Genesis 32:22-31

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. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 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. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” 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. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Sermon Text

If you’ve read the story of Jacob in scripture you read the story of somebody who really  is not a hero. When we’re introduced to Jacob he is fighting his brother in the womb. Later on he defrauds his brother not once but twice, taking everything from him in the process.  His brother is angry enough at this to chase him from his home. Jacob flees to his uncle Laban in the distant city of Charan, and there begins to learn his lesson when his uncle actively defrauds him. When he leaves to return to Canaan he has two wives, a large flock of animals, plentiful slaves, and a collection of his uncle’s household gods that he and his wife stole as they fled the city.

Jacob literally means, “heel-grabber,” evidently a term for someone who usurps power from others. His life was dedicated to taking advantage of those around him for his own gain. Whether it was in convincing them to sell their inheritance for a bowl of soup or stealing their blessing in disguise, he was willing to do what it took to get what he wanted. He was a cheat, a thief, and all around a troublesome person. Yet, he was also a descendant of Abraham, a recipient of his covenant with God. Through Jacob, it was promised, all people would be blessed, and yet he showed none of the signs that he would ever conform to such a high calling.

As he returned to Canaan, he knew that he would be coming face to face with his brother Esau. His brother had grown in power since their parting. He had a veritable army at his disposal, as well as a multitude of his own flocks and slaves. To Jacob, the march to Canaan was not a simple walk to return home, but a very real risk. If he ran into his brother, he was fully expecting that his life would be forfeit. He needed a way to distract him, a way to win him over.

He sends his family ahead of him. Firstly, across the river, and then on the day of their confrontation. Does he send them ahead as decoys? As offerings in his place? Or out of a desire his brother will see his dependents and be merciful? No one can say, because we never hear his rationale.

The night before the confrontation, Jacob sends his family and his possessions ahead of him and sits alone. We do not know how long he sat there in silence, but eventually a man suddenly rushes onto the scene and begins to grapple with him. While the man should have been able to take Jacob down in mere minutes, somehow the struggle continues for hours. At daybreak the specter decides it must flee, so it dislocates Jacob’s hip bone and blesses him in exchange for freedom. The blessing is strange, “You shall be named Israel, for you have wrestled with God and humans and have prevailed.” The being refuses to give its name, and yet when it leaves Jacob knows it was God who met him that night, as he names the place “Peniel,” “God’s face,” in remembrance of the event.

It’s a strange story. Why does God need to leave before sunrise? Why can Jacob successfully wrestle God for hours? What does it mean that God has, once again, appeared in a human – but definitely not incarnate – form for the second time in the book of Genesis? These questions naturally come to mind reading the story, but they are ultimately unhelpful for us as interpreters in understanding why we are given this story.

We are inheritors of Jacob’s struggle and that is what we have to understand behind all of this. Though we are not as comically devious as he was, we are all of us still people who have tried again and again to get our way in life, and have sometimes resorted to backward methods to get there.

Sure, we try to do right, but I doubt seriously that attempt to do right always succeeds to overcome our more selfish inclinations. We are all recipients of God’s gifts, inheritors of the covenant, and yet somehow the kind of folks who might smuggle some other gods out of our uncle’s house if we were given the chance, just in case things do not quite work out. We don’t have the literal idols to hide in our wife’s saddlebag, that’s true, but who knows what we’re turning to other than God.

Jacob was where he was precisely because he was good at ripping people off. His journey to Charan was an exercise in being humbled by force. His uncle tricked him into acting with propriety, asserted that he should start acting like a civilized person and not just a thief. When he fled, he came to his brother’s territory with the ever increasing sense that he was not strong enough to face him head on. He could not fight him, could not trick him, he would have to be far more humble in his reunion. Finally, when God came to him, the struggle against him was more than he could overcome. God met him at his level, and only when his hip was out of place would Jacob relent to let go. Jacob was someone who needed humbled by external forces before he could do right.

Jacob walked the long walk from Penuel to his family across the Jabbok. He met up with them and sent them ahead to meet his brother. He had sent his property ahead as an offering to his brother, but his wives and children were sent directly ahead of him. Two groups, split up in case Esau chose to kill one of them, were sent ahead.

His favorite wife and son, Rachel and Jospeh, were directly in front of him. As he walked toward Esau, only the noise of the animals would have risen above the field. Jacob limped across the distance between them, as his brother broke into a sprint. When the two met, Jacob no doubt expected the worst, but Esau fell on him with love and not hatred.

Those years that humbled Jacob had also softened the heart of Esau. Esau saw the riches of his brother, his large family, and saw a reason to rejoice – not to be angry. Esau accepted the gifts from his brother only after Jacob pleaded with him, and when the two parted ways Esau left some of his best behind to make sure Jacob’s family had enough. Jacob would return to Canaan, and settle just a little ways from where his father had settled in Hebron, settling in Shechem with his family.

If we walk with God, we will find ourselves humbled – either of our own choice or through God’s intervention. Looking at my life, short though it has been, I know that the closer I come to God, the more I realize my smallness. It is not that my self-concept has diminished entirely, I know that I am better today than I was a year ago, but its more that my self-concept is being compared to the appropriate scale. I am better than I was, but I am nothing without the God who got me here. I am dependent on God, on the people who have loved me into being, and the circumstances that have brought me to where I am.

In my life, truthfully in all our lives, we wrestle with God. We want to say that we know better, or see more clearly than God does what is really going on. We kick and fight and push and pull, but we cannot get away from God. The struggle lasts throughout our life and only in the moments we stop and we let God win, do we truly see things for what they are.

At the Jabbok, long ago, Jacob was given the name Israel to remember his fight alongside that river, but it is a name with dual meaning. Israel can mean, “He who wrestles God,” but it can also mean, “God who prevails.”[1] We fight with God, but God wins – one way or the other.

An element I have grown to love in this story is that God refuses to give Jacob his name. Yet, when the stranger leaves, Jacob knows that he has seen the face of God in fighting alongside that river. Something we often do in life is look back on a difficult time and suddenly see that God was alongside us the whole time. Sometimes shepherding us through, sometimes dragging us kicking and screaming, but never relenting. To wrestle with God, to be humbled in the practice, is to learn who God truly is. As Charles Wesley notes in his hymn based upon this text, our entry into humility is our entry into this truth, “Pure, universal love thou art; To me, to all thy passions move; Thy nature and thy name is love.”[2] Wrestle God, be made humble, and learn the love of the same. – Amen

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[1] Robert Alter gives the most succinct argument for this in his translation of the text, but the exact etymology of the name “Israel,” continues to be a matter of academic debate.

[2] Come O Thou Traveler Unknown UMH #386