“I will Not Let You Go….”


October 20, 2019 | Genesis 32:22-31

Genesis 22 The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

Genesis 25 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. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 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.” 29 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.

Genesis 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

“I will Not Let You Go….”

“I will not let you go.”   This is what Jacob says to the stranger who has wrestled with him all through the night.  “I will not let you go.”   Jacob is a wrestler.   His whole life, from birth through this struggle on the riverbank, he has been fighting for what he wants.  Jacob’s name means “heel-grabber.”  He was born clutching the heel of his twin brother Esau.  It’s like he was trying to hold his brother back so that he could get ahead of him and be the first born.  But there is no passing lane in the birth canal. It’s tight in there. So Jacob is the second born son in a culture where the first-born son receives the father’s inheritance and blessing.

But Jacob is a wrestler, a heel-grabber, an operator, a guy who fights for what he wants, and in the end, he deceives his blind, dying father into thinking that he is the first-born son Esau.  Jacob gets the inheritance and he gets his father’s blessing.  But it costs him.   To escape his twin brother’s murderous rage, Jacob flees from home, and now some twenty years later, having gotten in trouble where he was living, an angel of God tells him he must go home again.  It is not an easy thing to do.  Physically it is never easy to pack yourself up and move.  But this is the least of Jacob’s worries.  While he is on his way home, Jacob receives word that his brother Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men.   This is not good news.  Jacob has one more river to cross before he faces his brother, and when he lies down to sleep the night before the show down, he is terrified.   All night he wrestles, and when day breaks and his opponent asks to be released, Jacob says, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

We don’t know what Jacob is asking for—what it would mean for him to be blessed at this particular moment in his life.  Maybe he is asking for protection, to be spared his twin brother’s wrath.  Maybe the blessing he wants is Esau’s forgiveness.  Or maybe the blessing Jacob most needs is to be released from the impulse to always be wrestling for a blessing, to rest from the feelings of his own “not-enoughness” that he has fought with for so long.”   Whatever Jacob seeks, it is clear that he will not give up until he gets it— “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

And I wonder, who have you wrestled trying to get them to bless you?  In my own life and ministry, I have learned that the fundamental blessing we all seek, the blessing that we literally cannot live without, is to be loved, cared for, seen, and heard.  Who have you wrestled to affirm and embrace you just as you are?  To accompany you in good times and bad?  Who have you wrestled with, or who are you wrestling now to listen to and engage you with honesty, honor, and respect?  To delight in you and stay mindful of you?   A father or mother?  An intimate partner?  A child?  A friend?  A boss?  Are you wrestling with your own self, to fully receive and love yourself, wrestling with regrets, or with your shadow side, the parts of yourself that you wish were not part of yourself?  Who is Jacob wrestling beside that river?  A man? An angel? Himself? God?  All of the above?

To be human is to desire to be blessed, embraced, affirmed, honored and cherished by others.  And, thanks be to God, it happens that there are people in our lives who do this.   And it also happens that there are people in our lives who are not able to bless us in these ways and who wound us.   Sometimes, for our own well-being, we have to let them go, even though it is painful.  And the truth is, no human being can love us perfectly, nor can we love another perfectly, nor can we love ourselves perfectly.   Which means that to some degree, from birth to death, we struggle to be blessed, and we struggle to bless others, and to bless ourselves.

This morning, in the story of Jacob wrestling on the riverbank, and in the celebration of Gracie’s baptism, we are reminded that there is One who loves perfectly.  There is One who calls the universe into being and fills it with the breath of God, the Spirit of Life.   There is One who speaks at creation’s first light, saying, “I will not let you go.  No matter what, I will not let you go.”  And this is the original, cosmic blessing that sustains birds and bees and flowers and trees.  The original, cosmic blessing IS the eternal divine presence.  The blessing is God’s own self, God’s affirmation, God’s embrace, God’s cherishing, God’s holding.   In the story of Jacob wrestling on the banks of the river, he discovers, and we see with him what already is.  Jacob’s life is joined to the life of God.  He is blessed.  In the waters of baptism we see the sign of what already is:  little Gracie Harriet Kudlo is joined to and sharing in the life of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.   She is blessed and beloved.

And this is our story.   Each of us and all of us are sharing in the life of our Creator, the life of the Spirit, the life of Jesus who is wounded to heal our wounds, who dies and lives again to awaken us to the presence and blessing of God.   Look at this picture.  See the gracious, blessed entanglement of your life with the eternal God who created you and wrestles with you and promises you this:  “I will not let you go.   I am with you always.  I hold you in life and in love forever.  You are blessed.  You are beloved.  Each new day, with the rising of the sun, remember who you are and whose you are. You are mine,” God says.  I am yours.  We are one.  Go in peace to be my blessing for someone today.”


Back to Sermons list