Scripture can be found here…
We’re bundling two bedtime stories into one service tonight, because I simply couldn’t decide between them. They’re both about Jacob, the son of Isaac, the grandson of Abraham, one the three great patriarchs of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jacob is one of my very favorite characters in the bible. Not because he’s good, but because he’s human. And in his human capacity for following his own self-interest, he sometimes—often—finds himself on the run. And that’s where we find him tonight. Twice. On the run from the consequences of his actions.
The first time we meet him, Jacob is fleeing his brother Esau. Jacob and Esau were twins, and Esau was the older of the two. In their culture, that meant good things for Esau. Firstly, he was the son who would receive the birthright: status in the family, leadership. He would be a patriarch. And the firstborn would customarily get a blessing from his father, which was all about property and inheritance. As the oldest, he would receive a double portion, twice what any other heirs received.
But Jacob managed to get both of these away from Esau. The first one, we can lay squarely on Esau’s shoulders. Esau wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, shall we say. Not the brightest of bulbs. He sells his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew, because he’s hungry, and Jacob—who cooked it—makes him an offer.
The second steal we can lay at Jacob’s feet—and his mother, Rebekah’s. In an elaborate scheme she helps Jacob to disguise himself and to bring his father a meal of the kind Esau might bring him after hunting. The nearly blind Isaac is taken in, and gives his son Jacob the blessing that was meant for his older brother.
This is why Jacob is on the run the first time. It turns out, a blessing isn’t going to do you much good, if your brother is ready to kill you over it, and that is exactly what Esau plans to do. So Jacob runs. He’s heading for his uncle’s place—Rebekah’s brother, Laban—but it’s a long journey. He comes to “a certain place,” and settles for the night.
I just want to stop for a moment and acknowledge the desperation Jacob must have felt. He and his mother had had a swell idea, I guess, if you don’t really care about hurting other family members, and it backfired in the most awful and predictable way. And now Jacob is alone with a stone for a pillow.
But then he dreams a dream. I think Jacob’s the kind of guy who dreams in color. The details of this dream are evocative, and eerie. A ladder—or staircase, the Hebrew is unclear—between earth and heaven. I know the typical image we have is that Jacob sees angels going up and going down this structure, but the word in Hebrew means “messengers.” Sometimes we translate it “angels,” because of the context. Messengers of God are going up and down—sure, angels, maybe, but I think we are meant to understand that there is no barrier between earth and heaven, between us and God, not really. There are messengers, and they are moving in both directions.
God stands at Jacob’s side, then, and gives him a blessing—the real blessing, the one that will make all the difference in his life. Just as God has blessed Jacob’s father, and his grandfather, Jacob is given a promise: He is promised land, and children/ descendants, and blessing itself. God repeats, echoing the earlier promises to the other two patriarchs: “All the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.” And, perhaps the most important promise of all: “I will be with you.”
Jacob awakens from his dream, and knows that God has been with him. He looks around him, at whatever wilderness it is that could only provide him a stone for a pillow, and he says, “…This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.”
In our first of our bedtime stories, Jacob, frightened and running for his life, discovers that God is on the road with him, that God knows well what is going on, and that God’s promises to Jacob and his family hold true. “I will be with you.”
In our second passage, years have gone by. Jacob has managed to marry both of his uncle Laban’s daughters, the sisters, Rachel and Leah. Between them and their servants they have borne Jacob at least eleven children. Jacob has been working for his uncle, but relations between them have soured, and once again he finds himself on the run. Laban catches up with him, and they mend fences—sort of—but then God sends Jacob back home to Canaan. Which means, back to Esau. Years have gone by, the question lingers over the story: has Esau forgiven him?
In an attempt to parlay himself into a successful reunion, Jacob sends messages and lavish gifts ahead to his brother, but in the end he really doesn’t know what to expect. He’s a wealthy man now, and he is traveling with the whole retinue his wives and children and all his servants and flocks and herds. But as the danger of meeting up with Esau grows nearer, he decides to send them to a safer place—across the river. Jacob decides to spend the last night before homecoming alone.
But Jacob is not alone. The strange encounter is described in a single verse: “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”
Who is wrestling with Jacob? Is it a man? Is it, as some have proposed, his brother, come under the cover of darkness, and disguised—as Jacob himself was disguised to steal the blessing? Is it God, coming this time not with a beautiful dream of heavenly messengers, but as a challenger, ominous and threatening? Or is Jacob, perhaps, wrestling with himself—with the circuitous journey he has taken, with its steps and missteps, its honesty and treachery, its love and hate and the fear that makes him run?
The wrestling match goes on, and on, until daylight is about to break. The moment between night and day is a potent one, rich with symbolism—a new day, something shifting, something left behind.[i] The man tries to get away by injuring Jacob’s hipbone, but Jacob holds on, insisting on a blessing.
The man asks his name. The name Jacob means “scoundrel.” It’s related to his birth story, so literally, it’s “heel-grabber.” But the man says, now your name is Israel, for you have strived with God and with humans. You have persisted. You have prevailed.
In our second of Jacob’s bedtime stories, sleep is elusive, but God is present, though in a very different way. The Jacob who left home for the first time met a God of comfort and consolation. The Jacob who was heading home to an uncertain kind of reunion met a God of challenge, one who left him forever changed.
God is with us, in our dreaming and in our striving.
God is with us, in our running and in our resting.
God is with us, even as God is waiting to welcome us home.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Amy Merrill Willis, Ninth Sunday After Pentecost: Commentary on Genesis 32:22-31, Working Preacher, August 3, 2014. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18/commentary-on-genesis-3222-31.