New Identity

Genesis 32:22-32 New International Version (NIV)

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” ― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

These are the words of a love-struck woman who is, by the way, in love with the enemy. Juliet is a Capulet; Romeo is a Montague. How many people can recall the reason for the feud between these two families? None is actually given, but we know who the enemy is. Blood has been shed, boundaries have been crossed. And even though they may not know who is to blame for what, they do know the enemy.

What other famous feuds do we know? We have the Capulets and the Montagues, the Hatfields and the McCoys. The Redskins and the Cowboys; Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick (yes, I did a little research). And how about Jacob and Esau.

What do we do with a character like the biblical Jacob? From the very beginning, Jacob has been tangling with others. He shared a womb with his twin brother, Esau, for nine months, and as he came out of the womb, Jacob was grabbing at his brother’s heel, a foretaste the trouble he is going to cause.

The younger child, by only a few minutes, Jacob was always second. His brother was the big, outdoorsy one, hunting and working with his hands. Esau was his father’s favorite. And when it came time to pass on his possessions and a family blessing, Esau stood in position to receive the best of what his father had available.

But Jacob was his mother’s favorite, and together they found a way trick Esau and Jacob’s father, Isaac, into giving Jacob the best of everything. Jacob trades some food for Esau’s birthright, and tricks Isaac into blessing him with the blessing normally designated for the first-born son.

I don’t think I would have liked this young version of Jacob. He was not trustworthy; a bit of a trickster, to say the least. We could argue that the system wasn’t fair; why should Esau get the blessing and the birthright? But that’s not the picture the Bible paints of Jacob. He tricked his brother and his father, and now he has to flee for his life. Big brother is not happy, and as a hunter and outdoorsman, Esau would have had access to a number of weapons.

Yet, when he runs from Esau, we find God blessing Jacob. And surely this says more about God than it does about Jacob. In Genesis 28 we find the story of Jacob, running for his own safety, lying down one night, using a rock for a pillow. There, as he slept, he had a vision of angels, climbing a set a stairs or a ladder. And in verses 13-15, we find God speaking to Jacob, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

In spite of all his deceitfulness and trickery, God has chosen to bless Jacob. And through him all peoples on earth will be blessed. Over the next few chapters, we find Jacob growing, maturing, and developing into a better person. Jacob flees to his uncle, Laban, to find a wife. There he is met with the difficult choice of…which of his cousins he wants to marry. It was a different time and place, people. Hold your judgements!

It is in the process of marrying Leah and Rachel that Jacob learns a lesson or two. Laban pulls the old switcheroo on Jacob and Jacob ends up marrying the wrong sister. Laban is able to trick Jacob into working for him for an extra seven years just to marry the woman he wants to marry. The tables have been turned: the trickster has become the tricked. Jacob and Laban butt heads, on and off, for twenty years. Jacob works for Laban, watching his goat herds, and Laban keeps changing his wages, breaking promises, and altering the plans.

During this time it seems that Jacob learns a lot about breeding goats. But it also seems that Jacob learns what it is like to be on the receiving end of deceit. Twenty years have passed since Jacob left his home community; twenty years have passed since Jacob stole his brother’s birthright and blessing. During this time, Jacob has grown and changed. He isn’t the same man he was twenty years earlier. Now, in chapter 31, verse 3 we find God commanding Jacob, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.”

Sometimes I feel like Jacob. To be clear, I’ve never pretended to be my brother to steal a blessing from my blind father. And I didn’t flee my homeland for my own safety. But I’m not the same person I was twenty years ago. I’m in a different place geographically, but also socially, financially, and spiritually. Twenty years ago, I was a college student, struggling to figure out what my professors wanted from me. Okay, maybe that one hasn’t changed. But I was looking for someone to date and perhaps start a family with. I was living with my parents, with nothing to call my own. And though I was a Christian at the time, I have no problem saying that I am not the same kind of Christian I was twenty years ago.

The last twenty years haven’t been easy for me. I’ve failed more times than I can count. I’ve been hurt more times than I care to recall. I’ve been hurt by people I care about, and I’ve hurt other people. But, like Jacob, I believe I have grown into a better version of myself. I want to challenge you all here, mid sermon, to ask if you are a better version of yourself today than you were twenty years ago. Can we, like Jacob, grow through adversity, disappointment, and pain?

We return to the story of Jacob. God has called him to return to his home country, which is where Esau lives. And while Jacob has grown, we don’t know about Esau. He might still be very angry about that whole deceit and trickery thing. So Jacob sends a messenger ahead, and the messenger returns to tell Jacob that Esau is coming to meet him. You know, just Esau and 400 of his men. Now Jacob is frightened, so he sends some livestock ahead and offers them as a gift to Esau. Jacob sends his wives and children ahead with everything else as well. Jacob hangs back for the night. And that’s when things get weird.

That evening, Jacob meets a stranger. And what would any normal person do when you are camping out along a river and you meet a stranger? You wrestle with them, of course. You wrestle with them all night long. Jacob and this stranger are equally matched, and neither can get the upper hand on the other. The stranger even tries his signature move on Jacob. Every professional wrestler has their own move, and this guy can displace a hip just by touching it. But this too does not work. So the stranger tells Jacob to let him go, but Jacob refuses until the man blesses him. Maybe Jacob still has a few things to learn. He has gone from tricking his father into a blessing to forcing a blessing out of a stranger. But before the stranger gives Jacob his blessing, he gives Jacob something else: a new name. In verse 28 we read, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

Now I want to ask you a serious question. Who was Jacob wrestling? If you look at the chapter headings in your Bible, you will find a couple of different interpretations. But remember, these headings are not a part of the original text. So, did Jacob wrestle a man? Did he wrestle an angel? Or did he wrestle God himself?

Looking at this text alone, the stranger is repeatedly referred to as a man. The man wrestled with him until daybreak. The man touched his hip. The man asked him his name. Was this just some human? Nowhere in this passage does it say that the wrestling partner was an angel, but throughout history the artistic expressions of this text depict this wrestler as an angel. This is because one little line in Hosea 12:4: “[Jacob] struggled with the angel and overcame him; he wept and begged for his favor.”

Why would we say that Jacob wrestled with God? Look again at verse 28, where Jacob is given the name Israel, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

And if we keep reading, who does Jacob believe he was wrestling? Verse 30 says, “So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’”

Please, someone tell me which it is! I’ve got arguments against each of the options. Was it God or an angel? Let’s be honest, Jacob probably would lose either of those fights. Was it a man? I’m wondering how many of you have ever wrestled, like in high school. Or even just hit a punching bag for a bit. Spend a few minutes on a heavy bag sometime and you soon realize just how much work this is. I don’t think Jacob and another man could wrestle all night long. You need a break! And whichever guy is in better condition will overtake the other.

And come on, who just starts wrestling with a stranger when you meet them along a river? It is a weird story, which is one reason I would have been happy to skip over this one.

But that’s the point. I could avoid this story, or I could wrestle with it.

Wrestling with this story doesn’t mean that I have it all figured out. Far from it! The more I look at stories like this, the more commentaries I read, the more questions I have. I said earlier that I’m not the same kind of Christian I was twenty years ago. I’ve admitted this before, and I’ll say it again now. There was a time when I recall thinking to myself, “I’ve got God pretty well figured out.”

Twenty years, and multiple college degrees later, I shake my head at that thought. I sometimes come back to a scene in the movie, Rudy, where Rudy is meeting with a priest, and the priest says something along the lines of, “There are two things I know for sure: There is a God, and I’m not him.” Or, if you’d rather, Aristotle said, “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.”

Twenty years ago, I didn’t even know what questions to be asking, let alone have the answers for the questions I wasn’t asking. And I know that I’m not alone. In the field of psychology, there is something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is considered a cognitive bias where people think that they are smarter than they actually are. This phenomenon occurs in part because people aren’t exposed to other methods of thinking or understanding the world. Or something like that, I’ll admit, I don’t know what’s going on. But I found a helpful illustration that shows how as we gain knowledge and experience, we realize how little we actually understand.

So how does the Dunning-Kruger Effect come into play with our text this morning? I come back to the question, who was Jacob wrestling with: a man, an angel, or God? The answer is, I don’t know. The ancient Jews didn’t know. I’m not sure that Jacob knew. But, we all have our opinions. And I’m of the opinion that Jacob wrestled with them all.

I believe that the entire event of Jacob wrestling with the stranger was a vision of some sort. Jacob had a number of visions during his life, so it wouldn’t surprise me if this was a vision as well. When the stranger tells Jacob that his name will now be Israel because he has wrestled with God and men, I think that is absolutely true. It might be a metaphor, but it is still true. Jacob wrestled with his brother from day one. Jacob wrestled with Laban for twenty years. And Jacob wrestled with God’s leading in his life. And I think that through his wrestling with God and man that Jacob has grown and matured. He doesn’t try to trick his brother Esau when they are reunited. He tries to reconcile with him, not knowing if Esau is going to show up with 400 men and wipe him off the face of the earth. Jacob’s entire life has been a representation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. He has grown, matured, and now has a better understanding.

So what do we make of the limp? Verses 31-32 say, “The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.”

To this day, practicing Jews will not eat what they call the “gid hanasheh,” regardless of which animal it comes from. The gid hanasheh is the sciatic nerve, which I don’t need to tell some of you runs from the spine right through the hip and down the leg. My friends, Jacob had sciatica. Today, an orthodox Jew will not eat a rump roast, sirloin steak, filet mignon, or leg of lamb unless this tendon, the gid hanasheh, has been removed. Gid hanasheh roughly translates as, “the tendon of forgetting.”

Here’s the thing. We’ve all been hurt. We’ve all been abused, misused, and deceived. We’ve all probably abused, misused, and deceived others. Perhaps the last twenty years have been even more difficult for you than they were for Jacob. Perhaps you, like Jacob, have had to wrestle with God and with your fellow man and woman day after day. And perhaps, like Jacob, you’ve come away with a limp. Sometimes, no, often, we come out of these things with a limp. But the story of Jacob is one of learning, growing, hurting, and being hurt, and coming out on the other side of it a better person.

The gid hanasheh is the tendon of forgetting. The Jews don’t eat this tendon, because they don’t want to forget. We wrestle, we hurt, but we grow.