The night before Jesus chooses twelve men from his disciples to be apostles, he ascends a mountain and spends all night in prayer (Luke 6.12). The scene has echoes of the story of Jacob and his all-night wrestling match with the angel of Yahweh at the ford of the brook Jabbok (Gen 32.22-32). When the day dawns upon Jacob, he is a new man: Israel, the one who wrestles with God and prevails. When Jesus emerges from this night of prayer, a new Israel will be formed around him.
When Jacob wrestled with God that night, it was the culmination of all of his wrestling from the time he was in the womb. He wrestled with Esau in the womb and through their lives. He wrestled with Isaac. He wrestled with Laban for twenty years. What he discovered at the Jabbok that night was that God was the one with whom he had been wrestling the entire time.
Jesus has been wrestling. He was led by the Spirit to wrestle with the devil in the wilderness. He wrestled with his hometown friend and relatives in Nazareth. He wrestled with the spirit of an unclean demon in the synagogue. Most recently, he wrestled with the scribes and Pharisees concerning the Sabbath. He will continue to wrestle all the way to and through the cross, but at this point, he has proven that he is the true Israel, the one who wrestles with the Father and prevails.
Through Jesus’ wrestling in prayer, God is now rearranging the world. Israel, and, more specifically, Jerusalem with its temple, has been the center of the world up to this time in history (Ezek 5.5). But that is changing as Jesus calls the Twelve, declaring himself with his apostles to be dead-and-resurrected Israel. Israel is fulfilled in Christ and his church.
This was a monumental change in the course of history. The entire world structure changed. The old was being put to death and the new creation was emerging in an unrepeatable way.
While the specifics are unique to that time in history, Jesus takes up a practice that has been true for years and then leaves a pattern for his apostles and all of his disciples in the future: God changes the world through faithful wrestling with him in prayer. We see it in Jacob. We see it in Jesus. The image has an even clearer focus in Revelation 8.1-5. There the Lamb, the ascended Jesus, is opening the seventh seal on the scroll that will bring judgment on the old creation Jerusalem. The prayers of God’s people, as they have been since at least the time of the tabernacle, are represented in incense. The angel takes those prayers, mixes them with fire from the altar in a censer, and throws the censer to the land, resulting in lightning, thunder, and earthquakes. The world is shaken up through the prayers of God’s people. The wicked are being punished. The righteous are being vindicated. The world is being set right.
The scene in Revelation is only showing us what has always been true: God works through the prayers of his people to re-order the world under the lordship of Jesus. Every time we pray as individuals, families, and, especially, the church gathered around Word and Sacrament, God changes the world. We don’t always see it dramatically displayed, but that is one reason God gave us the story of Jesus choosing the Twelve after a night of prayer and the heavenly scene in Revelation 8. In these scenes, God unveils what he is doing through our prayers all the time.
The world in which we live continues to need re-arranging. Things aren’t right. We feel so small and insignificant compared to the massive issues that seem to be controlling the world. But the reality is that as old and young, whole and infirm, men and women come together to confess, adore, intercede, and offer up our weekly memorial in the Lord’s Supper, the One who controls all things hears our prayers and is using our prayers to change the world.
Saints, pray on! Do not grow weary of prayer. Continue to wrestle with God in prayer. He may be using your prayers to unseat a cruel dictator, to heal a body racked with pain, or to stop a tide of unrighteous laws in a society. Whatever he is doing specifically we may never know this side of heaven, but we do know that, through prayer, he is changing the world.
