‘Hold on’
‘PJ’ Craig offers timely charge and fresh interpretation of familiar Biblical wrestling match as APCE 2025 Annual Event opens
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MEMPHIS — As if to belie the theme of the Association of Partners in Christian Education (APCE) 2025 Annual Event, “A Stirring in our Souls: Wrestling with God and Church Toward a More Beloved Community,” a generous, affirming and wholly non-contentious spirit welcomed attendees into opening worship and their first full session together on Wednesday.
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“There will be no wrestling matches here,” said Tatayana Richardson and Jaime Staehle, co-chairs of the 2025 Annual Event. “This will be a space to be both challenged and encouraged, to lean into God’s work in and through us as the one big, slightly quirky, wonderfully gifted community that we are.”
Further reinforcing the event’s hospitable tone, Benjamin “Ben” Brody, chair of the Music Department, professor of Music and director of Church Music Studies at the Presbyterian-affiliated Whitworth University, led the gathering in gently evocative music, a fitting opening for the afternoon’s preacher, the Rev. Dr. Peggy Jean “PJ” Craig.
Craig, an ordained minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, is senior pastor at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Germantown, Tennessee.
Preaching on the event scripture, Genesis 32:22-32 — in which Jacob wrestles with God at the Jabbok River — she opened in a confessional mode.
“I know nothing about wrestling,” Craig admitted. “The closest I came was one year in middle school with a girl named Maggie, who was much bigger and much madder than me. It was all super dramatic, but nothing happened. While that was the closest I came to a fight, I know people who fight. This is what you got, so let’s go with it.”
Through the stories of RJ, her skinny, scrappy, rural North Alabama high school classmate — who was arrested for fighting — and Ally, a fight-prone foster child whom she met while running an afterschool program in North Philadelphia, Craig related the biblical Jacob’s birth narrative and subsequent history.
“Both [RJ and Ally] were kids who came out swinging like their life depended on it,” she said, “and I wondered if Jacob was like that, too. He came out swinging.”
It started in the womb, she observed, where he and brother Esau used to fight, with Jacob coming into the world holding onto Esau’s heel.
“In the blood and the fluid and the mess of labor, you couldn’t tell where Esau ended and Jacob began,” Craig preached. “It was like they were one.”
And yet, one brother couldn’t have been more different than the other. Esau, the firstborn, was strong and muscular. Jacob, the grabber, the fighter, stayed inside and cooked stews.
“Like so many other fighters, I wonder if Jacob was small and scrawny but scrappy and gritty like you have to be if you’re always second, always ignored,” she said. “I wonder what it’s like to never be somebody’s somebody. To be the one without the birthright. Like RJ and Ally, maybe every time they were fighting, they were fighting for somebody, anybody, to know that they existed. Maybe they wanted love, relationship, connection.”
After tricking his father Isaac into bestowing his blessing on him rather than Esau — who wanted to murder his twin — Jacob became estranged from Esau for 20 years.
It was while heading back to meet his brother after their long separation that Jacob found himself alone in the darkness, being attacked by a man and fighting back.
“Was there a minute when he thought, ‘This is my last one; this is the fight of my life,’” Craig said. “Minutes turned into hours and, at some point, the man realizes that Jacob ain’t gonna give up. ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’ This man renames Jacob and gives him a clue as to who he has been holding onto all night. Maybe what is at Jacob’s core — no matter what his name is — is not so much about fighting, but holding on. He wasn’t the strongest or the biggest or the best, but he held on.”
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Returning to her own experience, Craig closed with three poignant stories of people in her life who, like Jacob, held on.
A friend at church, who while struggling with his own cancer, never fails to ask about Craig’s father, similarly fighting cancer.
“He always says the same thing,” she said. “Hang in there, hold on.”
And civil rights activist Ms. Barbara, who, 60 years later, is still trying to effect change in her church and her neighborhood even as conflicts rage and shootings continue.
“’Why do you keep showing up?’” Craig said she asked her. “’Because I love these people and this church.’”
And from the Room in the Inn ministry, which offers congregational shelter for people experiencing homelessness, Craig told of a 5-year-old girl, a twin, who after running around in the church bumped her head and came running to her.
Wanting to get home to her own twins, Craig said that she instead opened her arms to the girl, who threw her whole body around her.
“90 seconds passed, and I thought she might be falling asleep, but her grip never loosened,” Craig recalled. “After 45 minutes passed, she got down and I went home. There are a lot of things I don’t remember about the summer, but I’ll never forget when a 5-year-old — and God — held on.”
Craig’s closing charge came from deep within the stories of Jacob, her church friend, Ms. Barbara, and a 5-year-old.
“Hold on,” Craig urged.
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