The Struggle for Blessing
11th Sunday after Pentecost
Jacob is the third of the great patriarchs – he is introduced to us in chapter 25 of the book of Genesis. And it turns out that his story is the story of the last 25 chapters of the book. It is his story that ultimately becomes our story – for we too, by our grafting into the branch of Israel, are descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By our spiritual adoption, we are children of Israel as well.
We pick up with Jacob this morning in chapter 32. Last week we studied the story of Jacob marrying first weak-eyed Leah, and then Rachel. Several weeks before that, we left the story of Abraham just after he took his son Isaac to the top of mount Moriah to take his life as a sacrifice to Jehovah God. The succeeding chapters find Isaac leaving Abraham – wonder why?? – and taking a wife. He marries Rebekah. They have two children, Esau and Jacob – twins, actually. But Esau comes first – the first-born of Isaac. Like many children, they take after different parents – Esau more the outdoorsman – hunter, gatherer – and Jacob more the country gentleman, preferring the company of his mother and the coolness of the tents. Then comes the event – you know, the event in which Rebekah helps Jacob con old Isaac out of the blessing that is intended for the first-born.
As the lads grew, it became obvious that Esau was Isaac’s favorite, and Jacob was Rebekah’s favorite. Esau became quite the hunter, but like most hunters, didn’t score every time he went out into the field. One day he came in from an afternoon hunt, was looking for something to eat, and Jacob was hovering over a pot of stew. Esau asks for a bowl, and Jacob obliges – first making sure to sell the stew for Esau’s birthright. Esau didn’t think very much of his place in the lineage, or perhaps he knew that he was Isaac’s favorite, and counted on that favoritism, and so he gladly sold his birthright for a bowl of soup.
You can hardly read it anymore because of the fading, but out there on my pickup is a front license plate that has a picture of a deer, and the scriptural reference, Genesis 27:3. It reads best from the King James, I think – “Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison.” None of the other translations mention deer hunting, but evidently that was a pretty big thing back in 1691 when King Jimmy was having the bible translated into the “King’s English,” and as a hunter, I am oh, so grateful. But it is really the next verse that gives us a little perspective on our lesson for today. This is where the story starts to get really good. Verse 4 – “and prepare a savory dish for me such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, so that my soul may bless you before I die.” The blessing – so common among families – is about to be passed from father to son – to the first-born son. It is the blessing of promise. In this particular family, it is the blessing of God – first promised to Abraham, and then to Isaac. Now it is to be passed to the next of kin – the first-born son, Esau. But that doesn’t happen. We know the story. Rebekah helps Jacob pull a fast one. She was listening outside the tent, perhaps knowing that the time for the blessing was coming near, and she had a favorite son – Jacob. Rebekah sends Jacob to kill a couple of kids – young goats – and she helps him prepare a stew. He reminds her that his “older” brother is a hairy man, and so she helps him some more by dressing him in his brother’s clothes, and then lashing some kid goat hide to his arms and the back of his neck. He goes in to Isaac, feeds him the goat stew (mixed with enough herbs, I suspect, to taste like venison), and then receives his father’s blessing. Later in the day, the deception is revealed, Esau receives a sub-standard blessing – really all that his father could offer him at this point – and the stage is set for a conflict. As far as I’m concerned, this story has to be true – you couldn’t make this stuff up!!
Fast forward to chapter 28. The deception having been pulled off flawlessly, the brothers virtually at each other’s throats with the threat from Esau to take Jacob’s life the next time he sees him, Isaac makes the decision to send Jacob off to his uncle’s country to find a wife. On the way, Jacob has a dream – the ladder dream – and in that dream, he receives confirmation from God that God will bless Jacob as the heir to Abraham and Isaac. That little tid-bit, in and of itself, is reason for us to take seriously our verbal commitments toward God. God honors that which Isaac had said, even in deception, and he chooses to bless Jacob, rather than Esau, as the son of the promise.
Now we discover that Jacob arrives in Paddan-aram, where he makes contact with uncle Laban. Actually, he makes contact with Rachel first. He meets her at the sheep pen, rolls the stone away from the well so that her sheep can get a drink, and then he kisses her – I don’t suspect it was a peck on the cheek. He was smitten. But uncle Laban tricks the trickster, marries off the older daughter first, and makes an arrangement for his younger daughter, the one Jacob truly loved.
Now, we had to do all of that to make sense of our text for today. Chapter 32 – both of the boys, Esau and Jacob – have married, and settled into their respective lives. As brothers are sometimes wont to do, they begin to consider what kind of life their sibling might have discovered. Jacob decides to try to make things right with his brother, so he sends some of his men to tell Esau that he is alive and well in Haran, and would be willing to share his wealth with his brother if he would forgive him. They do what they are told, and return to report to Jacob that Esau is making his way toward Jacob – with 400 men, nonetheless. Not surprisingly, Jacob assumes that Esau is on his way to revenge the loss of his birthright and his father’s blessing. We probably would have thought the same thing. Jacob decides to make a stand, and offer what consolation he can to his brother. So, he sends half the herd toward Esau, praying to God that this offering will appease his “older” brother. Then he crosses the stream to spend the night.
Now, this is where the story gets really good. Jacob has another dream. At least we think it was a dream. The text is a little unclear. And during this dream, Jacob wrestles with an angel. At least we think it was an angel – again, the text is a little unclear. Some versions say he wrestled with a “man.” Whatever the case, the next details are rather clear. They wrestle all night, and toward daybreak, the angel touches the hip socket of Jacob, dislocating his hip. He doesn’t give up. The angel asks for him to relent, and he says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And so, the angel blesses him, and names him Israel, “because you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”
One of the great tools of modern psychotherapy is the examination of family systems. The psychologist will delve into the hidden recesses of the counselee’s mind by talking about their current family system and their family of origin – mom, dad, siblings, grandparents, etc– hoping to discover some clue as to why the counselee feels the way they do, why they make the decisions they make, what motivates them – that kind of question. Those who are willing to take the risk to do this kind of intense, difficult work generally find themselves more enlightened, if not more equipped for life.
Often that work includes the discussion of family blessing. Who received “the blessing,” from whom, and why. In a way, the “family blessing” is a blessing of family, and maybe more importantly, an acknowledgement of the precious nature of a single individual’s contribution to the story of that family by those who have already contributed to that story. It is passed on from fathers to sons, mothers to daughters, and from fathers to daughters and mothers to sons. This “blessing” is rather indispensable in the development of well adjusted adolescents who then eventually become contributing members of society, and even leaders in their communities.
Some day I will rewrite this sermon from the perspective of the psychiatrist talking to Jacob about his need for blessing. That need came out of his struggle with life. Jacob needed blessing in his life. He came out of a family system in which his aged grandfather actually planned to kill his father for the sake of a blessing from God that he might be “the father of many nations.” As far as we can tell, that action permanently destroyed the relationship between his father and his grandfather. Both of those men had such difficulty with fear that they were willing to deny being married to their wives for the sake of their own lives. Jacob’s father had only the one wife, Rebekah, and she had only the two boys, twins. Jacob received a lifelong blessing from his mother, but he craved a blessing from his father, who naturally had offered his “blessing” of life to the firstborn son, Esau. So, Jacob “connived” a blessing, with the help of his mother, only to discover that such trickery usually turns against the perpetrator. He is more or less banished from his homeland, makes a deal for his wife, is tricked into marrying a woman he doesn’t love, makes another deal for Rachel, ends up having, at this point, eleven children by four different women, and now finds himself in a familial struggle with his only sibling, his past, and most probably his future and his promised blessing.
Jacob has striven with man – actually with all kinds of people – so much that we remember him as “the trickster.” His life is a convoluted mixture of deception, greed, desire, unsatisfied expectations and unfulfilled dreams. He has done all that he knows to do with mankind, and he comes up short. There has to be something else. There has to be more.
Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like our lives? We struggle, we connive, we posture, we prepare, we accumulate, we procreate – only to come up short and need more in our lives. We still need a blessing.
Listen, friends. We have the larger picture of this saga. When we speak of Jewish people today, we understand the lineage. We refer to them as sons of Abraham. We acknowledge their descendence from Isaac, the original child of the promise. But we know the Jewish people as the “children of Israel.” We know of them in this way, because it was Jacob who received the ultimate blessing – the blessing of immortality. It is his sons who become the twelve tribes of Israel. He received this blessing because he did something that Abraham could not do – he struggled with God until he prevailed. He received this blessing because he did something that Isaac would not do – he struggled with God until he prevailed. This “trickster” knew that what he had manipulated and created for himself was not enough, and he knew where he could get what would satisfy his yearning for blessing, and when opportunity presented itself, he struggled with God, and held on until he prevailed.
Walter Brueggemann says of this exchange, “The upshot is a new name and, by implication, a new being. Jacob had asked for a blessing. Perhaps he dreamed of security, land, more sons. But what he got was a new identity through an assault from God. He had been named Jacob -- 'heel/trickster/over-reacher/supplanter.' Each of these is true, but not flattering. Now he is 'Israel.' The etymology of 'Israel' is disputed. Perhaps it means "god rules", "god preserves," "God protects." But whatever the etymology, a new being has been called forth. He is now a man (and a community) linked not only to a nemesis of the night but to a promise-keeper of the day. Something happens in this transaction that is irreversible. Israel is something new in the world. Power has shifted between God and humankind. Israel is the one who has faced God, been touched by God, prevailed, gained a blessing, and been renamed. There is something new underway here about the weakness of God and the strength of Israel . . . new possibilities are open to Israel that have not been available before. In the giving of the blessing something of the power of God has been entrusted to Israel. Unlike every other such relation in which God rules and humankind obeys, Israel is a newness which has prevailed with God.”[1]
I know that in our time of rampant, hyper-conservative theology that it is not popular to suggest that we strive with God. We are more likely to receive advice that suggests we submit to God, or that we pray about the matter for a little longer. But our forefather, Jacob, becomes known as Israel, the father of many nations, because he slugged it out with God, and he prevailed. The lesson for us is clear – as children of God, we are not only privileged to “scrap it out” with God, rather, it is indeed expected of us. God is not particularly worried about us getting too big for our britches. Even Jacob knew his place – he named that place where he struggled with God “Peniel,” saying, “I have seen God face-to-face and lived to tell the story!”[2]
This life is difficult. We search for human blessing. Some find it, others never do. We search for achievement. Some find it, others search their entire lives, only to come up short. We search for God’s blessing. Some, like Abraham, discover the promise short lived, and eventually handed off to the next generation. Some, like Isaac, are so wounded by life that they seem unwilling to struggle for anything else.
The promise of the story of Jacob is that our struggle with God calls for perseverance, tenacity - even relentless stubbornness. But we do not give up – we do not give up on God, and we do not give up on ourselves. This holy tension – this holy struggle – is what God wants.
So, grafted children of Israel – adopted children of the promise – struggle with God until you receive your blessing.
Richard W. Dunn, Ph.D.
[1] Brueggemann, Interpretation Genesis Commentary, page 268-9
[2] This week, all scripture references are from the NASV, except for the quote of Gen.27:3, which is from KJV, and this particular quote, Gen 32:30, which is from Peterson’s The Message.
Genesis 32:22-31
Jacob is the third of the great patriarchs – he is introduced to us in chapter 25 of the book of Genesis. And it turns out that his story is the story of the last 25 chapters of the book. It is his story that ultimately becomes our story – for we too, by our grafting into the branch of Israel, are descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By our spiritual adoption, we are children of Israel as well.
We pick up with Jacob this morning in chapter 32. Last week we studied the story of Jacob marrying first weak-eyed Leah, and then Rachel. Several weeks before that, we left the story of Abraham just after he took his son Isaac to the top of mount Moriah to take his life as a sacrifice to Jehovah God. The succeeding chapters find Isaac leaving Abraham – wonder why?? – and taking a wife. He marries Rebekah. They have two children, Esau and Jacob – twins, actually. But Esau comes first – the first-born of Isaac. Like many children, they take after different parents – Esau more the outdoorsman – hunter, gatherer – and Jacob more the country gentleman, preferring the company of his mother and the coolness of the tents. Then comes the event – you know, the event in which Rebekah helps Jacob con old Isaac out of the blessing that is intended for the first-born.
As the lads grew, it became obvious that Esau was Isaac’s favorite, and Jacob was Rebekah’s favorite. Esau became quite the hunter, but like most hunters, didn’t score every time he went out into the field. One day he came in from an afternoon hunt, was looking for something to eat, and Jacob was hovering over a pot of stew. Esau asks for a bowl, and Jacob obliges – first making sure to sell the stew for Esau’s birthright. Esau didn’t think very much of his place in the lineage, or perhaps he knew that he was Isaac’s favorite, and counted on that favoritism, and so he gladly sold his birthright for a bowl of soup.
You can hardly read it anymore because of the fading, but out there on my pickup is a front license plate that has a picture of a deer, and the scriptural reference, Genesis 27:3. It reads best from the King James, I think – “Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison.” None of the other translations mention deer hunting, but evidently that was a pretty big thing back in 1691 when King Jimmy was having the bible translated into the “King’s English,” and as a hunter, I am oh, so grateful. But it is really the next verse that gives us a little perspective on our lesson for today. This is where the story starts to get really good. Verse 4 – “and prepare a savory dish for me such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, so that my soul may bless you before I die.” The blessing – so common among families – is about to be passed from father to son – to the first-born son. It is the blessing of promise. In this particular family, it is the blessing of God – first promised to Abraham, and then to Isaac. Now it is to be passed to the next of kin – the first-born son, Esau. But that doesn’t happen. We know the story. Rebekah helps Jacob pull a fast one. She was listening outside the tent, perhaps knowing that the time for the blessing was coming near, and she had a favorite son – Jacob. Rebekah sends Jacob to kill a couple of kids – young goats – and she helps him prepare a stew. He reminds her that his “older” brother is a hairy man, and so she helps him some more by dressing him in his brother’s clothes, and then lashing some kid goat hide to his arms and the back of his neck. He goes in to Isaac, feeds him the goat stew (mixed with enough herbs, I suspect, to taste like venison), and then receives his father’s blessing. Later in the day, the deception is revealed, Esau receives a sub-standard blessing – really all that his father could offer him at this point – and the stage is set for a conflict. As far as I’m concerned, this story has to be true – you couldn’t make this stuff up!!
Fast forward to chapter 28. The deception having been pulled off flawlessly, the brothers virtually at each other’s throats with the threat from Esau to take Jacob’s life the next time he sees him, Isaac makes the decision to send Jacob off to his uncle’s country to find a wife. On the way, Jacob has a dream – the ladder dream – and in that dream, he receives confirmation from God that God will bless Jacob as the heir to Abraham and Isaac. That little tid-bit, in and of itself, is reason for us to take seriously our verbal commitments toward God. God honors that which Isaac had said, even in deception, and he chooses to bless Jacob, rather than Esau, as the son of the promise.
Now we discover that Jacob arrives in Paddan-aram, where he makes contact with uncle Laban. Actually, he makes contact with Rachel first. He meets her at the sheep pen, rolls the stone away from the well so that her sheep can get a drink, and then he kisses her – I don’t suspect it was a peck on the cheek. He was smitten. But uncle Laban tricks the trickster, marries off the older daughter first, and makes an arrangement for his younger daughter, the one Jacob truly loved.
Now, we had to do all of that to make sense of our text for today. Chapter 32 – both of the boys, Esau and Jacob – have married, and settled into their respective lives. As brothers are sometimes wont to do, they begin to consider what kind of life their sibling might have discovered. Jacob decides to try to make things right with his brother, so he sends some of his men to tell Esau that he is alive and well in Haran, and would be willing to share his wealth with his brother if he would forgive him. They do what they are told, and return to report to Jacob that Esau is making his way toward Jacob – with 400 men, nonetheless. Not surprisingly, Jacob assumes that Esau is on his way to revenge the loss of his birthright and his father’s blessing. We probably would have thought the same thing. Jacob decides to make a stand, and offer what consolation he can to his brother. So, he sends half the herd toward Esau, praying to God that this offering will appease his “older” brother. Then he crosses the stream to spend the night.
Now, this is where the story gets really good. Jacob has another dream. At least we think it was a dream. The text is a little unclear. And during this dream, Jacob wrestles with an angel. At least we think it was an angel – again, the text is a little unclear. Some versions say he wrestled with a “man.” Whatever the case, the next details are rather clear. They wrestle all night, and toward daybreak, the angel touches the hip socket of Jacob, dislocating his hip. He doesn’t give up. The angel asks for him to relent, and he says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And so, the angel blesses him, and names him Israel, “because you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”
One of the great tools of modern psychotherapy is the examination of family systems. The psychologist will delve into the hidden recesses of the counselee’s mind by talking about their current family system and their family of origin – mom, dad, siblings, grandparents, etc– hoping to discover some clue as to why the counselee feels the way they do, why they make the decisions they make, what motivates them – that kind of question. Those who are willing to take the risk to do this kind of intense, difficult work generally find themselves more enlightened, if not more equipped for life.
Often that work includes the discussion of family blessing. Who received “the blessing,” from whom, and why. In a way, the “family blessing” is a blessing of family, and maybe more importantly, an acknowledgement of the precious nature of a single individual’s contribution to the story of that family by those who have already contributed to that story. It is passed on from fathers to sons, mothers to daughters, and from fathers to daughters and mothers to sons. This “blessing” is rather indispensable in the development of well adjusted adolescents who then eventually become contributing members of society, and even leaders in their communities.
Some day I will rewrite this sermon from the perspective of the psychiatrist talking to Jacob about his need for blessing. That need came out of his struggle with life. Jacob needed blessing in his life. He came out of a family system in which his aged grandfather actually planned to kill his father for the sake of a blessing from God that he might be “the father of many nations.” As far as we can tell, that action permanently destroyed the relationship between his father and his grandfather. Both of those men had such difficulty with fear that they were willing to deny being married to their wives for the sake of their own lives. Jacob’s father had only the one wife, Rebekah, and she had only the two boys, twins. Jacob received a lifelong blessing from his mother, but he craved a blessing from his father, who naturally had offered his “blessing” of life to the firstborn son, Esau. So, Jacob “connived” a blessing, with the help of his mother, only to discover that such trickery usually turns against the perpetrator. He is more or less banished from his homeland, makes a deal for his wife, is tricked into marrying a woman he doesn’t love, makes another deal for Rachel, ends up having, at this point, eleven children by four different women, and now finds himself in a familial struggle with his only sibling, his past, and most probably his future and his promised blessing.
Jacob has striven with man – actually with all kinds of people – so much that we remember him as “the trickster.” His life is a convoluted mixture of deception, greed, desire, unsatisfied expectations and unfulfilled dreams. He has done all that he knows to do with mankind, and he comes up short. There has to be something else. There has to be more.
Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like our lives? We struggle, we connive, we posture, we prepare, we accumulate, we procreate – only to come up short and need more in our lives. We still need a blessing.
Listen, friends. We have the larger picture of this saga. When we speak of Jewish people today, we understand the lineage. We refer to them as sons of Abraham. We acknowledge their descendence from Isaac, the original child of the promise. But we know the Jewish people as the “children of Israel.” We know of them in this way, because it was Jacob who received the ultimate blessing – the blessing of immortality. It is his sons who become the twelve tribes of Israel. He received this blessing because he did something that Abraham could not do – he struggled with God until he prevailed. He received this blessing because he did something that Isaac would not do – he struggled with God until he prevailed. This “trickster” knew that what he had manipulated and created for himself was not enough, and he knew where he could get what would satisfy his yearning for blessing, and when opportunity presented itself, he struggled with God, and held on until he prevailed.
Walter Brueggemann says of this exchange, “The upshot is a new name and, by implication, a new being. Jacob had asked for a blessing. Perhaps he dreamed of security, land, more sons. But what he got was a new identity through an assault from God. He had been named Jacob -- 'heel/trickster/over-reacher/supplanter.' Each of these is true, but not flattering. Now he is 'Israel.' The etymology of 'Israel' is disputed. Perhaps it means "god rules", "god preserves," "God protects." But whatever the etymology, a new being has been called forth. He is now a man (and a community) linked not only to a nemesis of the night but to a promise-keeper of the day. Something happens in this transaction that is irreversible. Israel is something new in the world. Power has shifted between God and humankind. Israel is the one who has faced God, been touched by God, prevailed, gained a blessing, and been renamed. There is something new underway here about the weakness of God and the strength of Israel . . . new possibilities are open to Israel that have not been available before. In the giving of the blessing something of the power of God has been entrusted to Israel. Unlike every other such relation in which God rules and humankind obeys, Israel is a newness which has prevailed with God.”[1]
I know that in our time of rampant, hyper-conservative theology that it is not popular to suggest that we strive with God. We are more likely to receive advice that suggests we submit to God, or that we pray about the matter for a little longer. But our forefather, Jacob, becomes known as Israel, the father of many nations, because he slugged it out with God, and he prevailed. The lesson for us is clear – as children of God, we are not only privileged to “scrap it out” with God, rather, it is indeed expected of us. God is not particularly worried about us getting too big for our britches. Even Jacob knew his place – he named that place where he struggled with God “Peniel,” saying, “I have seen God face-to-face and lived to tell the story!”[2]
This life is difficult. We search for human blessing. Some find it, others never do. We search for achievement. Some find it, others search their entire lives, only to come up short. We search for God’s blessing. Some, like Abraham, discover the promise short lived, and eventually handed off to the next generation. Some, like Isaac, are so wounded by life that they seem unwilling to struggle for anything else.
The promise of the story of Jacob is that our struggle with God calls for perseverance, tenacity - even relentless stubbornness. But we do not give up – we do not give up on God, and we do not give up on ourselves. This holy tension – this holy struggle – is what God wants.
So, grafted children of Israel – adopted children of the promise – struggle with God until you receive your blessing.
Richard W. Dunn, Ph.D.
[1] Brueggemann, Interpretation Genesis Commentary, page 268-9
[2] This week, all scripture references are from the NASV, except for the quote of Gen.27:3, which is from KJV, and this particular quote, Gen 32:30, which is from Peterson’s The Message.
posted by the sojourning pilgrim | 9:00 AM
2 Comments:
Pastor,
I know that you felt like this sermon missed the mark, but I would remind you that you are reviewing for us territory that is often pushed to the back. Whether that is by plan or by our uncomfortableness...it happens, this is not the feel good stuff...but it is the thoughtful stuff that sometimes you have to bring to us, even if we kick and scream.
God's work amoung us has not always been clean and pretty. I for one am reassured by that, the recipients of his love have been cheaters and liars...just like me...and yet he used them for his purpose...yes, I feel at home with this crew of folks...
Pont
Ditto.
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