August 2 - “Wrestling with Vision”
Wrestling with Vision
Genesis 32:22-31
Matthew 14:13-21
August 2, 2026
Rev. Mary Nelson - First Congregational Church UCC of Williamstown, MA
We haven’t looked at the Hebrew scriptures passages very much this summer, overall. We’ve been hearing the story of Abraham and his descendants alongside our primary gospel lessons, but we haven’t focused on that saga very much because the big-picture epic generational tale of Genesis has not been as resonant for us in this season as the raw, specific experience of Matthew’s community in first-century Syrian Antioch. But today, we’ve got a story from Genesis and a story from Matthew that, together, might be more compelling than either one is separately in this time.
Jacob is the third generation of the family of “Patriarchs” whose story shapes the traditional focus of the Hebrew scriptures. There’s Abraham, and he has two sons, Isaac and Ishmael—Isaac is the favored son, and Ishmael, though the elder, is cast out and his story unfolds in the off-stage area of this epic drama. Then Isaac also has two sons, Jacob and Esau (they are twins, but technically Esau is older), and, once again, younger Jacob is the favored son. It’s clear from an early age that there is just not psychological and emotional room for both boys to coexist in this household, and Esau goes away to the land of Canaan, partly because of some trickery on Jacob’s part. Jacob steals the parental blessing that is due to the firstborn son, and Esau leaves their father’s household to strike out on his own, unblessed (he, too, has a life that unfolds offstage). In today’s story, both sons are adults, and Jacob has realized that he needs to reconcile with his brother. That’s the backstory we need to know for today’s scripture.
Jacob packs up his household, which includes a considerable number of wives and children and servants and livestock, and travels with this enormous retinue toward Canaan, determined to make peace with his brother, but uncertain what he will encounter when he finds him. And he and his entourage come to a river, the Jabbok, with a ford-able point, as night draws near: he takes his wives and children and servants and livestock across the river and helps them to set up camp, but then he returns to the other side of the Jabbok for the night by himself.
There are context cues that appear in parts of the story that we didn’t read today: Jacob is afraid of meeting his brother. He knows he has to do it, he is in a vulnerable position and needs to ask his brother for help, but he is afraid that his brother is going to hold a grudge because of that stolen blessing, and enact revenge somehow… Jacob isn’t sure, but he doesn’t expect to find kindness or goodwill when he finally reunites with Esau. Jacob expects Esau to meet him with armies. So when Jacob takes his entire household across the river to camp for the night, and then returns to the other side to camp alone, he is acting out of cowardice. Jacob has placed his entire household—his wives and children and servants and livestock, PLUS a whole river(!)—as a buffer between himself and his brother. He would rather be alone and vulnerable, and make his entire household vulnerable as well, in order for Jacob to be as far away from Esau as he can possibly get.
That night, we are told, Jacob wrestles with a strange, unidentified man, all night long. He’s one of those ambiguous, unnamed figures who sometimes appear in the story of the Patriarchs: maybe he’s an angel, maybe the man is God-in-physical-form, maybe he’s just a man, we don’t ever quite know. But Jacob realizes that this man is important, and he refuses to concede the match, insisting that the man bless Jacob. The man blesses Jacob and gives him a new name, Israel, and then he vanishes. Jacob returns across the river, but he is changed—with a new name, which is a new identity, and also with a new limp, a physical reminder of the night he wrestled with…whoever that was. After this passage we read today, Jacob does resume his place at the head of the procession of wives and children and servants and livestock, and when Jacob meets his brother Esau, and Esau’s armies, their reunion is one of love and forgiveness and brotherhood. They make peace, they exchange gifts, they catch up, and Jacob settles his household in his brother’s territory.
Jacob wants to be the big strong leader of his household. He knows that he is the favorite son of the favorite son of a man who was promised land and progeny by God directly. He feels the weight of legacy and perhaps even calling or destiny. He likes the idea of leadership, of power. But when the time comes for Jacob to do the hard work of claiming that legacy for his own—not through trickery, not through riding on daddy’s coattails or relying on favorite-son status… when it comes time for Jacob to step forward and do the really hard work of claiming the promise for his generation and securing it for the generation that comes after him, Jacob gets scared! He risks everything he owns, every relationship he has, every bit of security he has built up to sustain his household, his wife and his children and his servants and his livestock. He puts that all out in front, between himself and his perceived enemy, and he runs away, back across the river. He’s afraid of what might be coming. He wants someone else to do the work for him.
Sure, maybe he needed that wrestling match on the bank of the Jabbok to prepare him to meet his brother Esau. Maybe he needed a fairly-earned blessing to give him the confidence to face his brother. Maybe he needed the new name, Israel, the new identity, to be able to say “I have wrestled with God and with humans, and I have prevailed; I have seen God face-to-face and lived, I can do this next hard thing, too.” Maybe God knew that about him, and came to the riverside to give him that moment. But what Jacob knew about himself, before that wrestling match took place, was that he was willing to risk everything in order to avoid doing the thing he needed to do. He chose to give it all up to avoid doing the work. Let my household meet Esau’s armies. Let them perish. I will hear their cries, I will hear the army splashing across the river, and that will be my warning to run as far as I can in the opposite direction. Anything to avoid the hard task I need to do.
We do this too sometimes, don’t we? Take the disciples in Matthew’s story today. Often, Jesus’s disciples are stand-ins for us, his modern disciples, right? They say out loud the things we are thinking, they ask the dumb question we would ask, they make the wrong choice in a moment of panic; and Jesus chastises them, and teaches them (uh, teaches US) the lesson we’re supposed to learn about how to be in this world. Today, Jesus tries to find a quiet place to be by himself and breathe for a minute, and the crowds follow him. (Presumably, the crowds include the disciples.) So Jesus has compassion for the people and heals them, teaches them, and at the end of the day, the disciples say, “Hey, Jesus, send all these people away, it’s time for dinner and they should go back to their towns so they can get something to eat.” But Jesus, who values radical hospitality, who practices welcome and inclusion for all people, knows exactly whose job it is to make sure the crowds can eat: “They don’t need to go away; you feed them,” he says. And the disciples are confused: “Um, we don’t have enough food to give them, all we have are two loaves and five fish.” So Jesus takes the loaves and fishes, blesses them, and then gives them back to the disciples to distribute among the crowd. “No, seriously, you feed them.” You have one job. This is the work.
They don’t want to do the work! But Jesus won’t let them shirk their calling, their responsibility. You give them something to eat. They’re out here because of the ministry we do, and I’m not feeding them on my own: you have to help me. Together, they end up feeding 5000 people “besides women and children.” (insert eyeroll here)
When we look around and see the hungry crowds, see the sun getting low, don’t we also try to send the people away so someone else can feed them? Don’t we look at our two loaves and five fish and say “there’s no way this will feed the thousands who hunger”? Don’t we like to know that the people got fed somehow, and feel relief that we didn’t have to solve the problem ourselves?
We cannot do everything ourselves, it’s true. We have human limits, we have resources we need to steward with care and creativity. But we also have a calling, and we have to do the work: listening to understand what that calling truly is, and working together to transform our two loaves and five fishes into the ministry that our community, our world, actually needs. Jesus wants his disciples to participate in doing the ministry with him—that’s US, that’s our task. And from time to time, we have to stop and listen, check in together about what our calling is and is not, and how we’re going to do the work we need to do.
That’s why we’re having these 4 discernment sessions this month and next. We need to make an effort to claim a coherent vision and understanding of our call. We have to figure out how we’re going to do the work—rather than thinking up ideas that we actually expect someone else to carry out for us. We are not the consumers of Jesus’s ministry, we are the doers of his ministry.
We want our church to be “appealing” to others – potential new members, a potential new pastor – but what is “appealing” is authenticity, self-knowledge, integrity. We have to be who God calls us to be, not who we think others want us to be. We have to serve the community that is, not the community that we imagine. We have to meet the needs of today, not the needs we remember from another time. We have to figure out what our calling is, and stand firm in it, and do the work.
Jacob had to wrestle with a stranger all night. The disciples had to go into the crowd and distribute food they thought was scarce. We have to listen and learn how to respond to the reality of the need that exists today, not rest in our fantasies of what the needs should be or what someone else should be doing to solve the problems (or face the armies) we have imagined we might encounter.
Our ancestors in faith saw the face of God and lived, wrestled with God and humans and prevailed, took two loaves and five fish and fed unknown thousands. We do not have to make the miracle happen—God does that. We have to do the work that God calls us to do, to make the miracle possible.
So let’s spend some time figuring out together what our work is, and how we’re going to do it, in Jesus’s name. Amen.