Sermon, October 21, 2007 -- Genesis 32:22-31

“Israel Comes Home” (Genesis 32:22-31)
Rick Olson, October 21, 2007

This is a dark, strange little story . . . it’s always baffled me in it’s quiet way, and worried me too . . . it goes right to the heart of things, right to the heart of our personal relationship with God, and that of our community as well. And it insists there’s a dark side, that it’s not all sweetness-and-light . . . God attacks Jacob when he’s tired and lonely and scared, when he’s going back home to a possibly-vengeful brother, and God does God’s level-best to beat the stuffing out of Jacob. It leaves us with a whole raft of questions, like . . . if it’s was God, how does Jacob prevail? Does God really have to cheat to win? And why does God attack Jacob anyway? Doesn’t sound too much like “God is love” to me . . . Was God trying to make some kind of point? If so, what is it? Why didn’t he just come out and say it? Why does God have to be all mysterious and beat around the burning bush?

It happens at a low point for Jacob . . . he’s on his way home from Haran, where he’d gone to live with his Uncle Laban, Rebekah’s brother, after some . . . difficulties at home. You remember his birth – after struggling in the womb with Esau, he was born clutching his heel, second-born by only a hair’s-breadth . . . but hair’s-breadths only count in horse-shoes and hand grenades, and second-born is second born, and he craved the attention, craved the blessing from his father that was Esau’s birthright. His brother did manly things like hunt and spit and chew, and Isaac loved Esau for it, and why not? Esau was everything an heir could be, and then some . . . but Jacob was a man of the tents, who hung around with the women, and Rebekah loved him best. He was wily, a trickster, and he bilked his brother out of his father’s blessing, but when Esau found out, he was angry, and Jacob had to hit the road to avoid a fight.

And in Haran, he worked seven years for a wife he didn’t want, and another seven for one he did, but he got the upper hand in the end and managed to do pretty well – he had a couple of wives and a bunch of slaves, eleven sons and a bunch of sheep and goats and cattle – but God told him to go back home, back to the promised land, and so here he was, headed back South, and he hears that Esau is waiting with an army, and for all Jacob knows, he has a big fat knife, ready to cut out his gizzard. And he wouldn’t blame him if he did, and so he sets out across the Jabbok River with a troubled mind.

And he takes all his stuff, all his wives and his concubines and his children and all his possessions and he crosses by the crossing of the Jabbok, and we get the metaphor already, as he surely does—as he’s crossing the river, he’s passing into a new life . . . and he wonders what’s on the other side . . . he knows he’s a child of the promise, but if Esau gets hold of him, he might not be for long . . .

And so he’s sitting on the bank, alone with his thoughts, and suddenly . . . he’s wrestling this guy. And we’re in the dark as much as he is . . . who is this, and why has he come? Maybe it’s Esau, in the blackness – Esau, come to settle it, once and for all . . . Come to win their grudge-match, and take back his blessing. Or some night demon, some wraith-taken-man-form, sent to frustrate God’s will . . . We don’t know any more than Jacob, and he can’t see a thing. The text is so sparse, so terse, we must fill in the blanks, fill in the details for ourselves . . . the man’s just there. One minute Jacob’s alone on the Jabbok, the next . . . he’s wrestling. He hears labored breathing, and smells the man-smell, the sweat . . . there’s no words, just sporadic grunts of pain . . . the hot darkness engulfs them, smothers them like a blanket . . . and it’s like, it’s like . . . they’re in some kind of bubble where time has stopped, and all Jacob’s people and camels and goats, all his accomplishments, fade from his mind like mist, there’s only him and the man, grappling in the night, and it’s so close he can hardly breath, and you can cut his fear with a knife . . .

And as he fights, he wonders what’s going on. Was it pay-back for all he’d done, all the trickery? He’d tricked his brother – twice! – and his uncle Laban, and he’d taken his daughters and his household gods, and after all, what goes around does come around . . . and now that he’s slinking back to his brother, tail between his legs, maybe it’s some kind of karmic message from God, wrestling with this stranger like he’d wrestled his brother in the womb, like he’d wrestled everybody else all his life . . . wrestling is after all a metaphor for Jacob’s whole existence, his whole life . . . he’d wrestled and tussled and tricked for everything he’s gotten, and now he was literally wrestling for his life on the banks of the Jabbok.

When there’s just a hint of color in the East, neither man has the advantage, they seem evenly matched, they’re covered in hot sand, it’s matted in their hair, stinging their eyes, and suddenly – out of the corner of one eye – Jacob catches movement, and pain sears his hip, and his leg is useless, but he hangs on blindly, and he wonders who he’s fighting, and why did he have to cheat like that, why did he trick him?

And then a voice . . . “Let me go, for day is breaking.” And it only adds to Jacob’s determination and, in a rush of renewal, curiosity. What kind of thing is this that fears the dawn? And in a flash, Jacob says, “I won’t let you go, unless you bless me.” That old craving for blessing, craving for well-being rears it’s ugly head, the one that got him in trouble in the first place, that got him exiled for fourteen years, and it was like he was right back in his own family, right back as a boy again, asking for his daddy’s blessing, asking for approval . . . “I’ll let you go if you bless me . . .” but the stranger doesn’t bless him, at least not right away, he asks a question instead – “What’s your name?” and it’s almost as if he’s stalling, playing for time, but Jacob thinks, what the heck, it’s better than letting go, and so Jacob gives him his name, tells him who he is, and that’s when it happens: he gets what he wants, and more besides.

“No more,” says the man, “No more shall you be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have contended with God and with humans and have prevailed.” And all of a sudden, Jacob knows what he already suspects . . . only One has the power to name, only One has the power to create a whole new life, and identity, and destiny. It’s the one who named the light “day” and the darkness “night,” who called Sarai Sarah and Abram Abraham, and who told Jacob to gather his kith and kin and head South on this quest in the first place. Jacob suddenly knew he’d been wrestling God, and he’d done pretty good. So now he’s Israel, and the name implies the manner of his naming – in strife and contention. But of course, it’s much more than that: a nation and a people have been born, rolling in the dirt of the earth, and most important, it’s been born through an assault by God.

And if I was Jacob, I’d be shaking in my sandals, saying “Anything you say, sir . . . you can call me Mary Poppins if you want . . .” But Jacob can’t leave well-enough alone. He is Jacob, after all: Jacob the trickster, Jacob the striver, Jacob the contender, who’s always looking for the advantage, always pressing for the upper hand, and he has the chutzpah to ask God for that ultimate gift – his name. After all, God knows Jacob’s name, and he thinks it’s only fair. So he asks the name of his assailant, but comes up empty-handed, with a blessing as a consolation-prize, which was what he wanted in the first place.

And in the end, there’s give and take, the stranger leaves – or does Jacob let him go? – but the mystery remains intact, God remains God, the relationship imbalanced. But a blessing’s a blessing, and one from God’s a pretty good thing, even if it does come with a pain in the neck—I mean hip—and in the end, Jacob’s alone again, hobbling past Penuel—which means the face of God—he’s hobbling before the face of God, and he’s no longer Jacob, but Israel, progenitor of a nation. The encounter has changed him in ways far deeper than physical, he’s been blessed, but not through trickery this time, but toughness, and perseverance against long odds . . . his tenaciousness and audacity have stood him in good stead, and we know that after wrestling God, he’s up for anything.

But what does this say about God? What about a deity who attacks somebody exactly when he’s doing what he’s been told? It kind of goes against our whole image, our whole way of doing business with God . . . we don’t expect to be punished for doing God’s will. There’s kind of an unspoken contract we operate under . . . we live the Christian life, and in return, our lives are better, we’re happier, more content, more spiritually in tune with creation, or something, but not this, we don’t expect to be rewarded by being attacked by a god! But there it is, Jacob does what God tells him, he heads back home to an uncertain future, with possibly death in store, from a place where he’s done very well for himself, thank you very much . . . he leaves all that, and God assaults him anyway, out of the blue, or rather out of the black mid-Eastern night. What’s wrong with this picture?

And I always wonder what my old professor Walter Brueggemann would say about this sort of thing, after all, he probably knows as much about Old Testament stuff as anybody, and you know what? I think he might say . . . so? So God wrestled Jacob, whaddya want me to do about it? That’s the way God is, inscrutable, dangerous, unpredictable . . . and furthermore, that’s the way God has always been, it’s just that we Western Christians don’t want to admit it. And the claim of our passage is that a relationship with this God is not all sweetness and light, not all reconciliation and forgiveness, and if this is grace, it’s not the kind we usually imagine. Jacob is wounded by this encounter, he’s marked by it, he comes away with a permanent limp. But he’s gotten a blessing out of it in return, and he’s seen God face-to-face. And that ain’t chopped liver.

And so, Jacob’s relationship with God is a troubled one, a two way street – it goes back and forth, with give and take. He’s been a contender all his life, he’s scrabbled and squabbled for everything he has, first with his brother and then with his uncle, and now, ultimately, with God. And he’s done incredibly well, soared incredibly high, prevailed in everything, but now he’s brought back down to earth with a thud. God is, after all . . . God. And Israel is a people with a limp, with a hitch in it’s giddy-up, and it’s hard to know what to make of it’s costly connection with God.

This tension between exultation and despair, between wisdom and folly, power and weakness is at the heart of Israel’s relationship with God, and it points to our experience as well . . . Christ’s power is found precisely in weakness, Paul says it well over in First Corinthians, and if anybody was a perfect demonstration of the Christian limp, it was Paul . . . let’s hear what he said about his limp . . . “to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this . . . but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."” Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness.

But even Christ’s original twelve disciples had trouble getting it. On the road to Jerusalem, on the road to the cross, they ask him “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” And like God at the Jabbok, Jesus answers them with a question: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with my baptism?” The disciples speak of exaltation and glory, and Jesus counters with blood and cross . . . and it’s no easier to get these days, either. The world still runs on survival of the fittest, of the richest, of the most powerful . . . and we live in it, partake of it, even in the U.S. of A. If you have money, you have advantage and opportunity. If you don’t . . . you don’t.

But Paul understood the equation, and he said God’s wisdom is the world’s foolishness, and the world’s weakness is God’s strength, and it’s something Jacob – now Israel – came face to face with there on Jabbok’s banks. His encounter with the holy, his date with the divine, was filled with joy and pain, hope and despair. He came away changed, marked for life, but with a blessing nonetheless.

I think it’s the same way with us, us latter-day children of the promise. Because we’ve been adopted by God, grafted onto the vine, onto the tree of the new covenant in Christ’s blood. We’re people of the limp, marked in our hips, in the place that we move at our baptism. Struck by God we participate in the dark side of that covenant, in the death and burial of God’s Son, but we also participate in the blessing, we receive the abundance that is ours through the promise. Dark and light, light and dark . . . no matter how it goes, we’re marked for life like Jacob, and with him we’re able to say “We’ve seen God face-to-face, and our lives have been saved.” Amen.