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Our reading is of Jacob struggling with a man/angel/God but Jacob’s whole life was one of struggle. He was the one through whom God would continue to fulfill the promise he had made to Abraham to give him a land and make his descendants to be a great nation that would be a blessing to all other nations. One would think that with Jacob being the one on the receiving end of that promise that life would roll on fairly easily without a hitch. Just like people think ministers are prayer warriors who never have any real-life struggles of their own when that is definitely not the case. Speaking from my experience and that of my friends in ministry, God sees to it that we experience probably a little bit more than our fair share of the real-life stuff so that we know what it’s like when you folks go through it and we can help. On top of that, there are the ministry specific struggles that we get served up as well. So, we can expect that Jacob too would face more than a fair share of struggles simply because he wears an unseeable target on his back called “God’s Promise” in a world that inexplicably turns from the One who in love made it.
Jacob struggled even before he was born. He struggled in his mother’s womb with his twin brother Esau, who was the bigger twin. The struggle affected his mother greatly. Rebekah and Isaac were childless for twenty years and then like a miracle, there are twins in there and they are painfully. She went to the family worship spot and prayed, “God, if this is the way motherhood is to be, then why am I here.” The struggling made her dysphoric. Dysphoria is when you can’t see past the struggle to the purpose. So, God gave her a big picture response. “There are two nations in your womb and they will have to be separated. One is stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” These two babies were the fathers of two nations that will not get along and will have to be separated. And…all the birth order birthright stuff is going to complicate things.
And so, Jacob struggled with his brother Esau. At the root of the problem is God’s promise. If God had elected/chosen to fulfill the Promise through Esau who was born first, there likely would not have been a problem. So also, if Jacob would have been born first, there likely would not have been a problem. But the unspoken assumption here (mine at least) seems to be that they believed God’s promise to Abraham and then to Isaac would naturally pass to the firstborn son, Esau, along with the birthright, the bulk of the inheritance, and the father’s blessing. But God chose Jacob and Jacob was born second. So, there’s some tension here involving whether or not God’s Promise is tied to social conventions involving birth order.
We know from what the Lord said to Rebekah that the Promise will go to Jacob, but this birth order presumption stands in the way. Instead of just letting God make the promise to Jacob himself, there must be a way to get Jacob into the position of firstborn son. As you recall, Jacob got Esau to sell him the birthright for a bowl of lentils. But it seems that this transfer of birthright from Esau to Jacob was never divulged any further than the two of them and probably Rebekah. Isaac still continues to regard Esau as the firstborn.
A few years later, Isaac is quite aged and blind and fears he will soon die so he wants to bless Esau with a special blessing for his firstborn. So, Rebekah concocts a scheme for Jacob to trick his father to give him the blessing, a blessing that for all shapes and purposes was rightfully his because Esau sold it to him for a bowl of lentils. The trick works. Isaac blesses Jacob instead of Esau. Esau responds by saying, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob (which means heel grabber or supplanter)? For he has cheated me twice now. He took my birthright, and look, now he has taken my blessing.”
Cheating is an unfair accusation. Esau didn’t seem to care about his birthright. The Bible says he despised it. He failed to tell his father Isaac that he had carelessly and disrespectfully sold it to Jacob for a bowl of beans. The birthright was not something to be so trifled with. Because Esau was too short-sighted and dimwitted to see past his own belly, Jacob really should have been the one to receive the blessing. But apparently Esau never owned up to his father about selling his birthright. Moreover, he was bigger and stronger than Jacob and likely would have pummeled Jacob if Jacob divulged it. So, Jacob has to get his rightful blessing by means of trickery concocted by his mother.
Blessing stolen, Rebekah suspects that Esau will try to kill Jacob in order to get it all back. The struggles of sibling rivalry thus turned deadly. The only way she can think of to keep him safe is to send him back to where she came from under the auspices of finding a wife from amongst her brother’s people. She gets Isaac to send him away by saying that she didn’t want him marrying any of those Canaanite women because they drove her crazy. This was a backhanded jab at Esau because he had two Canaanite wives who actually made it a point to get on Rebekah’s nerves. Esau hears Rebekah saying all this and decides to take off too but in the opposite direction. He goes south to what we call Saudi Arabia to his half-uncle Ishmael and marries a couple of his daughters.
So, the struggle with Esau takes a hiatus with Jacob fleeing the land empty-handed to go to northern Syria under the auspices of finding a wife from among his uncle’s people. On the way, God comes to Jacob in a dream and makes the promise to him. God also promised that he would be with Jacob to watch over him and that he would bring him back to the land. Jacob in turn makes a vow that if God does indeed bring him back to the land then Jacob would accept him as his God.
When Jacob reaches the land of his mother’s people, we are dupped into thinking his struggles are over. In a storybook match made in heaven fashion he meets Rachel (his cousin) and it’s love at first. He makes an agreement with his uncle Laban to work seven years for Rachel’s hand in marriage. Seven years fly by. The wedding goes down, but his uncle sends Rachel’s older sister Leah into the tent of consummation and for some reason Jacob does not realize that she’s not Rachel until morning and of course the consummating had happened. Jacob has words with Laban about this trickery and they agree that for seven more years of work he could have Rachel as his wife after the week of wedding celebrations for Leah had ended. Thus begins Jacob’s family struggles particularly with his father-in-law. And also, his wives are two sisters and he also has their two servant girls as concubines and there’s a lot of competition over who can have the most babies and who can have Jacob when. It’s nice to be wanted.
After the next seven years, Jacob and Laban work a deal that Jacob would continue to shepherd Laban’s flocks for another seven in exchange for receiving all the spotted and striped sheep that are born. Laban had not been anything other than a contentious and dishonest father-in-law who kept changing Jacob’s terms of employment. So, Jacob decided to get his due by means of some hinky magic. He believed that if he put the branch of a popular tree into the watering hole, the spotted and striped rams would service the flock while the white one’s watched. And surprisingly, it works. Jacob's spotted and striped flock multiplied exponentially while Laban’s white-wooled flock dwindled to nothing. Laban got very angry and made some accusations.
Jacob’s struggle with Laban culminated with Jacob having to flee for his life with his wives and children and wealth of livestock. Laban pursued and would have killed him had not God appeared to Laban in a dream and warned him to keep his hands off. Jacob and Laban made a peace pact and parted ways promising not to encroach upon each other.
And this brings us back to Jacob’s struggles with Esau. It’s been twenty years. Isaac and Rebekah are remarkably still alive. Esau hears that Jacob is coming and gathers 400 men to go and meet him. Jacob hears that Esau is coming with 400 men and he’s a little Verängstigt wie Scheiße. Jacob decides to appease Esau by sending his sheep as a gift for Esau in smaller flocks to encounter as he draws near. He pretty much gives Esau all he has. He sends his wives and children across the River Jabbok with his remaining servants while he stays put for a night by himself. Jabbok means to empty. Jacob emptied himself there.
During the night he finds himself wrestling with someone he cannot identify. All night long they go at it and the stranger cannot prevail. As daybreak nears, the stranger decides to end the fight with a form of a Master Ninja death Touch. He touched Jacob’s hip and dislocated it. Jacob is now a broken and completely vulnerable man but he will not let go. The stranger says “Let go of me.” Jacob says “not until you bless me.” “What’s your name?” the stranger asks. “Jacob,” he answers. Jacob means “Heel grabber” or “Usurper” or “Supplanter. The stranger answers, “You shall no longer be called Heel Grabber. You are Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”
In that moment as a new day dawned on the banks of the River to Empty, Jacob, having emptied himself of everything (that’s a Christ metaphor if I’ve seen one) Jacob became Israel – the Heel Grabbing supplanter, the younger, weaker twin who was destined to be served by the older, became the one who had struggled with God’s promise on his life, with God himself and faithfully prevailed. While he worked for his father-in-law, Jacob became greater while Laban decreased. Jacob let God fulfill his promise to him instead of going off on his own way. He came back to his father’s house no longer a supplanter but now a prevailer worthy of bearing the Promise.
So, what’s the takeaway? It is through staying faithful among the struggles of our lives that God shapes us into the people we are to be. Thus, in order for us to be the persons God wants us to be we will have to struggle. The faithful life is not this “Bless me. Bless me. Make me wealthy so that I can live the easy life” kind of thing that TV preachers promise you, if you give them money. The faithful way is the Jesus way, the self-emptying way, emptying ourselves of our grievances, of what we think we deserve, of our need to be in the right or to be vindicated, and especially of any sort of need we have to win over others. And rather, seek the way of reconciliation, of generosity, of forgiveness. Jacob did not prevail until he stood on the shore of Jabbok having emptied himself of everything, with a broken hip, refusing to let go of God until God blessed him with a new name. Jacob limped away from there saying he had seen the face of God and lived.
I hope you can catch a glimpse of the poetic beauty in this wrestling match. I certainly can’t do it justice. In the sufferings, the strugglings of our lives we are in fact wrestling with God as we strive to cling to him in fidelity with everything we got. We strive for what God wants for us which is to bear the image of Jesus in this very hurting and hurtful world. Facing our struggles faithfully, clinging to God, will cause them to take on purpose. Suffering that otherwise seems pointless and undeserved takes on the purpose of shaping us more into the image of Christ. Amen.
