With so many new modes of communication, more and more people are finding ways of making more and more connections. Yet the overwhelming majority of people report feeling less intimacy with others, and less capacity for intimacy with others, than most any time since such things have been tracked. On the upside, that data points to people knowing that intimacy is a two-way street — that their capacity to be intimate and their ability to experience intimacy are related.
People sense that decreasing intimacy is not only “the other guy’s problem,” but something with which they themselves are wrestling, and that kind of mutuality is a good place to start. And this is a good week to think about such things, as this is really the week of intimate wrestling, as the Genesis narrative continues to unfold.
Jacob encounters God intimately on two separate occasions this week — first as a man with whom he wrestles, and second in the form of his long-estranged brother, Esau. Each meeting is marked by touching, wrestling, and hugging. And each meeting speaks to how intimacy is enabled, its results, and how we choose to live with those results.
In Genesis 32:25, Jacob famously wrestles with a “man”—later identified as God in verse 31. The results of that ancient cage match are two-fold: Jacob is blessed by the man and that blessing includes his name being changed from Jacob to Israel, by which his descendants will be forever known. Jacob also sustains a permanent injury in the midst of his wrestling, one that is recalled, also forever, through his descendants’ not eating that same nerve in kosher animals.
None of the above drama unfolded until Jacob was willing to stand alone in the dark of night, with all of his fears and anxieties about the vulnerable closeness he was about to experience, and all of the uncertainty that entailed. Therein lies part one of the intimacy conundrum: Until we are able to be as vulnerable as Jacob, and even to be wounded as a result, we cannot know the enduring blessings of real intimacy.
The choice is ours whether to open ourselves to that kind of vulnerability. Jacob’s choice in Chapter 32 is not the only correct one to make, as we learn through his unfolding story and the choices he goes on to make in Chapter 33, when he reconnects with Esau.
Having taken advantage of his brother 21 years earlier, and knowing that his brother is coming to meet him with an army of his own, Jacob has plenty about which to worry regarding this meeting. And yet, when the brothers finally reunite in Genesis 33:4, it is a moment of heartfelt and again very physical connection including hugging, heads on each other’s necks, and open weeping. And as in the previous encounter wrestling with the “man,” this meeting is also described as an encounter which is like seeing the face of God, as Jacob tells Esau, “For to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:10).
Again, in this encounter between Jacob and Esau, the closeness they achieve requires taking action, even as Jacob feels great fear and anxiety. Again, the outcome cannot be predicted and the risk is great—both physically and emotionally. Again, the encounter is emotionally powerful. However, there is an equally powerful difference between these two encounters—one which reminds us we have choices when it comes to intimacy, that neither option is inherently right, and that there are costs and benefits when we exercise either one.
You see, after Jacob and Esau’s initially deeply heartfelt encounter, they decide to go their separate ways, realizing that sharing one land will not work out for them. While wonderful to reconnect, sustaining that initial level of intimacy would not be best for either of them. That may not be a bad thing: Intimacy is hard and not always required, even to do some of the most beautiful and sacred things, as evidenced by Jacob and Esau’s ability to bury their father Isaac together, even as they have chosen to go their separate ways.
It is also true that there are gifts that come with that kind of connection that seem to be attainable only when one is willing to be wounded and to live with that wound, as in Jacob’s first intimate encounter with God. In both encounters, Jacob meets God, but it is only when he is permanently changed by the encounter that he can inherit the name by which his people will be forever known.
Intimacy is hard, and sometimes even hurtful. That is why it is not always the way to go. If this story reminds us of anything, it is that we can find God—or many other great things we seek—both with and without that kind of intimacy. At the same time, some things we don’t seem to be able to find without it. Being vulnerable to potential injury in order to achieve that closeness is a choice. We must ask ourselves in a given situation: What do we really want and what are we willing to risk and feel in order to get there?