Summer
Sermon Series: Wrestling with Jacob
Genesis
35:1-29
This morning we reach the final
chapter in our story of Jacob. This has
been a long sermon series, by far the longest I have written. It has also been one of the most dramatic,
exciting, painful, and wonderful stories we have read together. Much like our own lives, the life of Jacob
was one of many ups and downs.
For ten Sundays we have charted
Jacob’s journey. We began with the story of his birth, as he wrestled in the
womb with his brother Esau. We witnessed
as Jacob and his mother Rebekah tricked his father Isaac into giving Jacob
Esau’s rightful blessing. We observed as
he fled his home in fear, sleeping in Bethel, and dreaming of a God who
promised wealth and protection. We
marveled as Jacob met Rachel and fell in love, only to be tricked into marrying
her sister Leah instead. We watched the
women compete for Jacob’s love and God’s blessing as his family swelled to 12
children.
We followed as Jacob fled Haran and
returned home with his uncle Laban hot on his trail. We saw him wrestle a stranger in the night
and then finally reunite with Esau in peace.
Last week we offered testament to the suffering of Dinah and the people
of Shechem as Jacob’s sons enacted an unjust vengeance in the land. And finally today, we collect up the bits and
pieces of Jacob’s story.
This final chapter is thought to be
just that, bits and pieces. These are
the remaining scraps of the Jacob story, stuck here in the final chapter
because there was nowhere else to put them.
Jacob begins to move into old age, and after today he is no longer the
focus of the narrative.
(Read Genesis 35:1-15)
After the horrors of Shechem the time
has come to move on into a new place.
God tells Jacob to journey now back to Bethel and to make that place his
home. Jacob takes the opportunity to
purify himself and his people. He calls
the people to put away any sign of foreign gods and any temptation to make
idols. He buries these temptations in
the ground, burying as well the sin of Shechem.
The people of Israel journey in peace
to Bethel and once again Jacob builds an altar there. God appears to Jacob and reiterates the
promises made early in his life. Jacob
is now Israel, the father of the nation.
God promises land, wealth, and generations of family to Jacob. The promises made to Abraham have now fully
passed on to the next generation.
(Read Genesis 35:16-21)
Sadness once again enters the
story. Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife, is
pregnant again but struggles and dies in childbirth. As she realizes that death is coming for her,
she names her son Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow.”
Jacob cannot bear to have that cloud over what will be his last child and
so he renames the boy Benjamin, which means “son of my right hand” or “son of
power”.
The author offers no comment on this
sad chapter, though as readers of the story we can assume that Jacob’s sorrow
at Rachel’s death is great. A pillar is
set to mark her grave on the road to Bethlehem, and the image of Rachel’s tears
will become a symbol of the suffering of the nation of Israel for
generations. Yet, just like us, Jacob’s
life moves on from moments of sorrow. As
the author says “Israel journeyed on . . .”
(Read Genesis 35:22-26)
Once again we find one of the sons of
Jacob behaving badly. Jacob’s eldest
son, Reuben, decides to make a play for power by sleeping with Bilhah. You may remember that this is Rachel’s maid
and one of Reuben’s many step-mothers, though the author now lowers her status
with the term concubine.
While we might recognize this as an
act of sexual aggression, at the time it was meant to be an act of political
aggression. Reuben is trying to show
that Jacob is now old and powerless and that Reuben is the one who should be in
power over the tribe. This act of
political aggression will be repeated throughout the scriptures from the book
of Judges to the sons of David.
The author doesn’t tell us what
happens as a result, only that Jacob is aware of the sin. It does not appear to work out for Reuben though,
since Israel is still clearly the head of the tribe.
(Read Genesis 35:27-29)
In this final scrap of history, Jacob
and Esau are united once again. Their
father Isaac has finally died, at the ripe old Biblical age of 180, and
together the sons bury him with his own father Abraham. The circle is closed, and Jacob, now Israel,
is fully the child of promise, the leader of the nation, and the one to walk in
Abraham’s footsteps and carry the promise of a chosen people into the next
generation.
Throughout our reading of Jacob’s
story we have discovered that in many ways he was just like we are. Here, in his final chapter, we find that he
has changed tremendously in his journey with God. Reading this text, we would hardly recognize
the Jacob we began the summer with. Gone
is the scheming and grasping. Gone is
the hurtful trickery and selfish desire.
As he has journeyed with God, Jacob has been honed into a new man, a man
of faith. At the end of his journey we
now find one who puts away other gods, builds altars, worships God, and
encourages others to do so as well.
Jacob the trickster is now Jacob the man of faith, Israel the leader of
the nation.
We too, could look back on our lives
and see God’s hand at work. When we were
young we were headstrong and full of zeal, charging into life like we knew all
the answers and prepared to grab life’s blessings for ourselves. Once we get older we realize that things
aren’t always that easy. Blessings come
from God alone, and the best way to journey through the world is with a patient
and faithful heart. Like Jacob,
journeying with God changes us and hones us into new and better people.
Jacob’s story has been marked with
sorrow and joy. From heartbreak in his
early marriages to this final chapter in Rachel’s life, Jacob has had to move
through pain. Rachel’s death while
giving birth to Benjamin is a perfect metaphor for the way we experience
suffering and joy simultaneously throughout our days.
In his commentary on Genesis theologian
Walter Brueggemann writes;
“The juxtaposition of the birth of the treasured
Benjamin and the death of the beloved Rachel is a significant one. The linking of the two events shows how
intensely intergenerational is the faith and life of this family. Dying always happens in the midst of new
life. Living always happens in the midst
of death. There is, after all, a time to
be born and a time to die. And this time,
like every poignant time, is both times.”
I was so moved by Brueggemann’s
observations here because I have seen it so many times in my own life and
ministry. In the midst of our joy we
find pain, and in the midst of our pain we find joy. The cycle of endings and beginnings is
constantly being interwoven such that as we say “goodbye” to people and parts
of our lives we say “hello” to others.
The cycle continues until our final “goodbye” to this earth, which we
believe in-turn is our final “hello” to the world beyond. As human people, living in the midst of this beautiful
and broken planet, we must learn to live in the midst of death. Like Israel, we must learn to journey on,
even in moments when our hearts are broken.
This chapter is a gathering of the
scraps, the bits and pieces, the last little mentions of Jacob and his
journey. This is the end of his time in
the spotlight, as Jacob the wrestler and as Israel the leader of nations. But of course, this is not the end of the
story. The story of the promise, the
story of the chosen people, continues on into the next generation.
So too, our stories are ones of
generations. We are families, like
Jacob’s family, journeying through the wilderness, and journeying with God. In closing this chapter on Jacob, I feel
called to think of my own family generationally. How would my grandmothers, both women of deep
faith, marvel and wonder at my role as a church leader? I am certain neither one of them could have
imagined women clergy, let alone their own granddaughter as a preacher. So too, I wonder how the promise of faith
will pass on into the next generations.
How will my children and their children journey with God, and what will
their experience be of the church and the world? I can only imagine.
As we close the book on Jacob, we know
that the story and promise of the people of God continues. Next summer we will pick up where we left
off, enjoying the dramatic stories of the next generation, through the adventures
of Jacob’s son Joseph. From the bits and
pieces of Jacob’s life we have found many connections to our own struggles as
people of faith. Thanks be to God for
the wonderful stories in our Bible, and thanks be to God for Israel, the father
of nations. Amen.
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