Walking With a Limp: What This Changes Between Us

The welcome clipboard still has his name in the fixer slot. Three people asked him after the last song to settle a conflict before lunch. He told one elder about the night. The table still needs him to be the man who gets there first. A woman who watched him come in from the lot already saw the limp. She keeps introducing him by the old competence because the group is not ready to lose their Jacob.

A second household is putting on coats. Their daughter heard the introductions. She will decide in the car whether this church is a people who can receive a new name, or a collection of private nights that never have to walk toward anyone.

This is a sermon about what a limp does between you. If you preach Genesis 32 as a map of anyone's private night, you will lie. If you preach it as Yahweh meeting Jacob at the Jabbok in history, you give this church a God whose naming sends a man back to the people who still remember the old name.

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Hear the night as Holy Scripture tells it, from the World English Bible: "He rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed over the ford of the Jabbok. He took them, and sent them over the stream, and sent over that which he had.

Jacob was left alone, and wrestled with a man there until the breaking of the day. When he saw that he didn’t prevail against him, the man touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained as he wrestled. The man said, “Let me go, for the day breaks.” Jacob said, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.” He said to him, “What is your name?” He said, “Jacob”. He said, “Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed.”