WRESTLING AT JABBOKReading: Genesis 32: 22-31
Jacob had left home as a young man after having cheated his brother Esau of his birthright. He had fled to Haran, to his uncle Laban. There he had worked hard, had married both Leah and Rachel and become a wealthy man. Now, after twenty years, sensing hostility and envy from other members of Laban’s family, he decides to return to Canaan, the land of his birth. Eventually they reach the Jabbok River and Jacob knows that the encounter he has been dreading will take place imminently. He will meet the brother whom he wronged all those years ago, probably on the following day. He sends all his family, his servants and livestock across the river ahead of him and he remains behind, all alone. He has some demons to face. The Jabbok was a bit like the Rubicon for him. Once he crossed it there was no escape, no going back. He had to face whatever would come. It must have been a long night. All of his past life must have passed before him. Jacob was no saint. In fact, he was a very earthy pilgrim who had cheated, lied and bargained to get where he was. At the same time, he had a tenacious faith and he knew that this night was reckoning time with God. It had to be before he met Esau for what he hoped would be a reconciliation encounter. He had to face himself, who he was, what he had been and what he hoped for. The writer of this part of Genesis describes this as an actual physical struggle where a man comes and wrestles with him until dawn. Jacob refuses to give up the struggle until he receives a blessing. When it is over he receives not only a blessing, but also a new name – Israel- meaning ‘one who struggles with God’. “For,” says the man, “you have struggled with both God and man and have won.” Jacob called that place of encounter ‘Peniel’ which means ‘the face of God.’ He said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.”
So Jacob is able to cross the river as the sun rises, to meet the new day and a new relationship. It turns out to be the day of reconciliation and a new stage of the journey for him. But for such a struggle there is always a price to pay. The cost to Jacob is a wound. He limps out to meet his new life.
I have read this story many times and, on each occasion, something different is highlighted for me. This time it is the phrase ‘Jacob was left all alone.’ Perhaps it is only when we are stripped of everything and stand on our own, naked before God, that we see who we really are, beloved and broken, beautiful and scarred. If we have the tenacity, the endurance, the vision, the faith to struggle and hold on, then God leads us to a new space, to the Rubicon or the threshold and gives us what it takes to cross over. What is it that he would lead us to in these days? In my spirit I know it is to the day of reconciliation, to the journey of peacemaking, to the shalom of God. There is always a cost to such a wrestling, both the inner and the outer struggle. We are wounded healers. We go out with a ‘limp.’ But if we dare to cross over, we see that the ‘Son’ has risen. We do not go alone but in the company of the one broken for us, the one who makes all things new and all things possible, even the reign of peace.
Have you ever had a ‘Jabbok moment’ on your spiritual journey?