Hilton Head Island, SC – February 11, 2018
The Chapel Without Walls
Genesis 27:41-45; 32:22-30
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Then he said, “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God, and have prevailed.” – Genesis 32:28 (RSV)
Of the four patriarchs of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, Jacob was without question the sleaziest. He was the most scandalous. He was the most scurrilous. He was a self-indulgent, self-centered, self-absorbed serpentine scalawag. He wasn’t esteemable, either.
Consider the following: Jacob tricked his twin brother Esau out of his birthright, which would have guaranteed Esau two-thirds of Isaac’s estate. He cheated Esau out of their father’s blessing. When Esau discovered what Jacob had done, he told their father Isaac that Jacob was well-named, for he had stolen the blessing he deserved. The name Jacob means, in broad translation, “He Steals” or “He Snatches” or “He Seizes.” Esau begged Isaac also to give him a blessing, and this is the somber blessing Isaac gave to Esau: “Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of heaven on high. By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother; but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.” Isaac made it sound as though the injustices Esau had suffered would continue until sometime in the distant future.
Esau was so incensed by his brother that he resolved to kill him. (Genesis does not deal with people’s stories the way Walt Disney would deal with them. Genesis is a “Tell It Like It Is” book.) So Isaac and his wife Rebekah warned Jacob to flee from Esau. As Isaac had been sent back to the land of Haran to find a wife, so Jacob also was sent to Haran to find a wife. The Hebrews were strongly opposed to anyone from their tribe marrying outside the tribe.
As Jacob fled north toward Haran, he slept overnight in a place west of Jericho in the mountains. There he had a dream, remembered in the old church camp song, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, we are climbing Jacob’s ladder, we are climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross.” In Jacob’s dream, he saw angels ascending and descending to and from heaven. In his dream Jacob heard the voice of God, and God told him that he would give the land on which he was lying to Jacob and his descendants. When Jacob awoke, he said to himself, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
Jacob called that location Bethel, Beth-El, “House of God.” In time, Bethel became one of the holiest sites in the land of Israel. A great shrine was built there, to honor the place where Jacob had his famous vision.
Jacob then journeyed on to Haran, where some relatives on his mother’s side lived. There he encountered his mother’s brother, Laban, who had two daughters. When Jacob saw the younger daughter, Rachel, he was instantly smitten with her. The older daughter, Leah, had poor vision. Leah couldn’t see well and didn’t look very good to Jacob, but Rachel looked terrific to him, and she also could see well. Immediately he wanted to marry her. Laban told his nephew Jacob he would have to work for him for seven years in order to get Laban’s permission to marry Rachel. Jacob was so taken by Rachel’s beauty he agreed to this very time-consuming arrangement.
You may have deduced that Jacob wanted to marry his first cousin. That’s also the way it appears to me. Apparently the insistence on marrying within the tribe or clan was stronger than the fear of genetic defects which might result from marrying a spouse too closely related.
Anyway, when the seven years was up, Laban held a big feast. Without actually telling us this, the narrative hints that Laban deliberately got Jacob very drunk. Then, when it came time to go to the bridal chamber, he sent his older daughter Leah to be in bed with Jacob rather than Rachel. In the morning Jacob realized he had slept with Leah, the daughter who didn’t see well rather than Rachel, the daughter who looked so beautiful. From this perhaps we are meant to conclude that Jacob’s deviousness came from his mother Rebekah’s side of the family, not his father Isaac. After all, Laban was Rebekah’s brother. In fact, Rebekah had already engaged in some skullduggery of her own, just by so shamelessly favoring Jacob. Apparently Jacob was a chip off the old maternal block.
In the meantime Jacob became a very fertile father. He had six sons by his wife Leah, two sons by Rachel’s servant girl Bilhah, and two sons by Leah’s servant girl Zilpah. These ten sons are all given names corresponding to the circumstances under which they were born. Later, after he married Rachel, he would have two sons by her. No daughters by any of these four women are mentioned. For such a productive papa, there must surely also have been some daughters, but the male-chauvinist writers of Genesis don’t even bother to tell us.
Jacob had to work another seven years in order to get permission to marry Rachel. This he did --- not happily, but he did it. In the meantime, Jacob the trickster tricked Laban the trickster out of a large part of Laban’s herd of sheep. These shenanigans are detailed in Genesis 30 and 31, but we don’t have time to explain the sordid details. When the fourteen years were completed, and Jacob had served the agreed-upon time to gain both Leah and Rachel, Jacob collected his two wives and all the many sheep he had furtively swiped from his uncle-and-father-in-law Laban. Jacob sneaked off for Canaan in the middle of the night. It was a fitting way for a congenital crook to flee from a congenital crook.
Laban did not look kindly on what Jacob had done. He quickly chased him. When he caught Jacob, he told him that he intended to do him “harm.” Since this is Genesis, it probably means he wanted to kill him. However, said Laban, Jacob’s God told him in a dream not to hurt Jacob, and Laban said he wouldn’t. Laban offered to make a covenant between himself and Jacob. In the Bible, a covenant is always a religious promise, made before God. They built a mound of stones with a stone shaft on top to mark their covenant. Laban said the stones were a witness to their promise before one another. “May the Lord watch between me and you, when we are absent, one from the other.” The shaft was called, in Hebrew, Mizpah, which means “Watchpost.”
When I was a young boy, our minister often ended the service with what came to be known as The Mizpah Benediction: “May the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent, one from the other.” It sounded so nice, so thoughtful, so kind. Only when I got to be a teenager, and resolved to read the Bible from cover to cover, did I realize it meant this: “May God keep an eye on you, you crafty, cunning conniver, Jacob,” and Jacob took it to mean, “May God keep an eye on you, Laban, you crafty, cunning crook!” As a pastor, I have never once used the Mizpah Benediction. It just doesn’t seem a properly religious thing to do.
God is not finished with Jacob, however. Thank God for Jacob and for us, God was a long way from ending His attempts to reform Jacob. When Jacob and his wives and sons headed back to Canaan, they went via the land of Edom, which is east of the Jordan River. That happened to be where Esau had settled, there to become a very rich land owner and producer of sheep.
Just before they encountered Esau, Jacob felt genuinely in tune with God for the first time in his whole life. Always before he had avoided God by every possible devious means. Now there was no way he could deny that it was God who confronted him. He was at ford of the River Yarmuk in what now is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. “Yarmuk” is Arabic; in Hebrew, and thus in Genesis, it is called “Jabbok.” It is the largest tributary of the Jordan River, and it gushes westward out of the mountains of northern Jordan.
According to our second reading for today, Jacob sent his family across the river ahead of him, and he was left alone in the middle of the night on the north side of the ford. The text says, with no explanation whatsoever, “And a man wrestled with (Jacob) until the breaking of the day.” Who was this man? Why would they wrestle all night long? When neither man could defeat the other, the mysterious wrestler threw Jacob’s hip out of joint. Still Jacob would not release his grip on the stranger. Jacob told the man he would not let him go unless he gave him a blessing. So the man asked Jacob what his name was. He told him, “Jacob.” (Remember from last Sunday that in Hebrew the name Yaakov means “He Who Grabs by the Heel,” which is what Jacob was doing to his twin brother Esau when Esau was the first-born, or perhaps more appropriately, “He Who Tries to Seize Power by Devious Means.”)
The Night Wrestler tells Jacob, “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God, and have prevailed.” The word Israel, the name Israel, means, “He Who Strives with God,” or, alternatively, “God Strives.” It is a hugely important name-change for a man who hugely needed to be changed. For his entire life Jacob had fought with God, and God had battled Jacob. Neither prevailed, until Jacob came to the ford of the River Jabbok. Once again Jacob fought with God, but at first he didn’t know it was God. Only in retrospect, by looking back at what had happened, did Jacob understand that it was not a man with whom he wrestled, but it was God Himself, God Almighty, El Shaddai!
Those who interpret this passage literally make it much easier on themselves, but I think they overlook what is truly being described here. They do not do justice to the theological meaning implicit in this extremely important chapter of Genesis. This event did not literally occur at a certain time and place. It occurred solely in the mind and heart of a man who finally realized how foolish, self-centered, and totally meaningless his life had been. At last God managed to reveal Himself to a man who had averted the Hound of Heaven his entire life. The River Jabbok was Jacob’s Rubicon. Like Julius Caesar seventeen centuries later, he knew that crossing his River of No Return meant he had been captured by God, and he would never again try to escape. “Make me a captive, Lord/ And then I shall be free/ Force me to render up my sword/ and I shall conqueror be.” When Jacob realized what this experience really meant, he called the name of that place by the river Peniel, “The Face of God,” because, Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face.”
This was not a physical wrestling match. It was mental, psychological, and spiritual. There comes a time for all of us when we find ourselves face to face with God, and we realize He demands something of us, of each of us. He is like Uncle Sam on the recruiting poster; “I want you!” He says. It doesn’t happen the way it sounds; it happens internally, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually, as I said earlier. It didn’t happen exactly as it is described in the Bible either. What transpired with Jacob internally was turned into a story, and the story was handed down orally for dozens of generations before it was written down.
The patriarchal stories were handed down by the people of Israel, who got their very name from Jacob, or so the story tells us. As Jacob strove with God, Israel also strove with Him. The complaining in the Wilderness Wandering. The difficulties encountered in the conquest of Canaan. The prophets lacing into the people because they were resisting God’s commands. When the Jews were taken as captives to Babylon, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” they asked. Jesus doing battle with his theological adversaries. The Israelis and the Palestinians. The battle continues to the end of time. “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men.”
I remember a man I know who, when he was in the presence of one of his best friends at the moment the friend died, left there some time later, so overcome by what he had just witnessed he did not realize his friend had died. Our stories become very complicated by our own perception of our circumstances. When the stories are told, they may become very different from what actually happened.
Jacob (Israel) is Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of Christians, on the road to Damascus. He is John Newton, slave trader, turned Anglican preacher and hymn writer; “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound/ That saved a wretch like me/ I once was lost, but now am found/ Was blind, but now I see.” He is Billy Sunday, hard-driving, hard-drinking, hard-living professional baseball player, fleeing from the call of God, at the last giving up and giving in, becoming one of the most useful evangelists of the early twentieth century. God wrestled with these men in their own unique situations, and God finally triumphed.
We all strive with God, in one way or another. God wants to break through the barriers we all erect to keep God at bay, but everyone must give up, give in, surrender, accede.
Think what might have happened if Jacob had not sensed he had a battle with God at the ford of the River Jabbok. Had he succeeded in resisting God’s search for him until he died, there would not have been twelve tribes of Israel, there would have been no Moses, no David, no Elijah or Isaiah or Jeremiah, no Jesus or Peter or Paul
Comparing yourself to someone like Jacob, think what God could do with you if you allowed Him to win in His strife with you! What a story it could make! The ending is up to you.