Wrestling

 19 October - Trinity 18: Genesis 32:22-31, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, Luke 18:1-8

But in the desert darkness one has found me,

Embracing me, He will not let me go,

Nor will I let Him go, whose arms surround me,

Until he tells me all I need to know.

Words from Malcolm Guite’s poem about Jacob wrestling. He’s in a dark place. Alone. He carries the weight of  burdens from the past. He is wrestling with God and himself;  with the relationships he needs to mend and the guilt he wants to let go of. 

Jacob wrestles with a love that will not let him go. 

The Jacob's Dream - Marc Chagall

Many threads of today’s readings draw us into moments of struggle; and of a God who is with us in the midst of that. We glimpse something important about persistence in faith, wrestling with questions, grappling for justice.  

Jacob wasn’t the first or last to wrestle with another. Wrestling is probably one of the oldest competitive sports in the world - with depictions found in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.  

Whether in the original or modern freestyle, the rules for matches are pretty similar as competitors wrestle with each other - executing holds and techniques.  

There is one church in Bradford where faith and wrestling come together: Bible stories combined with body slams, where ring drama meets real-life hope as their website puts it. Through events and services, their mission is to help people encounter the love of Jesus through the art, drama and raw energy of wrestling. 

On the BBC’s “Songs of Praise”, Gareth ‘Angel’ Thompson explains why he opened this ministry to help those who may have been ‘forced to navigate difficult childhoods and volatile family situations. He says, ‘you look at the word ‘wrestling’ - they are wrestling with their demons, insecurities, their past, their circumstances.’

Like Jacob before them, physical wrestling is also a moment of grappling with deeper questions: faith and life, relationships and healing. In the vulnerability of encounter, change is possible.  He wrestles his way to grace and hope. 

Guite’s poem about this life-changing encounter as he wrestled with an angel: his name changes and his future opens up. It is a moment that occurs on his way to his meeting with his estranged brother Esau, who he had wronged. 

There is pain in the wrestling, and wounding; but there is also the possibility of reconciliation. He wrestles all night and walks away limping, but also blessed. In the struggle, God meets him and refuses to let him go; in the grappling of body, mind and spirit, his heart is filled with a love. 

As Guite reminds us, our lives have glimpses of this story too. He says: 'in our brokenness and alienation must also wrestle with, and be changed by the love that wounds and heals.’

It’s not that such stories sanitize struggle, minimising the uncertainty and cost. Rather they sanctify it - bringing relationship rather than separation. The wrestling fosters advocates rather than adversaries. 

Today’s readings aren’t only about the wrestlers who refused to let go, who see blessings emerging from the bruising. It’s also about those who are persistent - the widows and prophets who cry out against injustice. 

Jesus tells a parable about the need to pray always and never lose heart: she refused to give up, to stop knocking, even when faced with indifference and a system rigged against her. Hers is a holy defiance in a world of justice delayed. 

It’s a story that speaks about persistence in personal faith but also questions of public justice. It’s a parable of protest and liberation - of God’s preferential option for those on the margins. It reminds us that God is with us not just in the holiness of the sanctuary and the holiness of our streets. 

Maybe we need a parable like this in our own generation: resisting the disappointments and confronting exploitation and refusing to let go of hope. He encourages us to pray. Persistently. 

The judge mocks God’s justice and the woman before him. The judge is the mirror opposite of what we hope for in a judge - wielding power not mercy. The woman represents a lack of ‘clout’ but she embodies the determined cries of the prophets. Her relentlessness makes the judge relents. 

In the story Jesus that Jesus tells he doesn’t identify God with the most powerful character in the story. He invites us to open our minds to other interpretations. 

On the one hand, he is making the point that if this judge will eventually concede and respond to the cries of the aggrieved, then how much more will God bring in a reign of justice. How much more will God answer our prayers and respond to us with love and care. 

On the other hand, we can turn our attention away from the judge and towards the widow: her persistence when she is fobbed off is a different kind of wrestling. Her boldness and faithfulness, her courage and determination put her on the path of change. Her concern for justice seeks life in the face of forces of death. 

We too are caught between powers of domination and impulses of compassion. We wrestle with our insecurities and pasts and circumstances. We wrestle in the wilderness and darkness, in the streets and public spaces: love endures in the struggle. 

God is there beside us when we limp; whispers hope in the tensions. Wrestling is honest: there is embrace. God does not let us go, until we know what we need to know. These are perhaps holy words for a weary word. 

This is where Paul leads us when he writes to Timothy: reminding us that to read the words of scripture is to find forgiveness and freedom. Those words draw us to the living Word, Christ Jesus himself. The one who speaks love not fear. 

And we too are to speak: to announce this life-giving; to bear witness to it in our lives. We proclaim and persuade - to put faith into practice, giving an account of the hope that is in us. That means our conduct, our aims, our patience and our commitment is to wrestle - to grapple with the hard work of reconciliation - and to discover the raw energy of our faith. 

We come back to scripture; we come back to the altar. In persistence and patience, being changed by the love of our wounded healer. Here we mercy and comfort - in order that our witness might grow through the breath of the Spirit of God. 

I dare not face my brother in the morning,

I dare not look upon the things I’ve done,

Dare not ignore a nightmare’s dreadful warning,

Dare not endure the rising of the sun.

My family, my goods, are sent before me,

I cannot sleep on this strange river shore,

I have betrayed the son of one who bore me,

And my own soul rejects me to the core.

 

But in the desert darkness one has found me,

Embracing me, He will not let me go,

Nor will I let Him go, whose arms surround me,

Until he tells me all I need to know,

And blesses me where daybreak stakes its claim,

With love that wounds and heals; and with His name.

© Julie Gittoes 2025

Letters

 19 October, Hampstead: Epistles - Genesis 50:15-21 and 2 Corinthians 1:1-7

When was the last time you received a letter - an actual piece of handwritten correspondence? When was the last time you committed thoughts, news or hopes to paper - and posted it to a friend or relative?

For me, it was only a few days ago. My mum writes to me every week. She has done that since I went to university. Comments on the day to day, social events, medical appointments, sermons, family news and what the cat’s been up to. 

Image of St Paul

In that pre-email, pre-mobile phone era, letters were regularly exchanged between friends outside of term - news, trivia, requests, dilemmas. I still have some of them, long after more recent texts have been deleted or email accounts closed. I read of a friend’s hope that her then boyfriend would move to London with her. I re-read it the week before I conducted their marriage. 

My dad was a less prolific writer, aside from notes in his work diary detailing hours, the job and how much copper pipe. He wrote when I was at low ebb - the tensions and challenges of a shared-student house. The consolation of a familiar hand; the loving wisdom of a familiar voice. They remain amongst my most treasured possessions; kept alongside the letters of condolence friends wrote when he died too suddenly, too soon.

It goes both ways: letters I’ve written in response to someone else's grief; letters to the Home Office in support of a sibling in Christ; letters written to  express thoughts with care.  This year I decided to write more, to communicate with my friendship diaspora in pen and ink, not just regular DMs. Choosing the card or the paper, making time; picking up a favourite pen - a tool that might improve my erratic handwriting. 

Why? Because letters embody a person; character and emotion come through the text. Whether its quotidian details or a significant moment, a letter is a reference point as we navigate seasons of  life. It can be infused with love, faith, gratitude, worries - and prayer.  It’s important to take what we write - how it lands, its meaning and purpose.

This kind of labour is a skill and craft, the stuff of flesh and blood.  Our communication is more than typing, scrolling and swiping through a digital universe.  Letters make our thoughts visible - reclaiming our humanity.  There is pleasure in receiving such a gift. 

Our first lesson from Genesis speaks into the dynamics of death and history. It names complex relationships - memories, fears, and hopes. It speaks of an instruction. In the circumstances, it is something that’s used like an insurance policy - a way of the brothers mitigating risk or securing a future in uncertain times. 

They do not fully trust the expressions of a reconciled relationship between themselves and Joseph. They worry that things will fall apart without their father; that old grudges will reappear, old debts settled. 

So they create a ‘letter of wishes’, neither written nor spoken, but nevertheless some plausible final words of a dying man, words of supplication and forgiveness. There are tears on both sides. The grief is real, but so is the story of jealousy, harm, guilt; stability felt fragile, rooted in parental love.

The instruction serves as a catalyst, whereby things do not go unsaid. Past wrongs are acknowledged and forgiveness is sought afresh. In the face of bereavement, space is created to choose to act for the sake of the future. Joseph does not claim to stand in the place of God - but he is able to express the ways in which intended harm was transformed.  

His lens is both deeply personal but also attentive to God’s ways with the world: the working out of creative and re-creative activity over time, against the odds; oftentimes hidden, sometimes seen with hindsight, embodied in human life and thought. His words were kind and reassuring; but they point to the future hope and love that overcomes fear. 

Our second lesson is most definitely a letter. Several times, including in the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says he’s writing with his own hand. He comments on the large letters he uses, his handwriting marked by all he endures. 

The fact that so many letters are within our holy scriptures sometimes obscures the reality that Paul was writing out of all the places we find ourselves.  He remembers people by name, asks for prayer and assures his hearers that they are prayed for.  He discusses practical arrangements from pleas to share resources with those in need to the return of a forgotten item like a cloak. 

He responds to challenges and questions - the tensions within the church and the social, cultural and political norms of the world in which they live; he offers words of consolation or encouragement. Sometimes he gives corrective comments on what he’d heard of their worship and teaching; other times he draws them into words of praise. Part of that was reflected in this evening’s introit - Christ’s life, death and resurrection [Um unsrer Sünden willen - text Philippians 2:8-9 - Felix Mendelssohn].

Once, when experiencing writer’s block in my own work, I decided to read the epistles as actual letters: yes, they are addressed to particular people in particular places - including Corinth and Achaia as we hear today - but they also resonate with us as members of that same church of God.  To read them as a whole draws us into their life - and Paul’s thinking. 

He’s working as a pastor, evangelist and theologian attending to the mystery of God’s love revealed to us in Christ Jesus - which we heard in Stanford’s setting of Romans 10 [If thou shalt confess with thy mouth - text Romans 10:9-10 - Charles Stanford. He is working out, in pen and ink, what that means for us as members of one body.  He is passing on a tradition he has received - of breaking bread in remembrance. He shares his own journey of faith and speaks of how faith transforms our life - the enfleshed poetry of faith, hope and love; the fruit of the Spirit; the radical inclusion through baptism. 

Words of grace, peace and blessing frame the opening of today’s letter - a reminder perhaps of how we should greet each other, not just in liturgical expression, but our interpersonal dealings - including our letters. Then, in this very short opening section, we get a glimpse of Paul’s pastoral and theological work. He speaks of suffering and consolation - and finding hope. He takes us to the heart of the gospel. 

The mercy of consolation is part of the character of God, made known in Jesus. In him, we are drawn into a movement of both being consoled in our affliction and also offering consolation to others. 

What Christ endures with us is also for us: that we might know healing and forgiveness, freedom and comfort in all that we endure. There is no made up instruction - but an embodied reality in the face of our fears, opening up a more hopeful future. 

Paul writes his letters on the road, in the company of others and sometimes in prison. He expresses solidarity with that depth of human experience - the pains and griefs and wounds we endure. This is not for him just a matter of empathy but a pointing towards divine mercy. He wants his hearers to hold onto the same unshakeable hope; of God’s love for the world, and the Holy Spirit at work in us. 

Paul writes to the Corinthians about repentance and forgiveness, of the need for generosity; about the power of God seen in human weakness. He exalts them to live in love and peace, to find ways to be advocates rather than adversaries. Poignant words in our own generation. He ends:

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

© Julie Gittoes 2015

The cross

Sunday, 14 September, Holy Cross: Numbers 21:4-9, Philippians 2:6–11 

and John 3:13-17

The legend of the story of the discovery of the true cross is that Emperor Constantine’s mother Helena found it in Jerusalem during a pilgrimage to holy sites in Palestine in 326.

She was guided to the place where it had lain buried by an elderly Jewish man - who carried ancient knowledge - and after excavating the ground, three crosses were found, along with nails.

Finding this ‘true’ or holy cross turned a sign of brutal and shameful torture into an object of devotion: something that prompts reflection on the breadth and depth of God’s love and forgiveness. 

Today the cross is still found in familiar and complex ways. A sign of God’s grace and our commitment to live in love, yes; but also tagged with questions of identity and power, challenge or conformity.

It’s worn as an item of jewellery - a fashion accessory, blingy or subtle; a cherished gift, a statement of faith. 

It is found in galleries and churches - an object of art and devotion in paint and sculpture, in stained glass, wood or brass, stitched into tapestries.

We stumble across it: chalked on pavements, crossed twigs, marks in sand; found and noticed, an unexpected reminder of faith. 

It’s part of our body language: a gesture made by sportsmen and women before taking a penalty or sprinting from the blocks;  a sign traced on our foreheads in baptism, an invisible yet indelible mark of being ‘in Christ’. 

We find it flown from flag poles, waved aloft and draped across shoulders: at the last night of the proms and in citizenship ceremonies, at football or athletics tournaments and significant moments in our national life.

It is flown, waved and draped in pride, belonging and unity; but also in protest, exclusion and fear. The cross has been claimed as a sign by which to conquer and a means of liberation.  

Wherever we find the cross, we need to notice its effects - does it heal and bless, or divide and wound? Our readings today take us beyond flags and jewellery to the heart of that; to the gesture of God in Christ. 

The sign of the cross is traced on text and lips and heart as we proclaim the gospel - reminding us to dwell on God’s love in thought, word and deed. A sign traced in the air - taking up space as we receive gifts of forgiveness and blessing. 

It is a sign of God’s hope breaking into a broken world: a sign of healing, of salvation; the overcoming of an old order of sin and death, an invitation to life and hope.  

In that sense, the cross cannot be limited or defined by a nation, but it can reshape a nation’s imagination. It cannot by definition be claimed as a mark of exceptionalism, but it can make us look beyond ourselves.

As members of Christ’s body, it makes visible our ‘in Christ-ness’ as a community, in all our diversity and individuality. Whatever our age, gender, class, health, occupation, sexuality, ability or ethnicity we belong; we are set free, valued, accepted, being transformed.

To take words from a statement from Bishop Anderson this weekend, freedom - whether it is freedom of speech or freedom in Christ - should be something we exercise ‘not to deepen fear or exclusion, but to foster compassion and unity’.

Sometimes our familiarity with the cross can domesticate it. Sometimes we need artists to shock us to think afresh about its meaning. 

During her Confessions tour, almost 20 years ago,  Madonna performed “Live to tell” whilst hanging on a giant mirrored cross wearing a crown of thorns. 

Still from YouTube video of "Live to Tell"

Unsurprisingly she faced a strong negative reaction from religious groups.  Her performance was described as blasphemous, distasteful and heretical.   

Her  response to this criticism was to say that her main intention was to highlight the plight of millions of children dying from poverty and hunger in Africa. 

During the performance, the death toll of victims is counted on a screen behind her; the words “in Africa 12 million children are orphaned by AIDS” are projected onto the stage. Images of children fade in and out as she sings.

In 2025, maybe she would have used the scandal of the cross to focus on a different aspect of the scandalous suffering of humanity: the millions facing starvation or displacement and exploitation; those feeling disillusioned, ignored or hopeless..

Somehow the cross we find brings us back to our common humanity made in the image of God - provoking us to recall our need for repentance and the enormity of God’s love and forgiveness. 

As “Live to tell” draws to an end, Madonna steps down from the cross and removes the crown of thorns. She kneels and bows her head. It’s the body language of prayer. 

Above her words from Matthew 25 appear: ‘And God said… whatever you do for the least of these…’: the hungry, abused, marginalized, excluded, homeless.

To quote Madonna’s own lyrics: ‘how will they hear, when will they learn, how will they know.’

The hearing, learning and knowing is addressed to those who have power and to the powerless - by the one who takes on our humanity in humility, who restores our human nature.

That imagery taken from the letter to the Philippians is one of the earliest creedal statements or hymns to Christ. It reminds us that we are called to walk in the steps of the one who did not cling to equality but humbled himself, taking the form of a servant.  

The cross we find invites us to respond to the one who came into the world not to condemn but to save: to reconcile all things in self-giving love that bears the pain and judgement – to redeem, restore, heal and transform us.

John’s gospel records an episode at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: it’s a conversation with someone who had considerable learning and curiosity, whose own authority meant he came to see Jesus undercover of darkness. 

This man, Nicodemus, is faced not only with a message but a person. He is being invited to go beyond his previous understanding of life and faith. We catch the end of his exchange with Jesus today.

Jesus is stretching his imagination - taking images from the Hebrew scriptures that Nicodemus knows so well and inviting him to see the truth of God’s love for the world. 

When God’s people become impatient and disgruntled, they only repent when confronted with the painful and deathly consequences of turning away from God’s ways. Moses lifts up the symbol of their suffering and it becomes a source of healing. Playing with this idea, Jesus talks about how he will be lifted up on the cross.

When people saw it, they were also, in the words of one commentator, looking at ‘the mirrored representation of their own destruction - the evil of empire, the oppression they participate in, the violence that beats at the heart of society, the scapegoating tendencies of people to allow innocent people to suffer sins that aren’t their own.’

The cross becomes the means by which we repent of such a cycle of blame, violence and indifference; systems that overlook, demonise, impoverish : God in Jesus goes to the depths of that self-destructive pattern which drives us from compassion to fear, from unity to exclusion.

In the cross we find a mirror which opens up the possibility of trust - to put our faith in God: for God so loves the world in this way - giving the only Son - so that everyone who trusts and follows Jesus will have abundant and everlasting life. 

Finding the cross allows us to see the truth, to find healing and to follow Jesus - the one in whom love ultimately wins. 

In being lifted up on the cross, he calls us to hear, learn and know the scandal of love: our need for forgiveness for the mirco-agressions and ambitions that dehumanise us and deny God’s image in the other; the economic, technical and social-political systems that silence us and drive us apart.. 

The shock of the cross reminds us of the scope of God’s love: it shapes our response to injustice and violence; humbled yet restored in dignity, we are forgiven and called to self-giving. 

Others will hear, learn and know such love when we go to the cross and know its power to heal; when love pours out through us. In prison, Bonhoeffer shared this poem with his friend Bethge:

People go to God in their need,

For help, happiness and bread they plead

For deliverance from sickness, guilt and death,

Thus do they all, Christians and pagans.

People go to God in God’s need,

Find God poor, reviled, with neither shelter nor bread,

See God entangled in sin, weakness, and death.

Christians stand by God in God’s suffering.

God comes to all human beings in need,

Sates them body and soul with Hi s bread,

Dies the death of the cross for Christians and pagans,

And forgives them both. 

© Julie Gittoes 2025