Cheyenne and I love church signs, or maybe I should say we love to hate them. I guess I hate them because given the opportunity to publish the Gospel before the whole community, it seems like such a waste to post some moralizing aphorism, or some encouragement to fix your life, or just some play on words whose actual meaning is nearly nothing. On the other hand, some of what I consider my best efforts at delivering the message of grace have been inspired by the mess the church has made of delivering that message. So we saw one recently that I found interesting. It said, "Your life can be either a mess or a message. Which will it be?" And my thought was, "Why can't it be both?"
And Jacob arose that night and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed over the ford of Jabbok. He took them, sent them over the brook, and sent over what he had.Jacob had just finished running from his father-in-law who he had cheated. When this story starts he is trying to escape from the wrath of his brother Esau, Genesis records for us how Jacob stole, lied, and cheated Esau, and we can fairly assume that there is quite a bit more lying, cheating, and stealing that Jacob did that isn't recorded. Jacob is the Supplanter, his older brother has some things that are His, some are His because He is the Firstborn, some His actions have earned Him, but all of them are rightfully His, and Jacob's story is the story of him taking from his Elder Brother. Jacob is the Deceiver, he is a con artist, a past master of half-truths, omissions, and outright lies. Jacob is playing me in this story, and you too.
Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.”
But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”
So He said to him, “What is your name?”
He said, “Jacob.”
And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Genesis 32
If there is any confusion, the Man wrestling Jacob could beat him at any time with essentially zero effort, He is the Angel of the Lord, the name the Old Testament gives to God when He manifests Himself to men, in other words this is none other than Christ Himself. So how is it that Jacob prevails? How is it that Jacob, who runs from basically every one else in the story, decides to pick a fight with the Lord of Hosts and comes out on top?
Realistically there is only one answer:the Lord throws the fight. The story doesn't record how the fight began, but based on our Lord's other fights I think that Jesus picked the fight. In the words of Tyler Durden from the great movie Fight Club, "I want you to pick a fight with a total stranger, and I want you to lose.` Christ spent the last year of His life goading the Pharisees into a fight, they didn't want to fight Him but He kept taking shots at them until they had no other choice but to fight Him, a fight He planned to lose. I think that the best way to find His reason is to look at the effect He produces. In both stories the effect is that Christ blesses the one who fought with Him and prevailed, and I think that that is the reason that He picked the fight. He goads cowards into fighting with Him, so that they will demand a blessing from Him, and He can grant us what He has always wanted to but we have been unwilling and therefore unable to receive.
Jacob the Deceiver, is Israel the Prince of God. The Mess is the Message. Jacob is us, obviously. We are the Mess. A famous church sign not that long ago read, "God hates fags." And what is interesting about that message is that they are right next to the most interesting, enlightening truth in the universe and just barely miss it. If I were to argue with them I wouldn't try and prove them wrong. I would instead show that their arguments prove rather more than they intend them to. For every verse that says God is angered by homosexuality, there are ten that say He is angered by adultery, and another pile that show how upset He is by sabbath breaking, and a pile of other things. He hates all sins, but not one sinner, not one fag. So, my not quite so snappy church sign would say something like, "God has a lot of good reasons to hate fags, very good reasons, honestly God ought to hate fags, and He ought to hate me because I am an adulterer and other things just as bad. But He doesn't. I can't explain why except to say that He loves us." The Mess is the Message. Jacob is Israel.
Paul says that, "He has confined all under sin, that He might have mercy on all." Being a sinner is the necessary condition for receiving grace, the only prerequisite. But it isn't that Jacob becomes Israel. Jacob was always Israel. And the surprising thing about this story is that there is another Christ figure in Jacob's life, Esau. Esau, the older brother, the father's favorite, the one who has all of the things that we lack, the one who does all things well, the one we have supplanted. From the womb I, Jacob, you have been the Lord's parasitic twin. All that we have, we have stolen from Him, but His complaint is not that we have stolen but that we haven't stolen enough. We need to move up from petty theft to refusing to let go of Christ until He gives us His blessing, His birthright. And if the only way to get us to demand His blessing is to lose a fight to us, He is cool with that.
Our story about Jacob began with him trying to return home, and finding his elder brother seemingly standing in his way. He imagined his brother as an obstacle, Jacob was right in seeing himself as a prodigal, but he was wrong about the elder brother in his story.
Then Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, “Speak thus to my lord Esau, ‘Thus your servant Jacob says: “I have dwelt with Laban and stayed there until now. I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, and male and female servants; and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find favor in your sight.” ’ ”
Then the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he also is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” So Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies. And he said, “If Esau comes to the one company and attacks it, then the other company which is left will escape.”
Then Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your family, and I will deal well with you’: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which You have shown Your servant; for I crossed over this Jordan with my staff, and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and attack me and the mother with the children. For You said, ‘I will surely treat you well, and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’ ”
So he lodged there that same night, and took what came to his hand as a present for Esau his brother: two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty milk camels with their colts, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten foals.
Jacob sends gifts to Esau, to pacify his imagined wrath, he makes plans to preserve his wife and children even if he himself fell into Esau's hands.
Then he crossed over before them and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.
But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. And he lifted his eyes and saw the women and children, and said, “Who are these with you?”
So he said, “The children whom God has graciously given your servant.” Then the maidservants came near, they and their children, and bowed down. And Leah also came near with her children, and they bowed down. Afterward Joseph and Rachel came near, and they bowed down.
Then Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company which I met?”
And he said, “These are to find favor in the sight of my lord.”
But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.”
He gets there and finds that the elder brother is running to meet him, has more or less killed the fatted calf for him and gotten the best robe. Esau refused the gifts that Jacob offered him, because he hadn't come to receive but to give. And now that I look back, can we really believe that Jacob stole from Esau and Esau had no recourse. Is there a father that if he found out one child cheated the other wouldn't bring justice to his wronged child? I am not saying that it didn't happen the way that it appears to in Genesis, but only that there is more to the story than we have seen.
The one who preachers the Gospel must be like Jacob, he must be the taker, the deceiver, the Supplanter, but the one who hears the Gospel is made like Israel the Prince of God. Only as sinners can we present the Gospel. If we leave out the mess of our lives, then we leave out the message of His mercy to us. Without the human story there is no divine story.
