Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 13, August 3, 2014, The Rev. Frederick Stecker

In a book of poems entitled Yahweh’s Other Shoe Benedictine poet Kilian McDonnell interprets the Hebrew saga we’ve been following. His poem is entitled God Cheats. [1]

He writes:

Late we cross the ford of the Jabbok,
Wives, camels, sheep I send ahead.

Alone in the sanctuary of night
Where only touch can see.

I wrestle with a stranger until dawn breaks,
Sweat to sweat, flesh to mystery.

When I pin him I’m stunned,
Not a stranger, but my God.

When Yahweh sees that I prevail,
He fouls me by a touch, unsocketing my hip.

I contended in the womb with hairy Esau and won.
I’m a mirror of my foes.

Yahweh pleads, “The day is near upon us, now let me go.”
But I still lock him.

I held Esau’s heel in the womb,
I do not surrender when I’m winning.

“Not unless you bless me with a winner’s blessing that cannot be annulled,
No sly cancellations.

In the failing mist I feel, then see his face,
“Tell me your name and I’ll let you go!”

The almighty con, thrones upon the cherubim,
Names me “Israel” but not himself.

With an extorted blessing, a new name, I walk away limping.

This poem and the Hebrew scripture help me understand the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux [2] who, eight centuries ago, wrote:

There are three distinct comings of the Lord I know:

His coming to us
His coming into us, and
His coming against us

The story of Jacob is a disturbing one yet upon him, as a result of his experience at the Jabbok River, the history of Israel rests.

Jacob was the second born of Rebekah, who in birth holds onto the heel of his brother Esau. This is, perhaps, the metaphorical explanation of the dominance of Israel, the 2nd Kingdom, over Judah, the first-born. It was Jacob who tricked poor, dumb Esau out of his birthright over a bowl of porridge in the wilderness. It was Jacob, following the crafty advice of his mother, who rubbed his body with animal fat, covered his arms with fur, and changed the tone of his voice so that he could deceive his ailing, aged, blind father into pronouncing the blessing upon him that belonged to Esau, his brother. It was Jacob, who succeeds by craft and by cunning and, for a while, is neither punished nor ostracized by his family or by God. It was Jacob, whose name means “he who supplants” who suffers no sense of shame, who leaves home only because his brother had threatened to kill him. And by the time of our story this morning Jacob had lived long enough, and as the world measures things, he is a successful and happy man. He decides to return home to the land God had promised him, to Abraham, Isaac and now to him. Yet he is still not reconciled to his brother, and it is through Esau’s land, this threshold to the Land of Promise that he must pass.

Jacob had learned that Esau was coming with an army of 400 men and so to win Esau’s favor, Jacob sends servants ahead with gifts of prized herds in incredible numbers. Then he sends his family and all his belongings away to safety. He spends the night alone on the Jabbok River’s edge. In ancient lore, spirits, ghosts, demons or trolls under the bridge always populate the river’s edge.

Theologian Gerhard von Rad calls this a “spacious narrative.” [3] As the restless activity of Jacob’s mind tests its options in his sleep, which is not the escape that we normally reckon but where what we suppress comes to the surface, he finds himself wrestling/contending with spirits and with his own demons, with the same cunning and determination he had always relied on.

But as hours passed and dawn was breaking, he could see his opponent and it was God. Jacob holds onto his adversary, as he did with Esau’s heel, until he receives a blessing. He crosses the baptismal waters of the Jabbok, wounded/reconciled with himself, his brother, and his God. Which is to say that by the banks of the Jabbok Jacob awoke to the fact that his cunning and trickery were not enough.

In a certain sense Jacob gives up, dies, to relinquish his old ways, his old life of self-delusion to become the new man Israel. He has struggled, been wounded, and received a blessing. As Bernard of Clairvaux explains, God had come to him, into him, and against him so that the new man, Israel, would be born. The paradox of wounding, finding salvation is enacted often in scripture. It is the dedication of the first child, the thorn of St. Paul, and circumcision ritualizes it.

It is indeed a shame that succeeding verses have been omitted for we find Esau returning his brother’s offerings. He is content. Weeping, reconciled, they embrace.

A footnote: Legend has it that the priests who worship at Peniel (that place at the Jabbok is also renamed, it translates “I have seen God and lived,”) limp. They limp as part of their liturgy, they limp as a testimony to the victory of God over our arrogance and self-deceit, and they limp because they know that before the Jabbok can be crossed into the Promised Land one must struggle. And by their limping they declare that God is not outside of this fray but part of it, summing up the paradigm of salvation. That in wounding and brokenness lies new life.

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