Jacob Jebeks
I love Genesis…
it’s weird
—it’s spooky,
God is unchained and unpredictable
—as are the people God encounters...
God’s personality is being revealed in real-time.
Genesis can be a little scary… but it can also be playful. For example, Jacob wrestles… struggles… at the Jabbok river… or in the Hebrew,
Jacob Jebeks at the Jabbok.
He struggles from nightfall to the dawn with this
man… angel… God.
In the latest J.R.R. Tolkien adaption—Rings of Power—a stranger falls from the sky like a comet, and one of the central questions to the TV show is, “Who is this Stranger?”
Is he Sauron, a Blue Wizard, Gandalf?
The show is filled with purposeful misdirects and mystery.
So too the identity of this man who Jacob is wrestling with…
yes, he is wrestling with God,
but also with his brother Esau and…
with himself as well…
Jacob is wrestling with Jacob
Jacob struggles with God, his kin, and with himself.
Let us pray
Jacob Jebeks… he wrestles… with himself
and his reputation…
with the choices he’s made from childhood on,
choices that have stranded him there alone in the dark,
on the other side of the river.
He wrestles with his nature—what it means to Jacob
—Jacob, a trickster who struggles and wrestles and always has to come out on top
—come out ahead
—always…
especially…
at the expense of someone else.
He wrestles with his choices,
his inclinations toward control and domination,
shrewdness that falls into injustice and even outright theft.
Jacob wrestled with himself… do we do the same?
Do we take ourselves seriously enough to lose sleep over who we are and who we have become?
To reflect on the consequences of our actions
—mulling over the intentions of our hearts?
Jacob wrestled with himself… do we?
Jacob Jebeks, he wrestles with his brother Esau…
as he had done from his mother’s womb onward.
Jacob knows that the next morning he will face his long estranged brother,
face the long avoided consequences of the confrontation that has blown up well beyond mere sibling rivalry, with Esau.
Esau who he grasped and grappled with in his mother’s womb,
pulling him back in so he could win that earliest of races, Birth…
Esau whom he cheated out of his birthright and whose blessing Jacob stole by trickery.
Esau who he antagonized up to that tense point in their family history,
when Jacob had to go,
leave home or else.
Esau of whom Jacob is terrified
—so afraid that he sends his fortune barreling on ahead of him on the other side of the river as a sign of intimidation or appeasement…
so scared that he sends his family out ahead of him,
across the river to the other side as human shields,
as one last trick,
decoys sent so that Jacob can run away while Esau is otherwise engaged.
He wrestles there at the Jabbok all night
with Esau, his kin,
because he knows that at first light he too has to cross over and come face to face with Esau, his brother;
tomorrow will either be a day of reconciliation or destruction.
Jacob wrestles with his kin… do we?
Do we struggle with the task of reconciliation?
Do we concern ourselves with the hard and necessary task of confession and forgiveness?
Desmond Tutu, who ran the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after the fall of Apart-heid, has seen what it means to really forgive someone
more deeply than most mortals, and he has broken the process down into four concrete tasks:
1. Admit the wrong 2. Listen to the Story 3. Ask for Forgiveness 4. Renew or Release the relationship…
Yes, righting a wrong takes more than a band aid, more than a surface “I’m sorry.”
Jacob Jebeked… he wrestled…
with God.
This is the plainest reading of the story
—he sees God face to face… there at the Jabbok River…
There by the river, a crossing point from one plane of existence and another
—one reality and another…
he meets the stranger and fights, wrestles… with God.
This is where you’d expect such an encounter
—where you might meet a god. Think of trolls on bridges,
Dryads in their pools…
in the ancient imagination watery places are thin places
—the barrier between heaven and earth is more permeable,
the border between divine and human can be forded,
down by the river.
Yesterday I baptized Derek
—a great great grandson of one of the greats of this congregation…
baptism…
water…
water is still a thin place for us today
—Derek was named and claimed, encountered, by God in the waters of baptism…
Jacob is pulled through that thin space,
brought face to face with God…
as he wrestles there.
Jacob wrestles with God… do we?
Do we?
Do we take our faith outside these Church walls and into all our moments?
Do we probe and strain to discern God’s will and meaning for us?
Do we follow Jesus,
are we his disciples?
Do we wrestle with our question about God until our question marks are bent into exclamation points?
Do we at least experience the solace of wrestling with God questions,
even if the wrestling is the most important part?
When we join Jacob and do these things…
take our self seriously,
do the hard work of reconciliation,
when we reconfirm our faith again and again,
renewed by the font of God’s baptismal grace,
we are ultimately wrestling with Love.
What do I mean by that? Think carefully of Christ’s only command…
the great Commandment…
Love God
and Love your neighbor
as yourself.
Love.
Love God
—trust God’s promises in such a way that they become a lamp to your feet and a light unto your pathway.
Love Neighbor
—Relationships take work,
trust takes time and consistency,
and righting wrongs doesn’t happen in a day.
Love Self
—Before you can love another, you need to be grounded in a certain level of dignity and self-worth,
it is the well from which other relationships can flow.
Jacob wrestled…
as do we…
with Christ’s gracious command
—it can be a struggle,
at times a battle even…
Yet it is a struggle worth dedicating our lives to,
worth the wrestling and the dark nights,
the thin places and the missteps,
the striving and the dreaded-blessed-glorious dawn.
Jacob wrestled,
and so shall we.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
