Until that dark night by the river Jabbok, life had been going pretty well for Jacob. He wasn't a bad guy, just good at playing the system, getting what he wanted, advancing his station in life. It had always been this way for Jacob
Jacob's very name suggests a survivor, a "someone's going to be kicked off the island, but it won't be me." In Hebrew his name translates to something like, "one who supplants," or in the Hollywood translation, "Top-Gun." Jacob has mastered the tenets of Social Darwinism. It didn't stop with tricking Esau his brother out of the birthright. Later on Jacob will trick his old man Isaac into passing along his blessing to Jacob instead of Esau.
God is way in the background in these Geneses stories working incognito through persons and events. That's why they work for me today, as God presence seems obscured; at least not out there center stage, as plain as the nose on your face.
The theology behind these stories of Jacob supplanting his brother says to us that when God shapes history God is not dependant on birth order or behind that the rules that dictate who should be first and second. God is free to act in new ways wherever new demands of love and community take shape.
Sure, Jacob's a little proactive, but who isn't? We may not think of it as swindling or manipulation; those words are too strong. We're more apt to use tamer language like: networking, relationship building, strategic planning, capitalizing on an opportunity.
All those stories of Jacob's trickery and family history are in the rushing waters of the Jabbok River. For you see, the next day, Jacob would see Esau for the first time in some 20 years, and Jacob is not the fool Esau is. Jacob knows too well how the world works. What goes around comes around, or so he assumes. And he fully expects that Esau, who by now has amassed quite a stable of servant-soldiers, will give him what he deserves. Just the night before this wrestling match in the river God, promised to Jacob goodness, land and blessing to Jacob's descendents, and the abiding presence of God. But that dream was last night. Despite the promises, Jacob is still Jacob, and now he is alone, back in the political war room, having sent his wives, children, servants, and live-stock across the Jabbok ahead of him.
This is Jacob at his best, the very model of a modern-major self-made man, built on the backs of others, digging deep to see if he can hatch one more emergency escape route and upend his brother, for a final decisive time.
That is when it happens. Alone in the darkness of a dusty riverbank something lurches out of the black night and grabs Jacob by the throat. It is part of the power of this wrestling of our wrestling that we do not know the name or see the face of the antagonist. On the way to his brother, on the way toward what seems like a reconciliation Jacob has to struggle with what's ultimate.
This adversary is addressed only as a man which leaves all options open. The power of this stranger is as much in his inscrutability as in his strength. Jacob anticipates the wrath of his brother. But first he must wrestle with God. In the middle of the night the forms of brother and God merge and overlap is this God or a man, my brother?
Perhaps in pondering this scene the story teller could not make out the forms very well. He could not discern whether the adversary was God or Jacob. In the night the divine antagonist tends to take on features of others with who we struggle in the day.
The wrestling is hardly described. It must have been an even match. Jacob may be frightened by both his bother and of God. But in this struggle he holds his own.
The hidden one has the power to injure Jacob even though he does not finally defeat him. If this is God, what kind of God is it, who will be pressed to a draw with this man?
This riverbank battle is physical, violent, tossing, turning, rolling around in the dust and mud, arms flailing, knees banging, heads jarring, a scratching biting brawl with neither one giving in. It goes on and on throughout the night and into the wee hours of the morning, the physical exhaustion dripping from the text like the sweat running down Jacob's brow.
Some night, some unexpected night, something will lurch out of the darkness perhaps from a past we have never faced, and have it throw us to the floor.
It will be that thing in your life that you could never imagine that will change your life forever.
It happens to Jacob by the river Jabbok. We might expect Jacob to cry uncle pretty quickly, having in the past always been the one to ambush others and manipulate them into quick defeat. But like most of us, when the chips are down, Jacob finds strength he never imagined and wrestles 'til the break of day. It even appears that Jacob has the upper-hand. He is winning. At least he believes he is winning.
It might be the first time in his life that Jacob is on the verge of victory in an honest battle. And then, in an instant, with just a touch of the hand, Jacob's hip is thrown out of joint and all is lost. Defeat thrown in the face of victory, victory snatched away with just a touch. All the long sweaty hours of wrestling, Jacob believing he was in the fight from the beginning, that he had a chance to win, believing he was in control.
Truthfully, it was all illusion. Jacob was never in control. The stranger was in control the entire time. This time it was Jacob who was fooled. It could have happened at any moment during the previous sweaty hours. Just a touch, a brush of his hip and the whole thing is thrown out of joint. His last hope is to get a blessing, a reminder of the night, and he does. With dawn breaking that stranger out of the darkness cries to be let go, but Jacob, wounded hip and all, does not release him, not until he receives a blessing.
"What is your name?, the stranger asks from the darkness." "Jacob," comes the answer. Then the man says, "You will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel."
And that is the blessing, the deep abiding blessing of being known. The stranger in the darkness names him. In the world of the Bible to be named, to is to be known completely, deep down into the depths of our lives. To be named is to have our lives cut wide open and all the posturing exposed, to be made completely vulnerable and thus known through and through for whom we really are.
This is Jacob's blessing to be known for who he really is. Frederic Buechner narrates the scene like this:
The darkness had faded just enough so that for the first time he can dimly see his opponent's face. And what he sees is something that scares him more than the face of death - the face of love. -
Not a blessing that he can have now by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can have only as a gift. What he strived for tricked for manipulated father and brother for now comes as gift. Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are his who will fight for them hard enough; but peace, love, joy are only from God.
To receive love is perhaps for some the hardest fight, we muster. And to be about love involves a tassel with our tendency to be in the center of things and not God.
Some feel that if known too well that surely no one will love us knowing all of that.
The next day Jacob crosses the river to meet Esau in the way that we have been accustomed to Jacob operating. Jacob wants the land that has been promised to him as a gift. And although gift is the way it was offered, Jacob intends to get it, to take it, anyway he can. He sends lavish presents of servants and livestock on ahead to Esau, hoping that Esau will be buttered up and thus reduces the severity of his revenge. Esau is one of the nice guys of the world.
When they meet, Esau repels the presents and instead embraces his long lost brother. Esau comes to Jacob as gift. All is forgiven, tears flow freely, and reconciliation is at hand.
I would like to tell you that Jacob's story ends there. That he learned from the night before, having seen God face to face, having been blessed, he picked up some life-altering lesson like a stone on the riverbank and carried it with him as a moral compass, starting off down a new path in life. However, the Bible is real, and gives a messy truth - this wasn't written by Dr. Phil or Walt Disney. Life isn't so straightforward - and real life is often more complex than our easy answer story ending morals might have us believe.
Rarely do lives change overnight, even after the dramatic events down by the riverside.
And so, when the embrace ends and Esau invites prodigal Jacob to come home with him, to live together as brothers, Jacob agrees, telling Esau to go on ahead, that he will be along shortly. But this is Jacob and he has one more lie in him. The tears barely dry on his cheeks, Jacob deceives his brother a final time and sets off down a different road, never to see Esau again.
So, is that it, we wonder? Is that how the Bible leaves it? After all the swindling and lying and manipulation, does Jacob come out of it unscathed? Well, not completely.
We often struggle with God's blessing of Grace. Intellectually it can offend our sensibilities. I'm accepted! Who says so?
Often it's an emotional offence: I don't feel as if God accepts me. It's a fact not just a feeling.
It's also often a volitional offense. If I'm unconditionally loved then I no longer have any accuse as to why I can't live my life.
Were reminded of those battles we fought to accept our acceptance, with this battle down by the riverside.
In one way the long night on the banks of the Jabbok did change Jacob. He may have gone off in another direction from Esau, but he did so gingerly, painfully, with a limp. For the rest of his God-given life, with every back-splitting step Jacob knew, no matter how many times he could fool other people, shape them, work the system to his advantage, fulfill his own ambition, happiness, success, pretending that he was in control of his own life and destiny, the limp was with him, as a blessed constant reminder that as he stumbled forward in life there was one who knew him deeply - and knows us the same, and with that knowing loves us unconditionally.
Way down in the depths of his being, with every step thereafter, Jacob knew the terror and the grace of being known by Universal Love. No more fooling others or himself because with that hip, came the reminder that he is blessed. You are blessed! Each and every one of you is blessed with grace. What's your reminder?
Amen.