Genesis
32:22-31
The
last time Jacob and Esau saw each other, it was after Jacob had lived up to his
name. In Hebrew, one of the meanings of
the name Jacob is “the one who deceives” and Jacob, with the help of Rebekah,
had done just that. Rebekah had dressed
Jacob in a manner similar to his brother and prepared a meal for Jacob to take
to Isaac. In doing so, they tricked
their father, who was blind, into giving Jacob Esau’s blessing. It was a blessing that was supposed to have
been given to the first born. And this
was after Jacob had talked Esau into selling his birthright to Jacob after Esau
came in from the fields starving one day.
One bowl of stew for a birthright just doesn’t seem right. And it wasn’t. But for Jacob to then plot with their mother
to steal Esau’s blessing was the last straw in the brotherly relationship. Esau was so furious at Jacob for what he had
done that he plotted to kill him. That
was the last time Jacob and Esau saw one another.
But
now, Jacob was preparing to meet Esau for the first time since that day. Years had passed, and yet Jacob was still
filled with the fear that Esau was going to kill him. In order to appease his brother, Jacob sends
ahead of him two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes
and twenty rams, thirty female camels and their colts, forty cows and ten
bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. And yet, Jacob was still full of fear as to
what would happen when he saw his brother for the first time since Esau
threatened to kill Jacob.
This
is the context in which our portion of scripture in Genesis comes from this
morning. The night before Jacob and Esau
are to meet, Jacob sends everyone across the river Jabbok but remains on his
own overnight. And there he wrestles with a man from God. Perhaps the wrestling is tied to Jacob’s
continued preoccupation with having stolen Esau’s blessing, for he refuses to
let go of the man from God at daybreak until the man from God blesses him. And this is the moment when Jacob changes
from being “the one who deceives” to “the one who has striven with God and with
humans, and has prevailed.” From Jacob
to Israel. And though he walks away with
a limp from having his hip put out of place, he also walks away from the
wrestling match with the blessing that he sought.
This
text is one of my favorites in scripture.
This is partly because God and I tend to have wrestling matches on a
regular basis. When I was growing up,
and even into the beginning of my senior year of college, I had this notion
that I was going to go to medical school at Johns Hopkins and become a world
class neurosurgeon. I even turned down
undergraduate acceptance to Johns Hopkins because they told me that they rarely
accept one of their undergraduates into their medical school. This was how confident I was in myself and
the path I thought was laid out for me.
Then I was told by my biochemistry professor that I didn’t have the MCAT
scores or the grades I needed to get into medical school, I was crushed. My professor also, and kindly, gave me two
options…to pursue a masters in biomedical sciences or to look for something
else. That something else, I would find
out after a long chat with one of my religion professors, was seminary.
At that moment, I was at the end of a faith
crisis which was brought on by the sudden death of a childhood friend of mine
two years ealier…I had spent a good amount of time wrestling with God about
matters of faith and life and death, so why would he want me to go into the
ministry when I was still trying to figure out what in the world it was that I
even believed in the first place. And in
the wrestling, I was blessed. Blessed
beyond belief as I moved to Chicago to begin seminary, blessed beyond belief as
I did my internship in Oklahoma, blessed beyond belief as I accepted my first
call in Kansas, got married to Chris, had Eleanor, and the blessings just keep
on coming…even though God and I still wrestle from time to time.
But
each and every time God and I have wrestled, I have come out on the other side
with a blessing. Sometimes it’s a new
blessing, other times, it’s new eyes to see the blessings that I already have
in my life.
Wrestling
with God is not a bad thing. Wrestling
with what it means to be a faithful person in a world that is full of illness
and hatred and sin is not a bad thing.
Wrestling is just one way that faith can grow and we can be changed into
more faithful people. We wrestle as
individuals to see what God’s plan is for us when a monkey wrench gets thrown
into the plans that we had for ourselves.
We wrestle as a church to look for ways to heal and to grow together in
times of difficulty and transition. We
wrestle as a nation to respectfully call out our leaders when the decisions
that they make, or fail to make, have a negative impact on the people of this
country, especially the poor, children and the elderly.
Wrestling
is a product of looking out into the world and the evil that is in it and
looking for God in the midst of the destruction. And sometimes it means we go into war with
ourselves when we find ourselves faced with situations that cause us to be
afraid, like when Jacob was preparing to face Esau.
But
in the wrestling, there is blessing. In
the times when we go to the mat with God, we will come out on the other side
cleansed and blessed. And though we may
not come out of it with a limp like Jacob wound up with, we too are
marked. We are marked with the Cross of
Christ, a mark that we were given at our baptisms, when we were washed clean
and called by name as children of God.
Though
he was equal with God, Jesus also wrestled with God. He wrestled with God in the garden as he
prayed that this cup would be taken from him…He wrestled with God on the cross
as he cried out “my God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” And through his wrestling with God, we are
all blessed. Blessed to be called
children of God, blessed to bear the mark of the cross on our foreheads, as a
sign of the promise that we will have a share in the blessings that Christ
himself will receive.
The
other reason that this story is my favorite comes a few verses after our text
for this morning. After the wrestling
match with the man from God, Jacob crosses the river to join his family. And upon seeing Esau, he slowly approaches,
bowing seven times as he does so. But
Esau runs to his brother, embraces him, kisses him, and the brothers weep
together. They are reconciled.
In
the wrestling, there is blessing…there is mercy…and there is forgiveness.
