This week we’ll be looking at the Old Testament story of Jacob, brother of Esau, who wrestles with a divine being in the night. Although many think this divine being is Yahweh, the God who delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, I invite us to think about how this story might also speak to other things we wrestle with. Whether we wrestle with our faith, our families and friends, or the pressures that society puts onto us, God offers us an alternative, just as God offered Jacob an alternative.
As we begin this week, I invite us to think and reflect on what it is that we wrestle with, and where it is that God is present (or not present) in that struggle. Just as we say in our baptismal liturgy each week, we have been named and claimed… But by whom have we been named and claimed, other than God? And how do those “names” affect us?
Come ready to dive into this story and hopefully we can listen together to the names by which God calls us.
Grace and peace to you, this week and always.
Erin
Genesis 32:22-32
The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.
Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on
the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled
with him.
Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’
So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’
Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’
Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’
The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is
on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the
thigh muscle.
