God: “His whole life he had been cheating, cheating, cheating. . . . His whole life he had been clever and cunning, and that night, that night, in that wrestling match with God . . . God touched him in such a way that he was changed.”
Jacob woke up that morning to a new life. It was that morning that he was reconciled to his estranged twin brother, Esau. Every step Jacob took with his dislocated hip was a reminder of his encounter with God, a reminder of his new name.
I am Jacob. I don”t mean that metaphorically. My given name is James. It is the Greek equivalent of Jacob. And it reminds me, as the old monk knew, of why I”m hoping to lose.
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