Name Your Nemesis
Today I want to explore the intriguing first lesson, but I need to go back a bit to Jacob’s youth, where he steals his brother Esau’s birthright. I spoke a bit about this on the 12th of July.
Esau is “a hunter, an outdoorsy guy,” think of the Leyland brothers. Jacob, on the other hand, is “a simple man, a tent dweller”.
One day, Jacob is putting the finishing touches on a rabbit stew. It smells fantastic, and Esau rushes into the tent famished. It’s been a poor hunting day, and he simply must eat. “Quick, let me have some of that rabbit stew; I’m starving”.
Adroit, astute, quick-thinking Jacob sees an opportunity and says, “Sure; but first, sell me your birth-rite”. The birth-rite is, of course, Esau’s rights as the firstborn, the right to property, goods, and all the future promise of leadership of the tribe. It is, in short, his complete future existence.
Esau’s reply to this outrageous request is about as stupid and absurd as it can be! “Oh well, look! I suppose one day I’m going to die anyway, so what the heck. What in the world is a birthright to me? Besides that, I’m really hungry, and the stew smells delicious.
“But, not so fast!” Jacob says, “Swear to me now”, demanding from his gullible brother the ancient equivalent of a stat dec.
With no hesitation, the doltish Esau swears to him and thus surrenders his own birthright.
This “deal” will cause all sorts of ructions culminating with Jacob fleeing away from his brother for fear of his life. Later Jacob will take family and goods from his uncle Laban with a series of ruses and more cunning deception. However far he may flee, he will never be able to outrun his guilty conscience, and my unsubstantiated, unproven, harebrained theory is that at one level Jacob's wrestle is in part at least his wrestling with his past. 99% of people do this at some point in their life, and the 1% aren’t always being honest with themselves, and/or others and/or God. Let’s unpack the reading a bit more.
Today’s lesson has been known by many different names: "Jacob wrestles with an angel"; "Jacob wrestles with God"; "Jacob wrestles at Peniel".
But "Jacob wrestles with a man" is in fact what the text itself says.
Jacob gets up in the night, takes his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and takes them across the stream Jabbok.
After sending this motley company away, Jacob finally finds himself alone. And in his solitude, where every distraction is stripped away from him, Jacob is jumped by "a man" who "wrestled with him until the breaking of the day". The Hebrew gurus tell me the text clearly says "man," not angel, not God.
With whom might we expect our rascal Jacob, the "grabber" of birthright from Esau and deceiver of Laban, to wrestle with?
I can think of three possibilities: Brother Esau, Uncle Laban and Jacob himself. Jacob needs to wrestle with his own grasping life to discover his place in the ongoing story of Israel and God's choice of them. And this should be very familiar to us personally.
"When he (the man) saw that he was not able to beat him (Jacob), he struck him on the hip socket, pulling Jacob's hip out of joint as they wrestled" Whoever the man is, he soon realises that he cannot easily or fairly best Jacob, so he grabs the ball of his hip and rips it out of joint.
But the hip socket trick is not effective, and Jacob still holds on.
"Then Jacob asked, 'Tell me right now your name' But he said, 'Why in the world do you ask my name?' And he blessed him there”. Jacob, in fact, extracts the blessing from the man, after being told that he has struggled and won no matter his opponents, divine or human.
In the reading, it is only Jacob that names the man as God. Why should we trust Jacob to decide for us who his opponent was? Jacob is a consummate liar as we have seen again and again.
Was it his brother Esau,… was it Uncle Laban or was it, as I rather think, himself.
Jacob finally sees God face to face, all right, but not until he recognises God in the face of his doltish brother, Esau, whom he expects to kill him after all he has stolen from him, but instead who welcomes him with a massive hug and a slobbery kiss (Gen. 33:4). I do not see that Jacob encountered God at Jabbok, but to his incredulous surprise, saw God in the last place he expected to find God, namely the gracious acceptance of his brother Esau.
Only when Jacob sees Esau will he see God,
Only when Jacob names and confronts his nemesis, his past failings and past sins, will he be free to see God. Only then will the veil be parted and he can finally find forgiveness and see the face of God.
And it will not be because of a great struggle against God, but rather an amazing reception of unexpected grace and love on the part of old Esau.
And so it is with us. We find God in very unexpected places, mirrored in very unexpected people. Once we open ourselves to such wild possibilities, once we name our nemesis, we can encounter the living God, rather than a god made somehow in our own image. Only then will our wrestling be over and love will have triumphed.