Jacob & His Blessings

i preached my fourth sermon ever today. for those who don't know, i have the honor of serving as a 1 of 6 teachers at my church. it has been a truly blessed experience and also remarkably anxiety-provoking. a sermon is unlike any other form of communication; it's not an academic paper, a business presentation, or a blog entry. it is personal but should be well-researched. its aim is for the guidance and betterment of a diverse group of people. it is a strange privilege as well as a pressure to attempt to point others to God so explicitly and also genuinely. while a good sermon might not be exactly earth shattering, a bad sermon can cause substantial damage, whether a congregant is offended by some statement or interpretation of scripture or whether bad theology is delivered to a trusting audience that will later look back and count that particular message as misleading. all of that is in my mind as well as the usual public speaking jitters. this makes for a tense body and prayerful spirit. i feel good about my sermon today. it was a gift that i offered to my church and i hope they were blessed by it. so i thought i'd share with you too.

here is my transcript. it is a bit long for a blog entry but hey. a sermon is its own thing, remember? if you do read it, be sure to click the scripture links - they are essential to understand what on earth i'm talking about.

Genesis 32:22-31

The story of Jacob wrestling is one of the most puzzling texts in all of Scripture. In my research for this sermon, I learned that myriad theologians, poets, philosophers, and pastors have tackled this text and – if they’re honest – remain baffled. I know I am still baffled. I have joined Jacob in wrestling. I wrestled this text and begged for a blessing. At one point last night I actually got a nose bleed. I never get nose bleeds and this one lasted for nearly 30 minutes. I felt like I was in a fight.

The scene is cloaked with darkness and intrigue. Jacob is wracked with anxiety. He is about to be reunited with his brother, whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years. You see, 20 years ago, Jacob ran away from home, fleeing to save himself from his brother’s murderous intent. For 20 years, Jacob had lived in fear and torment. I bet Jacob had long hoped he would never see his brother again. But now, something has changed and Jacob has decided to return to face his brother, to take responsibility. Not knowing whether his brother still hates him, but assuming he does, Jacob really believes it might be his last night on earth. I find it easy to picture this scene, to imagine myself there with Jacob. All the blank spots in the narrative provide me so much room to enter and to fill in the blanks. In that way, it is a very good story, if you take the time to activate your imagination. You can join me if you like. It is nighttime. I hear crickets. The stars shine brightly in the desert sky. The moon is nearly full. The air is thick with anticipation.

I imagine Jacob was trembling. Perhaps he wanted to cry; perhaps he was about to pray as he so often did in times of distress. I imagine he wanted to curl up in the fetal position and wait for the night to pass. Or perhaps he wanted to take stock of his life before it was over. I bet Jacob imagined the next day’s events over and over again, rehearsing his lines to his brother, picturing his angry face, imagining the worst, not daring to imagine anything else. I can almost hear Jacob groaning at all that is unknown. I’m certain that Jacob’s mind was vivid with memories: the last time he saw his brother’s face two decades ago, their last words to each other. Would the time that had passed be a bridge over the troubled waters of their relationship, or would the raging current of revenge prove eternal?

Now, hold that scene in your mind. I’m going to make a shift but fret not, we will return to Jacob's fight night.

I didn’t grow up going to church, but we did occasionally attend on Easter or Christmas Eve. As a young girl, whenever I found myself sitting in a church pew, I would turn to Genesis to find my name. The Bible spelled my name differently – and so much better cooler, with a KAH instead of the boring American CCA – but it was nice to see that in a certain way, I belonged in that pew. There I was, in the story of God. Later in her story, we learn Rebekah becomes mother-in-law to two women, Rachel and Leah. Those also happen to be my sister’s names, and I never let them forget the authoritative role I held in the alternate universe of the Bible. I’d always say, “Hey, you two better listen to me, I’m your mother!” There’s plenty to analyze there, I’m sure, but I digress. The actual biblical character, Rebekah, was not someone I was proud to be associated with. Let me explain.

Rebekah was married to Isaac, the son of Abraham. Isaac and Rebekah had twin sons – Esau and Jacob. Even in the womb, Jacob and Esau fought. Rebekah's pregnancy was horrifically painful. Genesis 25:22 says that the babies “jostled within her.” When she cried out to God in pain, he spoke directly to her. He said, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” In historical Israel, there were complex and rigid guidelines about inheritance – all of it was based on birth order and paternal blessing. The oldest was always more powerful and usually the favorite of the father. This was true of Jacob and Esau as well. Jacob was born mere seconds after Esau – he was famously clutching Esau’s heel coming out of Rebekah’s womb, hence his name, which means heel-grasper, or figuratively, deceiver. And so Esau was the firstborn and Esau was Isaac’s favorite. In everyway in this story, Jacob is the underdog. He preferred to stay at home with the women, who had no power or standing in their culture, to cook and garden, while his brother was manly and adept at hunting. Doesn’t this make us want to root for Jacob? Doesn’t this help us understand why Rebekah, a powerless person, would want to help her beloved underdog to rise above his disadvantages? Doesn’t God have a special place in his heart for those whom the world despises? And, as we read earlier, God pre-ordained Jacob’s succession over his brother. Can we really blame Rebekah for taking such drastic measures to make God’s prophecy come to fruition?

What follows is a well-known tale: Genesis 27:1-36

That last line: Isn’t he rightly named Jacob... It haunts me. I want to cry out, “Yes!” Jacob was named by his parents as heel-grasper, deceiver, wrestler from birth. They told him who he was. They gave him an identity. They played it out in their way, as they played favorites and plotted against each other and mistrusted God. This is true for all of us. Perhaps our own name does not have literal significance to us, but we are all shaped and defined in the context of our families. We know our roles. We may be the black sheep, the azazel on whom all the shame of the family is cast and is sent away. We may be the favorite, the one on whom all privilege and all pressure is placed. We may be the comedic relief, the storyteller, the caretaker, the mediator, or the hider. But we know who we are. We were given a name and we took our name. We play our roles well. They become who we are. Any of us who have left home and then returned know exactly how it goes. We regress. Back in our family, in our childhood homes, we become our adolescent selves, we find ourselves right back where we left off, in the same patterns and the same routines we’ve always kept as a family. To change a family dynamic is a dangerous thing and it is so very difficult. Sometimes it seems impossible. Sometimes we are so trapped in those identities that we play them out everywhere we go. We cannot escape ourselves no matter how far we flee.

Following Jacob’s betrayal of Esau, he runs. His brother literally wants to kill him for all he has stolen from him. And that was the last time they saw one another.

Flash forward to Jacob’s strange fight in the dark with a stranger.

Now we know why Jacob is so terrified of being reunited with his brother Esau. It is so easy not to like Jacob, to agree with Esau’s justifiable rage. Jacob stole what wasn’t his. He lied. He ran away like a coward. The other stories told about the intervening 20 years show him continuing to struggle and cower and manipulate and pray to God along the way. Jacob is a wrestler all right. He is at war with himself, restless with who he is, who he has been told he should be, and who he has become. He believes he deserves to die for what he did to Esau and yet he tries everything to avoid it. On his journey back to Esau the day before his nightlong fight, Jacob sends all kinds of gifts ahead of him, hoping to woo Esau with material goods. After all these years. If someone took everything from you and then ran away, I doubt a shipment of animals two decades later would soften you up. It might even add insult to injury. Is that all Esau’s stolen blessing is worth to Jacob, a few cows? Jacob is scrambling and he knows it. Just before sunset the night of the fight, he sends his entire family and all his material possessions ahead of him, across the river, into Esau’s territory. Some interpret this as a cowardly move, sending his vulnerable wives and children into the land where his potential murderer awaits. Others see this as a desperate gesture, a sort of final offering to Esau of everything he has. I don’t know why he did it; it is one of many mysteries in this story.

Once Jacob is alone and night has fallen, he is suddenly brawling with an unidentified figure. This man is not introduced, explained or interpreted in the text. He doesn’t approach or attack or manifest. He is simply there, already in motion. They wrestled all night. I think of the few boxing matches I have seen and I can’t comprehend it. How did they sustain their fight? How did they not simply collapse from exhaustion after an hour or two? After a while, did they do that boxing thing where they kind of hug it out until one of them gets another burst of will to keep going? And who in the world is this man? Some translations of the Bible call this man God, others call him an angel, even though I learned that it is explicitly the Hebrew word for man, not angel. Still other theologians wonder if this “man” is not Jacob’s own fear manifested in human form. We only know that this man refused to identify himself, even though Jacob asked him directly. Whoever this man was, he clearly acted on behalf of God. Not only did this man have the authority to bless Jacob and rename him, but Jacob’s new name points to the divinity of his opponent. “Israel” literally means “he struggles with God”. Furthermore, in response to his strange encounter, Jacob names the place of the fight “Peniel” which means “face of God”. It’s clear that Jacob has seen God, he has struggled with God in darkness, he was wounded in the process, and he emerged transformed, a new man. Finally, after a lifetime as a man of profound struggle and wrestling and deceiving, he has a new name, a new role in the world.

I see so many parallels between the story of the stolen blessing and the story of the demanded blessing. Jacob is man of intense desire. He wants to know who he is so badly, he desperately wants to be named and to know his belovedness. He wants what we all want: to be known, to be loved, to be blessed on this earth. He wants peace within himself. He wants to stop wrestling but he doesn’t know how. In so many ways, Jacob played out his same old story with the man that night in the dark. He was cloaked in darkness, hiding in fear. He was fighting, struggling to claim that which he did not trust he could get unless he stole it, unless he demanded it. His anxiety sustained him all night. Jacob’s anxiety looks so much like boldness, I’m not sure I can separate them. Those who do not trust that they will be provided for go to great lengths to provide for themselves. Fear, doubt, and anger are powerful energizers. But wrestling all through the night? Something was different here. This time, Jacob was acting out his story and living out his name with God. He had been visited by angels twice before but he had not been touched by them. As his father needed to touch his arm and kiss his face to bless him, God became a man that night, flesh and bones, to make a real impact on Jacob. He went so far as to seriously injure him. It only took a touch to Jacob’s hip, but Jacob never walked the same again. Jacob, in acting out his same old story but this time with God, finally got what he had always wanted. A new name. A new identity. A new blessing. And a wound to go with it. His limp would always remind him that he had seen God face to face.

In both stories, Jacob is asked to state his name before receiving his blessing. With his father Jacob lies by claiming he is Esau, but with the stranger he is honest. It is when he can own his actual identity, admit that he is in fact a deceiver, a wrestler that he is finally able to be changed and able to receive the blessing he had been fighting so hard for all his life.

The first story is rich with detail, including every word exchanged and every contextual descriptor, while the second story is jarringly sparse. In so many ways, this mirrors our lives. We know our origins well. We remember the exact words our mother spoke to us, we remember the time of day that our brother hurt our feelings, we remember the rules of our favorite childhood game. But our encounters with God, the truly affecting, mysterious moments in which we see God and know him and know his love for us remain shrouded and partially hidden. We only know that we are limping and that we are better for it.

Following his face-to-face, injurious, and ultimately transforming encounter with God, Jacob goes into the next day. Jacob and Esau are reunited. It is an encounter with remarkable similarity to the story of the Prodigal Son. In many ways, Jacob is the Prodigal Son. He took his inheritance early, insulting his father and family tradition. He fled his home, leaving a more faithful and steadfast brother behind. He returned home in humility after years of fruitless toiling. Jacob’s reunion with Esau consistently brings tears to my eyes.

Genesis 33 (revised by yours truly)

The story of Jacob wrestling with the man is a strange one, but perhaps most telling is the context in which we find it in Jacob’s story. Jacob is about to see Esau again and he is terrified, certain his brother still wants to kill him. He wrestles with this man and in doing so is wounded and also blessed. And then “Jacob looked up and saw Esau.” I believe that his transformative encounter with God is what made reconciliation with his brother possible. I assume Esau would have still run to Jacob and embraced him but I doubt Jacob would have been able to join him in his weeping and regret, let alone accept his brother’s embrace. His shame would have been stronger than his desire. But he came to Esau a man who had tasted God’s goodness and who no longer needed to take in order to receive. Jacob finally had a real blessing that was rightfully his, and so he was able to return Esau’s blessing to him.

I love Jacob’s overwhelming desire. He desired a blessing so much that he channeled all of his efforts, both holy and deplorable, into securing it. I love that God did not require Jacob to kill his desire. I believe God loved Jacob’s desire and ultimately, God provided for it. It was not a quick and easy blessing but it came. God was faithful to Jacob. Even more, God chose Jacob. God chose Jacob to bear the name of his chosen people. JACOB IS ISRAEL. A man defined by struggle, a people defined by struggle. A man plagued by shame and prone to deceit, a people plagued by shame and deceit. A man of great desire, a people of great desire. A man of very little faith, a people of very little faith. A man who ran from himself but never could escape, a people who fled themselves unable to escape. A man who repeated the same patterns over and over again expecting different results, a people stuck in a story on repeat. I am Jacob. We are Jacob. We are Israel. We are struggling, running, desiring, hoping for a different story but unsure how to change. We are God’s chosen people.

God has called Jacob “Israel” – he is no longer the weasely deceiver, he is the father of the twelve tribes. But something curious happens that I think is worth noting: the author of Genesis continues to call him Jacob. When God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, he was consistently referred to from thereon out as Abraham. But Jacob is not allowed this thorough of a transformation. No explanation is given for this. Perhaps it was too confusing to call a person “Israel” since Israel is so much more commonly used to identify a people. I can’t help but wonder though whether Jacob experienced what we experience in our own lives when we experience transformation. No matter how much we change or how dramatically new we feel, the people around us aren’t always so easily convinced. They have known us for so long by the same name. We are addicts, gossips, worriers, couch potatoes – sometimes the hardest thing about changing is convincing others you have changed. Something inside of us may be brand new but people still respond to us as they always have. They do not immediately accept our new names.

Furthermore, it is certain that Jacob, as transformed as he was following his night of wrestling, continued to struggle. This is not to discredit the transformation that took place. I have no doubt that Jacob was a new man in many ways. But old habits die hard. Our hearts may be new but our patterns are deeply engrained. We are still in the same relationships, living in the same place. We are still here on this earth, encased in flesh, and in process. Jacob was not done changing that night. Romans 7:21-25 comes to mind.

Even as we meet God face to face in a dark place and even as he blesses us, changing our name and rewriting our story for good, we are unfinished. It’s this concept of already and not yet. The battle is won and yet it wages on. The blessing is ours and yet we struggle to take hold of it, to live into it fully. We are redeemed and we are being redeemed. We are saved and we are still working out our salvation. May we as a community and as individuals continue to strive with God, struggle with him, claim our blessing, and beg to be renamed. May we claim the blessing that has already been given to us. May we read parts of our stories anew and discover new meaning. May we break old patterns and may our wounds heal. And may we rest in the promise that God is not done with us. Your dark night of wrestling may have passed and it is morning. Or maybe you have yet to enter into such a face to face encounter with God. Or maybe you are in that dark night now, grasping and wrestling and begging for a new beginning. But let me end with this blessing from Philippians 1.

May you be blessed today.