Genesis 32:21-32

Our Old Testament story involves a man named Jacob. Jacob is an important character in the Old Testament. The Hebrew people, God’s chosen people, get their name from Jacob, who in our story this morning receives another name – Israel. The rest of the Scriptures are about Jacob and mainly his descendants – the Israelites – working out their relationship with God.

Jacob is important to the biblical story for that reason. But Jacob is also important because he shows us what it means to have a difficult relationship with God. Jacob would not win any Christian of the Year or Outstanding Disciple awards from his local church. Jacob had a difficult relationship with his parents, especially his father Isaac; he had a bad relationship with his brother Esau; his marriage was difficult; and he was shrewd in his business dealings – so much so that he was on the run for a lot of his life.

Our reading this morning comes at a very difficult time in Jacob’s life. He is on the run and caught between an angry father-in-law and an angry brother. Here are some important things you need to know about Jacob and his life for our reading to make sense.

Jacob is a twin, his twin brother’s name is Esau. Jacob is technically the younger of the two brothers having been born after Esau. But the Scriptures say from the time that Jacob and Esau were in their mother, Rebekah’s womb, they fought and struggled with each other. Later, when they were older, Jacob got Esau to sell him his birthright, which was a big deal since as the firstborn of the two twins, Esau would hae been entitled to the family’s good name, their fortune, and he would have been considered the family leader when their father, Isaac, died. Esau was a fool to sell his birthright to Jacob, but Jacob was also a man who plotted his every move.

Jacob again plotted and went against what was expected when he tricked his father, Isaac, into giving him the family blessing instead of his brother Esau, who as the oldest, would have been entitled to it and you get the sense reading the Scriptures, who their father, Isaac, preferred to give it to. Jacob’s plot, along with his mother Rebekah, was to cook father Isaac’s father favorite food, dress up in Esau’s clothes so he felt and smelled like Esau (Isaac couldn’t see well), and trick the old man Isaac into blessing Jacob and getting all of the benefits of the family blessing.

Next, Jacob himself is tricked. After the drama with his father and brother, he flees to a relative. There he wants to marry one of the daughters and works for seven years to earn her as his wife. Only, on the wedding night Jacob is tricked into marrying the woman’s older sister, Leah (don’t ask how this happens). Angry that he himself was tricked, Jacob works another seven years to marry the younger sister, Rachel, the woman he actually loves. Please don’t look to this part of the Bible for marriage advice. Jacob’s life is a mess.

The final straw in Jacob’s mess of a life comes when Jacob and his father-in-law, Laban, have a falling out over their family business. The important part of the story to know is that Jacob comes out ahead in the business, he becomes wealthier, at the expense of Laban and his brothers-in-law. Jacob, his two wives, their children, and all of his employees, possessions, and animals end up going on the run, fleeing Laban and the wrath and desire for revenge Jacob assumes Laban wants to get.

Our story this morning happens as Jacob is in the midst of the most difficult moment in his life. He’s on the run from Laban and Esau and he seems scared, particularly of his twin brother Esau, whom he tricked out of the family blessing and inheritance.

The story takes place near a river, the Jabbok. It’s nighttime and Jacob has sent his wives and children and his possessions across the Jacob River to safety and Jacob is left alone. Suddenly, a man begins wrestling with him. They wrestle, trying to pin each other down, sweat falling down their cheeks, sometimes quickly, sometimes what in seems like slow motion, to wear one another down. Their wrestling match goes until the first light of the new day begins to appear. When Jacob’s opponent realizes that dawn will soon arrive and he is not going to beat Jacob, Jacob’s opponent goes for a low blow and decides to injure Jacob by punching his hip socket. Just the sound of it feels painful.

“Let me go,” the man pleads with Jacob, “it is almost daybreak.”

“I will not let you go unless you bless me,” Jacob demands.

The two wrestlers continue to go at it. They trade questions about each other’s name. “Who are you?” “What is your name?” Jacob identifies himself as “Jacob” and the man wrestling with him gives him a new name, Israel, which means “the one who strives with God.” But when Jacob asks for the man’s name who is wrestling him, the man mysteriously doesn’t answer. Instead, the man blesses Jacob, as Jacob had asked and wanted his whole life.

The story ends there. It’s daylight and Jacob is still limping, injured from his night of wrestling and the man’s punch to the hip. We learn as the story ends that Jacob names the man he was wrestling with and who injured him as God Almighty himself. “I have seen God face to face,” Jacob says, you can imagine to his family as he is telling this story, “yet my life is preserved.”

In the Scriptures, this story is called a theophany. It is an appearance of God Almighty in human form. The Holy One arrives and comes among human beings as a human being. There are many spiritually profitable parts of the story, but what has been on my mind this week is this: Jacob had to wrestle with God in order to become a free man. It is as if to say that in order to be free, we each have to struggle, whether at times that is with God and what God wants for our lives or whether at times the struggle is against ourselves and our own worst instincts, behaviors, thoughts, and actions.

You and I and every single human being was born and has a desire to live in freedom. This freedom isn’t just an outward freedom like the freedom of worship, freedom of speech, and the freedom of assembly that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantees. There is also an inside freedom, a spiritual freedom. Both are important because there are plenty of people who have political freedoms, but aren’t free spiritually, inside of themselves, in their heart and mind.

Let’s look at Jacob’s example. Up until this point, Jacob spent his whole life trying to live up to someone else’s expectations. He spent most of his life trying to one up everyone else. He comes across as a striver, someone who is never happy with what is happening. He appears to scheme and plot many times. But he also comes across as incredibly lonely and afraid. He longs for his father’s approval and blessing. He takes something from his brother that wasn’t his to take. Up until this point, he is dependent on these things outside of himself because he desires them. And he puts himself in a very dangerous position. He is, as the New Testament writers say, “a slave” to those things because what you love is what you will become.

In order to understand how the Lord might be speaking to you in this Word, as yourself this questions: “What do you really love?” and “what are you most afraid of?” Chances are good that what you love the most (not what we say we love the most, but what we actually love the most) and what we are most afraid of, is what we are slaves to and where you are not spiritually free. Here is an example: if you are terrified of not being where the action is, chances are you are a slave to other people’s emotions and whims. If you love status and security more than anything else, chances are you are beholden to your boss. If you care more about what people think than your own worth and dignity, chances are you are a slave to your family.

The gospel message, the good news that is the Christian message, is that Jesus Christ has come, he has died, and he has been raised to set you free. He has come to set all people free in body and in spirit. To be free inside, in your heart, mind, and spirit, means that you can love and care for your family without being a slave to their emotions or a doormat for their anger. It means you can go when you need to and not participate in something. To be free means that you can be good at your job and work hard and take pride in your work, and not participate in the office politics, or be a slave to your bosses anxieties. To be free means you handle money in an appropriate way – use what you need, give to God what is God’s, and give to Caesar what is Caesars.

Inward freedom does not come by magic or a snap of your fingers. Jacob had to wrestle with God and he left the wrestling match with a severe injury. The Word to us is that the spiritual life, the life of discipleship following in the way of Jesus, takes effort. You might get hurt. It involves wrestling and fighting against your own worst instincts, impulses, and malformed ways of behaving at times. God’s promise to us is that he will help us. Jacob receives a blessing. But we still have to wrestle in our own hearts, minds, and souls against our individual tendencies towards pride, greed, lust, jealousy, wrath and anger, gluttony and taking too much, and sloth. These forces don’t want to let us go easily. That is why the Scriptures use the word slave to describe what they make us like.

But the promise of the gospel is that God helps us and blesses us. Like Jacob, a day comes after a night of wrestling, and with the day comes freedom. Christ has come, he has died, he is risen so that we are free inside and outside – free to trust in God, free to hope in God and God’s promises, free to love God and love people and the things in the world in an appropriate and healthy way, free to be prudent in our actions and not controlled by our desires, free to be just and do what is right whatever the cost, free to face the hardships of life with strength and fortitude, and free to be the person God has created you to be with temperance.

Christ has set you free and made you a slave of righteousness. Go from here as the free person, inside and outside, that you are. Amen.