God works through cheaters and scoundrels and all
the sort that don’t do things right. Of course, those aren’t the only kinds of
people God uses but since we are talking about Jacob… the thoughts that come to
mind are: stubborn; cheater; thief of his brother’s birthright; fought with an
angel; wasn’t exactly repentant about any of this.
I want to start by saying this: This isn’t a story
telling us to be like Jacob. Most stories in the Bible aren’t fables telling us
to be like the heroes; most stories, like this one, are about who God is and
what God does and not what are we supposed to do. In this case, God chooses to
promote this nation, Israel. Jacob becomes Israel later in life—another of
those biblical name changes. Israel is God’s chosen people. God’s chosen people
can trace their history to a cheating liar that stole a birthright and,
apparently, that’s not all a bad thing.
It
could have been Esau. Volumes have been written on why God chose Jacob over
Esau; they say that Jacob was more cunning, cleverer, he had the right heart,
or whatever that means. At the end of the day, God chose a cheater. Jacob—the
name—literally meant “he cheats.”
So, we could also say that this is about God choosing
somebody and transforming him. Perhaps God takes all the Jacobs and turns them
into Israels. This feels closer to being true but still not the point. Not
every Jacob turns into an Israel. And this story still is not about Jacob. It’s
true that God uses good people and bad people—after all, he used Saul, the
murderer; Jonah, the pathetic prophet; and also widows and children and all
sorts of people whose powerlessness is their defining characteristic. God tends
to use the people who we would least expect, both good and bad. But the main
point is that God uses Jacob because Jacob is in the right place at the right
time. Our world is messy, and God seems to do the best he can with the mess
we’ve made.
This isn’t about Jacob; it is about God’s plan, which is
a plan for nations. Through Jesus, it becomes a plan for all people. The plan,
however, is not a smooth road. The danger in making every biblical story about
the hero is that we imagine that God’s plan for history is to make all of us
into heroes. Turn on the news and you know this isn’t exactly true. Instead of
a smooth road, God’s plan is to take the bumpy road of life and have it lead
somewhere meaningful. It’s a plan that even when we are sent in the wrong
direction and even when we crash and burn—even, especially, when we lose
something that can’t be fixed—God is there to pick up the pieces.
In
Jacob, the salvation story begins. God is setting apart a people—sons and
daughters of Abraham—who are in need of something, something they can’t quite
explain yet. Genesis is just the beginning; it’s people warring against other
people; it’s cheaters becoming fathers of nations. It’s Abraham sleeping with
his servant and taking Isaac to the brink of human sacrifice, and then it’s God
changing the trajectory of the story. This is the start of the salvation story.
For us today, it might be hard to relate. Many of us were
born into Christian families that told us the Christmas story and the Easter
story. Many of us have the salvation-answer given to us before we even ask the salvation-question,
before we ever consider questions like, “Why am I here?” “What is my purpose?”
“Why is there life at all?” We know Jesus before we know there is a need for
Jesus. That’s not a bad thing, but it does mean that since we have the answer
we sometimes worry when the questions come up. We feel that, if we are like
Jacob, if we are part of a world that is dark and we wonder if there are clear
answers or not, then we might be unfaithful. Our questions become associated
with doubts. We run away from the questions. Jacob isn’t perfect—he’s a
cheater, after all; he wrestles with God; he doesn’t follow the blueprint of
faithfulness—but he is faithful. It
is in his wandering, on his uneven path, even in his wrestling that he comes to
recognize the presence of God.
God promises to be with Jacob wherever he goes, which
means—I suspect—that God expects him to go somewhere. Israel—once Jacob—goes
many places. He has sons—one of whom, Joseph, ends up in Egypt. He blesses his
own youngest son, again breaking the rules. He doesn’t bow to tradition, but
follows a sixth sense toward a salvation story. Jacob is a reminder that God
uses people apart from whatever caricature we have of the perfect person God
could use. Jacob is a reminder that salvation is not a smooth road; he’s a
reminder that God will wrestle with us, that our choices are not always black
and white—good or bad—and that God will pick us up on the far side of the grey
choices we make. Most of all, Jacob is a reminder that we are human and God
chooses human beings, even though we make a mess of things, because we bear in
us an image of the divine.
At the end of the story, God promises again to be with us
wherever we go. That means when we mess up. That means when we feel lost. That
means when we angrily shout, “There is no God!” That means when we type
terrible things on our computers or think terrible thoughts about our
neighbors. But I don’t say any of this in a judgment-y way; I’m not saying, “He
knows when you are sleeping and knows when you’re awake.” You already know
that. Rather, I’m saying this as a salvation-promise; that there is no darkness
inside of you that God is not willing to fill. You are saved by grace and
though Jacob could have no idea what that means we are blessed to have a wider
view of the heights and depths of it. We know Jesus, which is a wonderful thing
to know. And we also know Jacob, we know where we’ve been, and that God will
move the story forward using all sorts of imperfect creatures like us.
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