Broken Hip

 Friends, today in our Old Testament reading, we have one of my favorite kinds of Bible stories to preach on: a really weird one. I adore how this story didn’t come off weird in antiquity, and I and it’s a fun one to look at because of how our modern eyes see it! So, here we have it: the time Jacob got in an all night long wrestling match with an angel, and emerged with a name change and a bad hip.

Perhaps the oddest part about this story is that it’s picking up in a rare, relatively dull moment in Jacob’s story. Wrestling with an angel is far from the strangest thing Jacob’s done. First, as a young man, he was making a really delicious sandwich, and his older brother, Esau, came inside after a long day of manual labor, was famished, and had to have some of that BLT. Jacob’s response? “Sure, you can have a bite of my sandwich–if I can have your birthright.” Well that escalated quickly. Jacob’s relationship with Esau only got worse from there. On their father, Isaac’s, death bed, their mom put Jacob up to putting on a bunch of fake body hair so that he would “feel like” his brother–seriously, this family–and, because Isaac thought Jacob was Esau, he gave Jacob the blessing he intended for Esau. And apparently he couldn’t give this blessing twice? This enraged Esau, and Jacob fled for his life. He ended up working for the next many years on a farm, owned by a man named Laban. Jacob fell in love with Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, and offered to do seven years of free labor for Laban in exchange for Rachel’s hand in marriage. If that sounds uncomfortably patriarchal, just wait, it gets worse. Laban had another daughter, an older one, named Leah, that he wanted to see get married before Rachel. So, after those seven years of labor, Jacob approached the altar to marry Rachel. But Laban got him drunk, put a veil on Leah and kept it there all day–and all night–and the morning after his wedding, Jacob woke up next to Leah, not Rachel. In this society, he said the vows to Leah and spent the night with her, so that made her his wife, no returns or exchanges allowed. So Jacob angrily accepted that Laban tricked him, and offered to work for Laban’s farm for seven more years so that he could take Rachel as his second wife. Fourteen years deep on Laban’s farm, Jacob was married to both sisters, but Laban wasn’t willing to let Jacob leave with them. So they Jacob, Leah, and Rachel secretly packed their things, including Laban’s pagan god statues, and made a plan to leave town together. Rachel was nearly caught sneaking out with those pagan statues, but covered them with a sheet, sat on them, and said “Master, forgive me for not rising to greet you, for the manner of women is upon me!” PMS to cover up a theft. Well played, Rachel.

At this point in the narrative, Jacob is on the lamb with sister wives. Also, his sister wives have been competing with each other for who can have the prettiest babies, and they’ve abusively forced their respective slaves to have Jacob’s babies, too. So now Jacob is heading out of town with four total wives, and eleven sons. He’ll have two more children in this motley crue, a boy named Joseph who ends up becoming his favorite, and a daughter named Dinah. And now that he’s escaped Laban’s home, he’s received some terrifying news–his past is catching up with him. Remember his estranged brother Esau? Jacob’s name literally means “supplanter”, because he stole Esau’s birthright, and blessing. The last they spoke, Esau hated Jacob and killing him wasn’t out of the question. 

Jacob is terrified. This might be where his weird story ends. He picks out his nicest livestock to give Esau as presents, hoping that maybe Esau likes goats, and they’ll make him happy, and that a happy brother with brand new goats won’t commit filicide. But remember, this is the Bible. Cain killed Abel. Jacob could have a target on his back.

He sends his entire family ahead of him, hoping to protect them for a little bit. Night falls. And then a strange man tells Jacob he’s now in the WWE, and this is Monday Night RAW. Jacob and this strange man wrestle all night long, competing for the belt, I guess. By morning it sounds like Jacob has the upper hand, and the angel is ready to tap out. But Jacob won’t let go. Jacob decides, correctly, that this strange midnight Royal Rumbler must be an angel, because what mortal man would…do this?...and Jacob demands a blessing. The angel gets in one good hit, and Jacob leaves this encounter with a hip injury. But the angel also changes the trajectory Jacob has been on. The blessing is much more than what Jacob asked for. 

It’s a change in identity. Jacob will no longer be Jacob, and that’s the best, unexpected news. His life was broken as Jacob, and it was headed nowhere good. The angel told him, your life as Jacob is over, and you can put down the terrible decisions you made under that name. You’ll no longer be Jacob the thief, Jacob the cheat, Jacob the man who will never truly love his first wife, or Jacob who messed up his brother’s life over a sandwich. Now, he’s Israel. The father of a nation. And his children will be the children of Israel. He’s beginning a new Kingdom.

If you keep reading, the best part of this story comes right after the passage ends for this Sunday. When Jacob sees Esau, it turns out Esau isn’t mad anymore, after all these years. He’s more than moved on. He just wanted to say hi to his brother. Jacob approaches him so scared, baring lots of gifts to butter him up, but Esau pushes that stuff aside, and hugs his brother. And then asks to meet his family.

It gets better. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if it’s you, you’ll hug your estranged sibling again.

I’m poetically drawn to the physical injury on Jacob that he carries as an outward manifestation of all of his internal injuries, that he gets to let go of. Right now a lot of us might wish for the deal he got, where you get to Battle Royale with a stranger in exchange for a clean slate and a bum leg. It might be worth it, right? I spent yesterday at one of the No Kings protests, in downtown Rochester. And please hear first, you don’t need to agree with me politically on anything. But our country is hobbling around like Jacob, carrying around the baggage of countless mistakes. So much so that, no matter who you may be inclined to vote for, all of us can see that we need to lay this all down, atone, and get to a better place, or we have nowhere else good to go. What a blessing it would be to be offered a blanket forgiveness for everything.

The good news is we have it, in Jesus, if we’re willing to hobble over to it with our broken hips, and then commit to it. The road to accountability and reparations is very long, but if Jacob and Esau can hug, then anything is possible.

Amen.