Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh on the sinew of the hip.- Genesis 32:32
A holy struggle.
I’ve been studying Jacob’s bout with the angel. It’s a powerful and evocative story, and there are a lot of ways to read it. Jacob spends the night alone, waiting to meet his brother Esau for the first time since he stole his blessing. Last he knew Esau vowed to kill him. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to that meeting, and had little reason to expect a moment of reconciliation. But in that dark night of emotional struggle, he faces a struggle of a different sort. A mysterious man appears and begins to wrestle him through the night. “When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob,” we are told, “he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.” But Jacob doesn’t let go, and forces from the mysterious man a blessing. That blessing is his new name. He would no longer be known as Jacob, which means supplanter or usurper. He would now be known as Israel, which means “God strives" or “he who struggles with God.”
That is where the lectionary account leaves us. And that is where most commentaries I’ve read leave the story. But the story doesn’t end with Jacob’s new name. The story ends with us being told that Israelites do not eat from a certain sinew because that is where God touched Jacob’s hip.
This is not an insignificant report. Though I get it might be difficult to preach on, and it’s certainly no command for us to avoid eating this particular sinew. It’s not insignificant because it shows us how Israel chose to commemorate the encounter of their patriarch with God. As his wrestling with God left Jacob limping, so too Israel at the time Genesis was written sets aside the same sinew as a reminder.
What are the marks God leaves on our lives? I don’t mean a limp, or a forbidden food. But what are the daily reminders we set to turn ourselves to God? How does our faith in Christ make our lives different than someone who doesn’t believe? If we follow the crucified messiah, it will leave a mark. There are things we will do that do not compute, or that seem strange or peculiar. Perhaps we set aside a time for prayer, or set times of fasting or other forms of abstinence. Or maybe we set aside a portion of our finances for the work of the Kingdom. What are the regular, ordinary, ways that the rubber of our faith meets the road of our life? As the Israelites remembered their father’s struggles on that lonely and dark night by setting aside the sinew of the thigh.