Last
week, Cheri relayed to us what a scoundrel Jacob was. In her words, he was selfish, self-serving, a
liar, and a cheat. And today we see that
as he continues toward his meeting with his long lost brother, nothing has
changed. Let me tell you what a
self-serving scoundrel he is.
Jacob
is heading back home – a place from which he ran away when he was fearful of
his brother. He is scared of the anger of his brother Esau, from whom he stole
the birthright of his family – basically taking anything that would have come
to the first born (which was a lot) – and then tricking his father Isaac into
giving him the deathbed blessing that belonged to the eldest son. Isaac was blind, and Jacob pretended to be
Esau and got his father to give him the blessing. Esau, of course, was furious and Jacob was
afraid that Esau was going to kill him.
So
now, after years of separation, Jacob heads to his childhood home, to the land
that he had been promised by God. He is
on his way to meet Esau and as a test, he sends some of his messengers ahead to
kind of see how Esau might be feeling about their reunion. He sends along a lot of cattle as a gift to
placate Esau, telling the messengers to let Esau know that he had been held up
at Laban’s and wasn’t able to get away until now, but the cattle would be his
gift to his long lost brother. Yeah
right – he was held up. Really!?!?
The
messengers came back and told Jacob that Esau was on his way to meet Jacob, but
that he also had 400 men with him. Now
that really freaked Jacob out. He just
knew that Esau was going to kill him. So
he sent a series of gifts of cattle, hoping to get Esau to soften up.
Finally,
he sends his wives and children and their servants across the river – to the
side where Esau is -- while he stays behind.
What a conniver! If Esau is
coming to kill Jacob, maybe he’ll kill the wives and children first! Then Jacob will see all of this happening from
the other side of the river and he can run!
What a self-serving little man!
Now
Jacob had been this way since he was a baby, holding on to his brother’s heel
as they came out of the womb, stealing the birthright, getting the deathbed
blessing by trickery.
Oh,
and did I mention that Jacob had also been chosen by God to be the one to carry
on the leadership of the Hebrew people in the same line as Abraham and
Isaac? Jacob is heading back to the
promised land where God had told him that his descendants would be like the
dust of the earth, there would be so many of them. Would God really choose this scoundrel, this
selfish, self-serving little jerk to be the father of a whole nation of God’s
people?
Jacob
is scared, and in the section before our reading today, he prays to God for
protection, admitting that he is “not worthy of the least of all the steadfast
love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant.” This is actually the longest prayer in Genesis. And although it seems to be one that is
prayed because Jacob is scared to death, it does make me feel a little better
about Jacob, if I can get it out of my head that he’s sent the women and
children ahead first to face Esau’s anger.
So
now we have Jacob, all alone, on a riverbank, trying to get some sleep before
the horrible encounter he expects with Esau in the morning. But instead of a sweet dream like he had
before – the one with the ladder with angels going up and down between earth
and heaven -he meets a stranger who wrestles with him all night long. When the stranger, also sometimes called an
angel or even God, sees that he can’t beat Jacob, he dislocates Jacob’s hip and
then asks Jacob to let him go. Jacob,
still the selfish one, says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And the man said, “What is your name?” and
Jacob said, “Jacob.” And the man gives
Jacob a new name, saying, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for
you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asks the man, “Please tell me your
name.” But the man says, “Why is it that you ask my name?” and then the man
blesses him. Jacob realizes, even
without knowing the name of the one with whom he had wrestled, that he has come
face to face with God and lived. He
names the place Peniel, which means the face of God.
When
you look at this story, it becomes obvious that Jacob wins against the
angel. They struggled all night long and
the angel finally saw that “he could not prevail against Jacob.” Jacob won!
Have
you ever wrestled with someone? My
brother is five years older than me and when we were young, I was his practice
dummy for a lot of things. When he was
in high school, maybe a sophomore, he went out for wrestling and one night when
he was babysitting for me, he wanted to try out some moves. I had never seen anyone wrestle except on TV
where Big Time Wrestling was on on Saturday mornings with great wrestlers like
BoBo Brazil and Haystack Calhoun. Those
guys just threw each other around and smashed each other to the mat. There was no starting out with one person up
and one person down on all fours, a whistle blowing to get them started. My brother began as the person on top, which
meant that I was in big trouble although I didn’t know that. Try as I did, I ended up on my stomach with
him on top of me, pulling my legs and arms, trying to flip me onto my back
where he could pin me. I remember at one
point getting to my feet, at which point he threw me to the floor where I
banged my head so hard I was dizzy. You
want to talk about fear? My brother was
so scared that I would tell on him that he made me warm milk and begged me to
keep our little wrestling match a secret.
Even after that little bit of time fighting him, I was tired, and I
hurt, not just my head, but my muscles as well.
I had strained to get up, to get him down and to survive.
So
when I read about Jacob wrestling all night long, I’m amazed that he was even
able to think enough to ask the guy’s name.
But then Jacob has been wrestling his whole life. He had wrestled with Esau even as they came
out of the womb. Then he had conflict
with his father Isaac because Isaac favored Esau, the eldest, the most
productive, a farmer. Then Jacob had
conflict with Laban as Laban tricked him into marrying Leah when he had been
promised Rachel. He worked for Laban for
many years and tricked Laban out of the best cattle and sheep. He struggled with Leah because he loved
Rachel more, and he struggled with Rachel because she was barren. This guy had been wrestling for a lifetime
against people in his life. But could it
be that in all these conflicts, Jacob was really struggling with God? And could it be that Jacob conquered the
man/God in a spiritual sense? He finds
victory in spiritual surrender. But
surrender always requires a struggle.
Jacob not only gains a new name but he also gains a new understanding of
who he is supposed to be. His old name,
Jacob, means supplanter. A supplanter
takes the place of someone or something that was there first. His new name, Israel, means “God rules.” He
had supplanted both Esau and Laban. He
is the spiritual head of a nation of people, and he had better rise to the
occasion. It isn’t Esau he needs to be
afraid of; it’s God. And his wrestling
doesn’t come without cost. He ends up
limping the rest of his life but he has been transformed into a new person.
I’m
guessing I’m not the only person here today who has wrestled with God. Can I get an amen? I probably began wrestling with God when I
was in high school and I am still wrestling with God today. I wrestle with God over suffering in the
world, over poverty, over violence and war, over injustice, over my own
financial woes and family issues. And
sometimes it’s very painful. Sometimes I
can lie awake for hours wrestling with God over something and other times the
wrestling matches are shorter. Wrestling
with God is nothing like wrestling with my brother. There’s no warm milk and there are no
promises of great things if I don’t tell about what happened. Wrestling with God is much tougher than
wrestling with a person.
At
our first Pub Theology meeting, we talked about suffering and there was no one
in the group who hadn’t had at least one experience of suffering. Whether it’s a physical thing or an
emotional thing, when we suffer, at some point we have to ask God why, or for
what purpose, or how long. We wrestle
with causes and the future. We wonder
how a loving God could allow suffering like what is going on with the immigrant
children coming across our borders, or their parents who sent them away, or the
people in west Africa who are suffering with the Ebola virus, or the people in
the Gaza strip and in Israel who have to live with bombs flying and people
dying every day. I wrestle with God over
those things, don’t you?
At
our last Pub Theology we talked about evil and I struggle with that too. I struggle with forgiveness of others who
have hurt me deeply. Can any of you
relate to any of this?
The
story of Jacob wrestling with God is one of my favorites because in it I see an
ordinary flawed human being who was rotten to the core for much of his youth
and young adult life being transformed by struggling with God. He was given a new name and a new way of
walking. He was limping but he was on
his feet. He wasn’t paralyzed – he
didn’t stop being able to function, and that next morning he did cross the
river and he did, with fear and trembling go to his brother, who also had been
transformed, and Jacob was fully forgiven, embraced and redeemed. He went on to be a leader of the people who
became Israel.
If
you haven’t struggled with God then I don’t think you know God. God is actively engaged in our lives and that
isn’t always pleasant. I think God looks
for openings in our lives where we can be engaged in the struggle of listening
to and following the direction of the Spirit.
These experiences can be difficult but they can also be
transforming. God’s grace is available
to us in the struggles of our day-to-day living. When Jacob finished wrestling with the man,
the man asked Jacob who he was. Jacob
told him he was a supplanter, one who had taken advantage of many people. That’s not a very good statement of
self-image. But Jacob, the supplanter, also saw the face of God on that morning
in the man, and in his brother Esau later in the story.
Being
a Christian would be so much easier if God just made our way smooth and fun
wouldn’t it? But our God isn’t like
that. God allows us to wrestle, to
question, to struggle with questions that don’t have answers, and to receive
the blessing of God’s continual presence in us and in those struggles. And through all of those times, we are
blessed to see the face of God, sometimes when we least expect it and in the
strangest places. We may end up limping
but we’ll be on our feet. Amen.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment