Jacob, Jesus and Jung

When facts become a story, the whole body is suffused with understanding.

Hannah Rachel Bell ~ Storymen

I preached at church this morning and since I have a fancy phone now I decided to record it, only it seems to be inordinately convoluted to put an audio link in a blogger post so it's not here. I think, though, that I can include this link to my Drive account and that might work, if you really want to hear my voice. Hopefully this doesn't leave my drive account open to marauders...somehow. Always a worry.

I thought about adding this 'imaginative' story at the end and playing the song but it seemed to work out best as it was and I was a bit worried people might think I was a fruit loop. I evidently don't mind if my blog readers think I'm a fruit loop. I think that ship has sailed here.

And so. It will win no awards but I offer it as an imperfect gift, which is, after all, the only kind.

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The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. ~ Genesis 32: 22-31

When we meet Jacob in this story, he is preparing to meet Esau, the brother he stole the birthright from. You will recall that Jacob had to gain his father’s blessing by deception by pretending to be Esau since Jacob was the second born son. Jacob fears Esau will want to kill him for his deception and Esau has threatened as much. Jacob is a trickster with a history of deception and manipulation - his very name means ‘one who deceives’ - so he is right to fear the consequences of his actions.

This odd story of Jacob’s wrestling match breaks into that narrative and disrupts the flow of the broader story to tell us this strange and mysterious tale of a being who wrestles all night with Jacob. It is a physically intimate scene, these two locked in a fight in the dark. It is a violent scene, with Jacob prevailing but only after gaining a dislocated hip. And it is also dislocated as a story, with unanswered questions and unexpected consequences.

For example, in this story we see once again that Jacob is determined to gain a blessing by whatever means he can: he refuses to allow his opponent to go without receiving a blessing. Jacob also asks his opponent the question ‘what is your name’ but he gets the unexpected and cryptic reply ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’

As for the opponent, many interpreters – both Jewish and Christian – have tried to determine who exactly it was. Was it a human man, a stranger? An angel? The spirit of Esau? Was it God? We are told that Jacob’s understanding is that through the encounter he has seen God face to face, but the details are hazy and mysterious.

As we have looked at our foundational faith stories in the past few weeks we have looked at different ways to read these stories, different ways of understanding what God might be saying to us through them. For example, it is helpful to have an understanding of the culture and worldview of the day, as much as we can, and it is also helpful to understand oral tradition and storytelling purposes.

Another way we can approach these stories is through our imagination. Imagination and religion have a complicated relationship partly because imagination is unpredictable and sometimes chaotic, and because it is personal and so cannot be controlled by other people.

Perhaps this story of Jacob – like so many in scripture – leaves many gaps exactly so that there is room for our imagination, room for us to fill in details and participate in the story according to our own interpretation. It provides an opportunity for us each to share our own unique take on the story that is told. A Christian imagination works with reason to search out stories for what it is true, to look for meaning, to look for emotional connection, to look for God. When we read the story of Jacob, we might consider how our minds embellish the story: what are the details that we add? How do we imagine it? Can we imagine ourselves as Jacob? Can we imagine ourselves as his assailant? Or as an observer? How do we imagine a meaning?

So, let me tell you about what my possibly overactive Christian imagination does with this story. What jumps out at me is the way that Jacob’s opponent responds to Jacob’s request for his name. Jacob asks politely ‘please tell me your name’ and the response is ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ as if to say ‘you ought to know the answer’. Here is Jacob fighting in the dark with an unknown opponent who seems to know Jacob, and believes Jacob should know him. I am reminded here of the psychological and cultural idea of our shadow – that is, our negative character that we hide and deny: 'Why is that you ask my name, Jacob? I am you.'

A key aspect of psychology, and of cultural practices all over the world – not to mention literary themes – is the idea that as human beings our quest is to understand and fight with our own shadow. If we imagine the story this way for a moment, Jacob experiences quite literally a dark night of the soul. He faces down his own shadow and, rather than using deception as he has before, has to do this honestly, head on. Unlike us, Jacob cannot distract himself by watching cat videos on youtube, or by heading out to Starbucks. We can imagine, then, in this solitary moment, Jacob wrestling with his life of deception, with his own sense of guilt about deceiving his brother, and with his unresolvable woundedness at being the second born son.

Surely this is a way of imagining this story of Jacob that resonates with us. We all have a shadow side to our character. We may try to deny it or hide it but we must face it or it will come and wrestle with us whether we like it or not – it will come back to bite us in the…hip. And, like Jacob, it is when we are alone with time to think that this often happens. Just like Jacob we have a history of deliberate sinning but we also sin and suffer from a place of unresolvable woundedness. What do we do with this side of our character that we prefer to hide? How do we deal with our sinful side, the side that destroys and leads us away from God and from others? Is ignoring and pressing it down the best way?

Jacob recognizes that through his encounter, his struggle, his fierce and painful fight he encounters God. Jacob’s sin in pursuing blessing by any devious means becomes his strength in determination as he gains a blessing after this honest wrestle with his shadowy opponent. Destructive forces are turned into creative promise.

God is in the midst of this struggle, at its heart. In God’s relentless pursuit of Jacob’s wellbeing, God wrestles with Jacob as much as Jacob wrestles with God, with his opponent, and with himself – intimately, forcefully, bodily. After the fight, even though he has a dislocated hip, Jacob refuses to let his opponent go until he blesses him. Notice that the opponent replies ‘What is your name?’. It is as if the opponent is reminding Jacob that the name he was given means ‘one who deceives’. He is asking him what identity he wants to claim now, who he wants to be after persevering in this struggle.

Theologian Walter Wink writes that “it is God who sets before us our need for healing, God who meets us in the wound, God the terror who frightens us in the darkness of the unknown life that wells up from our own depths, God who needs our healing, God who heals us.” Whatever our wound, whatever our shadow, God is with us in our complexity, turning our wound into strength by God’s grace. Light always casts a shadow and we consist of both as our complex and beloved selves. As Walter Wink continues, “The side of us so long lost to us, …at odds with us, wounded and rejected by us, also has the blessing to give us. We need that aspect, as part of our full being, part of the full selfhood that God restores to us.”

It is our own personal stories and struggles with God and with ourselves that form us as individuals and that can bless us with gifts we can share with others. Henri Nouwen writes this: “the first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it. When brokenness is…just as intimate a part of our being as our chosenness and our blessedness…we have to find the courage to embrace our own brokenness, to make our most feared enemy into our friend, and to claim it as an intimate companion.” (93). Like Jacob, though we may feel dislocated and in pain, we must persevere long enough, to ask for and receive a blessing, as Nouwen puts it, “allowing the blessing to touch us in our brokenness” (98) always so that we in turn can bless others.

Like Jacob discovers, we need not be governed by the fear of being discovered, or by the fear of fear, or by the flaws in our character we always thought were written in stone. We too are asked ‘what is your name?’ What is the identity that you choose now that encompasses all of you and as you continue your journey with God?

God undergirds, surrounds, and holds us in the struggles we face as we become human beings. Even Jesus faces the temptations and trials that human beings face in his time in the wilderness and in the garden of Gethsemane. As Paul (possibly :) tells us in Hebrews (4:15) ‘We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet is without sin.” The redemption of Jesus Christ’s struggle through the cross means that there is no depth or distance or darkness we can travel to that takes us out of the reach of God.

Does this interpretation make our struggle or Jacob’s fight imaginary? In a way it does, but imaginary does not mean not real. It is through our imaginations that we make meaning from stories like these. Imaginations fed by our learning and our listening, certainly, but still creative and open to the Holy Spirit’s wild leading.

God is with us as we face our fears and struggles, as we claim our new identity of body and soul, and as we are blessed by God to go out into the world using our reason and imagination in God’s service to others.

Amen.

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Blumenthal, Fred. Who wrestled with Jacob - online pdf
Nouwen, Henri Life of the Beloved 
Wink, Walter. Wrestling with God: Psychological insights in Bible Study. In J. Harold Ellens and Wayne G. Rollins Psychology and the Bible: from Genesis to apocalyptic vision