Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 19, 2025
Scripture: Genesis 32:22-31
To me, this story about Jacob that we read this morning has almost a cinematic
feel to it. There probably isn’t enough
story there to turn it into a feature length movie… unless you are Peter
Jackson who managed to turn a single novel, The Hobbit, into three
movies. But I can see this story about
Jacob working well as a short film.
So let’s start with our casting. Our
main character here is Jacob, son of Isaac and Rebekah, grandson of Sarah and
Abraham. Jacob, who was the husband of
the sisters Leah and Rachel (yes, both at the same time), and consort of his
wife’s slaves Bilhah and Zilpah. Jacob
who was the father of twelve sons and one daughter.
I think that we would probably have to cast a conventionally handsome actor in
the role of Jacob, but we wouldn’t want a muscley action hero type actor. Jacob tended to get by on his wits rather
than on his physical strength.
Jacob was more than just a bit of a trickster.
You might remember that when he was younger and his father was dying, he
tricked his older brother Esau out of their father’s blessing. In fact, this complicated relationship
between the brothers goes right back to their birth – they were twins, and when
they were born, Jacob, the second-born, came out of the womb holding on to
Esau’s heel, almost like he was trying to pull his elder brother back, and
pulling himself into the first-born position.
So Jacob is a trickster, but when you carry on with his story, the trickster
gets tricked by his father-in-law. When
Jacob fell in love with Rachel and asked to marry her, the condition was that
he would give seven years’ labour to her father in exchange for his bride. But
then seven years later, at the wedding, her father tricked the groom by
covering Rachel’s elder sister Leah’s head with the veil and presenting her as
Rachel. And so Jacob was tricked into giving his father-in-law seven more years
of labour in order to be allowed to marry Rachel.
But don’t worry too much about him – you can’t keep a trickster down for long,
and shortly before today’s story, Jacob turned the tables on his father-in-law. He was in charge of his father-in-law’s
livestock, and used his trickery to make sure that his flock ended up with the
largest and strongest sheep, while his father-in-law ended up with the weak and
sickly lambs. And then when his wives’
brothers clued in that their father was being tricked, Jacob made plans to move
his whole family, all of those wives and children, back to his homeland. But Jacob didn’t wait for his father-in-law
to catch him, but snuck them all away without saying goodbye.
And now Jacob, our hero – or maybe anti-hero – is on his way back to his
homeland, back to encounter his brother Esau, with whom he didn’t part on the
friendliest of terms, after he had robbed Esau of his birthright.
So back to casting. For Jacob, like I
said, we probably want someone who is conventionally handsome, but not a big
buff action-hero type. I’m thinking
someone like Benedict Cumberbatch or Ryan Reynolds.
His family – his wives and children – they all have minor roles in our film. At
the beginning of the story, Jacob helps them all across the river to go on
ahead of him, but he remains behind for the night. So I don’t think that we need to spend a lot
of time casting them.
But our other main character in our story is this shadowy figure that Jacob
meets that night on the shores of the River Jabbok. Did you notice that we are given very few
clues as to the identity of this figure?
Jacob had been praying to God in the scene just before our story,
praying to be saved from his brother’s justifiable anger; and at the end of our
story, he names this place by the river Peniel, meaning “face of God.” So we might assume that the figure that Jacob
encounters by the river is God. But in
the flow of the story itself, this figure is only named as a man. Not God, not an angel, but a man. No name, no description, other than the fact
that this being is strong enough to dislocate Jacob’s hip, something that
usually takes the force of a car accident to achieve.
In making our film, I think that I would want to keep this figure shrouded in
as much mystery as possible. I would
want to keep their face in the shadows so that we can never see their face
clearly. And maybe dress them in a long
dark robe so that their precise movements are hard to make out. It would have to be a tall actor with a
commanding physical presence, or maybe we could use camera trickery to make the
actor look significantly taller than our actor playing Jacob. Interestingly, Tilda Swinton was the first
actor who popped into my brain as I was mentally casting my film, but if she
isn’t available, maybe we could ask Johnny Depp or Denzel Washington.
The main action sequence in our film is a wrestling match between the two
characters – Jacob and our mysterious being. We aren’t told why they began to
wrestle, but they wrestle through the night, and then, just as the dawn is
beginning to break on the horizon, with the two of them locked in each other’s
arms, we have our main dialogue.
The mysterious stranger demands, “Let me go!” but Jacob replies, “I won’t let
you go until you bless me.” Our stranger
asks, “What is your name?” and Jacob replies, “Jacob.” Our stranger, in that moment, re-names Jacob
Israel, which means “One Who Struggles With God,” but when Jacob-Israel demands
to know the stranger’s name, our stranger refuses to answer, asking why Jacob
wants to know. Finally, our stranger
blesses Jacob, and then… disappears? The
stranger is there in the story, and then they aren’t. We can probably have some
fun with the visual effects at this point in our movie.
And then our big cinematic moment comes at the end of the film, with the sun
rising in the background, and Jacob limping towards the river to go and rejoin
his family, limping not only because of his hip injury, but limping as an
outward, visible signal of his inner change – changed by the blessing that he
received, changed by his wrestling with God, changed by the new name he has
received. Roll the credits.
To me, the most interesting question to ask of this story is the one that I
hinted at a while ago. Why did Jacob
wrestle this stranger, there on the riverbank?
Why did Jacob think that he needed to wrestle a blessing out of
God? When I think of God, I think of
love radiating out in abundance, for God is love – the very substance of God is
love. And yet Jacob feels the need to
wrestle a blessing out of God. Jacob,
who has spent his life tricking others and being tricked by others, thinks that
he needs to trick a blessing out of God, rather than realizing that God’s
blessing is there for the taking.
To me, a blessing isn’t about material good fortune – it isn’t about fancy
vacations or a fat bank account or even about good health. To me, when something is blessed, it is set
apart to be the thing that God made it for. A blessing dedicates a person or a
thing to God. I suspect that when this
building was first built, it was blessed, set apart to be a place of worship
and service. We end each worship with a
blessing, setting us on a path to be God’s people in the world in the days
ahead. Jacob is blessed to be Israel,
the father of many nations of people who will love and serve God.
I wonder if one of Jacob’s character flaws might have been that he wasn’t able
to see God any differently than he saw other people. He went through his life thinking that he
needed to fight others for what he wanted; and then when he met God, he could
only see God in the same light.
I’m thinking of our movie that we are making, and how we might portray that
moment when Jacob first encountered God, I mean, a “shadowy stranger,” on the
banks of the river as the sun was setting.
I imagine Jacob looking at the stranger with longing in his eyes,
knowing that this stranger had something that he wanted, but unsure of how to
ask for it. I imagine Jacob yearning to
know God better, just as his parents and grandparents had, but unsure of how to
approach God, and then falling back on his usual patterns of how to handle
life’s challenges with violence and trickery.
But all the while, God’s love and God’s blessing were there for the
taking – no trickery required; no violence required.
Now what about you? How do you approach
God for your blessing? Do you relate to
Jacob, scrambling for everything in life, and wrestling this blessing from a
seemingly-reluctant God? Or do you feel
like you want to turn around and run the other direction, fleeing from the path
that this blessing might put you on? Or
do you shrink back, not certain whether you deserve this blessing that God is
about to give you? Or do you stride
forward confidently, knowing that this blessing is there waiting for you?
But no matter your approach, you, my friend, you are blessed. You are blessed by a loving God, blessed to
be the person God created you to be, beautiful and beloved. You are blessed for a journey that may not
always be easy, but it will be a journey with God always at your side. You are blessed, so that your life might be a
blessing to the world. Amen.
Now picture Jacob-Israel, silhouetted by the rising sun,
limping,
preparing to cross the river to re-join his family
Image Credit: “Grand River Sunrise” by Rachel Cramer on flickr
