Forever Changed
Grace & peace to you. As you see this message, I will have just officiated a niece’s wedding in Brentwood, Tennessee and will be taking in the sites of the area between Nashville and Louisville as we visit my mom and prepare for a nephew’s wedding outside Louisville on October 22. It never rains, it pours. There’s always something going on! I have 14 nieces and nephews. I am grateful for the technology that makes it possible to share with you today even when I am not in Maryland.
Let’s begin by gathering our hearts in prayer.
Perhaps you are familiar with this story we’ve heard from Genesis – it is part of the unfolding narrative of the generations of Abraham. Jacob is the younger twin born to Abraham’s son Isaac and his wife Rebecca. The scripture tells of these twin boys wrestling in Rebecca’s womb, and Jacob holding onto his brother Esau’s heel as Esau is born. Jacob’s ambition to seize his brother’s firstborn birthright dominates their relationship.
Here on the banks of Jabbok River, a tributary of the Jordan, Jacob is on a journey of reconciliation. God has promised that if he returns to the land of his ancestors, land now dominated by his brother Esau, God will bless Jacob with “offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.”
That is a promise that echoes God’s promises to Abraham and to Isaac.
Prior to where our text today begins, Jacob has sent flocks of goats and sheep and camels ahead as peace offerings to his brother Esau. Jacob also sends his 2 wives and 11 children across the river with the flocks, and he settles for the night on the opposite side, not yet himself crossing into Esau’s territory.
Jacob is alone now. And “a man” wrestles with him until daybreak. Jacob is a mighty opponent and when the man recognizes that Jacob will not give up, the man strikes him on the hip, dislocating it. And evidently, Jacob still held fast.
The man says, ‘let me go,’ but Jacob says he will not let go without a blessing.
This is not the first blessing Jacob has sought. But the first was in a bait and switch conceived of by his mother in order to receive Isaac’s blessing – while Isaac thought he was blessing the firstborn Esau. Jacob has worked for this blessing. He insists on it.
And in response, the nameless man asks for Jacob’s name and then gives him a new one – Jacob is to be called Israel because he has “striven” or “struggled” with God.
Ah, so like Abram, Jacob receives a new name – and like the shift from Abram to Abraham indicating Abraham’s maturity and resulting role as the father of a mighty nation, the name Israel marks Jacob’s maturity and a as a leader of his people.
Jacob begs for the stranger to share his name. But the stranger asks why…and proceeds to bless him. The text indicates that Jacob named the place Peniel, which alludes to seeing face to face – the text indicates that Jacob did this because he had seen God face to face and lived.
We can tie Jacob’s acknowledgment of living in spite of seeing God face to face with Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus. Moses is asking God to stay with the people in spite of their misbehavior and lack of commitment. He asks to see God face to face, and God indicates that “no one shall see me and live.”
Something very important has happened to Jacob, because he acknowledges that he has been wrestling with God and he is very much alive.
In the process, Jacob’s hip is permanently damaged – he will never walk the same way again. He is forever changed. In spite of that, the sun rises on him as he walks on from that place – with his changed gait - toward an encounter with his brother Esau.
Border crossings are important moments throughout the Hebrew scriptures. They mark emerging things, changed circumstances, personal transformation.
They thresholds – the physical marker between what has been and what will be next. The moment that marks a new space, a new state.
There’s that word we talked about last week – threshold.
The river here is a threshold. It separates the place where Jacob rests to prepare to meet his brother and where he has sent his herds and his family.
But there are other threshold crossings here as well:
There are the borders or thresholds between Jacob’s being and God’s being.
There are thresholds between humanity and the divine.
There are thresholds between moments of hardship and moments of blessing.
There are thresholds between conflict and reconciliation.
The whole narrative takes place on the threshold between one day and the next, between the cover of night and the sunshine of day.
These are moments we sometimes call “liminal.” Liminality is the character or the nature of the time or space between what was and what will be, what is already and what is not yet.
I think about how Jacob must of felt, saying goodbye to his family as he sent them across the river. He had no idea how Esau might greet them. Did the man who wrestled with Jacob show up immediately or with the dark of night? Was it cold? Was the ground on which they wrestled cold and damp? Were there words exchanged as they wrestled?
Last week, I suggested that sometimes it feels like we as Christians are in exile, holding our breath for what is next. For me, coming out of the disruption of COVID and living into the divisions in our country and sometimes right here in our church, it feels like there is always wrestling.
Sometimes it is with words.
And it is not with others…it is wrestling with God for me.
What about you?
What about Faith?
In this season, we have been thinking about the places we have been, and we are considering what is next. We are at a threshold.
I wonder…is there wrestling as we wait together to cross the threshold?
I wonder if he could have asked for his blessing earlier in the wrestling?
I wonder if Jacob thought about NOT crossing that river once he was blessed? What made him keep going?
Was it his wives and children?
Was it hope for reconciliation with his brother Esau?
Is it possible that part of his blessing compelled him across the river?
Here’s the thing about thresholds.
Stay here on this side, and one truth exists. But cross over. Then what?
If we look to Jacob, we might expect to be weary, blessed, and forever changed even as we cross into the unknown. For the sun rose upon him, the text says.
Now…a spoiler of sorts. Let’s get a glimpse of what happens next.
When Jacob meets Esau, Esau doesn’t call his 400 men to attack. Instead:
“Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” Jacob offers Esau peace gifts of flocks and servants. Esau says he has more than enough… And Jacob asks him once again to accept – “If I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God.”
Jacob speaks from a place of deep knowing. Indeed, he has been with God. And he was blessed by God once. And now seeing his brother’s face is likened unto that.
Jacob is double blessed. Once by his encounter in the night and once by his brother’s favor.
He crossed the river blessed to find another blessing.
As we hesitate at the threshold, pondering what is before us, are we prepared to discover even greater blessing than we have known on this side?
May it be so.
Amen.
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