Wrestling Match
Or, a New Name, a New Walk, and a New Talk
For most of my growing up, my dad was a Southern Baptist minister. For several years, he didn’t work directly for a church, but rather for an organization that sent him to do guest preaching and adult formation all over the State of Missouri. As you might expect, instead of writing a sermon each week for these different churches, he had a handful of sermons he used on rotation. The one I remember most was on today’s Old Testament reading from Genesis 22: Jacob wrestles with God and comes away changed. My dad’s sermon title was “A New Name, A New Walk, and a New Talk.” In good Baptist fashion, he would proceed to execute a fine three-point sermon. The rhetorical pattern of repetition is probably what has helped me remember it. A New Name. A New Walk. A New Talk.
I don’t remember all the details of the sermon, but the title of it has stuck with me all these years and so in preparing for today, I thought it serendipitous. And so I’m going to take a brief crack at this passage with the title of my dad’s sermon in mind.
A New Name
Jacob goes into this mysterious all-night wrestling match with God (or an angel or a man from God) and emerges with a new name: Israel. Jacob in Hebrew may come from the word “heel.” The story is that Jacob followed his twin Esau out of the womb with his hand clasping Esau’s heel. But the word “heel” also relates to the Hebrew word for male genitalia. And so there’s a sense that Jacob has his brother not just by the heel, if you get my drift. There’s a sense that Jacob means to manipulate or to deceive. And as we know from other Jacob stories, Jacob is a manipulator and deceiver. He manipulates his brother out of Esau’s birthright. He and his mother conspire to deceive his father Isaac and by doing so get the blessing meant for Esau. Jacob is not always a super nice guy. And in this wrestling match, Jacob seems to corner this mystery man and won’t let him go until he gets a blessing. More of the same.
After wrestling with God, however, he claims this new name he is given: Israel. Israel is a complicated name in terms of what it means. We know that the syllable “El” is a word that means God. Some scholars will settle on a meaning of Israel that is like “one who wrestles with God,” “God strives,” or “God perseveres,” but there are lots of double and triple entendres in the name that can refer to everything from the idea of Living Water to a tip of the hat toward grape juice. There’s a sense that Israel means something like “He has become a receptacle in which God can be received and retained.”
Point is, Israel is the new name of this person and of the tribes and nation of people that will descend from him.
Like Jacob, when we wrestle with God, we are transformed. We may be given a new name, like when folks become members of a religious order or when someone becomes Pope. Or when we are baptized and can now be called Christian. When our name changes we take on a new identity – or vice versa.
A New Walk
Israel doesn’t just have a new name. He has a new walk. Genesis says the man touches Jacob on the hip, which may be an artful way of saying that Jacob was pinned down with a killer wrestling move. His hip is dislocated. That had to hurt. And it does. The story says Israel walks on from the wrestling match with a limp. I imagine that limp stuck around for a while. And that limp signaled to Israel and his people every time he took a painful step that something transformative had happened. You don’t come away from wrestling with God unchanged.
The same should be true for us. When we encounter God, our walk should be different. Our Christian walk. Our walk in our churches. Our walk at work. Our walk with our families. Hint: if our anger looks like the anger of the culture, it may not be righteous, even if the content is Jesus-ier. We should be doing things differently. Oddly. Uncomfortably. And if that’s not happening – if our churches and worship services and experiences and ways of being in the world are not distinguishable from everyone else, I suppose we have to ask ourselves the question: is God what we are encountering?
Maybe you’ve heard the phrase about someone – an athlete, a public figure, a noteworthy person of faith – that “they don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk.” That’s part of what’s at play here with Israel. He doesn’t just have a new name, he has a new identity – even in the way he carries himself.
A New Talk
I want to think for just another moment about that idea of talking the talk versus walking the walk. We’re in the throes of Election Season, which is a way we wrestle with each other if not God. And there has been a lot of upheaval recently in our political and faith lives. An assassination attempt. A new candidate for Vice President in one party and President in the other. And another VP candidate is on the way in a few days. New polling numbers. Political posturing. Debate offers. Stump speeches. Insults being hurled back and forth. It is a true slugfest. And it’s not just happening strictly in the political sphere. There were a lot of folks up in arms over the last few days about the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony. Many Christians got cranky over a depiction of what they believed was The Last Supper.
We have an opportunity, like Jacob, to speak differently.
What’s just beyond the Scripture reading for today in the next chapter of Genesis is Jacob back in the world after his encounter with God? In Chapter 33, Jacob and his family run into Esau and what seems to be an army or household of people. Jacob has reason to fear Esau – who he has spent a lifetime deceiving and manipulating and struggling against. Jacob is so fearful that he strategically divides his own family up, perhaps to avoid harm to them. He steps in front of his family, goes up to Esau, and bows before his brother seven times. Esau sees Jacob and runs to him. They put their arms around each other. They weep together. They’ve been apart for a long time, you see. And were not on the best of terms. Jacob and Esau have both had entire families over these last many years.
What I find funny and delightful about this next part of the story is that Jacob and Esau almost stumble over each other to show affection. Jacob has his family bow before Esau, the person he once supplanted. Esau notices all of Jacob’s sheep and livestock and Jacob offers them to Esau as a gift. And then Jacob offers to serve Esau and tend to the flocks. The Jacob we see here is transformed. He’s not just walking and acting differently, he is speaking differently in love.
He is not just walking the walk, but he’s talking the talk. That’s a backward way of saying the thing that is now a cliché. But I think it may be more important for us to keep in mind in this season of political strife, where talking is the weapon of choice. We can’t just walk the walk and feel self-important and righteous. We also need to be speaking kindness into the world. That’s part of our new identity, too.
A New Name. A New Walk. A New Talk.
What are we doing that signals transformation?