Jacob is born a trickster. Twin brother Esau is born a few minutes before Jacob, which makes him the elder son, the one who should receive the birthright and the father’s blessing. But with the help of their mother, Jacob cheats Esau out of both his birthright and their father’s blessing. Esau is rightfully outraged, mad enough to kill Jacob, which is the point when Jacob flees for 20 years to his uncle Laban in the distant town of Haran.
And there Jacob gets a taste of his own medicine. Jacob is smitten with Laban’s younger daughter Rachel. Laban promises her to Jacob in return for seven years of labor. So Jacob works the seven years, caring for the flocks, helping them to increase in size and health. His bride appears at the ceremony veiled. Only after the wedding night does he discover that she is actually Leah, the older daughter. He has been tricked. Laban says, “Well, I can’t marry off my younger daughter before the older one. I’ll give you Rachel, but only if you promise to work seven more years for me.” So a week later there is another wedding, Jacob gets Rachel and works seven more years. And then another six years for his share of the flocks. Twenty years. And still Laban accuses him of cheating.
So Jacob, his two wives, his two concubines, all their children, all their servants, all their flocks, leave. It’s time to go home. They walk several hundred miles. As they draw near to where Esau lives, Jacob sends servants out to see what Esau thinks about his trickster brother coming home. The servants respond by saying, “Esau is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him” (Gen 32:6).
Uh-oh. That does not bode well.
So Jacob sends ahead parts of his flocks of sheep, camels, goats, cows, and donkeys as a gift for Esau. Jacob moves all his family and servants and animals across the River Jabbok. Imagine how chaotic and noisy that is. Jacob comes back across the river to be in a deserted place alone and spends the night there without them. He needs to think, to prepare. He is in a time of transition, from his 20 years with Laban, and from his trickster ways with his brother before that. And in this deserted place that night, a man shows up and wrestles with him all night long. The man gives him a new name, Israel, which means strives or wrestles with God. But Jacob is marked by the wrestling: he now limps because the angel injured his hip.
And the next day, he goes out to meet with his brother Esau. He gives Esau all the animals that he had sent ahead as gifts, he introduces the family. Esau gives him a huge hug, they weep, and Esau says, “Hey, come on back with me to my home in Seir.” Jacob hems and haws, makes excuses, says the children don’t walk fast, you go on ahead. Esau heads south, and Jacob goes west to Shechem. Another trick, but probably a good idea. They have mended the rift between them in some way. Jacob has made amends.
The wrestling is mysterious. Who is this nameless man who shows up out of nowhere and demands to wrestle? Is it God, or an angel? That’s what we’re led to believe. Is it Esau? That’s another possible interpretation I’ve heard. On a metaphorical level, is it Jacob’s own guilty conscience confronting him with all the lies and cheating he has done and all the ways he has blown up his relationship with Esau? Because that’s all now coming back at him: Esau marching his direction with 400 men.
The identity of the man could be any or all of those interpretations. I have certainly done my share of nighttime wrestling. It’s 2:00am and this thing I did earlier today, or last week, or last month, is demanding a reckoning. Or a deadline is looming, and how do I prepare for it? Or I’m wrestling with discerning what God is calling me to do next. Perhaps you have had your own nighttime wrestling sessions like that.
For many of us, our faith journey is a constant wrestling. When I was young, I wanted someone to tell me answers: believe this, act like this, die and go to heaven. Simple. No wrestling required, just answers and certainty. What I discovered instead is that a faith journey is about wrestling with profound questions about God and what it means to be an incarnation of God’s divine energy. People have come to this church regularly, and when I invited them to join the church, they confessed, “I don’t know what I really think about Jesus, or God, or whatever.” That’s okay. Keep coming and keep wrestling. That’s what we’re doing here on Sundays: wrestling. We may look like we’re just sitting peacefully in the pews, but each of us is wrestling with God, and each of us is coming up with our own answers, which may not agree with anyone else’s answers, and which may also change over time. And that’s all great. We’re not here to hand out answers. We’re here to wrestle.
Like Jacob, we’re coming to a big transition time. In two weeks you and I will bid each other farewell, with many hugs and probably a lot of weeping at least on my part, because I will miss you all something fierce. And then you all will get to do some wrestling. Who have we been as Prospect Congregational United Church of Christ? Who are we now? Who do we want to be? How are we following Jesus? How is God calling us to do a new thing out of this transition space?
There are plenty of people out there who are spiritually hungry and may want to do some theological wrestling; how do you find those people and invite them to come wrestle here? How might they be changed in the process? How might you be changed by the blessing of their presence? By the questions that they ask, by the wrestling that they do, by the gifts that they bring?
When Jacob wrestled, he didn’t do it for show, like the wrestling matches on TV or on the White House lawn. There was no audience; there were no distractions. He put everyone else across the river so he could focus on the wrestling that he needed to do with God. Prospect may need to focus like that, too: put aside distractions and listen intently for God, wrestle with the angels that show up.
Like Jacob creating a solitary space to wrestle with God, Jesus often draws apart from the crowds and even from the disciples so that he can go off to a deserted place alone for some time with God. And that’s where we see him at the beginning of today’s reading in Matthew: in a deserted place by himself. He has just heard the news that John the Baptist has been killed by Herod. He is in his own transition space. With Jacob, the divine encounter happens in a lonely, nighttime space. With Jesus, he is so steeped in that divine encounter that people follow him to get a taste of it for themselves. Thousands of people come. He has compassion and heals their sick.
The disciples are the ones to notice the problem: it’s late in the day, and people will need to eat. The disciples’ practical idea is to provide opportunity for the crowds to take care of their own needs: Send them off on their own to buy food. Is anything open late in the day? Maybe. But the healing session is separate from the feeding. People are on their own for that.
Jesus understands that people need to be fed in both body and soul, and that these things are connected. He operates from a base of compassion for the people. He has no wish to control them or judge them—just love them. And if the crowd has understood anything about Jesus’ message of God’s love, they get that we all have to take care of each other. So Jesus has them sit down and then he blesses some loaves and fish, and he breaks them and shares them, just as he did at the Last Supper; just as we do in communion. And the people understand that all the food they have brought is blessed, too, and is also to be shared to make sure all have enough to eat.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” True. But Mother Teresa said, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.” Food for the body, food for the soul. At the feeding of the thousands, Jesus brings both together.
This is part of the wrestling, too, that Prospect gets to engage in. How are you feeding people in both body and soul? Or how might you do so? What are the needs in the community? Is there more appetite for community karaoke, as will happen next Sunday afternoon, or for caroling at Fred Lind Manor, as we did last December? Or something else?
This time of transition is full of possibility. Do the wrestling. Feed each other in body and soul. Listen deeply and intentionally for God’s call to the next thing that Prospect is to do and be in following the way of Jesus. And God bless you all along the way. Amen.