In The Night

Genesis 32:22-32

July 19, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Pastors get called on to do all sorts of things throughout the course of a week. Sometimes we get called to do funerals for people we didn’t know, and one time in a small town, a pastor received a call to do such a funeral. He hadn’t personally known the deceased, but he recognized the name right away, because everyone in town and throughout the surrounding community had known of this man. He and his brother were known to be disreputable and dishonest. Over the course of many years, they had cheated, swindled, robbed and generally stole from everyone they ever did business with. Now, one of the brothers was dead and this pastor was being asked to do the funeral, even though neither brother had ever been inside the church.

In the midst of the preparations for the service, the pastor received a call from the remaining brother. He said to the pastor, “Of course I want you to do the normal things and say the usual things at the funeral, but I want to make a deal with you as well. I will make a large donation to your church if, during the course of the eulogy, you call my brother a saint.” The pastor was troubled by the request; however, he served a very poor church and the building desperately needed repairs. He wrestled with the proposition up until the time the funeral began.

When the day came, the church was packed. Word had gotten around about the dilemma the pastor was facing, and everyone in attendance was curious what he would do. The service began in the usual way, with the pastor saying the usual prayers and reading Scripture. Then, he came to the eulogy, which he began with these words: “As you all know, the departed was an awful individual who robbed, cheated, swindled and stole from everyone he ever did business with.” The pastor paused and, noticing that the living brother was scowling, summoned his nerve to be able to on. “However,” he said, “compared to his brother, he was a saint!”

I don’t know if that pastor got the bonus he was promised or not, but sometimes, you just have to be honest! This morning, as we wrap up our series called “The Epic of Eden,” we come to a story of two brothers, one of whom was like the deceased in the story: a swindler, a cheat, a liar and who knows what else. Many of his crimes, though, especially in the early part of his life, were directly against his brother and not the larger community. So when he learns his brother is coming to meet him as he is heading back to their family homeland, he is understandably nervous. Jacob is about to have a long night of reckoning, not only with his brother Esau, but also with himself and his God.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at stories from what we call the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, stories that are foundational to our faith. Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel and then last week we looked at the call of Abram. I hope you’ve seen how these early stories aren’t really about miracles or spectacular events. Rather, they’re really about how deeply God wants to have a relationship with us. He will do most anything to rebuild and restore that relationship—while we, on the other hand, seem determined and dedicated to do most anything to run from that relationship. And if there’s anyone who demonstrates that tendency most clearly, it is Jacob, the “heel grabber.”

Jacob’s story begins all the way back in Genesis 25, and there are a lot of nuances and intricacies to the story, so I’m just going to quickly give you the highlights; you will have a chance to read a lot of the story in the daily readings this week. Jacob is the grandson of Abram who became Abraham, and Jacob is a twin. He and Esau were born at the same time, but Jacob (the second born) comes out grabbing Esau’s heel. That’s how he got his name; Jacob means “heel grabber” or “deceiver.” So they grew up with this often unspoken (though sometimes spoken) rivalry between them; Jacob always thought he should have been first, and yet because Esau came out first, Esau was entitled to inherit the father’s blessing and his estate. But, through a series of tricks and deception, Jacob manages to steal the right to the estate first, and then later he tricks his father into giving him Esau’s blessing. We might think, “So what’s the big deal,” but in that culture, having the father’s blessing was a huge deal. It meant you inherited the spiritual authority and power of the father. So when Jacob steals that, Esau is furious and vows to kill Jacob as soon as his father is dead. And you think your family has problems!

To escape Esau’s wrath, Jacob runs away to his Uncle Laban’s home in what Genesis calls “the land of the eastern peoples.” Where he goes is actually back to where his grandfather, Abram, originally came from, Mesopotamia or modern-day Iraq. There, his extended family welcomes him in, and he even finds a wife—two, actually. Sisters. That’s not a good idea, by the way, besides being illegal in our world. But Jacob is tricked into marrying Leah, the older sister, and then gets to marry the sister he’s really in love with, Rachel. And the point of that story is that Jacob the deceiver finds in his uncle someone who can best him at deception. And you think your family has problems!

After working for his uncle for many years and amassing a sizable fortune for both himself and Uncle Laban, Jacob decides it’s time to head back home, to face the music so to speak. And it’s during that journey where we come into the story this morning. Jacob has been traveling for a while, and then he gets word: Esau is on his way to meet him, and he has four hundred men with him (32:6). This sounds like a war party, and Jacob, we’re told, is in “great fear and distress” (32:7), so he begins to make a plan to pacify Esau. He divides his flocks and herds and people up into different groups and sends them ahead at different intervals, because he thinks that maybe if Esau attacks one group, the others might escape. Of course, Jacob, ever protecting himself, puts himself in the back. He’s not out front leading, paving the way, ready to take his own punishment. No, Jacob is perfectly content to allow others to take the punishment from Esau that he deserves. I’ll say it one more time: and you think your family has problems!

With the flocks and herds that are left to him, Jacob once again divides them up and sends a huge gift, in three waves, on ahead to Esau, once again hoping to pacify his brother with material things. And again, rather than presenting the gifts himself, he stays behind. He even sends his wives and all of his children to Esau’s side of the Jabbok River while he stays behind by himself. This past summer, one of the places where we stopped in Jordan was at the Jabbok River, and as you can see from this picture, it’s not that wide of a river, at least in the place we were. Of course, no one knows exactly where Jacob made his crossing for sure, but this spot, we were told, is typical of the river and is a place like where Jacob would have forded the river. So his family is on one side, camped for the night, and Jacob is on the other side, by himself, will to sacrifice all those who went before him to protect himself. Can you imagine anything or anyone more selfish than Jacob is at this very moment?

There, as night falls, Jacob is alone. In many ways, even with family around, even with two wives and, at this point, eleven sons, even with all of his flocks and herds and material possessions, Jacob has always really been alone. He’s never really thought of anyone except himself and what he could get out of any particular deal. He’s only called on God when it suited him, when he needed something, and even then, a lot of his prayers went like this: “God, if you get me out of this jam, or if you do something for me, then I’ll worship you.” If. If you come through for me, God. If you do this for me, God. It’s always conditional. The amazing thing is that, by and large, God has always come through for Jacob, despite Jacob treating God as a cosmic vending machine. But tonight, on this night of nights, Jacob is really alone, and God is going to use this night as an opportunity to get his attention and to shape him into the kind of man God knows he can become.

The story is told with an air of mystery, as if we are there in the dark right alongside Jacob. All we know at first is that “a man” grabs Jacob in the night and begins wrestling with him. The wrestling match goes on all night, until daybreak, and at least in this account, nothing is said during those hours. Just two men wrestling, each trying to gain control over the other. We usually call this “Jacob wrestles with God,” but in reality it’s God who initiated this wrestling match, though we don’t really learn that “the man” is God until verses 28 and 30). It might better be called “God wrestles with Jacob,” but it’s not just wrestling for wrestling’s sake. God has a plan. God has a design. God is trying to get Jacob’s attention. In reality, God has been trying to get Jacob’s attention all his life through dreams, visions and circumstances, but this night, God takes direct action (Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 117). The reason the wrestling match lasts so long is because Jacob isn’t willing to be beaten. He’s self-assured and defiant and determined that no one will best him. To give in might mean that he is somehow less than, that he’s not as strong as he thinks he is. So he will not give in and he will resist anyone ruling over him, even if that someone is God (Briscoe, Communicator’s Commentary: Genesis, pg. 273).

Perhaps Jacob is the easiest person in these stories for us to identify with, because we are the rugged, American individualists. We have been taught from the beginning of our lives that we can do it ourselves, we can be who we want to be, and especially today we are taught that we don’t even really need God to get by. Even those of us who sit in church pews every week often turn to God only when things get really desperate. Watch our culture, and consider how little we talk of God when things are going well, but allow a tragedy like last week’s shooting in Las Vegas or a natural disaster like the hurricanes that have struck Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other islands, and suddenly, there are people praying. There are also people blaming God in those situations; even those who want nothing to do with God in the normal times suddenly believe in God long enough to blame him. Let me say it as clearly as I can: God did not cause the hurricanes and God did not send the shooter. Those things break God’s heart even more they break our hearts. And it’s not that God can’t control the world; it’s that, as we discussed in the very first week of this series, God chose to give us the ability to make choices. And, as we also talked about there in the Garden of Eden, we repeatedly make bad choices, choices that go against the best that God wants for us. We misuse our freedom repeatedly, just like Jacob did. In this story, we are Jacob, the heel grabber, the deceiver, the ones who will do whatever it takes to get ahead, to make a name for ourselves, to stand out in a crowd. And sometimes—very often, in fact—it takes God tackling us, wrestling with us in the midst of a dark night of the soul for us to come back to him.

As a pastor, it is my privilege to walk through some really good times with people, but it’s also my privilege to walk through some really difficult times as well. It is a high and holy honor to be invited into those times that are very dark, and I’ve had the chance over the last twenty-five years to stand beside the beds of people who were going home to be with Jesus, to proclaim the good news in the midst of hopelessness, to sit with people who are wondering if God even notices them. I could probably spend the rest of the afternoon sharing about various times of wrestling with God, but one event in particular stood out in my mind as I was working on the message this week. Her name was Celia, and she was a bright-eyed, curious, beautiful little girl, not yet school age. She loved coming to church and to children’s church (what we call Kidz Connection), and she always had a smile on her face. I remember where I was when I got the news that Celia had been diagnosed with a rare form of childhood cancer, and when she soon after that began a series of treatments that was hard on her. Still, she started school and remained positive, and our church prayed. We prayed often. Celia was on everyone’s mind and in everyone’s heart. There were, as there always are in those situations, times when she seemed to be responding to the treatments and times when her body seemed unable to fight back the latest infection. She was doing as well as could be expected when I left for a mission trip to Arizona, but it was only a couple of days into that trip when I got the call: Celia had died. Celia had gone home to be with Jesus.

But that wasn’t the true dark night of the soul. It was what her parents went through in the days and weeks and years to come. There was without question a wrestling match going on as they sought to make sense out of something senseless, why they had to say goodbye to their baby girl so soon. I cringed every time I heard someone tell them it was the will of God, or that it must be for the good. Now, I believe with everything in me that God can use anything for good; the Old Testament prophets tell us he redeems the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25). He is redeemer. God can and will always wrest good out of evil (cf. Romans 8:28), but that’s not what Celia’s parents needed to hear at that time. They just needed to know that someone was there, that they were loved, and that their daughter’s life mattered. Any time you are tempted to give a trite answer to someone’s dark night of the soul, stop yourself. Don’t. It doesn’t help, and it’s not a caring thing to do. Instead, what someone who is wrestling with God needs the most is for you to be there with them in the night, in the fight, in the struggle.

For some of you, the dark night of the soul has come in the form of a cancer diagnosis, or the death of a loved one, or the breakdown of a marriage, or any number of other catastrophes. For the folks in Las Vegas this past week, it came in the form of terror, and for those in hurricane zones it has come in the form of loss on a huge scale. Outside, they and you may be very good at holding it together, but inside you are dying, and you’re wondering if even God notices. But notice this about the story of Jacob: in the wrestling match, even as God sought to shape Jacob into the man he wanted him to become, God never let go. In the wrestling, God was holding Jacob. As you think about and reflect on the times you have wrestled with God, John is going to come and remind us that God is with us, even then.

JOHN HENDERSON: “EVEN IF”

When daylight comes, the wrestling man attempts to leave, and we could debate all day what that means. Is God giving up on Jacob? It is because, as we will learn later in the book of Exodus, no one can see God’s face and live (Exodus 33:20)? It is because God can’t beat Jacob? Though, let’s remember this wrestling match is not about winning. It’s about Jacob becoming who God wants him to be. But whatever the reason for the man’s attempted and abrupt departure, I am struck by Jacob’s response: “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (32:26). To me, that’s a reminder that no matter how hard it gets, our calling, our responsibility is to stay in the conversation with God. Stay in the wrestling. Stay in the fight. Don’t tap out. Stay in. The easy thing is to give up on God, to let go and walk away. The challenge is for us to stay in the fight, to stay connected to God and say with grit and determination, “I will not let you go! You have promised to bless me, so I will not let you go!”

So the man—God—asks for the name of the man he’s wrestling with. Now, it’s not that God didn’t know Jacob’s name. This all has to do with the power of names in the ancient world. To know a person’s name was to know something about them. Names weren’t given to a person because they sounded good or cute. Names were given because they meant something, an ideal you hoped the child would grow into, a quality you wanted to see in them. In Jacob’s case, he was given a name that represented who he was from birth. Remember what I told you a few moments ago Jacob’s name meant? Heel grabber. Some translations say “supplanter.” Deceiver. God asks for Jacob’s name as a way for Jacob to confess who he has been throughout his entire life. He has lived up to his name; he has not outlived it. He is still the deceiver, even in his preparations for his encounter with Esau. When he says his name is Jacob, he is admitting who he really is. Still today, in every twelve-step recovery program, the first step is admitting who you are, what addiction or power has grabbed hold of you. Naming your brokenness is the first step toward healing, toward realizing you are not your addiction, and if you can’t name and own your personal brokenness, you will never find healing. Sometimes we have to be broken even more before true healing can take place. Jacob had to name who he was before any blessing could take place. Before he could truly move forward in life, he had to own who he has been (Ross, “Genesis,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 1, pg. 191). “What is your name?” God asks. Who are you? What is it in your life, your character that has kept you from me? “I am Jacob,” he says. “I am the heel grabber” (32:27).

The blessing God gives to Jacob comes in the form of a new name, a new identity, a new reality for Jacob to grow into. Because names were defining in that culture, a new phase of life or a change of heart demanded a new name. And in that moment, not only is Jacob made new, but a whole new cultural identity is given to God’s people. Jacob’s new name will be “Israel,” because, as “the wrestling man” says, “You have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome” (32:28). The name, Israel, means literally, “God fights.” Anytime you see “el” at the end of a name, it’s a reference to God. God becomes the subject, the defining aspect, of the person’s life. This one who has been so self-sufficient and so arrogant and so determined to grab any blessing he could by his own hand now has a name that will constantly remind him that the only true path to blessing is to let God do the fighting for him. The nation that grew out of his family would need to remember that constantly too. They are the people for whom God fights: Israel. While we don’t literally change our names today, let me ask you this: if you have struggled with God, if God has been shaping you over a period of time, if God has delivered you from abuse or addiction or disease or some other brokenness, what would your new name be? Not a name that sounds cute or a name that you wish your parents would have given you. What name would God give you? You know that if you have turned your life over to Jesus, he already has a new name for you, one that we’ll only learn when we are forever in his presence. In Revelation 2, in the midst of Jesus’ letter to the church at Pergamum, Jesus says this: “To the one who is victorious, I will give…that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” (2:17). I believe that new name will represent the ways God has shaped you more and more into the person he longs for you to become, and it will be a name that affirms the way God has fought for you. Like Jacob, one day, you will receive a new name, and you will in that moment know that the struggle has been worth it.

It is interesting, if you read the rest of Jacob’s story, is that he is only infrequently called Israel after this moment. He’s more often still called Jacob. I think that reminds us that sometimes we need a lot of time to grow into our new names. Jacob is given the promise of becoming Israel in this moment, but he spends the rest of his life living into that promise, becoming more and more the man God dreamed he would be from the moment he was born. And Jacob, of course, will forever remember what happened in the night on the banks of the Jabbok. He leaves this encounter wounded. The socket of his hip is wrenched when God touches it, and he limps from this moment on. The limp will remind him of what happened this night, and it reminds us that no one leaves an encounter with the living God unaffected. We should not leave the presence of God the same as when we came in. If we leave this morning exactly the same as we were when we came in, we’ve wasted our time here. The point of worship is to encounter the living God, and when we come into his presence, we can’t help but be changed. You see, for Jacob, his new name was not the real reminder of this night at the Jabbok. It’s his limp, his physical woundedness, his pain that will forever remind him of the call of God on his life. Sometimes we need wounding to be humbled enough to finally learn to rely on God, and sometimes the scars of our past are what really proclaim the goodness of God, the grace of God and the work of God in our lives.

Nearly nineteen years ago, when I had my first open heart surgery, the procedure left behind a large scar on my chest, as it does with all who go through such surgeries. I remember remarking to Cathy that I hated that, that it looked ugly and so on. And, because she’s kind and better than I deserve, she said to her the scar looked like healing, that it reminded her of the fact that my life had been saved and I had a new lease on life. Scars are like that. We may think they are ugly, even disfiguring, but from God’s perspective, they are reminders that he is at work, redeeming even the worst parts of our life. The scars are a reminder that we have stayed in the conversation, that the brokenness is not a waste, and that God is still in the healing business. Even Jesus was left with scars. After his resurrection, the way the disciples knew it was him was because of the wounds in his hands and his side. He was known by the scars, the wounds that brought us healing, and though it doesn’t say this in the Scriptures, I believe that’s how we’ll know him in eternity. The same way he was identified by Thomas (cf. John 20:24-29) is the way we’ll know him as well. We’ll know him by his scars and he will know us by ours (cf. Revelation 5:6).

This morning, as we close, I’m going to invite you to wrestle with God, to bring your scars and your broken places, your addictions and your struggles to our loving heavenly Father this morning. As we’ve said all throughout this series, God desperately wants to have a relationship with you, but like all these folks in the early stories of our faith, we so often try to do it alone. Today, let’s stop running, let’s stop hiding, let’s stop insisting we can do it ourselves and open our lives so that God to shape us into the men and women he wants us to be. Let him be the one who fights for you. So whether you come to the front and pray at the kneelers, or pray where you are sitting right now, I want to invite all of us just to open our hands as a sign that we’re willing to receive whatever God has for us today. And so, in a posture of humility and gratitude, let’s go to God in prayer.