Jacob
always lived under the shadow of his grandparents Abraham and Sarah and his father
Isaac. They had all participated in God’s plan of salvation in a grand way.
Who could top the call of Abraham and Sarah to set out for a different land with
the promise that they would found a great nation, greater than the grains of sand
on the seashore? Isaac had exhibited extraordinary courage on Mt. Moriah, learning
firsthand that he was a survivor, brought to the brink of extinction and then
back again by the grace of God, There were no such heroics connected with Jacob.
Jacob
had cheated his older brother out of his birthright, but it was really his mother
Rebekah who had pushed him into doing it. When he wished to marry the girl he
loved, he was tricked by his future father in law into first marrying his other
daughter. Later, Jacob would trick his father in law back. Jacob's life was full
of schemes, but often it seemed Jacob, the schemer, ended up as the victim His
days found him always on the move. Nights, however, provided Jacob respite, for
in his dreams, Jacob seemed to be called to great things, things which disappeared
at the light of dawn. Only in his dreams, was he able to claim his birthright.
Finally Jacob ran out of escape routes. After twenty years in a world of deception
and shady deals. he had decided to return home and face his brother. That is what
had brought him to camp alone at the ford.
With
whom did Jacob struggle? The text is purposely ambiguous. It was certainly much
more than an ordinary river demon. Was the demon Jacob’s own guilty conscience,
a ghost of his past coming to haunt him? Was it a confrontation with a messenger
of God over what Jacob the cheat was by day and what Jacob the parent of a great
nation was called in his dreams to be? The Bible just says it was a creature,
but afterwards, Jacob sensed in his struggle the presence of God.
Whomever
it was, Jacob fesses up. He acknowledges who he really is: Jacob the cheat. It
is only after he faces himself that he receives a blessing, and discovers he is
no longer the old Jacob; now his future is connected to the new name of Israel.
For the rest of his life, whenever he tried to run away, a sharp pain in his thigh
would remind him of that strange sort of baptism.
At
daybreak, Jacob safely crossed the river, no longer afraid to meet his brother.
Esau came with arms outstretched, and hugged Jacob. Then, an overwhelmed Jacob
says to Esau, “For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God,
with such favor you have received me.” Jacob never saw with whom he struggled
nor did his adversary ever reveal his name. Yet the following morning, Jacob became
reconciled with his brother, his exile ended, and in the eyes of his brother’s
welcome, he saw the face of God.
The
individual people in the Bible are rarely mere individuals. They are also symbols
for entire nations and communities. Jacob represents the community of faith which
often has had a convoluted and tumultuous journey, but is continually called by
God to be something else much, much greater. Today this centuries old campfire
saga from Genesis tells us that God is found in the process of struggle, a struggle
which often happens at night when we are desperately groping for clarity, so desperate
in fact, that we have no other escape but to face our past and the consequences
of what we have become. Yet in staying with the struggle, people of faith find
their anxiety of the future neutralized, just as the anxiety of Jacob over meeting
his brother was transformed into the joy of reconciliation.
Like
Jacob, we don’t see God directly in the dust and pain of the struggle until
afterwards. We don’t command God’s will. The struggle may be scary
and may keep an uncomfortable hold of us until we fess up who we really are. It
may teach us that so much of the control over our lives that we so frantically
try to protect, has always been an illusion. However, staying and wrestling with
God has the potential to alter us in amazing ways and open a new future for us
and our children, just as it did for Jacob, later known as Israel.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
