Wrestle
Genesis 32:22-31
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This morning’s text brings us all the way back to Genesis, all the way back to the story of beginnings. Anyone who thinks this story is a neat and tidy telling of God’s creation of God’s faithful, pious people, well – you probably haven’t read this book closely because in reality, it’s full of messy history, scandalous people, dysfunctional families – but always also full of truth about what it means to be human created in the image of God and in relationship with God. So listen now for God’s word for you this morning in our passage from the life of Jacob in Genesis 32:22-31
22 The same night (Jacob) got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok river. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then the man[a] said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,[b] for you have striven with God and with humans,[c] and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[d] saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, limping because of his hip.
Who in this room has not had the experience of wrestling with God? Kept awake at night by big fears, unsettling doubt, restless questions, moments of hopelessness. I think we all know this experience deep in our bones, which is why we feel so quickly connected to this story.
Jacob, the son of Isaac, the grandson of Abraham. A central, founding figure in the story of God. Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, the namesake of Israel - here wrestling with God and walking away with both a limp and a blessing.
But to know how we got to this wrestling match on the riverbank in the first place, we need to start at the beginning, all the way to the beginning when Jacob wrestled with his brother in the womb. Back to the beginning when his mother Rebekah was warned by God that her twin boys would always be marked by conflict. And sure enough, when the time came for the boys to be born, Jacob followed Esau out of the womb with his hand firmly grasping Esau’s heel desperately trying to be first – giving him his name, which in Hebrew literally means ‘the one who grasps the heel.’ From the very beginning, grasping for power and privilege. From his first breath, striving for blessing at the expense of his brother.
It’s a pattern we find repeated the day that Esau came into the house famished after a hard day working with his hands out in the fields. Jacob, having cooked up a hearty stew, would not feed his brother until he sold him his birthright and handed over his privileges as the oldest son. It must have been one amazing stew because Esau quickly agreed to the terms of this costly dinner. In so many ways, Jacob’s hand still grasped around his brother’s heel.
Not long after, when their father Isaac was full of years and short on eyesight, Jacob decided that Esau’s birthright was not enough and that he also wanted their father’s blessing, the blessing usually reserved for the oldest son. Taking full advantage of his father’s dim vision, Jacob pretends to be his brother and so steals the blessing, thus fulfilling God’s warning spoken so many years ago to their mother Rebekah that the eldest shall one day serve the youngest and the two will always be divided – Jacob’s hand always grasped around the heel.
When I was growing up, I’d sometimes push my younger brother just a little too far until he’d warn me that someday he’d be older than me, and then I’d better watch out! Funny how that hasn’t happened yet.
But Jacob and Esau – this was no ordinary sibling rivalry. And birth order in the ancient near east was not just an interesting topic in child development, but had very real implications. It meant land and property, the family name and with it, power, privilege, and blessing. When Jacob steals the birthright and blessing from his brother, he upends an entire social convention, he turns upside down the accepted and expected order of things. For Jacob, this wasn’t just about the family property but the inheritance of God’s promise that had come down from his grandfather Abraham. And so, when Esau learns what Jacob had stolen from him, his murderous plans send Jacob fleeing for his life.
After 20 years away in the land of his uncle Laban, Jacob has done well, acquiring two wives, twelve sons, plenty of servants, flocks, and herds. But finally, God makes it clear that it is time to return to the land, time to face his brother and live into the promises of God.
And this brings us back to the scene on the riverbank of the Jabbok in our passage this morning. Having heard from messengers sent ahead, Jacob learns the disconcerting news that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men. Understandably terrified at what this might mean, Jacob divides his camp and sends everyone else away so that they might be safe from the destructive revenge he fears on the horizon from Esau.
And there, by himself, Jacob settles in for the long night ahead, waiting to face the consequences of his lifetime of duplicity. Alone, afraid, vulnerable, and powerless in a way we’ve never seen Jacob before, he prays to God for deliverance and tries to take comfort in the promises God had indeed made to him. Promises that no amount of grasping or cleverness can win for him now – only the strength and power of God. The one who has always been able to manipulate situations in his favor must now just sit and wait with empty hands.
It’s in this dark moment of fearful vulnerability that Jacob encounters this stranger who wrestles with him until daybreak.
Who exactly is this stranger? It’s a good question. It’s also a question that the text doesn’t seem overly concerned with answering. This stranger is referred to simply as a man, not an angel. But then in retrospect, Jacob says that he had seen the face of God in this stranger. Whoever this stranger was, it represented something much bigger to Jacob than merely a man.
You see, here on the edge of the Jabbok river, Jacob also sits on the edge of life or death. At this – the major turning point in his life, Jacob is on his way back to his hometown after 20 years in exile not knowing whether he’ll be walking toward revenge or reconciliation in the morning. So, surely, whoever else Jacob wrestled with that night, he also wrestled with himself – with his past, with his deceitful schemes and snatched blessings. Surely he wrestled with the guilt, regret, and fear that had been all too easy to ignore until it all caught up to him this very night on the riverbank about to reunite with his brother. And now, in order for Jacob to move into the future, he must first return to his past, and that kind of painful work is probably best described as a wrestling match.
And what a wrestling match it is! Lasting all the way until the sun was just about to rise, when the stranger finally strikes Jacob’s hip to end the struggle. But true to his name and his nature, Jacob the heel-grasper continues to hold on to the stranger, desperately seeking a blessing in the face of the deathly danger he knows is up ahead. And it’s there in the blessing he receives that Jacob realizes he has encountered none other than God in this wrestling match – and that the biggest blessing of all is that he’d seen God face to face and lived to tell the tale!
Jacob walked away wounded, but alive. He walked away with a limp to remind him of the encounter, with a limp to remind him of the wounds he’d inflicted in the past, with a limp to remind him that it’s God’s strength he must now rely on rather than his own as he walks into the future.
But here’s the thing: Jacob doesn’t just walk away with a limp, but also with a new name. This stranger changes Jacob’s name to Israel because Jacob had striven with God and with humans and has prevailed. Here we see the name ultimately given to God’s people begins here in struggle, revealing to us a God who is not distant up in the clouds, but with us, right in the middle of our lives, mess and all. The word ‘Israel’ itself is derived from the Hebrew word ‘to strive’ or ‘to wrestle,’ and in this passage it seems like the name reflects humanity’s wrestling with God. But as many scholars like to point out, the actual name is more correctly translated as God’s striving with us. So, the text presents us with an interesting question: Do we wrestle with God, or does God wrestle with us? And the answer here, I think, is: yes. It’s both.
Like with Jacob, God wrestles with us, prying our hands from the tight grasp we have on all the ways we think we can control and win power and privilege. And also like Jacob, this struggle can leave us limping, but also leaves us with hands newly free to receive the blessing God intended for our lives all along.
We grasp after blessing when we forget that God’s blessing is not a limited thing. We hold on tightly when we forget that there’s actually enough for everyone and that the nature of God’s blessing is that it is meant to be multiplied and shared, not competed for and hoarded away for our own advantage.
The original promise to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham was that he would be blessed in order that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him – which means that instead of grasping, we should be sharing. This also means that once in a while God has to wrestle our hands free from the death grip we have on our own lives so that we can receive the life God intends for us.
In our first reading this morning from Matthew 14 we find Jesus teaching a large crowd while his disciples are getting antsy about the 5,000 men (plus women and children) who are quickly getting hungry. Surely, the disciples were growing hungry too, and probably wanting, a little like Jacob, to grasp on to the five loaves and two fishes they had to share among themselves. But when they hint to Jesus that he ought to dismiss the crowds, instead Jesus tells them to share their meal. So they give thanks and break the loaves and they find that there is enough. In the abundance of God’s Kingdom, they learn that there is no need to grasp after privilege or blessing, but only to have open hands ready to receive it and share it. May it be so in our lives and in our world. Amen.