Sermon. Jacob, Israel, and Your Own Name(s)

Sermon. 20 October 2019. St Mary’s, Great Ilford.

Trinity 18 (Year C)

·       Genesis 32.22-31.

What’s in a name? For example, how does the name “St Mary’s Little Ilford?” (where I am from) relate to the name “St Mary’s Great Ilford?”… Is the former small and of no account, while the latter is grand and stands tall in the world? You’re right to offer no answer. These are of course rhetorical questions.

What’s in a name? Does it matter, for example, that I go by my middle name (I’ll leave you to guess my actual first name)? What of people who have alternative names? I’m confident that you, like me, know people of African heritage (for example), who have an English and an African name. Surely something to rejoice in there, that there is such richness of diversity in the world.

What’s in a name? Some of us were given new names at baptism or confirmation or on taking vows, the name of a saint we are aiming to follow and whose help we are seeking. Do we make the most of this?

What’s in a name? What do we make of the really quite common biblical practice, which begins in Genesis and goes forward into the New Testament, whereby Gd or a hero of faith re-names someone, gives them a new name (whether as replacement or addition), after some significant encounter or crisis.

The Bible says that life can change things for you, change things for you so radically that you come away from an experience with nothing less than a new name.

What’s in a name? You know why I am asking this now. It’s because in today’s first reading from the Hebrew Bible (from the Old, the Original Testament) Jacob is given a new name.

Jacob becomes Israel.

If I say Jacob-who-becomes-Israel is an interesting character, that is an understatement. Let us refresh our memory of what has brought him to this place, the place he finds himself in, in our reading.

Jacob is a twin. His mother, Rebecca, has a difficult pregnancy. The two brothers fight in her womb. Esau is born first, but Jacob is holding onto his heal. He wrestles, then, even at the very point of birth. The Bible says that his name, Jacob, itself means “he grasps the heel”. And indeed that is a good translation. There is a related noun (aqev) which means “a heel”. And there is a related noun (aqav), which means “to be at the heel of” – and not without menace [acted out]– and so to struggle with, to beat, to supplant.

But it’s not just a matter of language. In Genesis, Jacob really does supplant the first-born. Remember: he buys Esau’s birthright, for a bowl of lentil soup. Later, in a wholly different story, he tricks his father Isaac into giving him (Jacob) the blessing due the first-born (Esau). Esau accepts this, but is enraged. Jacob has to flee. He flees on the pretext of finding a wife from among his own people. That leads to yet another turbulent story, and Jacob finds himself not with one wife but two. He succeeds as a farmer, however, and has children with his wives, eleven of them, at this point.  

This, then, is the Jacob whom we meet today. He is coming home. Home to his father, Isaac, but also to his brother, Esau. So he is afraid. He sends his family and his possessions off the beaten track, so that he can think things through, deal with his anxiety, come to terms with things, pray things through. And he is met by another, a stranger (we are not actually told who this stranger is). They wrestle, and Jacob is judged the winner. The other blesses him, and gives him his new name, Israel. Israel is held to mean something like “He prevails against Gd”. He beats Gd. Interestingly, though, as good a translation is “Gd prevails”. Gd wins. This echoes the fact that it is not altogether clear who won the fight.

So what? What to make of this? I’d like to draw attention to a few things.

Firstly, many of us can take great hope from Jacob-Israel, who is a great hero of faith, indeed a saint. Sometimes, some of us somehow get the impression that to be a saint means to spend the morning looking like this [pious expression], and the afternoon looking like this [pious expression mirrored]. Or, more seriously, we may have a sense that a saint is someone who is always calm, placid, peaceful, unshakeable and unflustered. Some saints undoubtedly are like this. But not all. There are as many ways of being a saint as there are human beings in the world.  

Saint Jacob-become-Israel is difficult. He is fiery. He seems compelled to fight, and obsessed with rivalry. And… all is well. Not despite these things but through these things (through working these things through) he comes to be a great hero of faith, one we can rightly name our children after, whether as Israel, or Jacob, or in the fully “Anglicised” (English) form of Jacob, namely… James. If you’re fiery like Jacob-Israel, take heart!

Secondly, notice that Jacob has to be alone to be given his blessing, and to be given his vocation, that of being Israel in the world. He sends away his family, his nearest and dearest. He sends away his possessions, all that might make him comfortable during the night, or for that matter safe. There is a lesson for us here, too.

•        Some matters can only be sorted, if we choose solitude.
•        Some encounters with Gd can only come about, if we choose solitude.
•        Some discoveries about ourselves, can only come to light, if we choose solitude.

Note my emphasis on choosing. It is not just that we find ourselves alone. It’s that we set out to spend some sustained time – maybe indeed a whole night – contending with Gd in prayer. I don’t need to remind you that this was Jesus’ own practice, again and again. So let us take heart, and take note!

Thirdly, there is something you don’t see in today’s text but can find in Genesis if you read on. It is that this encounter, this wrestling match, bears fruit. To be fair, even after it, Jacob-Israel is still frightened of Esau. After all Esau comes to meet him with 400 men. Jacob-Israel arranges his family carefully for their own protection.

But! But the two brothers show no hostility. Esau actually welcomes Jacob-Israel, and Jacob-Israel says these remarkable words to his brother: “Seeing your face is like seeing the face of Gd” (Gen 33.10).

Seeing your face is like seeing the face of Gd. The interpreters debate precisely what he meant, and it is genuinely open. But we are free to choose to see these words in their full sense. Seeing your face is like seeing the face of Gd.

So we may say that Jacob-Israel,

• fiery though he be,
• sought out solitude,
•  to wrestle and wrestle and wrestle with Gd – or just perhaps with his own fieriness,
• and so he comes through to the most profound biblical truth:
•  in seeing the other, yes, in seeing the rival, yes, in seeing the difficult person, yes, in seeing the enemy, we truly do see the image of Gd?

This is a core truth, one, frankly, we cannot be reminded of enough.

I will say one more thing. What if Gd were saying to you:

“Come away, and I will tell you your new name. It is not a name for your passport, or even for your neighbours to call you by. It is a secret name. It is between you and me. It tells you what your truest vocation is.”

Would you come away?

What would Gd tell you?

I invite you to seek to find out.

Amen.