Mar 21 2025 4 mins 2
March 21, 2025
Today's Reading: Genesis 25:1-26
Daily Lectionary: Genesis 24:32-52, 61-67; Genesis 25:1-26:35; Mark 8:1-21
Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them. (Genesis 25:26)
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
Jacob is well-named. Ya-akob means “heel-grabber,” and he is called Jacob because he was born clutching his twin brother’s heel. Esau’s birth was straightforward, but his twin Jacob was born arm-first, which immediately put his life and his mother’s in danger. “In the very midst of life, we are in death,” sings an old song in the church.
Yet God had promised Rebekah that she would be the mother of two nations, and that promise sustained her through a healthy delivery. But just as they struggled in the womb, these brothers continued to struggle with each other for years, thus fulfilling the Lord’s prophecy concerning these twins.
Jacob continued to live up to his name, though. More broadly, Jacob means “supplanter.” The manner of Jacob’s birth suggests that he was struggling to be born first, to hold his brother back. Before he knew the rules of inheritance, he struggled for the birthright of the firstborn. Later, Jacob would accomplish what he started when he grabbed his brother’s heel, bartered for Esau’s birthright, and tricked his father into blessing the whole thing. “The older shall serve the younger,” said the Lord (Gen. 25:23).
The heel business is an interestingly inverted sign. Jacob grabbed hold of the promise by striking at his brother’s heel and risking a crushed head at his birth. But it’s not the struggle of two brothers that fulfills God’s first promise. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).
The devil struck the heel of Jesus and even wounded His sacred head on the cross. But in striving to overcome the one and only Son of God, the devil suffered a bruise and more. “You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck” (Habakkuk 3:13).
Jacob grabbed the heel to get at the promise, but Jesus used His heel to keep the promise. So let us grab hold of Jesus’ heel, that is, His promise, and we will be born again.
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
Bruise for me the serpent’s head That, set free from doubt and dread, I may cling to You in faith, Safely kept through life and death. (LSB 352:5)
-Rev. Jacob Ehrhard, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church and School in Chicago, IL.
Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.
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