Scripture: Genesis 32: 17 – 33:11

Sermon: Struggling in the Dark

Topics: Face, Blessing, Struggle

Preached: August 29, 1999, am Woodlawn

Rev. Michael Abma

Textual Notes:

Key words – Note the word “face” with respect to Esau and God

Note the word “blessing” with respect to Esau and God.

GENESIS 32:17 – 33:11

¹⁷He [Jacob] instructed the foremost, ‘When Esau my brother meets you, and asks you, “To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?” ¹⁸then you shall say, “They belong to your servant Jacob; they are a present sent to my lord Esau; and moreover he is behind us.” ’ ¹⁹He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, ‘You shall say the same thing to Esau when you meet him, ²⁰and you shall say, “Moreover your servant Jacob is behind us.” ’ For he thought, ‘I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me.’ ²¹So the present passed on ahead of him; and he himself spent that night in the camp.

22 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. ²³He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.²⁴Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.²⁵When 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. ²⁶Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ ²⁷So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ ²⁸Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ ²⁹Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. ³⁰So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ ³¹The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. ³²Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

33Now Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. ²He put the maids with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all. ³He himself went on ahead of them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near his brother.

4 But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. ⁵When Esau looked up and saw the women and children, he said, ‘Who are these with you?’ Jacob said, ‘The children whom God has graciously given your servant.’ ⁶Then the maids drew near, they and their children, and bowed down; ⁷Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down; and finally Joseph and Rachel drew near, and they bowed down. ⁸Esau said, ‘What do you mean by all this company that I met?’ Jacob answered, ‘To find favour with my lord.’ ⁹But Esau said, ‘I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.’¹⁰Jacob said, ‘No, please; if I find favour with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God—since you have received me with such favour. ¹¹Please accept my gift that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have everything I want.’ So he urged him, and he took it.

INTRODUCTION — The Predicament and the Plans

Jacob didn’t see God coming.

He was preoccupied.

His mind was elsewhere.

He was caught totally unawares when a stranger leapt out of the dark deep night and jumped him on the shores of the Jabbok.

You see, Jacob had Esau on his mind.

It had been twenty years since they last saw each other.

And Jacob kept replaying the memory of Esau’s face over and over again.

The memory of Esau’s face haunted Jacob.

When Jacob had left home, his older brother was boiling in fury and rage.

Esau had been robbed of a blessing and had swore to kill Jacob the first chance he got.

And this was the man, the brother, Jacob was about to meet.

Not simply Esau alone, but Esau with an army of 400 men.

Jacob is understandably nervous and edgy.

He is, according to the Biblical text, filled with great fear and distress.

But Jacob is still shrewd. He plans his encounter with Esau, splitting his company into

two groups:

the expendable first party,

and the chance-for-escape rear party.

However, this time Jacob knows he is vulnerable, and so he prays.

Jacob starts his prayer by reminding God where this homecoming idea came from: coming home was God’s idea, not his own idea. And so, God better deliver … God better come through … God, he prays, you better snatch me from the hateful hands of my brother Esau.

But the plan and the prayer give Jacob no peace.

He is still thinking about ways to save himself.

He decides to send a little guilt offering on ahead in installments:

First some goats, then sheep, then camels, then cows, then donkeys.

Maybe the gifts will settle Esau down, Jacobs hopes.

Verse 20 literally reads,

I will pacify him with these gifts I am sending on ahead;

Later, when I see him face-to-face, perhaps he will receive me.

With the face of Esau on his mind, and Esau in his fears, and the memory of his own sins in his soul, the story puts Jacob

at a dangerous place, the ford of the Jabbok river,

at a dangerous time, in the dead of night,

in a dangerous state, he worried and all alone.

THE AMBUSH

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a stranger leaps from the dark, and Jacob finds himself fighting for his life.

Everything about this struggle story is supposed to catch us off guard.

Everything about this story is supposed to leave us confused.

Even the Hebrew words used leave us confused since the words

Yacob, yabbok, and abaq, — all sounding remarkably alike – are the Hebrew words for Jacob, Jabbok, and struggle.

Jacob doesn’t know what hit him. He is in the dark. And after wrestling and struggling with this stranger for a whole night, he is still in the dark.

And don’t we know that is true?

God has a way of showing up when we least expect him. When we are preoccupied with worries about our health, or worries about our kids, or worries about our work or future or whatever,

when our defenses are down,

that is when God ambushes us with the reality of his presence.

Frederick Buechner once observed, “If God gave us anything much in the way of advance warning, more often than not we would have made ourselves scarce long before he got there.”

Jacob doesn’t know what hit him, but he lives up to his name – a striver, a grappler, a go-getter.

But his opponent is unlike any other he has wrestled with in the past:

Different from his father Isaac,

Different from his brother Esau,

Different from his uncle Laban.

The power of this stranger is as much in his hiddenness as it is in his strength.

If the stranger is no ordinary opponent, Jacob proves himself no ordinary man –and suddenly we realize this description of their struggle is no ordinary story.

When Jacob is spent, worn out from fighting, there is another twist — the stranger merely touches Jacob’s thigh and suddenly Jacob is crippled. Jacob, the scrapper, the striver, who seemingly was always able to fight and win, to struggle and succeed, Jacob is now lying in the dirt, defeated.

And yet, he will not let go.

He hangs on, he clings to, he embraces this stranger.

The hold, however, is no longer the grip of violence, but the grasp of need, like that of a drowning man.

Already we see hints that this encounter in the night, this struggle in the dark, will leave its mark on Jacob and change him forever.

With Jacob hanging on for dear life, the two spar with words.

“Let me go!” says the stranger.

“Not without a blessing” answers Jacob.

“What’s your name?” asks the stranger.

“Jacob.”

“Not any longer. Your name is now Israel.”

“Well then, what is your name?” asks Jacob.

“Why is it you ask my name?” is the reply, and on that spot the stranger blesses Jacob.

THE FIERCE FACE OF GOD

Something deep and mysterious happens to Jacob here.

We have no idea that Jacob’s struggle in the dark is with the divine until Jacob names the place Peniel, saying, I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.

Suddenly, in this mysterious struggle in the dark we realize we have caught a peculiar glimpse of the face of God.

This is not the gracious, compassionate, promise-filled face of God that

Jacob had prayed to earlier that day.

This is rather a face of fierce love,

a face of suffering mercy,

a face mostly hidden behind sovereignty for if we really saw it fully,

it would kill us.

And yet, this face has a vulnerability to it.

For in this struggle,

which seems much too even for a struggle

between God and man,

we see something of God’s power in weakness.

In this struggle we see God allowing himself to be desperately held, and we see power somehow flowing from God into this man – but not merely to this man, but to the whole nation, the whole people, whom Jacob represents.

You see, when daylight finally comes,

when the struggle is finally over,

when that sun climbs up into the sky,

signifying a new beginning,

the stranger is gone, but so is Jacob.

Jacob is no longer Jacob the struggler and striver. He is now Israel, the one whom God protects and preserves. And this Israel has been formed, has come into being,

not by cunning or shrewdness,

not by savvy or success,

not by land or flocks, or wealth.

This Israel has been formed by an assault, an ambush, from God.

In this assault by God, Jacob gains a new name.

But the encounter also costs Jacob something — he limps away, wounded, a cripple.

THE NEW JACOB is ISRAEL

This could remain a rather mysterious, murky otherly-worldly conversion story of how the old Jacob became the new Israel.

This could remain a private and personal epiphany, Jacob’s personal “dark night of the soul.”

But remember, this Jacob, now Israel,

this striver, now cripple,

still has to face his brother Esau and Esau’s 400 men.

How does cripple approach Esau?

He asks three times, “If I find favor in your eyes.”

He and all his family bow seven times to the ground.

We have to wonder, has Jacob now Israel learned that there is

power in weakness;

there is strength in submission.

That any blessing worth having can never be grabbed or gripped, but can only be given as a gift, and received as a gift?

Notice especially what Jacob says to his brother when his brother runs to him and grabs him, wraps his arms around him and holds him tight?

Jacob says, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”

Then Jacob adds, “Please accept the blessing which was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me.”

There is more mystery here. But the words face and blessing are intentionally repeated in both Jacob’s encounter with God and his encounter with Esau.

Why?

We are supposed to see a connection between the forgiving face of Esau and

the gritty but gracious face of God.

We are supposed to see in the face of the Holy God something of the

estranged brother.

And we are supposed to see in the face of the forgiving brother something of

the gracious face of God.

We are all, in ways, travelers with Jacob, on a road we hope leads to reconciliation:

with parents, with siblings, with friends, with co-workers,

with God himself.

We are all faced with the painful struggle to forgive or to be forgiven.

All roads to real reconciliation must pass through an ambush by the Crucified One,

The one who knows what it means to struggle in the dark

and with the dark,

The one who knows that real forgiveness, real love,

real reconciliation, is never neat,

never clean, never easy, never without a cost.

CONCLUSION — ROAD TO RECONCILIATION

The road to real reconciliation is always filled with danger and with dread.

To walk that road we need to be assaulted by, ambushed by,

the Crucified One,

who strikes us down before he raises us up,

who puts us to death before he brings us to life.

When we struggle with him, we realize

here is someone who knows

all about limping

and all about blessing;

here is someone who knows all about bowing down

and all about forgiving.

And the mystery of this ambush, this struggle, in which we catch a glimpse of this fierce yet divine face of love is that we are changed in such a way,

that his face is somehow in every face we meet along the way.

Amen.