The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
Genesis 32:22-31
My sermon from the 10th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (August 6, 2023) on Genesis 32:22-31.
So at 10:00 am last Sunday, my brother-in-law and I were setting up a large canopy for our day at the beach. Eight kids between the ages of 6 months and 11 years old were already covered up to their neck in sand and I was really paying attention to my phone. It took a few minutes to notice the string of text messages letting me know the livestream at CLC wasn’t working. Once I saw the texts, I wrote back and immediately opened up Facebook to see what was up. But my help wasn’t needed since Karen had everything working. Since I was already plugged into worship, I settled into my beach chair and joined in. It was wonderful seeing how you embraced Sydney, our guest preacher. And I enjoyed having the gentle roar of ocean waves as a backdrop for our prayers and music. We’ve known, for quite a while, that not everyone can physically gather together for worship on a Sunday morning. Some beloved children of God can’t safely leave their home while others have vocations that fill their Sunday mornings in different ways. There is something powerful about seeing the body of Christ physically together but it’s also fun to pray the Lord’s prayer with our toes buried in the sand. The gift of technology has made real something the church has always proclaimed: that the body of Christ truly extends across all space and time. For centuries, this was hard to internalize since listening to the Word and celebrating the Lord’s Supper was something we needed to be physically together to do. But now we can see, hear, and do worship even when an Ocean or a Sunday morning committed keeps us physically apart. Our old experience of living as the body of Christ is something we’re all learning how to wrestle with. And as we heard in our first reading from the book of Genesis, wrestling through these kinds of boundaries is what we are called to do.
The Jabbok River, known today as the Zarqa, begins northeast of the city of Amman in modern-day Jordan before turning west and heading straight for the Jordan River. For centuries, it served as a kind of national boundary, marking the place where ancient Israel ended and the kingdom of Ammon began. Yet before it was a political boundary, it was a personal one for a set of twins who had, for decades, competed against one another. Approaching the river from the south was Esau, Issac’s first born, whose impulsive appetites often got him into trouble. Across from him, coming from the north, was Jacob who, years before, manipulated his way into a position of authority and power that made him, and not Esau, the heir of their father’s household. Esau was, to put it mildly, pretty annoyed at the shenanigans caused by his brother but before he could get his revenge, Jacob fled. Both did their best to live as if their brother didn’t exist by creating large households full of wives, children, servants, and wealth. Esau, though, did a bit better and created a private army that followed his every command. As the years turned, their worlds gradually grew closer together and soon the Jabbok river was the only boundary keeping them apart.
Jacob didn’t know what Esau was going to do but he assumed it wasn’t good. As he neared the Jabbok, Jacob’s anxiety grew. He didn’t think a little water in the wilderness was going to be enough to protect the future he already built for himself so Jacob did his best to make it bigger. He decided to send gifts and servants to Esau as a kind of bribe. But when one group left, Jacob’s anxiety grew and so he sent more people and more gifts to stop the future he believed was coming his way. Nothing he did seemed to lessen his fear so even sent his spouse, his children, and the future God promised to him towards what he assumed was coming his way. And soon Jacob was all he had left while standing on the bank of Jabbok river. Everything he built and valued about himself was across the boundary and in his brother’s hands. The only one who had yet to cross, or so he thought, was himself. And then, in the middle of the night, a wrestling match broke out.
Now Jacob’s opponent in the wrestling match is a bit weird since the so-called man doesn’t fit our image of God or God’s angels. They aren’t usually worried about their identity being revealed when the dawn eventually breaks. But I wonder if the “man’s” identity isn’t meant to be the focus of the story. Instead, it’s about what Jacob did: he wrestled. And while waiting to cross the boundary of the Jabbok, Jacob wrestled with more than God. He was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with his past, his story, and the future he tried so hard to create. He wrestled with everything, refusing to let go because, by this point, it was all he had left. He thought he was at the boundary into a future he did not want. But as he wrestled, a new reality came to life. He had, already, crossed the boundary since everything he said and did was already influenced by it. His story had become so shaped by what he thought might happen that he even threw the future God promised to him at it, hoping that could make it go away. The life Jacob hoped for – the life he thought made it good – had been transformed by the fear he refused to let go. He couldn’t imagine anything else to hold onto which is why he, and all of us, need a God who chooses to grab a hold on us. We need a baptism that affirms, in a very public way, the love God breathed into us when we took our first breaths. We need the gift of faith to show us that we never wrestle anything alone. We need the gift of a community to remind us that our worry and our anxiety do not make us unacceptable to God. We need to hear – to trust – and to experience how we really are part of the body of Christ. When we come to a boundary we are anxious to cross, that boundary has already crossed us. Our thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and point of view have been influenced and changed by the fear at the heart of what we think will come next. We imagine the boundary is still ahead of us even though, for all practical purposes, it’s already behind us. So God, through grace, holds us while we wrestle with what we have yet to work through. This struggle isn’t about overcoming what we’re facing; instead, it’s about not letting the unknowing that has already influenced us continue to be what defines us. We get to strive towards God and into God’s future because God, in Christ, has already shown how far God will strive for us.
Because of what God has already done, we then get to let the body of Christ rather than a fearful future shape the lives we choose to live. If we spend our Sundays inside the sanctuary, we need to always act as if the entire body of Christ is with us. When we run into a fellow church goer after not seeing them in-person in awhile, our words shouldn’t feel as if we’re accusing them of unfaithfulness. If we, through the living of our lives, find our toes buried in the sand on a Sunday morning, living as the body of Christ will ask us to make our worship more intentional and visible. We might post a comment to share that we’re here or make a plan to click play on the video later in the day. When we do that, we’re not watching church; we’re doing church with the community our God has called us to hold onto. We grow through this worship by proclaiming to each other that our fears, worries, and anxieties will not be what defines us. Rather, it’s the Lord who binds us that will always make us who we are. Sometimes that support will require us to humbly listen to each other when the worries become too much. We also make sure to encourage and make sure no one feels like they’re somehow less because their anxiety requires them to access the God-given gifts of therapy and appropriate medications. We, as the church, don’t let old boundaries we’re wrestling with get in the way of the love, hope, and forgiveness God has given us. Together, we strive for God because Jesus, through the Cross, has already shown how far God always strives for us.
Amen.