Have
you ever been in a situation where there is something you didn’t want to deal
with? Maybe it was a challenging issue at work. Maybe it was a tense
relationship with a neighbour or a conflict with a family member. Or if you
think back to your school days, perhaps it was a homework assignment. I can
remember more than once burning the midnight oil (or to be truthful, the
2 a.m. oil!) to finish off a paper that was due the next morning.
Eventually the situation reaches the point
where we realize we can’t postpone taking action any longer. Well, those are
exactly the circumstances in which Jacob finds himself in this morning’s Old
Testament reading.
Those of you who are familiar with his
story will know that all his life Jacob had managed to succeed through trickery,
through dishonesty and deceit. He was the master of the scam. And there had
been an indication that this was the kind of person Jacob was going to be right
from the time of his birth.
As you likely know as well, Jacob was a
twin. His brother Esau was the first to be born. But Jacob emerged from his
mother Rebekah’s womb with his tiny fist clenched tightly around his brother’s heel.
In fact it was for that reason that he was given the name Jacob, which means
something like “he clutches” or “he grasps”.
What happened at Jacob’s birth was the
beginning of a pattern. And so it is that, as we follow the life of Jacob in
the Book of Genesis we find him constantly grasping—first cheating his older
brother Esau out of his birthright, later masquerading as his brother to steal
their dying father’s final blessing along with his inheritance, and later still
tricking his uncle Laban out of half his flocks of sheep. But now (to change
the image) Jacob’s chickens had come home to roost.
Wrestling with God
As our passage opens this morning, Jacob is
dreading what is about to happen. At their parting years before Esau had vowed
to kill his brother. And it was only because their mother Rebekah had got wind
of this and shared with him what she had found out that Jacob was able to make
a hasty exit.
Now, after years of pent-up estrangement
and hostility, what Jacob had been avoiding was on the verge of happening.
Jacob was about to come face to face with his brother Esau once again. And
Jacob quite rightly feared for his life.
As we meet him in this morning’s Old
Testament reading, Jabob has been careful to ensure that his family and his
flocks are safely out of harm’s way on the opposite bank of the River Jabbok.
And there he sits, silent and alone, under the starlit sky.
Then the most peculiar thing happens.
Suddenly Jacob finds himself wrestling with a figure who seemingly has come out
of nowhere. Try to picture them, grappling with each other, throwing each other
down, rolling back and forth on the grassy meadow under the starlit sky. Then, as
the faint glimmer of the rising sun begins to appear over the eastern horizon,
Jacob’s mysterious opponent strikes him on the hip socket and throws his hip
out of joint.
However, Jacob was a tough customer. And he
was not one to give up a fight. He was not going to let a mere dislocated hip
stand in his way, and so he continued to wrestle with the stranger. It was at
that point, seeing that Jacob was not going to call it quits, that the stranger
said to him, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob was not going to
let the stranger off so easily and was firm in his response: “I will not let
you go before you have given me a blessing.”
So the stranger asks Jacob, “What is your
name?” To which Jacob replies, “Jacob”—the grasper. “Your name won’t be Jacob
any longer,” says the stranger, “From now on you will be called Israel—the
God-Wrestler—for you have wrestled with God and you’ve made it through.” So
Jacob called the spot where these strange goings-on happened “Peniel”, which
means “the face of God”.
They wouldn’t let go
So what can we learn from this strange
story from a strange land nearly four thousand years ago?
One of the things that I come away from
this story of Jacob is that he was not willing to let go in his struggle with
God. And Jacob was not unique. Later on in the Bible we meet with Job. As Job
suffered the loss successively of his wealth, his sons and daughters, and
finally his health, he continued to cling to his faith in God. In the midst of
his unutterable pain and suffering, he declared to his friends, “Though [the
Almighty] slay me, yet I will trust in him.” (Job 13:15)
In the New Testament we meet with the
Apostle Paul, who shared with his friends in Corinth the sufferings he had
endured over the course of his life:
Five times I have received … the
forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with
rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and
a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger
from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from
Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger
from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless
night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked… (2 Corinthians
11:24-27)
Yet
in spite of all this, Paul would not relinquish his faith in Christ. And Paul
was not unique. Recently I’ve been reading Letters and Papers from Prison
by a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who joined
the resistance against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi régime in Germany during World War
2. He was held in prison for a year and a half and then in a concentration camp
for another six months before being finally executed. Yet it is clear that over
the course of those years his faith in God only deepened and grew.
Christian
history right down to the present day is peppered with the stories of women,
men and children who have in spite of every kind of
adversity and loss, have clung to their faith in God. Indeed, in most cases
that faith was only deepened. Like Jacob in our Bible reading this morning,
they would not let go.
The One who will not let us go…
Had the circumstances been different, you
would have been witnesses to the baptism of three young people this morning. What
a privilege it is to stand around the font and witness as people mark the
beginning of a lifelong journey of walking with Jesus.
For twenty centuries Christians have been
baptizing in obedience to Jesus’ final words to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to
me. Go therefore
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you…” (Matthew
28:18-20)
Baptisms are joyful events—and that is as
it should be. Yet that joyful atmosphere can easily mask the seriousness of the
vows we undertake. Listen to the words with which we address the candidates:
“Will you persevere…?” “Will you seek and serve…?” “Will you strive…?” Those
are strong words when you take a moment think about them! I don’t think I would
be exaggerating to say they pose a superhuman challenge!
Yet we accept the challenge because when
Jesus commanded the disciples to baptize, he also left them with a promise: “And remember,” he said to them, “I am with you always,
to the end of the age.”
So
it is that as we grasp onto the Lord in baptism, we recognize that we are being
grasped by a hand that is infinitely stronger than our own—a hand that, no
matter what life may throw at us, will never let us go. And so, with the
apostle Paul we are able to proclaim, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
