Photo credit: Slava Arkhipenko, used by permission via Unsplash
As we come upon Jacob in this morning’s Scripture, Jacob fears for his life.[1] He is returning to the brother he has badly wronged. In the morning, he will face that brother, and his 400 men. And so, as he waits, in the depths of the night before, Jacob fears for his life. He fears for the lives of his children, for the lives of his wives, for the lives of the mothers of his children. He fears for his livestock and his livelihood. Jacob fears for his life and his world.
And Jacob’s fear is not without cause. Jacob is the Bible’s great schemer, and the tangle of all his scheming lies before him in this moment. And the victim of Jacob’s worst scheming awaits him just across the river. Jacob and Esau. They have a history.
Jacob is a twin. Esau is his brother. Esau was born first, with Jacob not far behind – grasping onto Esau’s heel as they entered the world together. Esau is the outdoors son – he likes to hunt. Jacob is the indoors child – he likes to cook.
When they are young, one day Esau comes in from the hunt, sweaty and exhausted. And Jacob says – “Here, dear brother, have some of this delicious stew I've made.” Famished, Esau is about to dive in, when Jacob says, “Oh, but first, you have to give me your birthright” – the birthright of the eldest son. Evidently Esau is that hungry, and so he does. With a bowl of stew, in a vulnerable moment, Jacob deprives Esau of his birthright.
And a few years later, Jacob deprives his elder brother Esau of the eldest son’s blessing. Their father Isaac is nearing his death. The time is coming for him to bestow his blessing (and with it all his possessions). By tradition, the first son will get everything, and the second son not so much. So while Esau is out on the hunt, their mother helps disguise Jacob as Esau – Esau is hairy, so Jacob puts on goatskins to make his arms hairier – and their father – whose vision is dimming – thinks it is his eldest son – blesses Jacob, not Esau, and, literally, gives Jacob the farm.
When Esau returns and finds out, he is understandably rageful. There is nothing left for him – and Esau says, “When my father dies and our grieving is complete, the next death will be my brother’s.” So Jacob flees.
Jacob flees ostensibly to go and find himself a wife. And he does – he finds a wife, actually two. Straight off, Jacob meets and falls in love with Rachel, but in a complicated story, Jacob gets tricked into marrying her older sister Leah first – after working for their father for seven years. And then he has to work another seven years before he can marry Rachel. The schemer gets scammed. It’s quite the what goes around comes around story.
After all that, about 20 or 30 years after Jacob fled from the fury of his brother Esau, God tells Jacob in a dream: It’s time to go home. It’s time to go back, and yes, it’s time to face Esau.
That’s where we find Jacob when this morning’s scripture opens – in this moment of reckoning. Jacob has packed up his 12 sons, 2 wives and 2 maidservants – the mothers of his sons – and all that they possess – and they’ve come to the shore of the River Jabbok – the last river to cross before Jacob comes home to Esau. As one writer says, this is a story of crossing over... crossing over into an unknown beginning again.”[2]
Jacob fears what lies ahead. He sends some men ahead to tell Esau that he is coming. They report back that Esau is coming, too, with 400 men. Jacob fears for the worst. And the schemer gets to work. He strategizes. “Well, let’s divide up into two groups. That way if Esau slaughters half of us, the other half might escape.” And Jacob starts sending gifts – waves of gifts – goats – then sheep – then rams – then donkeys – one after the other – waves and waves of gifts to his brother – as if to say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Don’t kill me.
He fears for tomorrow, and he does what he can. But, right now, night has fallen. The time for scheming is done. Jacob has readied his family and his whole household. And here he is – all alone – knowing that across the river, his brother Esau is coming.
We find Jacob, alone with his fear.
Now, Jacob is not the first person in Scripture to fear... and he’s not the last. I searched the Old Testament for this Hebrew word for fear. It appears... a lot. Here are some of the folks that the Bible tells us knew fear: Adam, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all of Joseph’s brothers (when they faced the brother they had wronged), Moses, the people in slavery, the people on the run from Pharaoh, the people in the wilderness, Joshua, Saul, David, the Psalmist who wrote this morning’s psalm, Jeremiah... and so on.
Fear is a primary and essential human experience. It is one of our most primal emotions – an instinct, really. Fear is not a pleasant experience, to be sure, but it is one of the ways that we are equipped to survive. Psychologists describe fear as “an intense emotion aroused by the detection of imminent threat.”[3] It’s “a sense of alarm that mobilizes our bodies to react.” Fear tells us there is danger.
Brené Brown – in her “atlas” of our emotional life – groups “fear” as one of the places we go “when things are uncertain or too much.”[4] She groups fear with other emotions like stress and anxiety and overwhelm and dread. We feel stress and anxiety when what we experience in the world seems beyond our ability to cope successfully – when the world is unpredictable and uncontrollable.[5] Fear stands out as an acute, insistent, emergency response to imminent danger. The typical responses fear activates are survival responses– fight or flight or freeze.[6] Run from the danger. Walk right into it and fight back. Or freeze – maybe the danger will not see you and walk right by. Very primal.
Beyond that primal survival moment, we’re told that we shouldn’t let our fear control us – n that we should “face our fears” – as Brown puts it: “Our anxiety and fear need to be understood and respected... We need to pull up a chair and sit with them, understand why they’re showing up, and ask ourselves what there is to learn.”
This Scripture is the moment where Jacob turns toward his fear – there is nowhere to run – in the morning, he will meet up with Esau. And so – when I first had the idea for this sermon – I thought this would be the point, in the sermon, where we would look at how Jacob shows up – what he does – and we would learn something about how we can turn toward our fears and face them.
But as I’ve worked with the scripture this week – that’s not the thing that has caught and held my attention. I’m not so much interested in how Jacob shows up as I am in how God shows up.
Scripture says that Jacob is left alone there – on the shore of the river – and a man shows up and wrestles Jacob until daybreak. Now there are different views of just what or who this man is. You may have heard this story described as Jacob wrestling an angel. But the story says at the beginning – verse 24 – that it is a man (Heb: ish) who wrestles Jacob. Then, at the end of the story, there is the realization that Jacob has wrestled with God – with Elohimactually, a very particular Hebrew name for God.[7] As Jacob turns toward his fear, at the threshold of this crossing, God shows up in bodily form wrestling Jacob.[8] God shows up not as some calming, ethereal presence that sits alongside – but in active, bodily, God-in-humanity striving and struggling – all night long.[9]
Notice what emerges from that struggle: a name, a blessing, and a limp.[10] Jacob and the man are wrestling in the dirt – and they have this conversation as they strive with each other. As morning nears, the man – Elohim – says, “Let me go it’s almost daylight.” (You see, in the world of this story, a human can’t see God and live – if day breaks, and Jacob is wrestling God, and sees God.... well...) Jacob is willing to go the distance, he has nothing left to lose. God wants Jacob to live, and so says: Let me go, before daybreak..
“Not until you bless me.” And so first, God gives Jacob a new name – “Your name will be Israel, because you (Jacob) have struggled with God and humans and have overcome.” Israel: the one who strives with God. That is who Jacob becomes in the wrestling. And when they finally take a breath: God blesses Jacob. Out of Jacob’s fear of his unknown future, in this wrestling and entanglement and engagement with God, God blesses Jacob not only with presence – (God’s intense, embodied presence) – God blesses Jacob not only with presence, but with possibility.[11]
A blessing for the day ahead –
a blessing for all the days ahead –
a blessing of possibility that transcends his fear and the very real threat –
that transcends all that separates Jacob from his brother –
so that Jacob can cross that river into
the unknown beginning that lies ahead –
into the life that lies ahead.
Jacob turns and limps forward along the way that will lead to the brother he fears. Notice that limp. Jacob has contended with God – but even carrying that new name and blessing – Jacob is still very human, limping – but limping forward toward daybreak. As Wil Gafney notes, “Even wounded, Jacob is tenacious... but, with that limp, each step he takes is [now] marked by the divine touch.”[12]
What holds my attention in this story is how God shows up. As Jacob turns toward his fear, God shows up in the struggle, with the gift of presence and possibility – for a future in which Jacob is not alone – a future in which we are not alone – a future that transcends all that keeps us apart – and all that we fear.
I think this holds my attention – because in these uncertain days – I am holding fear. Not just stress or anxiety – those are familiar friends I know well – but fear. I won’t give the whole list. But I fear for the survival a Constitution that has promised to protect our rights and freedoms (how ever imperfectly we have lived into that). I fear the bullying rhetoric of the regime that has come to power. I fear that they are coming for those different from them. I fear for LGBTQIA+ folks and our families and for so many others.
It’s not unreasonable to fear a regime that says it will use its power-over to come for those who disagree with them. Particularly when you see them doing just that. And this experience of fear has somehow attuned me to listen for fears that feel even greater than mine – fears from folks living in war, and hunger, from those who fear loss of jobs, and separation from family – fears that maybe till now my privilege has kept me from hearing.
As I read this story – as Jacob turns toward his fear – I want to know: Where and how does God plan to show up? God shows up, for Jacob, (1) with presence vivid and real and (2) with possibility that can transcend the perils that lie ahead – presence and possibility that empower Jacob to limp forward out of his fear and into life.
Now don’t worry – I won’t leave you hanging – I’ll tell you how the story ends: Jacob crosses the river – and there is his whole household wives and offspring and livestock – lined up and waiting. Jacob walks to the front of them. And they go to face Esau. And in the moment that he fears – face to face with the brother he has wronged – Esau runs to embrace him. (And as they catch up, Esau asks – What was up with all those goats and rams and donkeys you kept sending? That was weird). It’s not a perfect reconciliation – they discover they can’t live next door to each other – but they embrace, and they live.
As to what we might learn about facing our fears, well, here are some very simple things I glean out of this text:
1. Turn toward our fear. Name it. Look at it with honest eyes.
2. Take seriously the fear of others.
3. Honor the instinct of fight, flight, or freeze. Fear is there to help humans survive real peril. Particularly to the extent that you have less power and privilege in the system – what do you need to do to survive?
4. And then, beyond that initial assessment, move into the struggle, claiming and coming to embody the blessing of God’s presence and possibility, which have the power to transcend the peril that lies ahead.
This Lenten season, we are talking about Turning Toward the Way – turning toward the way of Jesus. It occurs to me that this, too, is the way of Jesus: Turning toward our fear – just as Jesus turned toward the cross – moving forward into the world’s peril, toward God’s presence with us there, toward God’s transcendent possibility and power to bring us always into life.
I read a lot of writers this week, but one stuck with me. Elie Wiesel – Holocaust survivor recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize – here’s what he had to say about that moment – when Jacob emerges from a night spent wrestling and striving with God:
“Jacob has just discovered a fundamental truth: God is in humanity, even in suffering, even in misfortune, even in the presence of great evil. God is everywhere. In every being. God does not wait for us at the end of the road, at the termination of our exile. God accompanies us there. More than that: God is the road. God is the exile. God holds both ends of the rope. God is present in every extremity. God is every limit. God is part of Jacob, just as God is part of Esau.”[13]
May that be so in the life we live as we turn together to face and embrace the struggles of the world God loves so very much.
© 2025 Scott Clark
[1] For general background on this text and Genesis, see Terence E. Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. I (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994); Wil Gafney, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18/commentary-on-genesis-3222-31-2 ; Vanessa Lovelace, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/jacob-wrestles-god/commentary-on-genesis-3222-30 ; Herman C. Waetjen, Christianity as the Moral Order of Integration: The Gift of the Jews to the World (London: Austin Macauley Publishers, 2023), pp.82-96. See also Naomi H. Rosenblatt and Joshua Horowitz,Wrestling with Angels: What Genesis Teaches Us About Our Spiritual Identity, Sexuality, and Personal Relationships (New York, NY: Dell Publishing, 1995), for a psychology-grounded reading of the scriptures.
[2] See Lovelace, supra.
[3] See American Psychological Association, APA Dictionary of Psychology, https://dictionary.apa.org/fear
[4] See Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Ney York, NY: Random House, 2021), pp. 2-15.
[5] Id. pp.4-6.
[6] Id. p.12.
[7] See Waetjen, supra, reading this story as part of the larger narrative in Scripture of Yahweh Elohim, the integration of the God of presence and the God of transcendent possibility, and the integration of the fullness of our humanity beyond every separation.
[8] See id. and, Fretheim, p.565.
[9] Id.
[10] See Fretheim, pp. 566-68.
[11] See Waetjen, pp.92-94.
[12] See Gafney, supra.
[13] Quoted in Rosenblatt, supra, p.304.
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