Grace and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, the Christ.” Amen.
The year was 1986, and I had recently moved to Arizona from Wisconsin for a news reporting job. Originally, Mike and I were bound for Bullhead City, but in my great fortune, the company decided I should go to Cottonwood to work for the Verde Independent, while another reporter would go to Bullhead City.
My areas of coverage for the next eight years, the formative years of my reporting career, were education and sports. I had experience covering education issues, less experience covering sports. But I had played and watched sports, and had every confidence I could cover whatever local sports came my way.
So, when I arrived in the fall, it was football, golf and volleyball season. I was familiar with those sports, and could knowledgeably write about them. Then the seasons changed and winter sports arrived. Again, basketball and soccer – no problem. But then I went to talk to the Camp Verde wrestling coach to preview his team’s season, and was CLUELESS where to start. I ended up asking him to be merciful to someone who had never SEEN a high school wrestling match.
Thankfully, that coach was Dennis Sterrett, and if anyone embodied grace and breathes wrestling, Dennis was the man. He explained weight classes – wrestling bouts match people of similar size. He described the challenges of a wrestler’s training: mental toughness and physical strength and agility. And probably most important, he explained the moves and how wrestlers score points. Takedowns, escapes, reversals and penalties.
Key to winning was keeping the superior position, avoiding being taken down or pinned to the mat, reversing or escaping when on one’s back. A match was six minutes, broken into three two-minute periods, but it was all-out action for all six minutes. No time outs, no stalling, no leaving the circle.
That experience puts a different take on this reading of Jacob’s wrestling match. Jacob’s bout wasn’t wrestling at all, but a no-holds-barred free-for-all. Jacob prayed, took his family across the river and returned. His opponent attacked him in the dark, without warning. There were no rules, no referee, no timed periods.
To understand how Jacob got here, we need to back up and pay close attention to three names. For the first name, we go back into Jacob’s history, as far as we can go. Back to his birth to Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob was a twin, and his brother Esau was born first. Jacob came out grasping his brother’s heel. And one meaning for the name “Jacob “was “to follow at the heel.” Jacob also can mean “deceiver,” or trickster, and that would be what Jacob would become. Names matter.
Today, one would think that twins would be equally important to their parents. But not so in Isaac’s day. Esau, who was born first, would not only inherit a large share of the family’s wealth, but also the blessing – he would be head of the household when Isaac died. By being born just seconds later, Jacob would be subservient to his brother for the rest of his life. So Jacob turned to deception not once, but twice, to gain both Esau’s birthright and his Isaac’s blessing. After hearing his father had blessed his brother over him, Esau was so angry he wanted to kill Jacob. So Rebekah sent Jacob out of the country, to her side of the family, until Esau cooled off. He would work for his uncle, Laban, for many years.
The next episode would make a great Biblical soap opera. Jacob fell in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. But Laban wanted both of his daughters to marry. So after seven years of work, Jacob, the deceiver, was himself deceived by Laban into marrying older sister Leah rather than Rachel. He would have to work another seven years to marry Rachel. At that point, Jacob made another enemy by taking Leah, Rachel, their sons, their servants, and all their livestock, and leaving Laban. Eventually, Jacob and Laban settled their score, and Jacob knew it was time to make amends with Esau.
Jabbock, the river that was the scene of the wrestling match, is the second name. Jabbok means “to empty out,” and it does empty into the Jordan River just a little ways to the west. But this is the place where God chooses to empty Jacob of himself. Throughout his life, Jacob was chosen by God. But instead of letting God work out God’s plan, Jacob takes matters into his own hands. He gets the birthright and blessing by trickery. He runs from Esau. He gets Leah and Rachel and leaves Laban. And now, headed back to the brother who wanted to kill him so many years ago, he sends for information, and learns that Esau has 600 men and they were coming for him.
Jacob is distressed and frightened and prays to God. Then he comes up with yet another scheme. He would send livestock as gifts to his brother. After a couple of waves of cattle, goats and sheep, perhaps Esau would be appeased. But as he and his wives and family approach the river, he hears that Esau still is waiting for him. So he sends Leah with part of the family and part of his herd, then has Rachel and the rest of the family and herd cross over, perhaps hoping that if Esau wanted to kill him, he might spare his family, or at least part of it. Then Jacob went back across the Jabbok.
And here’s where we pick up the story. Jacob is attacked by the unknown man, and it’s a dead heat all night. Jacob keeps struggling into the superior position, and gets taken down and reversed, nearly pinned, again and again. And close to daybreak, Jacob realizes that he isn’t wrestling just any man, but God.
“What a fool I am, to think I could be superior to God,” Jacob must have realized. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing my whole life? Why didn’t I just trust God all these years to make things right?” And finally submitting, Jacob lay there exhausted, clinging to God.
Ending the match, God dislocated Jacob’s hip, but Jacob kept holding on, asking for a blessing. And God asked him his name – not because God didn’t know him, but in saying his name, Jacob had to own it. Confession time. “Yep, I’m Jacob—deceiver. I’ve schemed, and plotted, and done things my way instead of trusting you.”
And God gave him a new name. Not just a new name, but a new life, a second chance, a way to live into God’s promise. “The old Jacob is gone. You are now Israel, for you have strived with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
And finally, name No. 3: Jacob names the land on the edge of the Jabbok “Peniel,” meaning “For I have come face-to-face with God, and yet my life is preserved.”
Eventually, Jacob, now Israel, does meet Esau, but instead of trying to kill him, Esau had gotten the word, and had come to embrace him. Esau has been blessed – not with his father’s blessing – but with family and livestock and land. He was ready to mend their rift. That’s where this story ends.
But what if Jacob never wrestled with an unknown man at all, but spent the night terrified, his sleepless, agitated mind wrestling with his history, his deceptive ways, and his brother’s wrath? What if his wrestling was a metaphor for painfully struggling with the person he had become, the person he was not proud to be? Some scholars think Jacob fought with himself all night to daybreak, emptying himself, laying it all out before God, and that’s when God appeared to Jacob and renamed him Israel.
There’s a part of me that wants to picture Jacob physically wrestling with God, God matching him move for move until Jacob realizes he’s been fighting God for control all along, then submits, holding on to God for dear life.
But the other part of me relates to an all-night emotional struggle. I’ve been there more than a few nights, a standoff between this child of God and my shadow side -- that part of me that I deny wanting to stay in control, and the rest of me wanting to give it all over to God -- praying, pleading, gut-wrenched sobbing, falling asleep still on my knees. Finally worn down and holding onto God with everything I have left, discovering that God has been there at rock bottom, waiting for me to arrive. Perhaps that’s a place you’ve been as well.
More than a few of God’s people have lived that struggle, pitting their own control against submission to God. Abraham and Sarah had to stop trying to control God’s promise. Moses spent many dark nights of the soul in the wilderness. Even Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleading with God for another way, but then submitting to God’s plan.
And I’m certain I will be back there, another night at my Peniel, wrestling, meeting God face-to-face, still practicing that hard-fought lesson: to empty myself and hold on onto God until the blessing comes.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment