The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost August 2, 2026 with The Rev. Angela Compton-Nelson.

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp13_RCL.html

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:48

I shall see your face. When I am awake, I shall be satisfied beholding your likeness. In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, if you happen to be tired of hearing about Jacob and his conniving, deceiving ways, I'm sorry to report that today is not your day. We hold the story of Jacob, this most likable and unlikable and dimensional of characters in view just a little while longer. And while we do not resolve Jacob's story, we bear witness to a significant transformation for him and for the whole people of God. I'm starting to imagine Genesis this summer as a series of overlapping transparencies, like from those old overhead projectors. The larger story of God and what God is doing in creation makes up the base layer, and then over this, a series of stories and generations beginning and ending, nesting within one another, all different lengths. The dynamic relationship between the individual and the community of God's people is highlighted in a series of character studies that happen within the context of the whole. The overall effect is story layered on story, each explaining another, each posing new questions. For every event that concludes or story that solves a problem, a new story and a new problem arises in its place, and another story remains hanging in the balance, unanswered. This is just one way of thinking about Genesis and what the story is doing. And today's story, Jacob's wrestling through the night with God, is a moment with an unusually high number of overlapping transparencies. The story of the people of Israel called Israel, being called Israel, has a new beginning. And God's naming Jacob Israel. The story of God's relationship with Jacob and Jacob's carrying of the covenant, having started much earlier in the story on another similar dark night in the wilderness, finds a bookend. Meanwhile, the story of Jacob and Esau's great conflict, of Jacob's deception and his flight from Esau's murderous rage hangs in the balance. The climactic resolution to the story is held off for yet another chapter. And each of these moments deserves some attention, beginning with the last in the list. In all of the details over the past few Sundays, we may have lost sight, or at least lost the sense of suspense that makes up one of the central questions of Jacob's life. When Jacob and Esau see one another again, will Jacob be received as a brother, or will he be rejected as a foe? The pages of the story of Jacob, and we will soon see the pages of his sons, are haunted by one of Scripture's earliest stories, Cain and Abel, the first siblings whose mysterious rivalry ends in murder. Already at war in the womb and born grasping at his brother's heel, Jacob spends much of his life in rivalry with Esau, taking from his brother and father by deception, and then fleeing in fear for his life. In this week's story, that rivalry and justified anger remains unresolved. It hangs in the balance, its possibilities and outcomes still unknown. But at this point in the story, with every move across the wilderness landscape, Jacob moves closer and closer to seeing his brother again. So the stakes of the encounter are as high as they have ever been. In this story, Jacob is alone at night in the wilderness because having received word that Esau is nearby, he has sent everyone ahead of him to meet Esau first. For the full weight of what is at stake for Jacob in the story, hold on to this question about what will happen with Jacob and Esau, because it contains the angst and urgency of Jacob's plea with the stranger in the night. And not to give away the end of the story. While this question will be addressed for the two brothers, the fear and anxiety that it creates remains with Jacob as he raises his own sons. Cain and Abel continue to haunt the story's pages as Jacob watches his sons contend with one another. He lives in fear of what they will do as their own tensions arise, and as it turns out, he's not wrong to worry about that. This brings us to a second feature of the stories in Genesis that is at play in today's scene. The writers often tie two stories together by placing a character in the same setting twice. This setting, the wilderness by night, is a place of decreation, of exile and loneliness, a place of danger and limit, where characters are stripped of everything, even their most essential needs, everything but their questions. Near the start of his story, Jacob was fleeing for his life from Esau and heading toward his uncle in Haran. Having received what he wanted by trickery, he retains nothing of ultimate importance. But here, alone and in a dream, he bears witness to a sight of God's presence in the world, a ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, and he sees the Lord and hears the covenant promise. I am the Lord your God of Abraham, the God of Isaac. All the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. In today's story, Jacob is again alone in the wilderness and at night. And a lot has happened since the first time he was in this same position. In the intervening years, Jacob has become husband first to Leah and then to Rachel, separated by seven years. Jacob and his father-in-law Laban have lived in constant tension and conflict before finally Jacob flees from him. And when Jacob and Laban finally meet up again, they make a covenant and part ways with Jacob promising not to go north where his uncle is again. He's cornered on all sides by places he can't go. Not for nothing, he's once again leading a family member with whom he's in conflict, out wandering in the desert, when an old problem becomes a current problem. Because, what do you know? Jacob and his people begin to hear reports that Esau and 400 of his men are in the vicinity, and Jacob is quaking in his boots. He arranges gifts that he sends to Esau to assuage his anger. And then at the start of our passage, under the cover of darkness, he sends his family and belongings across the Jabbok River. And we, as the readers, are left with Jacob, a lone figure in the wilderness, perfectly set up for a good old-fashioned dark night of the soul. And this is exactly what we get. A stranger, a man, wrestles with Jacob through the night. On realizing that he will not prevail, the man strikes Jacob's hip socket and asks to be released from the brawl, to which Jacob responds, I will not let you go without a blessing. This demand for a blessing is one of the most interesting features of this story. From the very beginning of Jacob's story, he's been marked out for a blessing. And yet for his entire life, he's fought for it instead. Such a common theme in the stories from Genesis. We're right to spend a moment on it. The thing that God has promised to give to Jacob is the thing he keeps on demanding. Here he's quite literally wrestling with an unnamed stranger and demanding a blessing that he already has. And we might ask, why? What is Jacob's story reflecting back to us about the reality of being human? And what of sharing about what it means to be in covenant relationship with God? What is it telling us? As they part ways, Jacob receives a blessing in the form of his hip being popped out of joint. He's marked by this struggle, the struggle of his whole life gathered into one night. And he is blessed by a new name, Israel. A name which maintains the meaning of a struggle, a name that divides Jacob's life into the time before and the time after, right on the cusp of his reunion with Esau. And a name that suggests the continuity of Jacob's identity. Jacob has always been this person who struggles with God. Jacob has also always been the recipient of God's covenant promises. Part of the task has been to help Jacob see, to see that in such a way that he stops reaching for it, taking it, stops reaching and taking what has already been given to him. And this is where I think our final feature of the story belongs. Israel's early named ancestors are told parallel to the story of the whole people of Israel, different permutations of the story of God in vignettes. While this is true of Genesis as a whole, it's right in our face in this story, because the personal name given to Jacob is also the corporate name given to God's people. And I think this is important because it sets the groundwork for the relationship between God and the people of Israel who will find themselves in constant struggle. The struggle is a feature, not a bug, of the people's life with God. To take God seriously is also to question how and why the world is the way that it is. To take being a human creature seriously is to live in the complexity of human existence and relationship and hold it up before God and demand a blessing. Being in a covenant relationship with God does not guarantee blessing without struggle. They're intimately tied together. Struggle is key to becoming a trusting recipient of God's grace. And in the very end of it all, how the world knows and is blessed by God through this particular and imperfect people. Thanks be to God. Amen.