Moses, Jaws, and the Nehushtan

DELIVERED 10 JULY 2021 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

Good evening, everybody! It’s good to see all of you. I hope you all had an excellent Fourth of July.

This past weekend, one of my oldest friends from South Carolina, Mike, went to Martha’s Vineyard for the holiday with his wife and his son. Have any of you ever been to Martha’s Vineyard? I haven’t gone yet, but I’d love to. And to be honest, the reason I’d like to go is actually the same reason my friend Mike went: it had nothing to do with the Vineyard itself and everything to do with the fact that Martha’s Vineyard is where they filmed the best Fourth of July movie of all time, Jaws. 

Jaws is–and I am not exaggerating here–a perfect movie. Easily a Top 10 favorite for me. And it can be easy to forget, I think, that it’s a movie about the Fourth of July. Specifically, the plot revolves around this string of shark attacks near a fictionalized Martha’s Vineyard called Amity Island and how those attacks threaten the town’s tourist economy over the holiday. Our hero is the small-town sheriff, who is just trying to figure out what’s going on, and in the first half of the movie, he’s set against the town’s sleazy mayor, who keeps trying to wish the problem away so the beaches won’t close. For a monster movie, it’s a pretty complex set up. It’s also the same basic plot as Jurassic Park.

Anyway, this past week, my friend Mike kept texting me pictures of all these filming locations–here’s the Town Hall! Here’s the dock where the guys try to catch Jaws with a turkey! Here’s the dock where fishermen bring in the big shark that is not Jaws and the mayor declares the beaches will be open! And as I got all these messages, I got to thinking more about the movie, and I realized something that I thought was kind of profound about it: Jaws is a movie about the horror of belief. The difficulty of it, not because what we’re looking for is hard to find, but because it is too overwhelming and frightening to handle. That’s the mayor’s problem in the movie, and it’s the source of most of the tension: we, as the audience, know how serious the problem is! We’ve seen the shark! But the characters have too much at stake to let themselves believe it. 

I bring all of this up tonight because Jaws actually reminds me of the backstory behind our main story tonight, which is about the curious episode of the nehushtan, or the “bronze serpent thing,” in the Old Testament book of Numbers. The story itself is a pretty crazy one, and we’ll get to it in a bit: there are fiery serpents and miracles and all sorts of things. But I have come to believe that for this story to make sense, we have to go back a bit to an earlier story from the Israelites’ desert wanderings: the story of the Ten Commandments. 

As a refresher, here’s how the story goes: our hero from last week, Jacob, has many sons, and among those sons is a boy named Joseph. He is Jacob’s favorite. But he is hated by his brothers. So, they conspire to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt. This happens! But in time, Joseph’s mix of wisdom and humility allows him to rise in influence under the pharaoh. Meanwhile, a famine has struck his family’s land, and through a circuitous series of events, they go to Egypt to ask for aid. This leads to a great reunion–and great acts of forgiveness–which result in Jacob’s clan settling under Joseph’s care. But in time, Joseph and his brothers die, and new pharaohs enslave their descendents. This enslavement lasts for 400 years, until the children of Israel are vast in number. They groan in Egypt, and God hears them. God then raises up Moses to deliver them–to carry out their Exodus from Egypt–and Moses does so. After they escape, their first stop on their way back to the land of their forefathers is a place called Mt. Sinai. During this entire journey, God has led them in undeniable ways: there have been miracles and wonders galore. But at Mt. Sinai, the Israelites see a terrifying sight: the mountain looks to be on fire, with lightning flashing constantly in a cloud settled over its peak. This, they assume, must be where their God dwells. Their leader, Moses, goes up the mountain to speak with this God, whose power broke the distant pharaohs, and they wait. And they keep waiting. 

In the book of Exodus, which records this story, the perspective shifts to Moses: he goes up the mountain and talks for a long, long time with God, who gives him the Laws which will govern all of Israel. But then, after 11 chapters of Law-giving, our vantage point returns to the people waiting below. And those people do a strange thing:

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

Exodus 32:1

Here’s my idea tonight, in a nutshell: Exodus 32 is the first half of Jaws. The Israelites are the townspeople of Amity Island. Aaron is the town mayor. And God is the shark. Here’s how this works: the Israelites are scared because everything about their way of life is being threatened. Although slavery in Egypt was awful, their “deliverance,” thus far, has been an “out of the frying pan and into the fire” kind of thing. Whereas their rations as slaves were meager, their meals in the desert are nonexistent. Whereas the work their men and women did as slaves was backbreaking, the wandering they are doing now is hurting their children and their elderly. Whereas they once lived in fear of the pharaoh, who was a type of god on earth, they are now huddled under the thunder mountain, bearing witness to a power greater than they ever imagined. And with all this change, there is a big part of them that just wants to go back to the way things were; a part of them that is afraid of what is happening. And so, facing the horror of the God of their forefathers, they choose instead to believe a smaller and simpler thing. They want an idol: an idol is something they understand; an idol is something they can control. It makes their worship small, manageable…even negligible. And Aaron–like the mayor in Jaws–gives them permission not to believe the big and overwhelming and dangerous thing that’s out there in the water (or on top of the mountain). He helps them feel better about looking away from it.

But here’s the thing: God is the shark. He’s not going to go away, even if they ignore this particular problem until it swims right up and bites them in the…

The big question in the story of the golden calf, I think, is “why on earth do the Israelites build idols when God is right there?” And the answer is that God is terrifying to them. The future God is calling them into is terrifying. We want to worship what helps us feel safe and in control. But the God of the Bible just doesn’t work that way. And so the tragedy of this story is the same as the tragedy in Jaws: by denying the truth, we create the very situation which will bring us harm. The Israelites anger the God they are afraid of by avoiding him. And what, then, is the consequence for their sin? The Israelites who have given into their fear will, to a man, die in it: they will wander 40 years, until the adults who left Egypt are gone, and their children will be the ones to reach the Promised Land. Oof. 

In this series this summer, one of our main questions has to do with why Israel tells such embarrassing questions about itself. This story must be one of the all-time great examples: why remember this incident? Why remember this fear? Why tell the story of their wandering at all? The answer, I propose, is because the Israelites want to remember (and teach to their children!) that the key to having a god like their God is walking in the direction of belief. Following him with small, brave steps. Being patient, and refusing to waver. They want their children to know that belief doesn’t make life easier. They want their children to know that real belief takes a lifetime.

As I said a while ago, this is all backstory for the main event tonight, which is the story of the nehushtan. This story is also part of the narrative of the Israelites’ desert wandering, and it comes not from the book of Exodus but from the book of Numbers. We find it in chapter 21, and it starts like this:

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

Numbers 21:4-5

It’s a familiar refrain for anyone reading through the long narrative of this season in Israel’s history: yet again, the people are frustrated and impatient with their journey. Yet again, they cry out to Moses and complain to him about God. Yet again, they say things were better when they were in Egypt. Which means that yet again, they have forgotten about the shark: they want to keep the metaphorical beaches open for the metaphorical Fourth of July. But this decision bites them! In the next verses, we read that

the Lord sent fiery snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.

Numbers 21:6

The word “fiery” here most nearly means “venomous,” in case your imagination was taken with the idea of fire-snakes. I don’t want any of you who have a snake phobia to freak out: there probably weren’t literal snakes of fire. But nonetheless, their complaining has a consequence: God allows them to be bitten and poisoned. Then,

The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Numbers 21:7-9

That bronze snake on a pole is the “nehushtan,” a word which literally means–and I’m not joking–“bronze thing.” And as we just read, after Moses builds it, people look at it, and they are healed. 

It’s a strange story, right? It’s brief: that’s the whole thing. And it doesn’t seem to make much sense…unless you connect it back to that story of their time under Mt. Sinai. Here’s what I mean: once upon a time, the people built idols because they were afraid of their God. The idols gave them something else to look at, something else to believe, which was smaller and more manageable and less frightening. This was idolatry, not because the people made a tangible idol, but because they were trying not to believe in what was right in front of them. They were choosing something–anything–to look at and trust that would be altogether less terrifying than looking at and trusting the actual God who was delivering them. That was their sin: it was the tragedy of looking away, of prolonging their disbelief. 

And so it’s profoundly meaningful, I think, that God redeems that story here by giving them this strange chance to try again. It’s as if God is saying, “is the problem that the mountain was too scary? How about a bronze thing, a nehushtan? What form of mine will you accept, will you look at? I want you to see me, to trust me.” After all, that’s the crisis this is all in response to, right? The Israelites keep looking back at Egypt! They keep trying to run away from God. But God must be faced…because God is really there. You can pretend there’s no shark if you want…but there actually is! 

So, here’s the wrinkle from this particular story then, right? Numbers tells us that many Israelites died. Which means that, even when presented with this second version of the golden calf, this new way of facing up to the God who is in control of their destiny, there were those–“many” of them!–who still would not look. They were too stubborn, too independent, too doubtful. Or maybe…they were still too afraid. 

The revelation of the nehushtan story–the reason, I think, that it keeps being told, over and over again, by the Israelites–is that it exposes the truth behind the Isrealites’ tendency towards idolatry: they don’t make idols to fill the space created by the times God is silent. They don’t make idols because they believe other gods are better than the God who pursues them. They make idols because they’re afraid of a God who is too constantly and too undeniably present with them. They’re afraid of a God who is real and powerful and demanding of them. They’re afraid of a God of miracles and plagues and rescues and wonder. They’re afraid of a God who will overwhelm them. Who will swallow them up. An idol is a child, afraid of judgment, refusing to look its mother in the eyes. 

But if they could look at their God–if they could look at the bronze thing their God has made in order to better relate to them–what would they actually find? What would happen? It would be their rescue. 

I said at the beginning that this story–and yes, Jaws, too–is about the horror of belief. We can, and probably should!, get a lump in our throat when we consider how all-encompassing our relationship with God is supposed to be. But unlike that giant shark, getting swallowed up by God leads not to death but to new and abundant and overflowing joy and life. It’s a deliverance: from the harmful messes our stubbornness and our willfulness and our denial and our fears create for us. All we have to do…is have the courage to look up. To have the audacity to hope. 

The story of the nehushtan is a “middle chapter” in the Bible: the story of the golden calf, there beneath Mt. Sinai, is its prequel, and we need to know that story to make sense of this one. But it also has a sequel, too, right? If the nehushtan is this symbol of deliverance God has created specifically out of his desire to relate to the people he is pursuing…it is also a foreshadowing of the Cross. Jesus is the perfect nehushtan: the person of God made flesh, made relatable, made knowable…and, in his death, lifted up so that anyone and everyone who looks up at him–who faces up to the scope and scale and power and majesty and commitment of God to his Creation–will be saved. What does that most-famous of Bible verses, John 3:16, actually say about Jesus? 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”

John 3:16

We look at Jesus, and we believe. That’s the pathway not to death–which is what it certainly looks like!–but to everlasting life. The challenge for us, as we think about and respond to these stories, is not a simple one, but it is a direct one: are we willing to turn away from the idols we make to avoid thinking about the overwhelming love of God and instead look up at him, facing our fear, and finding new life in its place?
Maybe our idol is work, or family, or money, or distraction, or the fantasy of control over our own lives. Maybe it’s a perpetual state of “doubt” we are trying to stay in…which is just a desire for control by another name. But here’s the thing: God-sized beliefs can’t be figured out from the sideline, and they can’t grow without risk. At some point, you have to get in the boat and set out to sea. It’s not that you’re looking for the shark…He will find you! It’s that you are saying that you’re done with the lie that you can run away forever. You’re done with pretending God is anything less than the overwhelming Lord of all things. And you’re ready to look up at him, wonder at him, and begin to believe.

Jacob Wrestles with God

DELIVERED 3 JULY 2021 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

What does your name mean? Have you ever looked it up? Have you ever known people who are really into this question? 

For a brief window of time when I was very young, my mom got into cross stitching. And when I was growing up, there were precisely two “legacy pieces” of her work that became fixtures in my childhood bedroom: the first was a pillow with a little pocket on the front and a cross-stitched picture of the tooth fairy on it. It had a rhyme or saying stitched into it, too…but I can’t remember it. It always, always sat as a decoration on my childhood bed. The second piece was a small, framed pattern that was on the wall above my lightswitch, and it had my name on it, as well as my name’s meaning. My first name–Kenneth–means “handsome,” and my middle name–Michael–means “gift of God.” So, Kenneth Michael: “Handsome gift of God.” Sweet, right? I grew up with that, right there in my bedroom. 

This past week, as I was preparing for this sermon, I decided to finish the story and look up my last name, too. Who knows what it might mean? Maybe “great beard” or just “really cool dude”: Camacho. We could add it to the cross stitch…

It means “disfigured.” It’s Portugese in its origin, but the best guess of the name people is that it is rooted in the Gaelic word “camb,” which means “twisted.” Such a bummer!

In any case, I’m starting with this question–what does your name mean?–because this week, as we get into the second story in our summer series, More Stories We Tell–we are looking at the story of Jacob in the Old Testament…and although (as we will discover) there are a multitude of things we can say about Jacob’s story in the Bible and dozens of possible sermons and applications to pull from it, the approach we’re going to take today focuses on his name–Jacob–which we are told in the Bible and by scholars of ancient Hebrew means “grabber.” “Thief.” “Trickster.” “Supplanter.” “Usurper.” Or at least it does until God changes it. 

So, who is this “grabber,” this “usurper,” Jacob? The short answer is that he is one of the most significant figures in all of Israel’s ancient history. He is the last of the three great “patriarchs” of the nation: the grandson of Abraham, with whom God made a covenant promising he would build a great people and use them to bless the whole world, and the son of Isaac, who inherited that promise from his father. But–very, very significantly–he’s not Isaac’s oldest son. That would be his twin brother Esau, the rightful inheritor of God’s promise and Isaac’s blessing. Although Jacob and Esau were twins, Esau was the first to be born, and he was born with Jacob’s tiny baby hand clenching his ankle as he followed his brother into the world. This, of course, is the origin of Jacob’s name: he’s a “grabber” from the start, first of his brother’s ankle…and then, portentously, of his brother’s inheritance. 

The story in Genesis goes like this: Esau grows up to be a skilled hunter and an altogether strong man. He is his father’s clear favorite. Jacob is smaller and less hairy, and he never learns a trade; instead, the Bible says that he prefers to stay around the tents with his mother, Rebekkah. He is, however, a pretty decent cook. This is important, as one day, exhausted and starving from a long hunt, Esau returns to the camp and is functionally hypnotized by a stew Jacob is making. He asks Jacob for a bowl before he goes in to report on his outing to their father, and Jacob makes a preposterous offer: he will give Esau a bowl of stew in exchange for his birthright as the eldest son. Esau–famished and almost certainly sure his brother isn’t serious–jokingly agrees. But Jacob is serious…and the double-portion of their father’s wealth reserved for the oldest son becomes his. Jacob: grabber. Jacob: usurper. 

This begins the estrangement between Jacob and Esau. But it is not Jacob’s greatest trick. That comes sometime later, when their father, Isaac, is blinded and near death. Knowing that he is at the end, he calls for his oldest son, Esau, so that he can pass the blessing and promise God gave to him about the future of their people–the promise to be a great nation, to bless all the earth–onto him. But his wife, Rebekkah, overhears…and so she convinces Jacob to disguise himself as his brother–even covering his arm in goatskins, so that he will seem hairy–in order to deceive Isaac into passing the blessing onto the wrong son. Their scheme works, and Jacob receives the blessing. Jacob: grabber. Jacob: usurper. Jacob: thief. But even more than that–and more perplexingly than that–also, Jacob: patriarch. Jacob: founding father of Israel. 

We’ve asked this before, but let’s add this ingredient to the “stew” we’re making here this morning, too: why are the Israelites telling this story? Why are they remembering their own heroes so unflatteringly?

The next morning, Isaac dies and it becomes clear that Esau–who is enraged–plans to kill his brother. So, Rebekkah sends her youngest son to a distant land to live with her brother, a man named Laban, until Esau’s anger fades in time. So, Jacob goes. Jacob: grabber. Jacob: coward? And it is in this moment–more than 3 chapters into his story in Genesis–that we see the first sign of Jacob’s spirituality, or his faith in the God of his fathers. It’s disappointingly transactional: he prays,

“If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”

Genesis 28.20-22

Now, here’s where one of those other sermons could just spin right out, right? When have we, like Jacob, tried to make a bargain with God? A bargain, more often than not, for our own prosperity, or at least for our lives to go the ways we have planned for them to go. But although we’ll mark that exit on the highway of Jacob’s story, we’re not going to take it tonight: we need to keep driving. 

What happens when Jacob arrives at the home of his uncle Laban feels initially like a comeuppance: to make a long story short, Jacob falls in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel, and he agrees to work for Laban for 7 years in order to earn the right to marry her. But on the wedding night, Jacob the Trickster is deceived by his uncle, and he mistakenly marries Laban’s oldest daughter, Leah. Furious but powerless, Jacob makes a second deal: he will work 7 more years and then marry Rachel, too…which he does. But in the meantime, tensions arise with his father-in-law: Jacob is being a bit deceitful with the flocks, building a herd of his own on the side. And Laban is also trying to be deceitful with the flocks, making bogus deals with Jacob and then manipulating the terms. Not to get too in the weeds, but after another 6 years, the two are on the verge of an actual miniature war. So, Jacob, Rachel, and Leah flee Laban and try to return to the land of Jacob’s fathers. Jacob: grabber. Jacob: thief. Jacob: trickster. And certainly not Jacob: faithful, Jacob: prayerful!

This move, of course, brings Jacob back into a potential conflict with one of his first “marks” as a conman: his brother, Esau. In his absence, Esau has prospered, and Jacob hears that his anger has not abated. And so, in Genesis 32, Jacob tries to scheme his way out of trouble:

Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom. He instructed them: “This is what you are to say to my lord Esau: ‘Your servant Jacob says, I have been staying with Laban and have remained there till now. I have cattle and donkeys, sheep and goats, male and female servants. Now I am sending this message to my lord, that I may find favor in your eyes.’” When the messengers returned to Jacob, they said, “We went to your brother Esau, and now he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.”

Genesis 32.3-6

Jacob of course panics, and fearing his entire clan will be wiped out, he divides his camp and sends them away from him, in the hope that Esau might not destroy them all. And then, once he is entirely alone and all out of tricks, finally Jacob prays with the whole of himself. He says,

“O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’”

Genesis 32.9-12

Let’s be honest, it’s still not the most humble prayer. But Jacob–grabber, trickster, usurper–can sense his defeat. Which is what makes the next part of the story so strange. We read in the next verses,

So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man asked him, “What is your name?”

Genesis 32.24-27a

There’s another cluster of exits here, in the highway of this story: who is the man? Who overpowers whom? Why the hip? Why is daybreak so important? The one most tempting to me: why does Jacob hang on…and even threaten this being? But we’re talking about names. And so we have to move on:

“Jacob,” he answered.

Genesis 32.27b

Grabber. Trickster. Thief. Usurper. 

The Christian theologian Frederick Buechner famously wrote of this story that it’s about “the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.” We can see the defeat of a body here, right? Jacob cannot overpower the man, the angel, and so he is permanently wounded here in his hip. But Buechner is most interested in a soul defeat. And what is its symbol? For the first time in 5 chapters, Jacob has to say his own name. He hangs onto God, he demands a blessing…and God says to him, “tell me who you are.” The grabber. The trickster. The thief. The liar. Say your name. And Jacob does. 

This is the exit in the story we want to take: what happens when we tell God who we really are? Jacob. Kenneth Michael. There’s a lot of fear in that, right? We’ve all been promised a lot: we’re here in a church tonight because somewhere, somehow, we have all at least heard about a God who blesses those who submit to him. But the Jacob story reveals how complicated “submitting” really is. Sometimes, submission still looks like bargaining: Jacob is humbled enough, after he steals his brother’s blessing, to know that he can’t stay there and fight. There is humiliation in running away to his uncle’s home. But fear isn’t submission: he still only promises to serve God if God spares his life…and even more than that, if God makes him wealthy! When he is tricked by his father-in-law, he “submits” none of his plans to God: although he routinely tells Laban that the God of his forefathers will surely bless him, he doesn’t follow that God in any way; he follows his faith in his own cunning. And even when this man, this angel, this emissary of his god literally wrestles him, Jacob continues to not submit! He is “beaten,” when his hip is dislocated…but he does not submit. We can learn from Jacob’s story because Jacob is us, too: losing, sometimes…bargaining, sometimes…trusting ourselves, most of the time…can all just be a way of dancing around our God. It’s not real submission. And why do we do this? I think it’s because deep down, we sometimes feel ashamed of what we’ve done, and of who we really are. We have made mistakes; we’ve taken shortcuts or tricked our way into or out of certain things. There are parts of ourselves we are willing to let God see…but there are also things we might know we can’t keep hidden, but which we still don’t want to speak aloud.

So it matters that the act of submission God accepts here from Jacob is Jacob’s confession of his own name, and all that name means. What’s amazing, then, is that it doesn’t lead to judgment. It leads to renaming!

Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

Genesis 32.28

Jacob says who he is…and God tells him who he will be. The name “Israel” is often translated “he who wrestles with God.” But a better translation is actually “God wrestles”; that is, “Israel” just as much refers to the people God chooses to wrestle with as it does Israel’s own history of wrestling with God. Jacob wants a blessing; what God gives him is a new way of seeing himself. In fact, a way of seeing himself as God sees him. He is someone worth wrestling with, no matter his past. He is someone worth fighting for, not because of what he has done, but because God is not finished with him yet. 

In a moment, Fred Miller is going to come and share a bit about how this story might lead to practical challenges for us, as people with whom God is wrestling. So, I’m going to conclude in this way: first, I want to say a few things that are true here in this story which I hope will stick with us this week. And second, I want to read a poem. Figures, right? It might as well be in my name.

The true things:

First, God plans on broken people. There is so much trickery and confusion in the beginning of Jacob’s story, but none of that screws up God’s plan to make of Abraham’s descendents a great nation which will one day bless all the earth. In fact, God seems to anticipate that mess, and to even have plans for how it will serve what he is doing. This tells us a ton about God…and it can also reassure us and give us confidence–when God asks us for our own “names”–that our answer doesn’t disqualify us. God isn’t waiting on perfect people who are good enough for him to use them. God’s plan is to reveal his own greatness by loving and perfecting the people he uses.  

Second, God fights with broken people. He’s going to fight with you, at some point or another. That means that not every tragedy is a punishment, nor every blessing a reward. Sometimes, prosperity is the worst thing that can happen to a person: it certainly feeds Jacob’s arrogance. Sometimes, suffering is a blessing (not always; please know that). The point is that being defeated might be the beginning of seeing something God is doing. 

And lastly, the postscript: in Genesis 33, Jacob faces his brother, and before he can say a word, Esau runs to meet him and embraces him; he throws his arms around his neck and kisses him. The brothers weep. Jacob is forgiven; they return together to the land God has blessed. God fixes broken people. When he does this, it flashes like a supernova in the sky: it is the single greatest sign of who he is and what his name means.

And yes, that poem! It’s by Ranier Maria Rilke, and it’s called “The Man Watching.” I came across it in a commentary on this passage by Sara Koenig. It concludes like this:

How small that is, with which we wrestle;

what wrestles with us, how immense.

Were we to let ourselves, the way things do,

be conquered thus by the great storm—

we would become far-reaching and nameless.

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.

Whomever this Angel overcame

(who so often declined the fight),

He walks erect and justified

and great from that hard hand

which, as if sculpting, nestled round him.

Winning does not tempt him.

His growth is this: to be deeply defeated

by the ever-greater One.

“The Man Watching,” Rainier Maria Rilke