Unexpected Transformation

Genesis 32:22-31

August 2, 2020

 

Does anyone remember the Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers? I was just a kid when they hit the big screen, but I was aware of the character of the Pink Panther, because I watched the cartoon of the same name on Saturday mornings. Peter Sellers starred as Inspector Clouseau, who was a bumbling but very funny detective. While I was more attuned to the Pink Panther of Saturday mornings, and even though I have not seen one of the movies in years, I do remember one particular aspect about each film. Clouseau had a manservant named Cato. Cato was a master of martial arts, and it was his job to attack Clouseau at unexpected times. This was meant to keep the inspector vigilant and, on his toes, when dealing with criminals. Cato would ambush Clouseau anyplace, any time, even at home. But if the telephone rang or someone came to the door, he would immediately return to his role as the devoted valet. 

The Pink Panther movies were funny and silly. The relationship between Cato and Clouseau was meant as a comedic device. It was meant to make people laugh. But the story we have before us in Genesis is anything but funny. But the reason I start with a comedy movie is that the Cato’s unexpected ambushes on Clouseau make me think about the ambush that happens to Jacob. Maybe ambush is too strong of a word, but it does read like one. It feels like one.

Jacob, our trickster, our grasper, our scoundrel, has done well for himself. He met his match in his father-in-law, Laban, who tricked him into marrying first his oldest daughter, Leah, then the true desire of Jacob’s heart, Rachel. Jacob has had children with both women, and their maidservants. There are eleven offspring at this point. But Jacob has made the decision to leave his father-in-law’s home and try to make peace with his brother Esau. While this sounds as though Jacob has mellowed some, the old trickster still had some tricks up his sleeves.

When he and Laban agreed to part company, Laban told him he could take some of the livestock that bore certain physical traits. Jacob engaged in what might be understood as an example of the earliest genetic engineering and manipulated quite a few animals that would go with him. Rachel must have learned from her husband, because before they left her father, she stole some of her father’s household gods.

Laban, realizing they were gone, took after them. Jacob did not know any of this, so he encouraged Laban and his men to search the tents. But Rachel had hid them in such a clever and such a sneaky way, that she proved herself to be just as cunning as Jacob.

But now we come to our part in the story. Through messengers, Jacob has let Esau know that they were coming. The messengers have reported back that Esau is advancing toward them with 400 of his men. Jacob fears the worst, so he divides his group into two, and works out a plan to make Esau think that he is better equipped for a fight than he truly was. And now, he has sent his wives and his children across the Jabbok, and he is alone. Without any pause in the narrative, without any hesitation or explanation, a man begins to wrestle Jacob in the darkness.

Like the ambushes Cato used to wage on Clouseau, this seems to come from nowhere. But while Cato and Clouseau were silliness embodied, this is deadly serious. The unknown person and Jacob wrestle until daybreak. They seem to be an even match, because neither one can overcome the other. Finally, as the light of the new morning begins to creep out from its bedclothes, the man realized that he could not beat Jacob. So he strikes Jacob on his hip socket. Jacob’s hip is immediately dislocated, and I would suspect the pain would have been excruciating. But Jacob was not named for his grasping tendencies for nothing.

The man demands to be let go because the day is breaking. But Jacob won’t release him until he receives a blessing. The man asks Jacob his name.

The man asks Jacob his name.

This was not a moment of introduction. In the near Eastern culture, names were not just designations or identifications. To know someone’s name was to have a power over that person. It was as if knowing someone’s name was to hold that person’s soul, that person’s innermost being, in your grip. What is your name was not just a getting to know you kind of question. To know Jacob’s name was to make Jacob vulnerable. But Jacob responds. He tells this man, this man whom he has wrestled and struggled and grasped.

“Jacob.”

The man says,

“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”

The man gave Jacob a new name but would not respond in kind when Jacob asked him what his name was. But the man blessed Jacob, and the wrestling match was over. Jacob did the same as when he had the dream of the angels and the ladder, he named the place where he stood. He named it Peniel, which in Hebrew translates to seeing God face to face but not losing his life in the process.

This is a great story. It captures your imagination. It captures mine anyway. I often like to think about biblical stories through the lens of a screenplay or a novel. If I were to write this story in my own words, what would I say? How would I frame it? How would I tell the story up to this point and where would I take it once this part of the story is complete? But beyond being a compelling narrative, what else? What does it mean for us today? What significance does it hold for our lives beyond this morning in worship?

I know that I cannot answer this question for all of us, I can only answer it for me. When I read this story of Jacob wrestling with this man, with God, through the dark night, I feel as though it is the story of my own faith, my own struggles with God. It embodies my own long dark nights of the soul, when I wrestled with God, when I wrestled with my faith, when I wrestled and strove against what I thought God wanted of me and what I wanted for myself.

I have a confession to make. I am so envious of the people who seem to live their faith as easily as they breathe. That has never been me. When I was a kid, I questioned what I was told to believe about God. As an adult I do the same. For four plus years I co-lead a Bible Study with another pastor, whom I am grateful to call friend. But he and the other folks in the group – also people I am grateful to call friends – just seemed to get it all so much easier than I do. What they read in the Bible they seemed to accept more gracefully and willingly that I do. It’s not that I don’t take scripture seriously. I do. But I wrestle with it. I question I push back. I argue. For me faith has been a struggle, a wrestling match with God.

Sometimes in those Bible studies, and in many other circumstances as well, I would sit and listen and think, “I wish I could approach this like you all do. I wish it came easier for me. I wish I could just accept and move on.”

But I can’t seem to do that, and I’ve come to believe that maybe I am not supposed to. Maybe this is just who I am, and God who knows me just as I am, calls me to be a disciple, to follow, to lead, to preach, to pray, to work to be faithful just as I am. Maybe that is why the old hymn of the same name touches a chord in my heart. Maybe this is why the story of Jacob both draws me in, frustrates me, and even angers me; because I know I am more like Jacob than I care to admit. His life with God was not an easy one. He struggled. He grasped. He wrestled. But he was blessed. He was unexpectedly transformed, not only through the changing of his name, but because he walked away from this wrestling match with a life-long limp.

We so often think of transformations as beautiful, don’t we?  When Jesus took some of the disciples to the top of the mountain, he was transfigured into glory. His face, his whole appearance, even his clothing, went from ordinary to magnificent. That’s how we want to see transformation as well. We are transformed from our ordinariness into something more wonderful, more beautiful. In truth, we want to believe that transformation changes us from ordinary, flawed, frail to perfection. But when it comes to faith, when it comes to discipleship, to following Jesus, to trusting God, to hoping in the Holy Spirit, transformation does not erase who we were. Transformation transforms who we are, and it might even leave us with a limp. Even in resurrection Jesus still bore the scars of the nails.

But what really matters is that its worth it. The wrestling, the struggling, the limping. It’s worth it. Because the unexpected transformation that comes from God is not about making us perfect, it is about making us more who God created and called/calls us to be. Our transformation may come in unexpected ways, but it is worth it. That is the good news of the gospel. It is worth it.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.” Amen.