A Crippling Victory

Return from Exile: Reconciliation

We have been on a long journey with Jacob. When we first began, Jacob was a young trickster who stole everything from his brother Esau. He tricked his own father into giving him Esau’s blessing, and became a fugitive and exile because of it. The wrath of his brother Esau lead him to flee from his homeland to his uncle Laban’s house in the land of Haran, from which Abraham came.

But now, after many years, it is time for Jacob to return home. It is time to return from his time of exile. A major part of God’s plan requires a redemption of the world through this family of Jacob, but also in the land to which God had lead them. But to inhabit the land of promise, Jacob would first have to come face to face with his brother Esau once again. And facing Esau also meant facing the past and all of the ways these two brothers had wronged one another, but especially the ways in which Jacob had wronged Esau.

This is a daunting task for Jacob, as it requires facing who he is: the deciever, the heel-grabber. And yet, even now, after all he’s done, God goes with him. As Jacob nears the land of Edom, the country his brother Esau has built up since he’s been gone, he discovers the many angels God has sent along with him to guide and protect him, just as the Lord had promised he would. Nevertheless, the presence of Angels does little to quiet Jacob’s soul. He knows he has wronged Esau, and he knows that he will have to face his sins in order to enter the promised land.

So he steels himself. He prepares for the worst. He divides his people up in order to protect them. He sends ahead of his family three caravans carrying gifts to Esau, hoping that this will appease his brother and help quell his anger before they meet. But can such gifts truly heal the rift between these two brothers? Or is Jacob up to something more?

When these servants bearing gifts come to Esau, Jacob instructs them to tell Esau:

Wrestling in the Dark: Striving with God and Man

As Jacob sends his gifts out ahead of him, he stops on the road to rest. In the dead of night however, a man leaps from the dark and assaults Jacob. Jacob and this mysterious man wrestle all through the night, for hours and hours the fight rages on. Who is this man? Is it Esau, come to finally fulfill his promise to kill his little brother? Is it God himself, come to test Jacob’s character? Perhaps we are not meant to know, at this moment in the story, whether the attacker is God or Esau. Indeed, like so many times in life, our struggles against God in the dark tend to take on the form of our fight with our fellow man in the day.

In the dead of the night, the identity of this mysterious attacker is unknown. Just as the sun rises, however, the man begins to realize he cannot win against Jacob, but he can injure him. So he touches Jacob’s hip, and cripples him. “Let me go!” the mysterious attacker demands, but Jacob refuses, “Not unless you bless me!”

What an odd, and ironic request. “Blessing”, is, after all, why Jacob is here. The stolen blessing, the blessing taken from his older brother. And yet, it seems, Jacob still finds himself in need of a blessing even now. Perhaps Jacob hoped for a blessing of security and hope and peace, but what he got was something altogether different.

Instead, this mysterious attacker gives Jacob a new name: Israel. Jacob may have wanted security, land, or maybe more descendants. What he got instead was a new identity through an assault from God. Because now Jacob has striven with God and man.

Israel, Jacob, then turns to ask the question we have likely been asking ourselves, “Just who are you?” Yes, Jacob, who is this mysterious stranger that assaults people in the dark, dislocating hips and changing identities?

To that, the man will not give an answer.

Crippling Victory

This is no doubt one of the stranger stories in Genesis. It leaves us with so many questions. If, as he implies, this mysterious man is in fact God, what does it mean that Jacob came to a draw with him? What kind of God would be pressed to a draw with Jacob? And what kind of man is Jacob, that he can force a draw even against heaven?

Certainly, this means that this is no ordinary God, no ordinary man, and no ordinary story. In every other story we see gods who beat men into submission, relationships where God says and man obeys, yet in Israel’s story there is a relationship where man prevails with God. Victory is not exclusive, it is something shared between God and man.

And yet, in the midst of the wrestling with God, it is important to note that it is man, not God, who is changed. Jacob’s identity is transformed, and he becomes Israel, yet God remains as mysterious as ever. In prevailing with God, God remains God, but Jacob is no longer Jacob.

And so Israel comes to his brother a new person, radically changed by an assault from God. He has prevailed with God, he has new power, but not the kind of power common to man. Because while he has prevailed, while Israel is victorious with God, he is also crippled. He now walks with a limp, and will always walk with a limp.

Israel has won a crippling victory. And only now does he perhaps fully understand that his proclamation in chpt. 28, “God is in this place”, is cause for dread as much as for rejoicing. Because no victory is won with this Holy One without trouble, pain, suffering, radical reversal and change.

In wrestling with God, Jacob wins a victory, but victory on God’s own terms. A victory that changes Jacob, not God. He prevails with God, and in the only way that God prevails: a crippling victory. A magnificent defeat. A victory that leaves scars and is utterly costly, but is nevertheless the most powerful of victories.

For God’s weakness is stronger than human strength, and God’s power is made perfect in weakness. And this is the blessing and new name that God bestowed on Jacob: a crippling victory. Power in weakness. Power now unlike the kind that Jesus taught his own disciples about.

The New Revised Standard Version The Request of James and John

35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

“Jesus, will you give me power over my brothers?” we can almost hear the desires of Jacob repeated here as well: “God, will you give me power over my brother, Esau?” But God in Christ responds: “You don’t understand my power. You don’t know my power. My power is in the cross. My victory comes through defeat. My kingship and authority over all creation comes through lowering myself as servant of all.”

And so Jacob comes before Esau a changed man, Israel. With newfound power, power that allows him to humble himself before Esau, to become the servant, to bow seven times, pressing himself into the dirt before Esau’s feet as he approaches.

To See thy Brother’s Face

Jacob’s humility and broken, lowly posture before Esau is not all that he offers is brother. He also insists that Esau take these caravans of gifts that had already been sent out before him.

The New Revised Standard Version Jacob and Esau Meet

Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company that I met?” Jacob answered, “To find favor with my lord.” 9 But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.” 10 Jacob said, “No, please; 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—since you have received me with such favor. 11 Please accept my gift that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have everything I want.”

B- Wrestling in the Dark: Striving with God and Man

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This word here, “gift”, is the same word in Hebrew as “blessing”. This, in some small way, is Jacob’s attempt at restoring the blessing he had stolen from Esau. Jacob, of course, could never truly repair the damage done to his brother with gifts. He certainly could not return their father’s blessing to Esau, that was impossible. But some form of reparations were necessary for reconciliation.

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C- Crippling Victory

D- To See thy Brother’s Face

At first read, the way that this story is arranged might seem odd to us. It doesn’t really seem to fit neatly together. Jacob is preparing to go and meet with his brother, to set things right with their past. And then, in the middle of the story about Jacob’s struggle with Esau, we suddenly come across a story of Jacob’s struggle with God. Why is this story here? What does wrestling with God have to do with wrestling with our fellow brothers and sisters?

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Jacob’s story suggests to us that they have everything to do with one another. Jacob’s struggle with God is placed alongside his struggle with Esau precisely because the two cannot be separated. Love of God and Love of brother go hand in hand. As Jacob says, “truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God.” This is why, no doubt, when asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus responded, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

F-

This is why John writes to us in his first letter, “We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

It is why Jesus warns us in the sermon on the mount that before we go to the temple to make sacrifices, before we pray to God, before we come to Church on Sunday and sing hymns and offer our praises to God, “if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

Such love, such a relationship with our brothers and sisters, requires the kind of encounter with God that Jacob had that night. It requires us to understand the crippling victory of God: power in weakness, authority in servanthood, victory in self-sacrificial love.

Reconciliation with God and man requires the same kind of power: the power we see in Christ Crucified. Prevailing with God and man is a painful, dangerous affair. It will leave us marked, we may walk away with a limp or worse. And yet such reconciliation is necessary before we may ever enter the promised land, and finally see the Kingdom of God come here on earth.

Brothers and sisters, I cannot think of a more appropriate time to preach this passage as now, as the presidential election draws closer and closer.