Jacob is the main character in today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. If you were to ask Jacob who he was, undoubtedly his first response would have been to tell you his name. The name he grew up with was Jacob. He might also have mentioned that he was the son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham; he had an impressive pedigree. Furthermore, in his case, his name, Jacob, was more than just a label so that his mother would have something to call him when it was time for dinner. Jacob’s name itself said something about who Jacob was as a person. In Hebrew, the word aqeb means heel, and if you remember your Bible stories, you’ll remember that Jacob came into the world clinging to the heel of his twin brother Esau. But the word aqab means cheat, and that is a word that really tells us something about who Jacob was. Jacob was a cheat. Cheating was how he lived. No matter what name his mother or his friends may have called him, no matter who his ancestors may have been, if you want to know who Jacob really was, he was a cheat. I checked the dictionary just to make sure that "cheat" is a noun, not just a verb, and yes, a "cheat" is "a person who acts dishonestly, deceives or defrauds." That’s Jacob.

If you remember your Bible stories, you’ll remember that Jacob cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance, by exploiting Esau when he was tired and hungry. Then, in a later incident, Jacob cheated Esau out of Isaac’s patriarchal blessing, which was Esau’s by right and was of great value at that time. Jacob dressed up, disguised himself, as Esau to trick their nearly blind father. If that’s not cheating, I don’t know what is.

And, if you remember your Bible stories, you’ll remember that these two incidents are just part of a long story that leads up to today’s Scripture reading. (And if you don’t remember your Bible stories, remember we now have an adult Bible study class. We read about Jacob last week.) After cheating his brother twice, Jacob flees out of fear of Esau’s retribution… a retribution that would most certainly have been justified. On the way, he falls asleep on a bed of stones and has a dream about a marvelous ladder to heaven. He goes to live in a foreign land where he marries (twice), has children, and achieves a considerable amount of status and wealth.

So I suppose at this point if you were to ask Jacob who he was, he still might have to admit he was a cheat, but he was also a father, a husband, a property owner… and a resident alien who somehow knew that he still had not found his true identity. So he set out to go home.

Home to face his brother. And in the story we hear this morning Jacob wrestles with an angel of God by the banks of the River Jabbok. Jacob at the Jabbok. Alone. In the middle of the night. It must have seemed a night that would never end. A struggle that could not be won. And cheating wasn’t going to help.

Writing about this story, one scholar has written: "To utter [Jacob’s] name was to speak his character—"cheat"—acknowledging that his alienation from Esau was not an episode but a way of life. The story [of Jacob’s struggle in the night is] psychologically and theologically profound [because it is about] Jacob’s need to face his own character, his relations with people, and his relation with God. The limp suggests the costliness of the lonely struggle. [As he moves forward to face Esau] Jacob limps. But the sun is rising, and he is on his way to becoming a new man…" A man who has been given a new name, Israel. A new name, a new man, blessed and beloved by God.

And yet, in a way, Jacob’s new identity was not new. He had always been loved and cherished by God. What was new was Jacob’s discovery of who he was. It took Jacob half a lifetime of dreaming, traveling and struggling to learn within his own heart that he was God’s beloved child. The name Israel has meaning. El means "God". Israel is "the one who strove with God." It was in striving with God that Jacob came to know who he really was.

Each of us is born with a nametag that says, "Hi! My name is… God’s beloved." Before anyone else gives us a proper name, before we grow into the personality that will define us, before we are anything else we are God’s beloved. Sometimes it takes us a lifetime of struggle to learn in our own hearts what has always been true. As you know, the Bishop of Maine addresses her column in the Northeast every month to "God’s beloved in Maine." That is who we are. I’m sure she does not use the phrase casually or lightly. Do you know that’s who you are? Do you really know that before and beyond anything else you are God’s beloved?

Our identity as people loved by God is something that each of us must work, struggle to learn, discover in our own lives. We ourselves build so many barriers to God’s love, it takes time, perseverance, courage to overcome those barriers within ourselves so that we may know God’s love. Jacob had to find the courage to return home and face Esau. And when Jacob finally came face to face with Esau, Scripture says "Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him." And Jacob said to his brother, "truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God."

The barriers within us are real and powerful. Only with courage and persistent struggle can they be overcome. It doesn’t just happen. I know something of the nature of my own struggle; I cannot know yours. Jacob had to find the courage to go home. Perhaps that is true for you; perhaps you need to find the courage to leave home, to leave the insulating presence of the familiar. The gospel reminds us that unceasing, persistent prayer is crucial for us all. As is a sincere, never-ending engagement with the Word of God in Holy Scripture. And Jacob found God’s loving face in the face of another person, probably the last person in the whole world from whom he expected to receive God’s love.

It is not easy. It can take years or a lifetime to really understand who we are as God’s beloved, to become the new men and women that God has always hoped for us to be. But if Jacob did it, anyone can. And I’m sure Jacob would tell us that it was indeed worth the effort.