" I is for Israel" The Good Book Summer Series

Genesis 32:24-28 (NRSV)

and in the Message 

This morning, we heard the second of four stories from the Old Testament as we explore some of the stories of our ancestors in faith.

Today’s text is from Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, and it’s a story about Jacob.

A few chapters earlier in Genesis, we meet Jacob and his twin brother Esau at their birth.

I wonder if you had a nickname in your family? Or if you gave one to your brothers or sisters?

When Esau arrived first, he was given a name that reflects his red and hairy appearance, but Jacob was born holding onto his brother’s heel so his name means “heel sneak” or “usurper” which refers to someone who takes what is yours and claims it as their own.

The boys’ parents were Rebeka and Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah. And while most parents say they don’t have favorites, the biblical text says that Isaac favored Esau and Rebeka favored Jacob. It also tells us about an encounter between the brothers when a very hungry Esau gave his birthright – or share of his inheritance – to Jacob in exchange for a bowl of hearty stew. (Genesis 25)

But it was when Isaac was very old, and his eyesight was failing, that Jacob truly lived into his name.

When Esau leaves to go hunting, with their mother Rebekah’s help, Jacob tricks Isaac into giving him his blessing before he dies. When Esau learns how Jacob has deceived him and their father, he’s angry and their mother warns Jacob to flee to her brother’s home.

Today’s story takes place more than twenty years later as Jacob is going home and preparing to meet his brother Esau.

If you have been unhappily separated from a family member, you can imagine the uncertainty and anxiety Jacob was experiencing. He was afraid. He didn’t know anything about his brother’s character. He didn’t know whether Esau’s anger had been simmering for two decades, or whether he had forgiven him.

So, he sends his family and servants ahead with gifts for his brother, and he camps alone for the night by the river Jabbok.

And as our text told us, there he wrestled all night long with another man.

Jacob was a fighter. He had fought with his brother to be born and came in second; he fought with him again, stealing their father’s blessing. So, when this stranger found him, alone in the night, Jacob did what he knew how to do – he fought.

Today, wrestling matches are six minutes long. Jacob and his opponent wrestled all night long, hours upon hours without surrendering. Imagine the exhaustion and frustration that they felt.

Our text says that when the man saw that Jacob would not yield, he touched his hip, dislocating it. But even then, Jacob did not let go of his opponent.

Instead, Jacob demanded a blessing.  And incredibly, instead of turning away from Jacob or punishing him for the deceits he had practiced during his lifetime, the man gave him 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." (Genesis 32:28) and before he left Jacob, he blessed him.

The author of Genesis could have had Jacob emerge from the story more decidedly victorious, but he doesn’t. Instead, we see how Jacob wrestled with God, not against Him. He hung in there all night, refusing to be cast aside. And he came away changed. He walks with a limp. He has a new identity, no longer a “heel sneak” but a “God-fighter” or “one who strives with God” as his new name can be translated.

Now we know the story better,

what can we learn from Jacob’s stubborn and determined wrestling?

Dr. Anna Carter Florence is the author of “A is for Alabaster”, the resource we’re using for this series, and one question she asked as she talked about the chapter titled “I is for Israel”, is,

“How do things change?” from decade to decade in our lives. How different are the things with which we wrestle or for which we strive when we are 20, 30, 40 or 60?  

I don’t want us to answer too glibly or dismiss what our younger selves sought. I hope the question helps us reflect on which things endure, which ones are central to our identity as God-fighters (and followers), and which ones may be part of our own hubris or arrogance.

Because I think we are all a little like Jacob at some point in our lives:

wanting what someone else has;

unable to recognize the sufficiency of what God has already provided; and,

being afraid to face the consequences of our mistakes and the ways we hurt others.

The Good News we have from Jacob’s story is that God’s grace is sufficient, in fact, abundant. And in the face of our all-too-human responses to the world around us, God still loves us, and names us, “God’s child now and forever.”

One of the professors at Luther Seminary Dr. Rolf Jacobson, noting that Jacob was buried in the same place as his grandfather Abraham, wrote,

We don’t know if they wrote anything on his tombstone, but if it were…, it would have said, “Here lies Jacob, a thief and a sinner claimed by God in order that God might bless the entire world.”[i]

Let us pray.

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for wrestling with us and not against us.

Help us recognize you when we encounter you,

And remember the blessing we already have by your grace,

That you call every one of us “God’s child now and forever.”

Amen. 

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[i] Crazy Book. Rolf Jacobson, Editor. 132.