Service for October 19 Nineteenth Sunday of Pentecost

Sermon for  October 19, 2025                              Nineteenth Sunday of Pentecost

In the Hebrew language names are never just names. Names have meaning that tell us something about the person who carries that name. Jacob, which means literally, "heel" -- is no exception. Even as he and his twin brother Esau were born, Jacob was grasping Esau’s heel. He's been grasping ever since -- living by his wits and cunning, trusting no one and proving himself untrustworthy every step of the way.

Throughout his life he’s done whatever it took to get what he wanted. But now God has told him it’s time to return home to the land promised to his ancestors. It’s time to face up to what he’s done and take his place among his family and so he will have to contend with the brother he wronged so long ago. After sending a servant to tell Esau that he was returning home, Jacob’s servant reports back that Esau is coming out to meet him along with 400 men. We don’t know Esau’s intent in bringing all those men, but Jacob fears the worst. It seems that when you live your life getting ahead by questionable means you expect the same behavior from everyone else.

Within sight of home, Jacob gets his family and all his possessions, livestock, wives, slaves, all of it over to safety but then for some reason he returns across the river to spend the night alone. He’s at a crossroads in his life: the consequences of his past are rushing to meet him. Now, Jacob, one who gets ahead by trickery and scheming, must face the reality of who he is and what he has done,

In that night at the crossroads between the past and the future, Jacob wrestles. We’re told he wrestles with a man, with an angel in some translations and in the end Jacob understands that it was God he was locked in combat with. We can understand this to be a dark night of the soul for Jacob. At this turning point in his life, Jacob wrestles with all of his defining relationships. He wrestles with himself – who he was, his past, his treachery, his character that always needed to have advantage over others, AND he wrestles with God; God who is determined to keep God’s covenant with humanity given to Jacob’s ancestor Abraham; God who, importantly,  does not overwhelm Jacob or force him into submission.

This story does not allow us to see God as caricature. This is not God as vengeful and angry judge. But neither is God benevolent but aloof parent. This story shows us God who is willing to engage, literally wrestling with this chosen, but very flawed human being; not forcing his will upon Jacob but truly engaging with this very strong and determined man. God values Jacob as he truly is. He wants to continue the work of blessing and redeeming the world through this chosen family, but he does not require that Jacob is perfect before he can use him to do that work of blessing and redeeming.

God seems to value Jacob as the whole human that he is; complete with good and admirable traits as well as those qualities that hurt others and take advantage of them. God does not condone those traits but simply accepts them as part of the package, part of the truth of who Jacob is.

God and Jacob wrestle through the night until the light of dawn threatens not God but Jacob since no human can see the face of God and live. But just before the dawn when it becomes clear that Jacob is not going to be defeated, he is injured so that he can no longer hold his own in the match. And even then, Jacob refuses to release the man/God until he receives a blessing. In response the man/God asks Jacob his name, much as we might say, “Who do you think you are?” Who do you think you are to ask a blessing of me?

Jacob must account for himself. He must name the truth of who he has always been, since birth, grabbing for what is not his; using any means necessary to get what he has no right to claim… and succeeding! It seems before he can return home to the land of promise he must acknowledge the truth of who he is and what he has done. He must acknowledge it to this man/god; but first he must acknowledge it to himself.

Frederick Buechner imagines Jacob at the point when man/God asks him, "Who are you?"

And Jacob thinks, “There was mud in my eyes, my ears and nostrils, my hair.

My name tasted of mud when I spoke it. "Jacob,” I said. "My name is Jacob:'

"It is Jacob no longer;' the man/God said. "Now you are Israel. You have wrestled with God and with men. You have prevailed. That is the meaning of the name Israel.”

Once he has named himself, confessed his past and all that he is, for good and for bad, he is then able to receive the new name God offers him: Israel.

Jacob wrestled with himself, faced the truth of what he had done and of who he was; who he had proven to be again and again throughout his life: trickster, schemer, conniver and for that man/God does not strike him down or even ask him to repent. He is given a new name as if to say, “Yes, you have been that person and now that is the past. Now you are Israel. All your striving, your wrestling with God and with man has brought you to this point where you are ready to face the future; where you are ready to be used by God.

Buechner goes on to say, “a part of the lesson, luckily for Jacob, is that God doesn’t love people because of who they are but because of who [God] is. It’s on the house is one way of saying it and it’s by grace is another, just as it was by grace that it was Jacob of all people who became not only the father of the twelve tribes of Israel but the many time great grandfather of Jesus of Nazareth and just as it was by grace that Jesus of Nazareth was born into this world at all.”1

This story of one of the ancestors of the faith, like all the other ancestral stories, centers on God's promises. In all of the stories, all of the fathers and mothers in our long line of faith ancestors are dysfunctional; dysfunctional people in one way or another and all from dysfunctional families AND at the same time God is able to work in and through them to bring God’s redeeming love to the whole world.

This story invites us to tell the truth about who we are; what we have done, what we have thought; all the good, the bad and the ugly that makes us who we are. We are invited to wrestle with that, seeing it for the truth that it is. We’re invited to offer God the name that has defined us to ourselves and to the world, to break its power over us by revealing it to the light of day.

Take a moment to ask yourself:

What are the names that have defined me?

What is the truth about myself that holds me captive to the past?

When we offer that name to the light of day and to God, it loses its power over us. In the naming we are freed to receive whole heartedly a “second truth about ourselves; a truth bigger and more expansive and far more gracious” than we can imagine, “a second truth that creates an open future and sustains us with the hope and courage to embrace it.”2

We are invited to name the truth of ourselves and our world and when we have done that, we are invited to cling even more tightly to the truth of who we are in Christ, God’s beloved. We are invited to accept, and live into our primary name, Christian, sinner and saint, beloved child of God. That name frees us to leave all other names in the past and leads us into the future, with courage no matter what it may hold.

Amen. 

1 Peculiar Treasures by Frederick Buechner

2  In the Meantime by David Lose