Genesis 32:22-31; Matthew 14:13-21

You Have My Blessing 

 Whatever else we can say about him, Jacob is a man who sought blessing.

He went so far as to deceive his father Isaac to obtain it. The blessing meant for his brother Esau became his instead. Defrauded of his birthright, Esau plotted to kill him, and Jacob fled for his life.
On the run, Jacob came to Luz, where he dreamed of angels ascending and descending. God appeared to him there, renewing the promise made to Abraham and Isaac, and now to him. Jacob awoke and said, “Surely God is in this place,” and he named it Bethel, the house of God.

Strengthened by this encounter, Jacob continued on to Paddan Aram, where he worked for his uncle Laban. There he met Rachel and resolved to make her his wife.

Though he faced obstacles, he did not give up. After twenty years of labor, Jacob prepared to return home, now a wealthy man with family, servants, flocks, and herds.

But trouble follows close behind success. “Man is born to trouble, as surely as the sparks fly upward,” says Job. The great psychologist Carl Jung observed that no one who moves among the chaotic currents of life is without trouble.

Scripture is nothing if not realistic in this regard: our greatest challenges often arise immediately after our greatest achievements.

For Jacob, returning home meant facing the brother he had wronged—the brother whose blessing he stole.

When he learned that Esau was approaching with four armed hundred men, Jacob sent messages and gifts ahead, hoping to pacify him.

In today’s lesson, we find Jacob sending his family and possessions across the river Jabbok. Jacob’s assumption is that armed men would not harm women and children. Having carried out his complex plan, Jacob spends the night all alone by the Jabbok.

Was it worth all the trouble? What did Jacob really receive when he obtained his father’s blessing? What does one have if one is the privileged recipient of a blessing?

Now that my mother lives in an assisted care facility in Grand Rapids, I spend a considerable amount of time there, at least one afternoon each week.

There is a woman who lives there, wheelchair bound, who roams the halls, giving out candy to whomever she sees.

When she learned that I was clergy, she began to seek me out, having come to expect me at particular times. The request is always the same: “Father, bless me.”

She is Catholic, and so when she hears that a man is clergy, she assumes he is authorized to confer blessings.

I am not Catholic, but I have told her more than once that I have a profound respect for the Catholic Church, and even have close relatives who belong to it.

That must have satisfied her, because she still asks me to bless her each time I see her, which I do.
But what is it that she receives from me—or more accurately, from God, through me—when I pronounce the blessing?

I remember another occasion when I shared with a man for whom I had a deep respect—a man whom I even regarded as a mentor, whom I wanted to imitate.

I told him about a project I had in mind. I had mapped it out, evaluated its chances of success, but still had my doubts.

He listened carefully and thoughtfully, then turned toward me, looked me in the eye, and said, “You have my blessing.”

If we pause here to reflect on what passed between me and my mentor at this moment, we come close to what it means to give and receive a blessing.

In the Bible, the verb “to bless” is often paired with the verb “to curse.” The latter verb is closely associated with the idea of “binding,” “restricting,” or “limiting.”

For that reason, it makes sense that “to bless” carries the opposite meaning, “to liberate” or “to set free.” Now let’s keep that with us as we return to Jacob.

As we have already pointed out, having sent everything ahead, Jacob is alone at the river Jabbok, preparing himself to meet his brother Esau.

What happens next is very mysterious. A man comes out of the darkness and attacks Jacob. Who is this man?

Is it Jacob’s own self-projection? That is, is Jacob wrestling with himself?

On occasion, when our past comes back to haunt us, when doubts overwhelm us, when regrets gnaw away at us, we wrestle with our thoughts until daybreak, depriving ourselves of a good night’s sleep.

The thought of meeting Esau may very well have reminded Jacob of all the wrong he had done, letting loose an internal struggle.

But our lesson does not tell us that he is wrestling with himself, but with a man.

And as he and the man wrestle through the night, Jacob realizes that he is wrestling not with a man but with God.

Then the struggle takes a sudden turn. The mysterious figure touches the socket of Jacob’s hip and puts it out of joint. Jacob can no longer wrestle as he did before. He can no longer hope to overpower the one who confronts him. All he can do now is cling to him.

And so when Jacob says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” these are not the triumphant words of a man who has mastered God.

They are the desperate words of a wounded man who knows that his life and his future depend upon the blessing of the One to whom he clings.

It is hard to imagine a more startling image of God’s involvement in Jacob’s life—indeed, in our lives—than a wrestling match.

Yet the God who wounds Jacob does not abandon him. He remains with Jacob in the struggle and ultimately blesses him.

And Jacob will not cease from the struggle until he receives that blessing. He is Jacob, after all—the man who sought blessing.

But in what does this blessing consist?

Jacob is afraid for his life, and for the lives of his family. To bless, in this moment, consists in God’s acting to guard, to protect from danger, to promote life, to make his life and the lives of his family flourish.

That is what Jacob is seeking from God. “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

Jacob clings to God in his crisis, in his difficulties, where God meets with him face to face. God is there with him in the struggle and consents to bless him.

“What is your name?”

To have a name in the ancient world is to have an identity. Your name told the world who you were. Jacob means one who seizes, grasps, or supplants.

Every time Jacob heard his name, he was reminded of what he had taken—from his brother Esau, and later from his uncle Laban. Each time he heard it, he heard his faults read back to him.
And now he is to speak that name aloud, in his own voice, when the One who wrestles with him asks him to give it.

“Jacob,” he said.

But instead of confirming him in his negative identity, the mysterious figure gives Jacob a new name instead: Israel.

The word most likely comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to struggle.” It is the same word group from which we get the term for a ruler or prince, and even the name of Abraham’s wife, Sarah.

The renaming is important. It is, in a sense, a new birth, a new beginning. Jacob wrestled with Esau at birth, grasping his brother’s heel and earning his name.

Now he wrestles again. At birth, Jacob held Esau down. At the Jabbok, he attempts to hold down the mysterious figure who confronts him in the night.

Jacob’s first name reflected his first struggle, the struggle with Esau. Now he receives a new name that reflects this second struggle.

The first name marked him as one who grasps and supplants. The new name marks him as the prince who has wrestled with God.

No longer Jacob, he is now Israel. It is, as we said, a new birth—a new beginning.

But Jacob does not leave this encounter with only a new name. He also leaves with a limp.

As the sun rises over Peniel, Jacob crosses the river bearing in his body the mark of what has happened to him. He goes forth blessed, but he does not go forth untouched.

The blessing does not restore Jacob to the condition in which God found him. It gives him a new future, but it also gives him a new way of walking into that future.

From this point forward, every step will remind Jacob that his life does not depend upon his ability to grasp, manipulate, and scheme.

The man who had spent his life seizing what he wanted must now walk in dependence upon the God to whom he clung.

The wound, therefore, is not the negation of the blessing. It is the bodily sign that Jacob has encountered God, has been changed by that encounter, and at the same time received God’s power to truly live. 

God graciously comes to us too in our struggles and difficulties. And if our problems persist, if our weakness remains, if we still find ourselves struggling after we have prayed, that does not mean that God has withheld his blessing from us. God blesses us abundantly in Jesus Christ.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus stands in the middle of an all-too-common human struggle. There is too much need and too few resources. There is too much demand and too little supply.

When this struggle weighs heavily on us—and it will, many times throughout our lives—we ask the question that has been asked in every generation: Does God even care?

The disciples have only five loaves and two fish. But there are five thousand people to feed, not even counting the women and children.

The demands of the hour exceed their limited resources. They can only say, “This is all we have. It is not enough.” What else can they do but dismiss the people in the hope that they will find food in the surrounding villages?

But the God who blesses us is there in the person of Jesus. He is not intimidated by difficulties. He does not counsel us to flee from our problems or to run from our responsibilities, but rather to face them. “You give them something to eat.”

We are easily discouraged by the difficulties that overwhelm us, that surpass our ability to cope.
But faith is nothing if not directed to the impossible. If faith only sees five loaves and two fish, and immediately concedes defeat, it is not faith.

Jesus does not answer their question with words. He answers it with bread. “Bring them to me,” Jesus tells the disciples.

Responding to this invitation is an act of faith. Faith means committing our problems—and the little we have to meet them—to Jesus, in the expectation of his help, his blessing.

It means giving to Jesus everything that we are and have, in practical obedience to his invitation, allowing him into our lives to do what only he can do with them.

Jesus took the five loaves, blessed and broke them, and then gave them back to his disciples, who distributed them to the crowds.

Jacob came away from his encounter with God still bearing weakness in his body, yet still blessed to face what lay before him. 

The disciples come to Jesus conscious of another kind of weakness: the inadequacy of what they have in the face of overwhelming need, yet they too are still blessed to meet that need.

In both cases, human limitation does not prevent the blessing of God. God’s blessing meets us precisely where our own strength and resources prove inadequate.

Let us be clear. This is not magic; this is a miracle. There is a difference. The disciples are still the agents. To be sure, they receive their task back with the blessing of Jesus, but it is still their task.
The lesson teaches us that we, God’s people, even in our weakness, even in our lack, share in Jesus’ power more than we may realize. The blessing of Jesus is given to us to promote life, to help it grow, to make it flourish and thrive.

But, like the disciples, we are often overwhelmed—immobilized by difficulties, like a wrestler caught in a submission hold.

But remember that to bless is to set free. God set Jacob free from who he once was, from all that his name meant, from his guilt over the past and his fears about the future. He gave Jacob a new name, a new lease on life, a new future.

To be sure, Jacob entered that future with a limp. He was weaker than before, but he was also freer, because he no longer had to secure his life through grasping, manipulation, and scheming.

He could now face Esau not merely as the man who had stolen his brother’s blessing, but as one who had received his life and future from God.

In Jesus Christ, God sets us free from who we once were, from our guilt and our fears, and gives us a new future.

We may enter that future with continuing struggles. But those struggles do not define who we are or determine where our lives are going. God’s blessing does.
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His grace is sufficient for us, and his power is made perfect in our weakness. He gives us courage to take the next step into the future he has prepared for us.
When we need the approval of a trusted mentor, we long to hear from him the words, “You have my blessing.”
These words liberate us. They set us free to tackle again the project before us, to continue on in our life’s course despite the obstacles, just as Jacob did.
In Jesus Christ, God speaks this blessing over us and more. Because God has blessed us in Christ, we can act courageously. We have more than enough to be a blessing to those around us.
One last thing. It is no accident that when we hear that Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives the loaves, we hear echoes of Holy Communion.
Let us not miss the point. Before sending us out to feed the world, God first feeds us in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Before sending us out to promote life and to make it flourish, he first feeds us with the Bread of Life, which is Jesus Christ himself.
Let us then approach the Lord’s table with eager expectation that he will fill us with his blessing.
Let us all eat and be filled. In him we will find not only enough, but an abundance, with enough left over to bless those around us. Amen.