The Rev. Dr. Brandon Perrine
Proper 13A
Genesis 32:22-31
August 2, 2026
The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
~o~
Let’s be honest from the outset: Jacob is not a likeable guy. He was born second, clinging to his brother Esau’s heel. He spent his youth trying to get ahead—asking his hungry brother to trade his birthright for a bowl of soup, then disguising himself as Esau in order to steal his brother’s blessing from their nearly blind father. He has a contentious relationship with his uncle Laban, who tricked him into marrying Leah when he wanted Rachel. He ended up married to both, but Leah always knew she wasn’t his first choice. Even Jacob’s children from Leah and Rachel didn’t get along because Jacob played favorites with Rachel’s offspring. Jacob was just one of those people that kind of just gives you the ick. He lived up to his name meaning “supplanter,” “trickster,” or “deceiver.”
In the story we heard today from Genesis, Jacob was about to cross paths with Esau again after being estranged for years. The whole birthright and blessing thing hadn’t exactly set well with Esau. Frankly, Jacob expected trouble or worse—death. He sent his family over the river where he hoped they’d be safe, and he waited to meet his brother alone.
That’s when the mysterious wrestler showed up for a match that lasted until dawn. When the struggle would not end, the stranger struck Jacob’s hip, a blow that put Jacob’s hip out of socket, but Jacob still did not yield. Finally, the stranger blessed Jacob. He gave Jacob a new name—Israel—meaning “he wrestles with God.” And that’s when Jacob finally realized who he’d been sparring with.
The past few weeks, I’ve been asked by more than a couple of you why we’ve continued to have readings from both the New Testament and Hebrew Bible in our services. Many of us struggle with parts of the Hebrew Bible. Some of its portrayals of God feel harsh to modern ears, and many of its characters behave in deeply troubling ways—nearly sacrificing a son, for example, or treating women as little more than property. Why do we bother with those stories instead of just hearing the gospel read every Sunday?
My answer is pretty straightforward. Because of this story. Because of this story and others like it. Because of a story about a slimy guy like Jacob who’d burned all his bridges with family, ran out of escape routes, and found himself alone on a river bank wrestling with God while awaiting his brother’s judgment.
As much as it hurts to admit it, these stories are our stories. We’ve been there and done that. We’ve put ourselves first at the expense of others. We’ve ignored their agency and their humanity. We’ve been willing to give it all up to get ahead. We’ve wrestled with our conscience. We’ve wrestled with our faith. We’ve wrestled with God. And in spite of it all, stories like this one remind us that we’re still not beyond redemption. We can turn it around. We can make different choices. We can mend relationships. We can reorder our priorities. We can struggle through the night and greet the dawn as a changed person.
The Hebrew Bible is a book of those stories. Jesus knew them well and taught the lessons he learned from them. But there’s still something for us to be gleaned from reading them again and again. We might even find that they’re about us.
There’s nowhere in the story of Jacob that I resonate more deeply than I do with this episode. The struggle. The wrestling match. That’s me. That’s growing up Southern Baptist and realizing that you’re gay and your faith is incompatible with your lived experience. That’s planning to be a therapist and going to seminary instead. That’s deconstructing and reconstructing your faith dozens of times in response to countless questions and coming out again on the other side. This is my story. And it’s also likely your story too. It was certainly the story of the nation that would grow from Jacob’s offspring and bear his new name. Faith and life are a wrestling match. Anyone that would tell us otherwise has simply not lived either.
Isn’t it amazing that we can read our stories in the ancient pages of one of the world’s most ancient texts? Isn’t it reassuring to hear the dark wrestler sanctify the struggle, bless the match, and bestow a new title just for lasting that long? Isn’t it beautiful to know that we are the inheritors of a long and proud lineage of women and men who wrestled and didn’t give up and even came out on the other side transformed?
William Shakespeare once famously said that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. In other words, no matter what you call it, it’s still a rose. This story tells a different tale. There is power in a name— in a new name. All of us have been named by someone—sometimes in love, sometimes in judgment, and sometimes by the stories we tell ourselves. Jacob would meet Esau that morning, but he would do so with two things he didn’t have the previous night—a limp and a new name.
We too may emerge from our wrestling with a limp. The struggle may leave its mark, but it need not define us. Like Jacob, we may also emerge transformed—bearing a renewed identity, a renewed purpose, perhaps even a new name for a new day.
May it be so. Amen.
