July 23, 2017
Paul Purdue, preaching
Every child is different. The Biblical twins Esau and Jacob remind us each child is unique. Genesis tells us Jacob “was a quiet man who stayed at home” favoring farm and table. Esau, a reddish hairy hunter favored the outdoor life. Isaac, the twin’s father, loved Esau because they shared subsistence hunting and backcountry camping. The twins’ mother Rebekah loved Jacob who helped closer to home. Even before birth, the twins seemed to fight inside Rebekah’s womb. Esau won the race to enter this life. Jacob came out of the womb in second place but hanging onto his older brother’s heel, as if to pull ahead or maybe trip Esau at the line. Indeed, the name Jacob means “one who grasps the heel” or “one who trips you up.”
Isaac, with eyesight almost gone and sensing death, calls his favorite son, Esau, saying,“I’m old and don’t know when I will die. Go up into the hills hunting, where we used to hunt together, and come back and fix a big campfire meal of wild-game and I will bless you before I die.”
If you read the Bible you know Biblical families can be as painful and complicated as any modern family. Overhearing her husband’s conversation with her oldest son, Rebekah colludes with her youngest son to steal Esau's blessing. Jacob seems like a pretty despicable guy. However, Paul warns us to hold off judging until Jesus comes back. Jesus says simply “Judge not”. (Matthew 7:1 & 1 Corinthians 4:5) We might go easy on Jacob because we don’t know much about Jacob’s homelife. We do know his parents played a terrible game of favorites. I do not want to be cute here, but right after Jesus says “judge not” Jesus says “You can know a person by their fruit” (Matthew 7:15-19) It’s a balancing act! We note that Jacob shows little concern about stealing from his brother and deceiving his dying father. Jacob fears that while receiving the blessing his dad might take his hand or hug his neck and that Jacob’s smooth skin could unmask his impersonation of Esau. Ethics are not rooted in a fear of getting caught.
In his covert operation, Jacob seasons a goat to taste like wild game, slides into Esau's smelly camo tunic, and puts on some homemade goat hair gloves replete with a neck-hair toupee. After crediting God for a quick hunt, Jacob offers his fake fur hands and evades his father’s questions. Isaac calls the imposter “Come here and kiss me, my son.” So Jacob, came close and kissed his father. When Isaac smelled the scent of the imposter’s clothes, he blessed Jacob saying “See, the scent of my son is like the scent of the field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you showers from the sky, olive oil from the earth, plenty of grain and new wine. May the nations serve you, may peoples bow down to you. Be the most powerful among your brothers… Those who curse you will be cursed, and those who bless you will be blessed.”Do you wonder if God honors a sham prayer concocted in deceit and trickery? Do you wonder how Jacob felt after executing his treacherous scheme to perfection? How is Jacob’s soul?
The ancient camera does not follow Jacob from the room, but lingers with Isaac as it captures the pathos unleashed by Jacob’s betrayal, theft and fraud. Not long after Jacob returns Esau’s camo tunic, Esau returns jubilant from the hunt. Esau prepares a meal of high-mountain antelope cooked over an open fire. Hearing Esau’s warm greeting Isaac calls out haunting words, “Who are you?”“Who are you” haunts any child whose aging parent struggles to recognize them. “Who are you?” claws at our identity.Listen to the passage:“I am your firstborn son, Esau.” Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, “Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed him?—yes, and blessed he shall be!”Picture the trembling, mildly confused father. Hear Esau crying out longing for a blessing, “Is there no blessing for me father?”
Genesis offers us a family crime scene. Jacob runs away with the goods. Rebecca does not speak to the investigators. Isaac, frail and broken, stands trembling in confusion and regret. Esau’s weeping turns to muttering. I imagine Esau clenching and unclenching his fists. What do we make of these stories? How do we understand these founders of the faith? Is anyone a hero in our story?
Growing up, I profoundly misunderstood these stories. I thought these patriarchs and matriarchs exemplified some sort of heros of the faith and that I was supposed to emulate them. I once got a little comic book at church with a picture of muscular Moses, his tunic draped like a cape flapping in breeze, his staff like Thor’s hammer. Now I’ll take Moses as my pastor or senator anyday over Jacob, but Moses has deep flaws too! Even as a college student, I would read the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Leah and Rachel, not to mention guy like King David or Solomon or Saul of Tarsus, and be puzzled. Is anyone a hero in our story? Some folks give up on these Scriptures and others cling to a wooden literalism. Neither of these approaches honors the text or advances our faith. What do we make of these stories? These stories make us think we need to look beyond the surface to deeper themes. I love the MethodistChurch because we call people to think. We try to love God with all our hearts and all our minds. “By reason we read and interpret Scripture. … By reason we ask questions of faith” (2016 UMC Discipline #105 pg. 88)
Are there any heroes in our passage? There is one hero, but our hero is not Isaac, Jacob, Rebekah, or Esau. The hero barely appears in the text at all. The hero only appears in a dream! Our hero is our unseen God, who offers us second, third, fourth and “seventy - times - seven” chances. The unseen power of Love, the Hope of Renewal, the Promise of Justice, the Fragrance of Reconciliation heroically arrives despite of our bad behavior.
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King describes God’s arrival in the middle of a life-threatening ordeal: “The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me an inner calm. God is able to give us interior resources to face the storms and problems of life. ...When our days become dreary with the low hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a Great Benign Power In The Universe whose name is God, and God is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows! This is our hope for becoming better men and women. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world." (The Strength to Love)
Do you know this Great Benign Power who makes a way out of no way? Soon after Jacob’s theft and deception, Esau lets people know that after his dad dies he will kill his brother Jacob. Jacob flees. He runs away all day long. He runs until the sun sets. And I would tell you that he set up camp in the dark, but after plotting to get everything, the trickster lacks a sleeping bag or even a raincoat to crumple up as a pillow. He rests his head on a rock. He really does not know how to camp. Some might say “he is getting just what he deserves”, but no one ever mutters that when they are talking about people they love. And friends, do you believe God loved our world enough to die for it? Do we believe Jesus tells us to love each other, love our neighbors, and even love our enemies? (Matthew 5:44 & 22:39, John 13:34)
The Great Bengin Power finds Jacob in his sleep. If we were writing the story, we would want God to deliver a good stern lecture to Jacob, maybe a nightmare or a tablespoon of well-deserved guilt. I wonder why God did not preach the truth, “If you enter worship and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go. First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister” ?(Matthew 5:23).Instead Jacob dreams of a staircase connecting heaven and earth populated with people and angels and people moving along that path to heaven; when suddenly God appears. And what does the Almighty say to this schemer running for his life? God whispers “I am with you.”Our Hero arrives saying “I am with you!” The Great Benign Power, our Emmanuel whispers, “Do not be afraid…I am with you, always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20, 14:27, 28:5)
A friend of mine from seminary said, “I never met a sinner who did not know it, or a saint who did!” After running away all day and sleeping on the pavement, do you think Jacob felt near the bottom? Why do we ever want people to suffer a little more or ask them to show us their inner remorse as if we are the judge? Is not Jesus the Judge? No God comes whispering in a dream “I am with you.” If your plans have ever arrived at worse than nothing, you know how beautiful it sounds for someone to say “I am with you”. How amazing to receive mercy when we clearly do not deserve it! Do you hear Jesus softly and tenderly whispering “I will be with you” We Wesleyans call this holy whisper prevenient grace.
Grace releases its’ magic slowly and imperfectly into Jacob’s life. He wakes up, takes the rock that was his pillow and makes it an altar so that he can worship God. Once awaked to God, Jacob declares “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” The trickster is different. He even turns in a conditional pledge card. His journey will take decades. Years later, Jacob wrestles with God all night long getting a new name, Israel, a much deeper blessing than any Isaac might bestow. Israel means something like “one who strives with God” And the next day, Esau will embrace his brother Jacob-Israel, neck to neck, tear for tear, and Jacob, reconciled to the one he defrauded, will proclaim to Esau “to see your face, my brother is like seeing the very face of God.” (Genesis 33) Do we believe the unseen God of the universe still quietly whispers “I am with you… do not be afraid”?
So what do we do with this story? Surely the message is not to run away from our problems like Jacob did or to scheme for power. No perhaps, we need to hear that “God is with us” even amid all our imperfection and failings? Perhaps, we need to hear that God can use us even we mess up and hit rock bottom like Jacob! Maybe we need to be careful not to judge too quickly, knowing that only Jesus is without sin. Maybe we need to offer grace and patience realizing God’s grace might unfold over years and even decades. Perhaps, we who say “the peace of God be with you” might offer peace from deep within our hearts so that we might see the very face of God in the forgiveness of our brothers and sisters? Whatever else we might take from this sermon, let us hear the Good News that “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” is still whispering to sinful folks like you and me “I am with you… always, even to the end of the age”. Amen