Wrestling til Daybreak

Have you ever noticed that some of the most important turning points in our lives don’t happen in broad daylight, with everything neat and clear? They happen at night. They happen when we’re alone. They happen when we can’t sleep because the fears and failures of yesterday and the worries about tomorrow won’t let us go. That’s exactly where we find Jacob in our story this Sunday. Genesis 32:22–31

Jacob has been a go-getter since before he could walk. Scripture says he came out of the womb grabbing his brother Esau’s heel. That’s what his name means—“heel-grabber,” “supplanter.” He is not my most admired person in the Bible.  From the start, Jacob has been grasping for blessing, for position, for security.

And he’s good at it. He tricks Esau out of his birthright. He deceives his blind father Isaac and steals the blessing. He runs away when Esau vows to kill him. And on the run, he has that dream of the ladder at Bethel—angels going up and down, God speaking promises. It’s sheer grace. God promises land, descendants, and presence. But Jacob’s response? “If God will do this for me, then the Lord shall be my God.” Even his prayers are bargains.

Then, Jacob flees to Haran, and there he meets his match: Uncle Laban. Jacob falls for Rachel, but Laban switches Leah on the wedding night. The trickster is tricked. For twenty years Jacob works to obtain Rachel as his bride.  At last God calls him back to the land of promise. But going home means facing Esau—the brother he wronged, the brother who once vowed to kill him.

The night before that reunion, Jacob does what he does best: he makes a plan. He sends gifts ahead, divides his camp in case of attack, sends his wives and children across the Jabbok. He’s left alone.

And that’s when it happens. We have arrived at today’s scripture. The text says simply: “A man wrestled with him until daybreak.” No introduction. No explanation. Just a sudden fight in the dark.

Again, we are not too different from Jacob.  Our relationship and interactions with God can also be confusing and can certainly feel out of our control.  We have little understanding as to what God is up to in our lives, yet we certainly wish we knew.

All night they wrestle. Jacob doesn’t give up. At dawn, the mysterious figure strikes his hip, and Jacob is crippled. Still he hangs on. “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  And here’s the heart of it. Jacob, the grasper, the bargainer, the trickster, does something new. He clings—not to a scheme, not to a plan, but to God himself. He won’t let go until the blessing comes.

The blessing comes—but it comes with a wound. Jacob will limp for the rest of his life. And he receives a new name: Israel. “For you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”

That limp is important. The late Professor Terence Fretheim at Lutheran Seminary says faith is not about escaping wounds but about discovering God’s presence in them.And the name—Israel—is not just Jacob’s new identity. It becomes the name of God’s people. To be Israel, the nation, is to wrestle with God, to struggle, to cling, and to live.

The very next scene, he meets Esau. He bows, expecting vengeance. But Esau runs to him, embraces him, kisses him. They weep. Jacob looks into his brother’s face and says, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.” This is transformation.

Jacob’s life still has valleys—Rachel dies, Joseph disappears, famine drives him to Egypt. But by the end, Jacob is not the schemer who deceives; he is the patriarch who blesses.

So what does this mean for us?

• First, faith is a wrestling match. There are nights when we struggle with God, with our fears, with ourselves. This can be scary.  Don’t be afraid of that struggle. Sometimes the struggle is the very place God meets us.

• Second, blessings leave scars. Like Jacob, we may limp away from the night changed and wounded. But those wounds can become holy reminders of God’s presence.

• Third, God gives us new names. The names we carried—failure, deceiver, striver, procrastinator—don’t have to define us forever. God names us beloved, chosen, called and to live with God in eternity/

Like Jacob, we too, can walk into our futures carrying scars and blessings, wrestling still, but known and named by God.  How glorious is that! Thanks be to God.  Amen.