Jabbok, Jebek, Jacob

          This is one of those stories…

          Just 9 verses.

-Jacob crossing a river,
-wrestling,
-leaving different than he came…

          that’s it… and that’s everything.

         

          There at the Jabbok river Jacob leaves his family, crossing back over.

           Crossing back, because he is frightened of his brother, Esau—his brother who is coming forth to meet him with an army of 400 men.

          He expects him to be angry…
 rightly, justly, angry
—angry at all Jacob has done.

          This furry red sharp shooting bowman of a brother, defeated by Jacob’s cunning, but now coming… coming for Jacob, on the other side of the river Jabbok.

          Jacob split his herd and wealth up into two pieces as a peace offering, sends them forward to his brother
…that brother he tricked.

          Not just wealth, wives… children, all on the other side, between Jacob and Esau.

          For Esau’s wrath to reach Jacob, Esau would have to go through herds and harems, women and children, and that river, the Jabbok River.

          Perhaps Jacob feels secure there, on the other side? There, alone.

          Alone until he is not… Rivers are strange things, the evening, in the dark, is a strange time. Water crossings and the night are, as Celtic Christianity will later call them, thin places.

          The night is where things appear different than they did in the daylight, both more obscure and strangely clearer, the dark is for dreams and nightmares and inspiration.

          Rivers are where you find strange creatures, trolls under the bridge, dryads looking at their image like a mirror, folk living at the edge of society…

          The river at night is where past and present, human and God, things seen and things unseen, have a way of crossing over to one another. A river is a thin, razor thin, barrier between those things!

         

          I wonder if Jacob heard the man coming, or was he ambushed? Did the reeds rustle at he came? Did he make a ripple as he crossed over, and met, and wrestled with Jacob?

          Did you know in Hebrew to wrestle is to Jibek?

          Jacob Jibeks at the Jabbok river with… someone.

          He wrestles with his brother Esau, just as he did in Rebecca’s womb
—in some way that sibling rivalry that started in their mother’s womb is being played out still as he wrestles, Jibeks…
is he wrestling with all he’d done to his brother Esau?

          He wrestles with his own nature, what it means to be Jacob…
Jacob who tricks and wrestles and always has to come out on top at the expense of someone else… everyone else…
the long term consequences of that kind of life is being alone there on the shore, being willing to sacrifice family and everything else, to just save his own skin
… to get win, even if the prize is nothing…

          But is it not said, “he is one who strives with Divine Beings and with Human Beings!”
He’s not just striving with his brother his past and his lonely present, he is also wrestling with God
—the God who formed him in the womb, whether he struggled with his brother or not… the God who followed him through his wrestling and trials and was his God not because Jacob was a trickster, but just because Jacob was…

          He clung to God there—clung to the infinite in this finite person—clung to God in the form of a man, there by the Jabbok river.

          Then Jacob is asked by this mysterious man, “what is your name?”
And Jacob answers.
Jacob says, “Jacob!”

Jacob—born with one hand clamped to his brother Esau’s heel, attempting to pull him back into the womb so he could be the first-born instead.

Jacob—whose name means Supplanter or Trickster.

Jacob—who continued to degrade his brother once out of the womb.

Jacob—Grappling his brother’s birthright from him in a moment of hunger—selling him out for some stew.

Jacob—Grabbing Esau’s blessing from him by tricking his blind father Isaac.

Jacob—wrestling wives, riches, and more from his father-in-law’s by hook and by crook.

Jacob—because his anti-social actions has estranged him from his family, he is returning to his brother Esau, but fears for his life.

          Jacob… is more than an answer.

It is a confession.
Jacob is confessing.
Jacob is admitting,
“Yes, I am a Trickster.
Yes I am a Supplanter.
Yes I stole what was my brother’s and left him alone.
No I have not been my brother’s keeper.”

          And, in making that confession, in being confronted by the cowardly nature of his name, Jacob is given a new name.
Israel.

          God strives… God preserves…

          God gives him a new name. In confessing who he is, facing that reality warts and all, Jacob receives a new start, named and claimed by God.

          To be clear, this name change isn’t re-branding, Coke becoming “new-coke.” Philip Morris becoming Altria, Monsanto becoming Bayer.

          That’s not what’s happening to Jacob.

          We find him limping into the morning light—changed—renamed—limping toward his brother!

          We find him squinting a little as the light glimmers off the Jabbok. As he crosses over to the other side—crosses over to a new relationship with his brother.

          Yes, Jacob Jibekks at the Jabbok. Jacob clings to God in the form of a man.

He wrestles with his past,

his relationship with those he’s hurt,

his name and his very nature.

He steps through that thin place and comes out changed.

          Night turns to day.

          He receives a new name
—Jacob becomes Israel. The Grasper becomes the one grasped by God.

          He is changed, made to limp, to humbly go forth always aware of God’s action that night.

          He meets his brother, and they are reconciled to one another

—embracing one another,

 becoming family again and journeying alongside one another

—no longer wrestling to see who is on top.

          Yes, Jacob stepped through a thin place and was changed, that night…
that night when Jacob Jibeked at the Jabbok.

“Return O’ Remnant”

         10 lepers in the borderlands between Samaria and Galilee, some Samaritans, some Jews. They are a multi-cultural and interfaith group—brought together, not by some high ideal or because some preacher has pumped them up about loving their neighbor—but because they are joined in their suffering and isolation.

         Perhaps these boundaries between Samaritan and Galilean were broken on account of their affliction…
think of that famed picture after 9/11 of people covered in debris, in the midst of that tragedy those common borders between them were dissolved. 

         Or… I think of going down to Florida a few years back to the Adult Congenital Heart Association (ACHA) meeting. The only thing anyone had in common was we’d survived our heart conditions into adulthood… and yet that was such a bond, we understood one another and our common experiences…
as I am sure is experienced by any group gathered around a common affliction.

Perhaps this group of lepers was the Esdraelon Plains chapter of the International Leprosy Association—they find deep commonality in their shared suffering.

         Or… probably, their gathering is more tragic. They indeed had accepted their cultures’ ways of discriminating:
-"stay away from those awful Samaritans” say the Jews,
-“stay away from those awful Jews” say the Samaritans…
and to them, that was all well and good,
until both of their cultures say, “Stay away from those awful lepers.” 
Theirs is likely the fellowship of outcasts, the unclean, the cursed and suffering, gathered together.

         And then Christ is there—there outcast with them, unclean and cursed so that nothing God has made may be called unclean and accursed. His passion… suffering with us.

…This is the point of the incarnation—God with us… and this is what we see today. God in our midst.

         And then, after their healing, they come to a turning point. Will they return to regular life, or reconstitute their relationship, no longer around the sameness of suffering, but instead around the one who saves?

Prayer

         Will they return to regular life, or remain together as a new people with Jesus?

         The majority return to regular life.

         This is far from an illogical act. Wouldn’t you want to see everyone you left behind when you caught leprosy? 

         Maybe it felt like an escape? The problem is fixed, so I need to go as far away from that broken part of my life as I can!

         Maybe it was more banal than that
—I went to the priest, I did my duty—I did the prescribed ritual, now I can return.
I did the bare minimum, what more do you want from me?

         But, by leaving behind the one who saved them, and leaving behind the identity and fellowship of their need, they are electing to return to normalcy, instead of reconciling their soul to their previous affliction. 
They’re not dealing with the aftereffects of their suffering. They’re going back instead of forward,
back to their old life instead of forward into a new one that includes their past.

         They are choosing revival, instead of death and resurrection.

         But then there is the remnant that return to Jesus… the one, this Samaritan.

         I imagine he returns because he’s astonished at what God has done for him. “The Jewish Messiah made me, a Samaritan, clean! Healed me.” This is a shocking thing, completely unexpected…
God came at him sideways!
It’s like catching something in the periphery of your vision instead of straight on, you’re going to take notice. Think of haunted houses, the majority of the scare-factor is being surprised.

         So too, this man is caught off-guard by God’s gracious act through this unexpected vessel, this man of a different race and religion who heals him!
Yes, sometimes God comes at us sideways.

         And to that, he gets caught in this wonderful cycle of joy and thankfulness
—in his case it begins with astonishment and moves to gratitude,
but it could just as easily have started on the other foot,
giving thanks can open you up to joy.

         And yet, as Jesus asks, “were not 10 made clean? But the other 9, where are they?” 10%...Only a remnant return…
this has always been the story of God’s people, many fall away, yet some remain
—this is the story of the mustard seed we read of last week
—God does things small,
-salt, not the whole meal,
-light to illuminate the thing, not the thing itself. 

         Or as we read in 2^nd Kings, common water and washing, not hocus pocus and the greatest of rivers, is enough to heal Naaman
—a captured girl and some servants are the ones who get the King to act in his own best interest,
they reveal God!

         Yes, a small segment return to the place that changed them… not in a bellybutton-gazing self-victimizing way
—but in a way that transforms them into a cohort of moral geniuses, often called “wounded healers.”

-Think of the Apostle Paul, we do not know what the “thorn in his side” was, but we can trust that struggle helped him minister faithfully even in the worst of conditions in a compassionate manner.

-Think of those brave survivors of the Holocaust, Viktor Frankel and Eli Weisel, whose works and lives wrestled mightily with questions of meaning and morality.

-Think too of Mother Theresa
—some now question her saintliness and see it as somehow tarnished or diminished, based on the doubts and dark nights of the soul that were found in her private journal… but in point of fact, those struggles themselves where likely the source of the good she did in the world.

         Yes, returning to that which wounded you in order to be transformed and strengthened for service, grounded in that place so that you have an equilibrium wherever you go.

         

         Grounded, ultimately, in the ongoing life of faith, “your faith has healed you,” Jesus says after the healing has already occurred. It is more than healing, it is being with him. With the one who showed, as a sign of his resurrection, his wounded hands and side, and lets us join him, join in surprise and join in joy, this small group, this remnant, who live the Resurrected life. Who trust in him.

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