In all of scripture, and even in all of literature, you
would be hard pressed to find a character more interesting than
Jacob. We meet him first before he is even born - his mother
Rebekah is in such agony during her pregnancy carrying him and
his twin brother that she wants to die. When the babies finally
make their appearance, little Esau comes out first, but his
brother is holding on to his heel, and, as the legend has it,
that is why he was given the name Jacob - it meant "heel" or
"trickster" or "supplanter." And since names then and now carry
baggage, we have a huge clue as to the kind of person this baby
is going to become.
Yes, the lad grew up to be a "heel." You remember those
stories from your Sunday School lessons. He cheated his brother
out of his inheritance. He duped his father Isaac on his
deathbed. Esau was ready to kill him, but Jacob approached the
problem "spatially" - he got out of that space. He ran for the
hills...literally. He headed north toward his Uncle Laban in
Haran.
Something strange happens now. As Jacob paused on his
journey, and with no one hot on his tail, he made camp for the
night. His escape had been too hasty to prepare a bedroll, so he
just curled up on the ground with a smooth stone for a pillow.
Tossing, turning, unable to sleep because of a guilty conscience?
Not at all. Like a baby he slept, and dreamed the kind of dream
that one would have thought would be reserved for a saint - a
ladder reaching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and
descending. And standing above it all, the God of all creation
saying not, "How dare you???" but, "I am going to bless you."
Land. Descendants. "Your descendants will be like the dust of
the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east,
to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be
blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will
watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this
land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised
you."(1)
Wow! I guess we should not be surprised by Jacob's
response. He took that stone which he had used for a pillow,
propped it up and poured oil on it and called it BETHEL ("God's
House"), the least expensive sanctuary in the history of
religion. Then he says piously,
"If God will be with me and will watch over me on this
journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and
clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father's
house, then the LORD will be my God and this stone that
I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of
all that you give me I will give you a tenth."(2)
How about THAT, folks? A whole tenth! If God will do all
the work, Jacob will only keep 90 percent for himself. What a
guy!
Jacob finally arrives at Uncle Laban's where his next
adventure would begin. Love. He falls in love with cousin
Rachel (which, in those days, was OK). Laban says Rachel will
cost seven years hard work; Jacob says all right. At the end of
seven years, the wedding...but under the veil, Rachel's older
sister Leah. Horrors. The trickster had been tricked. It would
take seven more years of labor for our hero to get Rachel. But
Jacob is a person who proves the old adage that you do not want
to wrestle with a pig - both of you get dirty and the pig likes
it. Jacob proceeded to outdo his double-crossing uncle by
conning him out of most of his livestock and finally sneaking off
with, not only both of Laban's daughters, but just about
everything else in those tents that was not nailed down, even the
household gods. Our boy, Jacob!
By this time, twenty years had passed, and Jacob was ready
to head back to the family homestead. He loaded kith and kin and
took off...without bothering to tell Laban goodbye, of course.
Laban chased after, there was a confrontation, finally peace -
with each one glaring at the other through squinting, angry eyes,
they offered this mutual warning that has been misused ever since
as a Sunday School benediction: "The LORD watch between me and
thee, when we are absent one from another."(3) Benediction? Not
at all. This was a threat. Misbehave? May God gethcha!
(Remember that the next time you stand in a circle holding hands
as you prepare to leave the class.)
The journey continues. Jacob is about to be reunited with
Esau. What would big brother's reaction be? Jacob decides to
find out. He sends a messenger: "Hey everybody, I'm HO-ome."
Word comes back that Esau is coming out to meet him, along with
400 of his closest friends. Sounds like bloody revenge is
coming. Jacob decides to oil the machinery - gifts...bribes.
Goats, sheep, camels, cattle, donkeys. Will they make any
difference? Jacob is scared. He divides his entourage into two
groups, figuring if Esau attacks one, at least the other has a
chance for escape. He prays (the longest single prayer in the
book of Genesis, by the way...and no wonder): he reminds God of
past promises - "You did say, God, that you would do me good,
make my offspring as the dust of the earth, the sand of the sea -
you remember that, right, God? Right, God???" Finally, he sends
his family away across the river.
Now, nightfall. Where years ago, encamped under the stars,
he slept like a baby and dreamed beautiful dreams, this night
would be different. The scriptural account is very sparse; it
says only, "Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him
till daybreak." Who is it? An apparition? A phantom? Some
pagan river god guarding the ford of the Jabbok? An angel? God?
Scholars are all over the lot with their answers.
Was this wrestling match merely symbolic? In the daytime we
may be too busy to dwell on the past, but at night our mental
struggles can increase; the wrestling might be with the pillow,
but it is very real. Have you ever struggled with your
conscience at night? Suffered over guilt? Been panicked by
fears of the day ahead? Jacob had LOTS of reasons to agonize.
In the morning he would be meeting one of them face-to-face.
On and on the struggle continued through the night. Hour
after hour they grappled and grabbed. Jacob is wounded in the
fray. Depending on which version of scripture you have, you
learn that the injury is to the hip socket or the hollow of the
thigh or some location below the belt which are only Biblical
euphemisms for a place no man ever wants to get hit. No wonder
Jacob limped. But he hangs on.
And on and on and on. Now the sun begins to rise. Jacob's
antagonist says, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
Who is this nocturnal nemesis wanting to escape before dawn?
Whoever it is, Jacob is impressed enough to presume someone or
something beyond the ordinary. He responds, "I will not let you
go, unless you bless me."
The man asks, "What is your name?"
"Jacob."
"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you
have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
The name again. Through all succeeding generations, when
Hebrew children ask parents and grandparents, "Where did our
nation Israel get its name," the response is, "Let me tell you a
story...it began with a struggle."
Now it is Jacob's turn to ask the name, but no name is
given, just a blessing. The unidentified adversary disappears.
And the new day dawns.
As he reflects on the events of the night, Jacob becomes
more and more confident. The more he thinks about it, the more
he becomes convinced that his encounter was with the divine. So
Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God
face to face, and yet my life was spared."
Was it actually God? Is that the way God comes to us? I
would rather understand it this way - there are times when we DO
wrestle with God, not because God has mugged us like some thief
in an alley, but because WE chose to pick the fight. Yes, it was
a losing battle from the beginning, but sometimes we do it
anyway. Could it have been that way with Jacob? Entirely
possible. Note this for the record: God WAS there that night.
During that terrifying night, Jacob DID see the face of God, for
God was with Jacob during the struggle, just as God is with you
and me during ours.
An interesting lesson, don't you think? While Jacob
wrestled all that long night, he did not know with what he was
struggling, he only knew that he would not let go until some good
came of it. Do we miss great blessings because we give up too
soon? I think of Thomas Edison and the remark someone once made
on the huge number of failures the inventor had encountered in
his search for a new storage battery - 50,000 attempts before he
achieved results. "Results?" said Edison. "Why I have gotten a
lot of results. I know 50,000 things that won't work."(4) What
blessings we would have missed if Thomas Edison had given up.
A cyberfriend notes a comic strip set in a lawyer's office.
A couple has come saying they want a divorce. The lawyer looks
at them and says, "I'm not sure you are giving your marriage a
fair chance." You see, they are still in their wedding clothes!(5)
Is there value in the struggle, even if we are struggling
with God? Unquestionably. The classic illustration is the
struggle that a butterfly goes through in breaking free from the
cocoon. It is difficult to watch, because the temptation is to
want to help this poor, squirming creature. But keep your hands
off anyway. You see, it is the STRUGGLE that allows the
butterfly opportunity to build enough strength to finally be able
to fly.
Are there struggles for you right now? Business struggles,
family struggles, money struggles, faith struggles, personal
struggles? Do not give up. The survival of our rascally hero
Jacob may offer some consolation and encouragement. Hang in long
enough, and a blessing awaits at the end.
Remember those wonderful words of the Apostle Paul in the
8th chapter of Romans:(6) "All things all things work together for
good for those who love God"...even the struggles. Then he asks
rhetorically, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" The
answer is NOBODY. Not some river demon, not some double-crossed
uncle, not even a potentially murderous brother whom you cheated
years ago. "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" he
asks. "Trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness
or danger or sword?" or any other struggle? None. Nothing.
Nada.
"Trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger,
sword." For Paul, these were nothing exceptional, just day-to-day existence. We have a different set of day-to-day struggles:
house payments, cavities, arthritis, leaky roofs, crab grass,
traffic jams, tax audits, lawsuits, sleepless nights, noisy
neighbors, flat tires. Life may suffer no crushing blow but
simply drags on from one day to the next with no apparent
meaning, no aspiration, no adventure, no joy. Then add to the
list the big things that DO shake us to the roots: failing
marriages, rebellious children, abusive parents, dying loved
ones, cancer, bankruptcy, alcoholism, drug dependency,
unemployment, terrorists. Paul's word is that not one of those,
not the little things or the big things or even ALL those things
put together can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord.(7)
That is good news. The good news to Christian families who
have faced tragedy in the form of deranged gunmen, plane crashes,
or car wrecks is that nothing, even those awful events, can
separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The
good news to Christians suffering around the country is that
weather-related emergencies - flood, drought, forest fires -
cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord. To Christians in Baghdad, the good news is that bloodshed
and war cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord. To you and me living comfortably in Western
Pennsylvania but sometimes faced with moments of quiet
desperation, the good news is that nothing can separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Yes, there are moments when we feel like the little girl
sitting on her bunk at summer camp and crying her eyes out. The
counselor asked if she were homesick. "No," she whimpered, "I'm
HERE-sick." We know what she means. Sometimes it seems like
SUCH a struggle. The message of Jacob is DO NOT GIVE UP, because
a blessing may await at the end.
By the way, the story of Jacob's reunion with brother Esau
has a wonderful end. Jacob limps off to meet his sibling who
greets him, not with hate, but a hug. He does not kill him, he
kisses him. Then Esau asks why all the gifts with which he had
been flooded. Jacob answered, "To find favor in your eyes, my
lord." In other words, to butter him up. Esau said thanks, but
no thanks - he had gracious plenty already. Jacob said, "No,
please! If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift
from me. For to see your face is like seeing the FACE OF GOD,
now that you have received me favorably."(8) How true, how true!
In a unique way, Esau was a visible demonstration of the grace
and mercy of our loving God.
Struggling with God. In the end we realize that God was not
struggling AGAINST us, God was struggling WITH us, just as with
Jacob, and will continue to struggle with us no matter what.
Remember Paul's words: "For I am convinced that neither death nor
life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the
future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love
of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Amen!
1. Genesis 28:14-15
2. Genesis 28:20-22
3. Genesis 31:49
4. Clifton Fadiman, Gen. Ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Little, Brown & Co.,
Boston, 1985), p. 183
5. Bass Mitchell, via Ecunet, "Sermonshop 1999 08 01," #6, 7/27/99
6. 28-39 passim
7. H. Michael Brewer, "Preaching on the Lessons," Church Management - The Clergy
Journal, Oct., 1990, p. 23
8. Genesis 33:10
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