Listen

S. Pentecost 19.25 Gen. 32:22-30, Luke 18:1-8

‘But; when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’

He seems to have found it, once upon a time, way back when—in Jacob at the Jabbok. Jacob is the grandson of Abraham, the Father of Faith. But whereas Abraham displays his faith in what is for us a more conventional way by simply trusting God when he commands him to offer up his son Isaac to him, Jacob’s faith is a bit more… athletic.

Jacob’s faith is displayed in wrestling all night with the Angel of Yahweh(!) (who is Jesus, Yahweh come in the flesh so we can really get a hold of him 😉 And we’re like, huh? How is that faith?

Well; that’s a great question. When you see how Jacob’s faith is possibly more paradigmatic than Abraham’s—an advance even, upon grandpa’s faith—then you’re getting somewhere, I think with this whole Xn Thing!

I think Kierkegaard is right in “Fear and Trembling” which ponders Abraham sacrificing Isaac on Mt. Moriah. Abraham believes, absurdly, against all reason and common sense, that God will bring something good for him out of the sacrifice of Isaac. He will raise Isaac from the dead or something like that?, so that Abraham will come out ahead by his teleological suspension of the ethical—by putting all his chips on Red 7, er, the sacrifice of God to save him and the world.

And Abraham wins. He proves his faith, gets Isaac back in a way he could never have had him before, as one risen from the dead—a foreshadowing of their son the Christ and his resurrection.

But Jacob’s faith—displayed in the all-night wrestle mania at the Jabbok—is even more a theology of the cross, even more beat in the sense of beat-up, beat-down, deeply defeated and in that sense BEATIFIED, made holy and pure in a way that excels even Abraham’s. If we’re being literary and Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” captures Abraham’s faith, then I think Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” captures Jacob’s beat faith even better!

Jack was always misunderstood by most, I think. He was no wild-eyed hippy—he actually hated the ‘60s hippies who thought he was their father—no sex and drugs crazed liberal was Jack. No; Kerouac was actually quite conservative politically and theologically. He always identified as “a slightly crazy Catholic mystic” to quote the man himself on the subject. Even in “On the Road”, he isn’t seeking kicks and thrills. He’s looking for a nice catholic girl to marry and settle down with. He said he hoped his book would inspire a generation of Christian mystics to renounce the world and go ruck-sacking down the road, chasing after Jesus as the original apostles did.

That Jack’s quest is a failure, on just about every level, is why I think he understands Jacob and the sort of faith displayed at the Jabbok. My friend Rusty Reno apparently agrees. 2007, Rusty dusted off a copy of “On the Road” which, like me, he’d read at age 19 hitchhiking to strange places. It was the 50th anniversary of publication and, surprised it was assigned reading for his daughter’s high school lit class, he re-read it.

And Rusty found it was not the book nearly everyone thinks it is, but saw it as a spectacularly failed quest that, in its defeats perhaps more clearly illuminates what genuine Xn faith looks like.

And here’s where Jacob’s beat-down at the Jabbok comes into focus. “On the Road” starts after Jack’s father had died and his first wife had dumped him and he was left alone living with his mom in New Jersey struggling to write a book that no one would want to publish.

Jacob is in a similar pickle. 20 years before, he fleeing his older brother Esau—who wanted to kill him for tricking their dad (Jacob’s name can be translated as “Trickster” or “Trip” as in ‘someone who trips up others’) into giving him the firstborn son’s birthright (as the LORD had told his mother at their birth would be Jacob’s).

Mom sent Jacob to her brother Laban (quite a tricky fellow himself!) to find a wife. Jacob found the girl of his dreams, but got tricked into marrying the older sister first (after serving 7 years a slave for the younger, hotter Rachel) then serving another 7 years for Rachel, and then another 7 years (!) to get a flock of his own to shepherd.

But Uncle Laban had reneged on every deal, changed Jacob’s wages 10 times, and Laban’s sons are getting pretty sick and tired of Jacob and are ready to kill him, so he takes his spotted and speckled lambs and goats (which were his by agreement) and runs. Laban catches him, but lets him go because God told Laban not to mess with this guy.

And after reaching out to Esau with a generous gift of cattle, he hears Esaus is coming to kill him with 400 armed men. So, caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, Jacob sends his wives and kids in order of least favorite to most, hoping to bribe Esau into leaving him alone.

So, Jacob’s literally left alone that night at the ford of the Jabbok. And a man comes and wrestles with him all night. Who started it? We’re not told. They both had some pent-up frustration with each other!—Jacob and Yahweh. Yahweh had “often declined the fight” but now, it’s on—FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHTD!!!

Seeing, surprisingly, he’s not winning, Jesus goes into the divine bag of tricks, touches Jacob’s hip, shrinks the sinews so the hip is out of joint, and says: “Let me go. Day breaks.” But Jacob says “No! I won’t let you go unless you bless me!” And the blessing is a new name: Israel “Strider” literally just like Aragorn. Irony alert: Limper would have been more strictly accurate. Jesus loves irony it seems as much as I do…

“Because,” Jesus says, “you have striven with God and men and have endured.” And Jacob says: “I’ve seen GOD! face to face, and am not dead, yet. Cool!”

It is in being defeated—magnificently, by God, hobbled by him, that Jacob finds his identity. Being beat-up, beat-down by God makes us beat—beatified, as those who no longer care about winning or what we get out of it, but are happy just getting whupped up on by God, molded into something new, that is hopefully not completely disappointing to him…

Heiko Oberman sees here Luther’s faith which is well expressed in Rilke’s poem “The Man Watching”:

“What we triumph over is the Small,/ and the success itself makes us petty./ The Eternal and Unexampled/ will not be bent by us./ Think of the Angel who appeared/ to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:/ when his opponent’s sinews/ in that contest stretch like steel,/ he feels them under his fingers/ as strings making deep melodies.

“Whoever was overcome by this Angel/ (who so often declined the fight)/ he strides upright and justified/ and great out of that hard hand/ which, as if sculpting, nestled round him./ Winning does not tempt him./ His growth is to be profoundly vanquished/ by ever greater things.”

As the Peace, surpassing all understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.