We're jumping ahead a little bit – we'll retrace our steps here next Sunday – but in Genesis 35, Jacob again hears the voice of God, intruding into the midst of his newfound turmoil. At the opening of this new encounter, God recalls Jacob's mind and heart to their past together. Hearkening back seven chapters, God refers to himself as “God who appeared to you” (Genesis 35:1). The narrator will gloss the same moment a bit differently: “the God revealed himself to him” (Genesis 35:7) – unhid, uncovered himself, like a spouse on the wedding night. These verbs show up together again when we read how “the LORD appeared again at Shiloh, for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD” (1 Samuel 3:21). Then to Samuel, first to Jacob.
But we, for our part, live when “the mystery hidden for ages and generations” has at last “now [been] revealed to his saints” (Colossians 1:26), for Christmas has marked the birth of “a light for revelation” to all nations: the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God (Luke 2:32). And we know that “no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27), “through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). For this “mystery of Christ... has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Ephesians 3:4-5), the same “Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). Through their eyewitness testimony and the Spirit, God has revealed himself also to us.
Jacob goes on to reflect on another aspect of his relationship with this self-revealing God: that this is “God who answered me in the day of my distress” (Genesis 35:3). He sounds like Hezekiah, who pronounced it “a day of distress” when an Assyrian army had Jerusalem surrounded (2 Kings 19:3). But Isaiah sent the king a message: “Thus says the LORD: Be not afraid” (2 Kings 19:6). God heard Hezekiah's desperate plea, and he answered by dispatching a destroying angel to give Assyria reason to retreat. God recalls, too, what he did in the exodus: “In distress you called, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder” (Psalm 81:7).
As for us, St. Paul reminds us that “in all our distress and affliction, we have been comforted about you through your faith” (1 Thessalonians 3:7). When we look back on the past year, I'd say there have been some days of distress here and there, for one or another of us. Grievous losses. Medical emergencies. Hard trials, through which we perhaps “suffered distress and anguish” (Psalm 116:3). But we also know that when we call, God answers us. That, too, is something we've seen borne out in the past year. “The Father of all mercies and God of all comfort... comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
But there's a third thing Jacob remembers as he looks back. He recounts that God “has been with me in the way that I have walked” (Genesis 35:3), just as Jacob had asked him to be (Genesis 28:20). Jacob knew already the promises Moses would repeat, that God “will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:8). Before Isaiah spoke to Hezekiah, he spoke to his father Ahaz when his heart was shaking like the wind. Isaiah assured him that “the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14), “which means 'God With Us'” (Matthew 1:23) – a promise fulfilled in Jesus, who is God-With-Us in the ways we've walked in this year now closed. That's especially so if you've walked in his way: “Practice these things, and the God of Peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9).
Enough, though, of Jacob's and our reminiscing. By the end of today's reading, God has turned Jacob's attention also forward, to four aspects of Jacob's destiny. First, as we'd heard at Peniel already from that mysterious man wrestling Jacob in solitude and shadow, Jacob has a new name: Israel (Genesis 32:28; 35:10). It represents a change of direction, a new calling, an identity freed from the burdens he's been carrying. The prophet likewise promised Zion that “you shall be called a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give” (Isaiah 62:2), one no longer tainted with old shames, sufferings, and silences. And that's what's set in store for us: “To the one who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna,” says Christ, “and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Revelation 2:17).
Second, God therefore bids Jacob – Israel – to go “be fruitful and multiply,” since “a nation and an assembly of nations shall come from you” (Genesis 35:11). Now, Jacob, in his own person, has done pretty much all of his procreating by this point. But under his watch, a nation is being grown from him, but only in Christ does it grow into a multinational assembly or, literally, “a church of nations.” We're part of the promise. And Christ says to us, “I chose and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (John 15:16). The aim of his saving mission is “in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4).
Third, God assures Jacob that “kings shall come from your loins” (Genesis 35:11). Jacob's future is one where his kids won't just be regular folks; some, at least, will reign in royal splendor. Jacob's destiny has a great hope of glory. And do we have promised us any less than he here? St. Paul declares outright that “Christ in you” is “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), adding that “if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12) – which is why St. Peter can already call us “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).
And fourth, God bestows on Jacob the blessing promised to Abraham and Isaac: that Jacob, as Israel, and then his seed after him, will possess this very land (Genesis 35:12). Moses reminded Israel about “the good land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance” (Deuteronomy 4:21), and he pressed God to recall that “they shall inherit it forever” (Exodus 32:13). And in days when it seemed that promise had shattered, the prophet heard the divine voice again: “He who takes refuge in me shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain” (Isaiah 57:13). And isn't this also ours, in a new way? We're told that Canaan wasn't ultimately what God was getting at, that Jacob and his house “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). “Being justified by [God's] grace, we... become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7). We're aiming to hear: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father! inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 5:34). Yes, “in him we have obtained an inheritance” (Ephesians 1:11), and “from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward” (Colossians 3:24).
So here we are, at the dawn of a new year. Behind us, we know that God revealed himself to us, that God has answered us in the day of our distress, and that God has been with us wherever we've gone in the year 2025. If we look ahead to what's offered us in the end, we can see a new name written by Christ, a new fruitfulness unto God, a new glory to reign with Jesus, and a new inheritance in and from him. That's no less than what was held out in front of Jacob, of Israel; indeed, it's far more. So how should we begin the year of our Lord 2026?
Jacob will be glad to tell us. See, in this chapter, having heard the word of God, he lays down some directives to his house and to the growing company that now surrounds him. And the very first commandment for the house of Jacob is this: “Put away the foreign gods that are among you” (Genesis 35:2). This action, to 'put away,' is one of rejection, of abandonment, of removing from the realm of relevance, as when the psalmist prays God to “put away your indignation toward us” (Psalm 85:4). As a result, the people heed Jacob, and he takes those filthy idols they've clung to and he disposes of them as if they're dead, eliminating them from experience; not only that, but the Hebrew name of the tree he buries them under rhymes with 'curse' (Genesis 35:4).1 On the same spot centuries later, Joshua stood before the people and insisted that, yet again, they must now “put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel,” since to “serve foreign gods” any more would court God's turn to judgment “after having done you good” (Joshua 24:20-23).
It was as a sign of this that those being baptized into Christ have traditionally been asked to both confess their new faith and to reject the old error; as one bishop wrote sixteen centuries ago, “it is necessary, by way of casting the foreign gods from our midst and abandoning such falsehood, that we should say, 'I renounce you, Satan, with all your pomp and all your worship.'”2 But sometimes we waver in that renunciation. Sometimes we find those old works and that old pomp and that old worship rather tempting. Sometimes we reclaim for ourselves a foreign god, an object of adoring devotion intruded into our heart and life from outside the gospel. We fail to heed the psalmist who reiterates, “There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god” (Psalm 81:9). For they make us foreign to God, and that can make us pretty strange.
And this matters because, as St. Paul warns, “an idolater has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Ephesians 5:5). Those promised destinies in Christ are incompatible with a life of clinging to foreign gods. So Jacob takes away the foreign gods around him, and he buries them; he buries also the pagan earrings, amulets of superstition that bore the imprint of idolatry.3 He did it so that, as St. Ambrose put it, they could “forget the old sleep of unbelief, and so that their ears could become deaf to sacrilege and be purified for grace.”4
That leads us to the second commandment of Jacob. It's just one Hebrew word: “Purify yourselves” (Genesis 35:2). It isn't often we hear of people purifying themselves, but both Ezra and Nehemiah recount how “the priests and the Levites purified themselves” (Ezra 6:20; Nehemiah 12:30). They were just echoing God's own words to Moses, his command to set the Levites apart and “sprinkle the water of purification on them, and let them go with a razor all over their body, and wash their clothes, and purify themselves” (Numbers 8:5-7), “certainly by means of immersion in water,” as with Jacob and his house.5 Purifying themselves meant being beneficiaries of atonement and addressing the burdens of sin they'd carried in their lives (Numbers 8:21). Only then could they be fit to be a living offering unto the Lord, consecrated to his sacred service (Numbers 8:14-16).
What about us? Jesus, having made “purification for sins” at the cross (Hebrews 1:3), “gave himself for us,” says St. Paul, “to purify a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14), each “washed free of his vices,”6 to be able to present ourselves as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1). And yet St. Paul feared for Christians who “have not repented of the impurity... that they have practiced” (2 Corinthians 12:21), because “everyone who is... impure... has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Ephesians 5:5), “for God has not called us for impurity, but for holiness” (1 Thessalonians 4:7). That's why St. James still has to insist, writing to Christians: “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts” (James 4:8). As the new year dawns, do that. Cleanse your hands of dirty deeds. Purify your hearts of an unholy will.
Jacob's third commandment for his house fits very neatly with the second. Where the Levites, as part of their purifying of themselves, were mandated to “wash their clothes” (Numbers 8:7), Jacob lays down for his people a more radical requirement: to “change your garments” (Genesis 35:2). It's what David did when he turned from his penitential grief to worship: “David... washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes, and he went into the House of the LORD and worshipped” (1 Samuel 12:20). And that's a picture of the start of our life in Christ: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ,” washed and anointed in the Spirit, “have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), “clad in Jesus Christ as a garment of salvation.”7 St. Paul describes the implications by telling us that “you have put off the old human with his practices and have put on the new, the one being renewed” (Colossians 3:9-10). St. John can therefore say, without contradicting St. Paul, that the “fine linen, bright and pure” with which we're clothed is “the righteous deeds of the saints” (Revelation 19:8).
But when Jesus turned his attention to the churches in Asia, he declared that the majority of one church had “soiled their garments” (Revelation 3:4), while those in another had become spiritually “naked” (Revelation 3:17). They needed, he said, to “buy from” Jesus “white garments, so that you may clothe yourself” “and walk with me in white” (Revelation 3:18, 4). How are your garments? Are they there? Do they still look fresh? Or is there need for renewal? It's a humbling thing, to admit we're not as well-dressed spiritually as we think or as we'd like others to think. That's why St. Peter insisted that we “be subject to the presbyters; clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility” (1 Peter 5:5) – humble enough to confess our need to be restored to the love that alone lives and shines. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful... to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Once Jacob's house has heeded his three commandments, they can join Jacob in following the command that he himself had heard first (Genesis 35:1), the one he now shares with his house: “Let us arise and go to Bethel,” to the 'House of God' (Genesis 35:3). This is, in effect, a religious pilgrimage.8 King David's washing, anointing, and clothes-changing were all preliminary to going from his house to the house of God, the Temple (2 Samuel 12:20). Then, when Hezekiah was terminally ill and still beset by his foes, Isaiah encouraged him that “thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the House of the LORD, and I will add fifteen years to your life; I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria” (2 Kings 20:5-6). No wonder the psalmist sings, “I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the House of the LORD'” (Psalm 122:1)!
How is it, then, that we should be entering 2026? We should bury our foreign gods in the past, where they can be dead and gone, recognized as cursed. We should purify ourselves anew in hands and heart, returning to our first love. Confessing our past stains, we should put on garments of renewal and brightness, garments we both receive and weave – a mystery of grace and the obedience of faith. And we should, with joy, go to the House of God – not coming to church as an errand to fill an hour, but treating it as a sacred pilgrimage to seek his face.
There remains, then, just one more thing left. God required that, once Jacob began to dwell at Bethel, he should “make there an altar to God” (Genesis 35:1). That's why Jacob invited his house and company to rise up and go to Bethel with him, “so that I may make there an altar to God” (Genesis 35:3). Once they reached Bethel, “there he built an altar” (Genesis 35:7). Jews and Christians alike took it as “the altar of sacrifices” pleasing to the Lord,9 so that Jacob “performed sacrifices to God and showed himself to be learned in the mysteries.”10 An ancient writing adds that angels wash Jacob's son Levi “with pure water” to purify him, handfeed him “bread and holy wine,” dress him in “a holy and glorious vestment,” and tell him that his “posterity will share among themselves the Lord's Table.”11 And doesn't that sound familiar to us? St. Ambrose preaches to us, down the halls of time, that Christ “came to us from heaven as the Bread of Salvation so that now no one may be hungry, but each one may gain for himself the food of immortality,”12 the bread he makes his flesh, the cup he makes his blood, on the altar of God, the Lord's Table, for those who come freed, washed, and vested in him. So, “since we have a Great Priest over the House of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water,” and “let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:22-23). Amen.
1 Anne Marie Kitz, Cursed Are You! The Phenomenology of Cursing in Cuneiform and Hebrew Texts (Eisenbrauns, 2014), 208-209.
2 Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 5.3.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:270.
3 Shaul Bar, Daily Life of the Patriarchs: The Way It Was (Peter Lang, 2015), 81.
4 Ambrose of Milan, Jacob and the Happy Life 2.7 §33, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 65:165-166.
5 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 240.
6 Ambrose of Milan, Jacob and the Happy Life 2.7 §34, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 65:166.
7 Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Lectures 1.10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 64:159.
8 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 239; Paul D. Vrolijk, Jacob's Wealth: An Examination into the Nature and Role of Material Possessions in the Jacob-Cycle (Gen 25:19–35:29) (Brill, 2011), 284.
9 Jubilees 32:4, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:117.
10 Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 5.3.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:270.
11 Testament of Levi 8.5, 16, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:791.
12 Ambrose of Milan, Jacob and the Happy Life 2.7 §32, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 65:165.
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