Sunday Sermon - August 2, 2026

The Bible offers welcome to those who struggle with the divine, and in these stories, we hear God's welcome to those who struggle with faith, with God's call, and our place in all of it. In the story of Jacob wrestling with God, we hear this invitation for us as well. 

Reading: Genesis 32:22-32

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Scripture quotations from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Transcript

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A reading from Genesis. At night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, like everything and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, Let me go, for the day is breaking. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he said to him, What is your name? And and he said, Jacob. Then the man said, You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, Please tell me your name. But he said, Why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved. The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel limping because of his hip. The word of the Lord.

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So the the story of the feeding of the multitudes, that's how it often gets named, because, you know, it's 5,000 men plus women and children. Let's not discount them. So feeding of lots of people, right? It's a beautiful story, it's a wonderful story, makes for a great children's sermon because it's fun to tell, the abundance, the feeding, and whatever, right? But then, as I was thinking about which reading to preach on today, I kept staring at that Jacob story. Because sometimes I feel like Jacob's story is a little more in tune with the way our life feels sometimes. Because when we get to this point in Jacob's story, he is very much afraid, uncertain, and lonely. So to recap, because Jacob's story, he's born in, I think it's chapter 25 of Genesis. We're all the way in chapter 32, and Jacob's story keeps going after this. So it's a long story, so I'm not going to tell you every detail. Give you the highlight reel. So Jacob is born, right? Jacob is one of two twins. And in the womb, the boys are wrestling. And poor, the mother of poor of Jacob is absolutely distressed of like, what is up with this? These boys are giving me lots of heartburn. I don't want to deal with this. And so and so the boys are born, and Esau comes first. And then right on his heel, quite literally holding on to his heel, is Jacob. And so Jacob is the second born. And then we kind of skip around to the story a little bit, talk about Isaac for a little bit and all that stuff. And then they're grown up. And Esau loves to go hunting, and Jacob stays home and does kind of the home ex stuff. And Esau comes back from a really long hunting trip and he is starving. He is absolutely famished. He could have been gone for a week and maybe has not eaten much. So he's hungry. And Jacob has made this delicious smelling stew. You walk in the tent and the smell just hits you. And Esau says, Oh, brother, give me something to eat. And Jacob is not necessarily a role model here, because Jacob looks at Esau and says, I'll give you a bowl of stew, but first you must give me your birthright, which would be his inheritance. Seems a high price for a bowl of stew. But Esau is starving, and so he says, Okay, fine, I'm gonna die if I don't eat soon. Take the inheritance, give me the stew. So they go on for a bit. And then Isaac, their dad, is starting to get old, and he wants to bless his son, his eldest son, his favorite, Esau. And so Rebecca, their mother, hears this and says, Hey Jacob, come here. You're my favorite. I want you to get the blessing. And so she covers Jacob's arms with goat hair, because Esau's very hairy, and they're twins, so they sound very similar. And Rebecca sends Jacob in, and Isaac says, Who's there? And Jacob goes, Why, it's Esau, your eldest. You should bless me. And Isaac is kind of blind. So Isaac touches him, feels the hairy arms, smells Esau's clothes, and says, All right, and gives him this beautiful blessing. Esau comes home, realizes Jacob has stolen the blessing, and Esau then vows to kill Jacob. He's like, I'm done with you. You're too much. So Jacob flees the area and finds a relative and says, Hey, your daughter's really pretty. I want to marry her. And he's told he has to work for seven years. So he works for seven years. And then he's the dad of the women. Like, well, you can't marry her because she's the youngest. You got to marry the oldest one first. Okay. And then he marries her. And then another seven years goes by. He finally earns the right to marry the other one. And life is great. And then he says, Well, I've worked for you enough. And I want to strike out on my own again. So they strike a deal to figure out how much of the herd Jacob gets to take with him. And then Jacob figures out a way to kind of, I don't know how this works genetically, but trick the animals to giving birth to certain colors and patterns so that he gets more animals. And so Jacob basically finds ways to trick the owner of the herds to give him more stuff. And Jacob is heading back and he's told to go back to his homeland, which is where Esau is. So Jacob throughout his story is crafty, he's a trickster, and he is not necessarily someone you would want to call a role model for all of us. So he's on his way to Esau, and someone scouts ahead and says, Oh, your brother's coming, and he has 400 men with him to come and meet you. And Jacob is thinking about the last time he saw his brother, his brother vowed to kill him. And now he's coming with 400 men. So Jacob splits up his stuff, his people, sends them into two different groups, and he sends the women and the children ahead of him. He's like, You go, he won't hurt you. And he hangs back. So now Jacob is sitting there on the other side of the river. No one is with him. He is wildly and painfully alone. And he is scared because his brother, who had vowed to kill him, is coming to greet him with 400 men, and he doesn't stand a chance. So Jacob camps alone at night, scared, afraid, uncertain. And then this man shows up. This man who then immediately jumps into a wrestling match with Jacob. And it is dark. Jacob has no idea who this man is, but he is wrestling, and Jacob, who is afraid for his life right now, decides that he is going to fight for his life. And so he wrestles and he refuses to give up and he struggles and he is struck on the hip, such that I don't know, tears a tendon or something. And he has this limp and still he refuses to let go. He says, No, I will not let go until you bless me, until you promise life and goodness for me after this. I will not let go because Jacob is still fighting for his life. And so the man blesses him. He blesses him and says, You have striven with people and with God. And suddenly that man who is wrestling with Jacob in the dark is revealed to be God. This God wrestled with Jacob. This God who has been with Jacob throughout this whole craftiness, trickiness phase of his life, but has not really been necessarily at Jacob's forefront, other than saying, Well, God has blessed me, and that's why all the animals are speckled and I get to keep them. And so Jacob wrestles with God. And in this story, we hear of a God who wants to engage with us, who wants to wrestle and struggle with us. Because let's be abundantly clear. If God wanted to win this wrestling match, I don't think there would be a problem. I think God can take Jacob. I don't know if Jacob is like a WWE wrestler. I don't know if he's like a black belt in jujitsu, but I think God can take him. Instead, God chooses to wrestle with Jacob, to stay in it, to encourage Jacob to fight, to wrestle, to engage, to invite Jacob's uncertainty and persistence, and to bring everything that Jacob had in that space and bring it all into that fight. The fear, the uncertainty, the intensity of the moment. In that struggle, God welcomes and invites all of that. And then blesses Jacob and says, No longer shall you be called Jacob, which is related to the word wrestle, but it's also related to the word heal. It's kind of a complicated name. No longer shall you be called Jacob. You shall be called Israel. And Israel means one who struggles with God. And that is the name of the Israelite people. Ones who struggle with God. It's quite a blessing. Little bit of an intimidating blessing, but quite a blessing. So now I want to actually go back to Matthew for a second. So hold all that in your brains. The disciples, they are having their own little wrestling match as they go back and forth with Jesus. Jesus says, feed the people, and the disciples say, ow! We have like enough to feed maybe a hundred people if they're not really hungry. And we have 5,000 plus. And Jesus says, do it. And they do. But all throughout this, you hear them struggling and grappling and trying to figure out how to participate in what Jesus is doing. And the answer is they just hang in there. They keep on persisting, they keep on engaging, committing to that relationship of trust that they have built with Jesus. Jesus says, take the bread and feed the people. Okay, they take the bread and they feed the people. Jesus says, take the fish and feed the people. Okay. And then Jesus says, collect the leftovers. And I can imagine the disciples going, what leftovers? How on earth can there be leftovers? Yet they go out, and there are leftovers. Throughout Scripture, we have so many instances where there are people who are struggling, not only struggling with the daily concept of life of getting food on their tables and healing from their sicknesses and community out of their loneliness, but people who are struggling with their relationship with God. That's in our scripture, which leaves room for us. Because in the wrestling that Jacob does with God, in the back and forth arguing the disciples do with Jesus, the fighting means that they have not walked away from God and that God has not walked away from them. Because both the people and God have skin in the game. They have a commitment to this relationship. They refuse to let go both sides of the equation. Jacob refuses to let go of God, and God refuses to let go of Jacob, despite Jacob's iffy role model status. The disciples refuse to let go of Jesus, and Jesus refuses to let go of the disciples because again, if Jesus wanted to, he could have fed those people by himself. But he didn't. Faith is not just simple obedience. Faith is refusing to let go. Faith is tenacious and persistent. That's the story we hear in these readings. That that is not only allowed, but God welcomes that struggle, naming the namesake of the entirety of the Jewish people, Israel, one who struggles with God. And there are times when faith is easy, when it is fine, when everything seems like it's, you know, two friends hanging out going out to dinner. But there are times when you look at the world, when you look at friends who are struggling, when you look at your own struggles in your own lives, and you say, God, where are you? I just I can't see you now. And so we struggle, we wrestle, we fight, we stay in it, we stay with our tenacious faith. And we ask God, God, bless us. And then God says, I've been here this whole time, struggling with you, wrestling with you, being engaged with you in this whole process. And you are blessed. You are blessed beyond belief. After this scene, Jacob goes on, limping, presumably for the rest of his life, marked by the struggle, but blessed all the same. And he meets Esau, and Esau welcomes him. And Jacob tries to give him gifts, and Esau says, I have plenty. Keep what you need. Let your women and children rest, water your camels. And Esau welcomes him. Faith is sometimes hard. But God welcomes the struggle. When we are fearful, uncertain, and lonely, feeling like Jacob on that bank, not sure what's gonna happen across the river, with no one there as backup, when it feels like something is hitting us out of the blue and we don't know what to do. We hold on for dear life. Because we know that God is with us in the struggle. It doesn't make that struggle good and wonderful. Jacob did not earn superpowers out of the struggle. He earned a limp. He got hurt. The struggle is real, the pain is real. But so is God's blessing that is there in the midst of the struggle. Sometimes life feels a lot more like that Jacob story. So I encourage you, hang on, wrestle, struggle. God is with you. And reach out to others. Because unlike Jacob, we're not alone. We are not on a side of a bank in the dark by ourselves. We are in a community of people who want to love you, who want to embrace you, who want to say, I see your struggle and I am here with you in the midst of it. Because that's what disciples are. Disciples are struggling together, grappling together, and participating in what God is up to together. Just like those disciples on that bank of that river or that lake, feeding all the people. God welcomes the struggle. God welcomes you, and God bless you. Amen.