Who Are You?

Slowly, he approached his father’s tent. Heart beating, skin itching, mind whirring. Determination etched on his face; today he would finally steal grace. “Did my brother’s clothes always weigh so heavy?” he wondered. Maybe the weight lay elsewhere.

Did he pause for a minute outside the tent door? Did he fortify his resolve with reasoning, over how his pagan-living brother didn’t deserve the blessing anyway? But he did…

He took a deep breath. The smell of childhood comfort drifted up towards his sweat-beaded nose, transformed now into the smell of victory. In a few minutes he would have succeeded. The deception was simple, they had prepared well. The smell, the feeling of the arms, the well-prepared meal, the invoking of God’s name as a fail-safe. As long as he didn’t talk too much, it would be perfect. Stooping a little, he carried his pot inside with confidence.

He greeted the old man, calling his attention to his new visitor. “My father”. The aged one answered, but his words hit an eerie note. “Here I am”. Those words were simple and true, and yet somehow, they rang with echoes of an older time. The stories the old man had told of days long before, flashed through the young man’s mind. Stories from the old man’s youth, when his own father had answered YHWH in this manner, in the final test of his faith. A test to see, would he trust God to fulfil his promise? Would he rely on God to endow blessing?

Those simple, but ancient, words caught him off guard. A little shaken, he composed himself. But then a chilling note rang through the air and stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Who are you?”

Time stopped still. How many times had he asked himself that exact same question? Tending to the livestock, sitting at his mother’s feet as she cooked, how had that question had haunted him?

“Who are you?”

Swallowing hard, a myriad of answers streamed into his mind? I am Jacob. I am deceiver. I am supplanter. I have lived with this title my whole life.

I am the second best. But, (through mentally gritted teeth) I am the son who cares about the blessing given to my Grandfather. I am the one without pagan wives. I am the one who is intent on following on the family heritage. I am the one who deserves the blessing. I am the one who will take it.

“Who are you?”

Suppressing that piercing question, and the heartache that it drew out, he opened his mouth and declared, “I am Esau, your firstborn.” By deception he wrenched the spoken blessing from his father’s lips. The mission was complete, but the question, in truth, lay unanswered.

“Who are you?”

Did he recall his father’s question in the years that followed? As he tried to hustle and was hustled himself? After he had faced hardship upon hardship? As he tried constantly to wrestle the covenant blessings from God’s hand, or from that of others? A self-made man, that was Jacob. One with a goal, desires… and cunning plans on how to get there. That is the answer to the question.

“Who are you?”

Years later, in the dark of the night, under the innumerable stars that bore witness to the life that he sought, did he think upon that day in his father’s tent? Alone with his thoughts – unsure of whether his life would end in the morning, unsure of whether he would ever be able to inherit the land – what did he say of who he was then?

Perhaps his thoughts were broken as he saw a man approach. Before he could close out his musings the man was upon him, wrestling with him. The one who had wrestled blessing out of the hands of others by deception, would not prevail against God by force. Yet, that same impulsive spirit was not easily driven out. “I will have the blessing!” Years later, Jacob was Jacob still, the one who thought he could manufacture God’s blessing, who reckoned that he deserved it. But then, shockingly, came a harrowing question. One which he had heard decades before, one which he had never truly dealt with.

“Who are you?”

This time it was done. There was nowhere to hide from reality. He admitted the truth. “Jacob”. This time there would be no deception. This time there would be no wrestling the blessing by force. This time the impulse to seize would give way to a realisation of grace. After years of creating a self-made identity, of suppressing it often, finally he had to come face to face with who he was.

But then, the déja-vu gave way to something new. Finally, he had come to terms with who he was, and yet in a miraculous work of ironic reversal, now came the most unexpected part. The man answered the question for Jacob.

““Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Confession had given way to clarity. A new name. Not one given by man, reflecting his unchanged nature, but one given by God, who had been working on him all those years. Now injured, feeble, in pain, Jacob’s days of seizing life himself were numbered. Noble or ignoble as his intentions were at different times, nonetheless, as long as he subdued the question, he failed to address his need. The blessing came not from cunning nor strength, but by the God who had promised it.

A new name, a new identity, a new understanding of God. And all because of a question.

“Who are you?”