Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Hymn of Hope *All My Hope on God is Founded* Witness of Scripture: Genesis 32: 22-31 Anthem *Adagio from Six Studies in English Folk-Song* Vaughan Williams. Angela Walker, English horn, John Riester, piano Sermon *Jacob's Jabbok* David Spain
Recorded on August 6, 2023
There is a church in Norman that places signs in their front yard with messages meant to encourage people to visit. The messages are sometimes clever, sometimes edgy—whichever the case, they draw our attention, which is what advertising is meant to do. Currently, the church is displaying the following message, meant to convey its style and theology. On a yellow background, the word NO in big black letters is on the top left side of the sign, under which in red letters are the words “Judging, pressure, snakes, yelling, boredom.” On the top right of the sign, in big black letters is the word YES, under which in red letters are the words “Biblical, relevant, fun, friendly, you.” That’s all well and good—if it was yes to snakes and pressure, that might curtail the interest. “Biblical and relevant”—that seems good, although it might be important to find out what the church means by biblical and relevant since most churches would make that claim. What’s absent from the sign (‘How could they have missed this,’ you are probably asking yourself?) is the word ‘wrestling.’ How could they have left out ‘wrestling?’ Had they thought to include it, would the word be under the NO column or the YES column?
To be fair, ‘wrestling’ may be missing from the signs of most people’s faith.Ironically, where it is not missing is in the Biblical story, especially the story told in Genesis of Jacob at the River Jabbok. In fact, Jabbok is only the latest locale of Jacob’s wrestling, because he has been grappling and grasping from his very first day. The second born of twins, Genesis says that when they are born, Jacob is grabbing Esau’s heal, trying to get ahead. In the revealing creativity of names, Jacob means supplanter or heel-grabber and he spent most of his life living into his name.
Frankly, this story about Jacob at the Jabbok is a contentious story in every way.There is no way to hear this story without wrestling with some part of it along the way. While Jesus’ para bles intrigue us; this story from Genesis mystifies us which is fine—albeit uncomfortable—as long as we remember that biblical mysteries are not problems meant to be solved; instead, they are adventures meant to be explored. Like the parables Jesus tells, the Mystery in Jacob’s story tends to unsettle easy faith and conventional concepts of God. So, as we explore the Mystery of this story in Genesis, we recognize the Mystery of this story explores us. And when we say Mystery, we write that with a capital ‘M.’
Jacob, as we recall, is not the most admirable character. The clutching incident on his birthday became the reality of his relationships thereafter. Jacob grabbed for everything he could get his hands on—he wanted control and up until the Jabbok he was mostly successful at getting what he wanted. From the start, and for reasons that evade logic, the parents have a favored child—there was something that drew Isaac to Esau and something that drew Rebekah to Jacob. Alliances are not necessarily bad, until someone lives or feels on the outside of the alliance. Culturally, the first born had an advantage—most of the inheritance and much of the power would go Esau’s way. But, Jacob had no intention to settle for that, so in cahoots with his mother, Jacob was able to gain the birthright away from Esau for nothing more than a helping of Hungry Man. Maybe Esau was not up to the task if he gave away his position for a bowl of stew—he seems shortsighted if not easily duped. The deal is sealed some years later, when Jacob, dressing up like Esau, goes into the aged and dim-sighted Isaac to grab the blessing meant for Esau.Jacob, with the help of his mother, took advantage of old dad and got the will changed so that he would have Esau’s portion. Genesis refers to it as blessing, and it is more binding than any legal document, just as words spoken in great love or deep disregard can land firmly within the soul.Jacob now has what he had been after from day 1, and Esau is enraged and vows to take it back by taking out Jacob.The story is a reminder that actions have consequences, and as a result Jacob has to flee for his life by living in a far country with his mother’s brother, Uncle Laban, who it turns out is cut from the same cloth as Jacob and apparently his mother.
If we stopped the story right here, then we could have an Aesop’s moral—maybe we could put it on a sign in a church yard. The problem is the story does not go that way. While Jacob is on the run, he stops for the night and has a dream.It is not the dream of a guilty conscience in which God is giving Jacob a holy comeuppance; instead, it is a dream of a ladder stretching from heaven to earth with angels coming up and down that ladder and God promising to be with Jacob. It is, despite his conniving and controlling, God’s offer of covenant to Jacob, God’s call to Jacob to live in God’s ways of relating. At first Jacob is on board, but when morning arrives Jacob takes God’s offer of covenant and rewrites it into a conditional contract.“If you will do thus and so for me God; if you will answer the prayers I have, grant the requests I make, then we are going to get along just fine. But if not, then there are plenty of other gods to turn to.” Few, if anyone, states it as boldly as Jacob did, but we recognize in many expressions of religion and voiced by some people, a similar perspective—that God is invoked for convenience not covenant; for self not service; for confirmation not transformation. Genesis is silent, at least for now, about God’s response to Jacob’s proposal, but at least God does not withdraw the offer, testimony that God is not easily dissuaded—even by our conditions—from offering the covenant.Early in the Biblical story, thanks be to God, amazing grace makes its appearance.
To fast forward the story, Jacob makes it to Uncle Laban’s land and does quite well although not without Laban working him over to get both his daughters married to him, 11 children born, and plentiful herds that are the envy of all the neighbors. But then comes the day when Jacob decides it is time to go home because implanted deeply in everyone is the yearning for home. So, with one last intrigue, Jacob takes not only what Laban has given him but also some of what Laban had not given him, and heads back. Getting close to home, Jacob gets wind that Esau is coming to meet him, along with 400 of his best friends armored up. Convinced that Esau will even the score from 20 years ago, Jacob sends his families on ahead along with his herds so to grease Esau’s palms and calm his presumed vengeance. It is hard for Jacob to get past himself, to see that what once was does not necessarily determine what will be. Jacob knows the contractual life of if/then, not the covenant life of reform/renew.He did not know God is greater than he is; he did not know that life could be more than what he connived and controlled.
What happens next is as shadowy and mysterious as the darkest of nights. As Jacob is alone by the Jabbok (which means emptying or pouring out) he drifts off to sleep but does not have the dream of another celestial ladder. Instead, Jacob is thrown into the mud, engaged by a force he knows not what, but it has been variously described as a man, an angel, as God and who is to say for sure how God can be present. They wrestle all night until first light breaks; at which point still grasping with all his might, Jacob demands the blessing he has always wrestled away from everyone else but can’t seem to take at the Jabbok. This faithful foe draws the match to a close by making the wrestling move of all time that dislocates Jacob’s hip. Jacob now realizes, by the mercy of God, that he is not the most powerful force in the world, that his life is as much contingent on the grace of God as everyone else’s. He still asks for a blessing, but as Frederick Buechner observes, it is “not a blessing that he can have now by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing he can have only as a gift.” (The Magnificent Defeat, p. 18)
We notice in the story that before the blessing is given, there is a question.“What is your name?” When he was asked that question before, Jacob lied.This time, Jacob admits who he is—heel grabber, supplanter, conniver, controller. With that bit of honesty in hand, Jacob can now actually receive the blessing, which is that he is more than all those things he has just named.Buechner again observes, “Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are his who will fight for them hard enough; but peace, love, joy, are only from God.”(Ibid, p. 18) It is as if Jacob has come to himself, and is now able to receive what the blessing of God and the blessing of life is—“peace, love, joy, covenant, healing” even as something has to be put out of joint along the way to make room for God’s covenant.
There are a million takeaways from this story, which is more about the wondrous, redemptive Mystery that we don’t know as much about compared to the likes of Jacob whom we know too much about—not only in others but perhaps occasionally even in ourselves. First and foremost, let the story remind us that God’s redemptive powers outlast human deceptive powers. It is not without a struggle many times, but God’s way endures. Second, the story serves as a corrective to a certain picture of God.Debie Thomas has written, “As a child and teen, I thought of God as terribly fragile, easily offended, easily upset, easily put off…stories like Jacob’s point to a God who is infinitely more interesting than the God I feared in childhood. A God who wants to engage? A God I can come at with the whole weight of my thoughts, questions, ideas, feelings?A God who invites my rigor, my persistence, my intensity? That’s a God I won’t let go of. Wrestling is not a bad or even a scary thing, because it’s the opposite of apathy, the opposite of resignation, even the opposite of loneliness.”(The Christian Century, ‘Fighting God,’ 10/13/16) So, if you are wrestling, for whatever reason, please don’t think that means your faith is lacking. Faith does not always live at high noon nor rest in the easy chair. And then this…it is what happens after that night by the river called emptying. When Jacob and Esau meet, Esau embraces Jacob, they fall into each other’s arms not wrestling for anything but embracing each other in love, forgiveness, honesty, hope, future. Esau is the one who makes that happen; Esau is to Jacob now Israel, the very presence of God—not one to be duped and deceived but through whom to be reconciled and received.Esau, contrary to what he thought all those years before, does have blessing given to him that he can pass on.
So, if you happen to be driving down the street and see the sign that says “No judging, pressure, snakes, yelling, boredom; Yes biblical, relevant, fun, friendly, you,” you might be inclined to ask, what about wrestling? Well, it’s a sign of faith.