Genesis 32:22-31
Assaulted by God
James Sledge August
2, 2020
When
I was a child, my father would read Bible stories to us before bed. I can still
see the big Bible Story book he used. It had stories about Jesus, but as a
child, the Old Testament stories stood out more. There were a lot of “hero” type
stories: David fighting the giant Goliath with only a sling, Samson, the Hebrew
version of Hercules. And then there were all those stories about Abraham and
Sarah and their offspring: Isaac, Esau and Jacob, and then all of Jacob’s sons,
including Joseph.
The
characters in those Bible stories didn’t seem much like real people to me. Perhaps
that was just how far removed they were historically and culturally. Or perhaps
it was because the Bible stories themselves had a kind of comic book quality to
them.
Whatever
the reasons, I was well into adulthood before it dawned on me what a messed up,
dysfunctional family Abraham and Sarah’s clan was. It starts with the
half-brothers Ishmael and Isaac and only gets worse from there.
Rebekah
and Isaac have twin boys, Esau and Jacob. Esau is the first born by a few
seconds, and the sibling rivalry is off and running. Not that the parents help
matters much. Dad likes Esau, and Mom likes Jacob. Esau is an outdoorsy,
hunting and fishing sort of guy, and Dad
plans to pass on the family business to him. Jacob is a Momma’s boy who likes
hanging out in the tent. He’s also sneaky and manipulative, a scoundrel who
takes advantage of Esau’s tendency to act first and think later. And his mother
is happy to assist.
Jacob
and Esau are born when Isaac is quite old, and he is feeble and blind by the
time the boys are fully grown. Sensing that his time is short, Isaac calls Esau
and asks him to go out hunting and bring back some savory game they can enjoy
together. After the meal, Isaac will formally sign over the family business. In
the language of the Bible, he will bless Esau.
But
Momma overhears. She goes to Jacob and they, literally, cook up a scheme to deceive
the old, blind father. She prepares a meal and helps Jacob disguise himself as
Esau. He puts on some of Esau’s cloths, and Momma uses goat skins to make arm
hair wigs so the smooth-skinned Jacob has the hairy arms of his brother.
I
know it sounds crazy, but that’s what is says in the Bible. Jacob goes to his
father, pretending to be Esau. Isaac recognizes Jacob’s voice, but the smell of
Esau’s clothes, the meal, and those arm hair wigs, (and maybe a little
dementia?) are enough to fool the old man.
And
so Isaac blesses Jacob moments before Esau returns to discover that he has been
robbed. I don’t know why there is no undoing this contract made under false
pretenses, but it seems that the blessing cannot be taken back. It is Jacob’s
now.
Robbed
of his birthright, Esau threatens murder, and Jacob flees for his life, going
back to Momma’s homeland to live with her family. By the time he gets the nerve
to come back, he has a couple of wives, eleven sons, a twelfth on the way, and
one daughter. He is still a con-man and trickster, and he will repeat the
mistakes of his own parents by favoring one child over the other, and Joseph
becomes a spoiled brat whose own brothers plot to kill him. But that’s another
story. In ours, Jacob heads home, not knowing if Esau still wants to kill him.
Now
I have known my share of dysfunctional families, but I’m not sure I’ve ever met
any so thoroughly messed up as this one. And perhaps that would not matter, except
that for some inexplicable reason, God has hitched the hopes of blessing and
restoration for all humanity to this dysfunctional family. What was God
thinking?
I
don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but church congregations can be
dysfunctional families themselves. There are manipulative folk who to get their
way by complaining or threatening to leave and people who rarely lift a finger
to help out yet perpetually think they deserve more from the church. There are
parking lot meetings that circumvent the official meeting. There is gossiping
and anonymous criticism where “lots of people” without names are upset or
angry. Yet for some inexplicable reason, God has hitched the hopes of
humanity’s blessing and restoration to this dysfunctional family. What was God
thinking?
For
much of Jacob’s dysfunctional story, God seems largely uninvolved, but as Jacob
returns home, that changes. The night before he and Esau meet, A man
wrestled with (Jacob) until daybreak. A man? Esau? God? It’s a strange
story with religious sensibilities quite different from ours, open to dramatic encounter
with a strange, earthy God. This is not about belief. It’s about struggle and
blessing. Jacob seeks to deal with the “man” as he does with everyone, grabbing
what he wants, but it does not work. Jacob is not defeated, and he does get a
blessing, but in the process he is renamed and left with a limp. God’s plans
are still hitched to Jacob, now Israel, and his dysfunctional family, but Jacob
and those who follow will be changed and marked by this blessing, bound in an
ongoing struggle with God.
______________________________________________________________
I’ve probably spoken before about the huge
study on the religious beliefs ofAmerican youth, conducted in the early 2000s. It
studied a broad swath of religious traditions and found that most young people
don’t dislike religion or church. They have mostly positive views. However,
their religious beliefs are so benign and bland as to have no real bearing on
how they live their lives, providing almost no need to participate in organized
religion. The study named their faith, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” and it
has five main components: belief in God, God’s desire for people to be good and
nice, a life goal of being happy and feeling good, a God who is not at all involved
in daily life but may help you out in a crisis, and the belief that good folks
go to heaven.
There’s
nothing offensive about any of this, but neither is there much substance. Professor
and Christian Educator, Kenda Dean uses terms such as “Christian-ish” and “cult
of nice” to describe it. It bears little resemblance to the faith the Church
has proclaimed for centuries, but this is not, according to the study, because
young people misunderstood or perverted their faith. Rather it is the faith
transmitted to them by their parents and their congregations.[1]
Now
Jacob lived a long way from 21st Century America and “Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism,” yet I can see some points of contact, at least prior to
Jacob’s wrestling match. Aside from moments of crisis, God seems uninvolved in
Jacob’s life. Jacob is all about his own wits and cunning, grasping for all he
can so he can be successful and happy. But then God, for all practical
purposes, assaults him. Strangely, the match is something of a draw. God blesses
Jacob, but he is permanently changed and marked, with a new identity and a
limp.
Now
here we are, the dysfunctional descendants of Jacob. We often imagine a safe,
benign God not much involved in our lives, but perhaps willing to only to give
us a spiritual lift or buzz. We can scarcely imagine a God who assaults us,
grapples with us in a strange encounter that does not overwhelm us yet transforms
and marks us, sending us out with new identities, carrying God’s blessing, limping
as we go. Such a thing seems preposterous… until we actually meet God.
[1]
See Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian:
What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2010)
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