Origin Stories: It S Funny Cause It S True

Origin Stories: It’s Funny ‘Cause It’s True

Genesis 25:19-34

19 These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham was the father of Isaac, 20 and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban the Aramean. 21 Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. 22 The children struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?”So she went to inquire of the Lord. 23 And the Lord said to her,

“Two nations are in your womb,

and two peoples born of you shall be divided;

the one shall be stronger than the other,

the elder shall serve the younger.”

24 When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. 25 The first came out red, all his body like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau. 26 Afterward his brother came out, with his hand gripping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.

27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. 28 Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

29 Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. 30 Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished!” (Therefore he was called Edom.) 31 Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” 33 Jacob said, “Swear to me first.”So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

As a twin, you anticipate a series of questions that inevitably come: Did you ever play any tricks on people? What’s the easiest way to tell you apart? And my favorite: which one of you is the evil one? What they don’t realize is that the evil twin won’t tell you he’s evil, so both say they’re the good one! When we were kids, my brother and I made a deal. He got all of the good guys for He-Man and Ninja Turtles, and I got all of the bad guys. Maybe I’m the evil one for that choice, or maybe it makes me good because I chose the unfavorable to avoid conflict. But there’s also stories of one twin pushing another through a window or destroying the other’s stuff because they ate the last of the peanut M&Ms. But whoever did whatever doesn’t really matter – the point is that conflict and family seems to go hand in hand, and it certainly finds its way into the origin stories of the people of God.

And even though the people of God are also family, we are still surprised to find this level of competitiveness and jealousy in these stories. We often imagine how life should go, especially a life with God, and often conclude that it means freedom from conflict and tension. Just reading through Genesis from the beginning, it’s quite natural to think, “Well, this time it’ll work out.” Noah’s show of faith in the midst of wickedness means that the world is back on track, right? But a few hours after hitting shore he hits the bottle. So when we hear of God’s promise to Abraham to make him a great nation, we imagine that Sarah will start having babies at any moment. But she doesn’t – she even laughs at the idea.

Well, then, Isaac will take this call seriously – he sees God’s faithfulness in providing a sacrifice, underscoring the promise of a family so Isaac will get married and start that nation-building project. But he stays a bachelor, approaching middle age with no prospects and no online dating invented to help. But God’s providence brings him a wife and a love story that rivals Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic.

But this story, as we continue it this morning, turns quickly to heartache. For twenty years, the couple prays and aches over their inability to have children. And you may be thinking, couldn’t Kyle have found a more recent love story than Titanic? But this movie came out twenty years ago, so imagine praying for that long with no response. What could that do to our faith? But quite surprisingly, Rebekah discovers she is pregnant, and pregnant with twins! A double blessing. But even before they are born, they’re fighting with one another, and it seems that it continues their whole life.

Sometimes the way we see promises come true actually takes us deeper into chaos. We imagine God’s promises might make life easier – it’s hard to reconcile when they complicate things. It feels a lot like losing, and the demoralization that comes with losing breaks our capacity to imagine that God would want to have anything to do with us. I mean, look at Isaac’s family – it’s messed up. Why would God want to trouble himself with all of this drama? Why work with such odd and misshapen pieces of the story?

And so sometimes we look at our life, with our family drama and weirdness and conflict and think, “God must be really disappointed.” And so I hope stories like this one, with all of the redneck sensibilities it has (literally, Esau/Edom means “red guy”), makes us feel a little nobler in our drama. Maybe we even learn to laugh at it, as we wonder at how God would insert grace into all of our mess.

When Rebekah comes to God, to wonder why these boys were already fighting and causing her pain before they were born, God responds that he is going to flip the script. This time, maybe for the first time, the elder will serve the younger. The strong will work for the weak. The loser will win. And it’s OK to laugh at the silliness of life because this reversal of expectations is the foundation for humor.

Look no further than Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. One is a “mighty warrior of great fighting stock” armed with a gun. The other is a small, sarcastic rabbit. There’s no way the rabbit stands a chance against the hunter. Bugs embodies the literary archetype of the trickster – cunning, mischievous, and subverting the strong and powerful. He’ll dress up as a barber, a duck, and a woman in order to trick his way out of trouble (or get Elmer Fudd into trouble). And this is remarkably similar to how Jacob acts in this narrative.

Jacob is the wimp. He prefers to stay in the air conditioning rather than going on hunts. He was a vegan before it was cool (how else can you explain a bowl of lentil soup sounding good?). He’s not what you think of as a man’s man, the strong hunter type who can provide for a family. And yet God favors him over Esau. And that alone messes up our categories – undone even further when we learn that Jacob wins his claim as firstborn through more trickery with his father.

But God honors Jacob because Jacob knows the value of the birthright, moreso than his brother or father knows. Maybe because they are firstborn, they take such privilege for granted. But the losers know something from being second place. And Jacob knows it’s worth more than bowl of beans.

This is an origin of a people who know what it is like to be the losers. As the Jewish exiles return from Babylon, they put these stories in writing, codifying a memory that helps them to navigate their own loss of status. They return defeated – and sometimes we start a new chapter of our life where we are the losers. But it is in these moments that we learn the value of our birth, of our place, even if it is not seen as valuable by others. This is a value given to us by God, not simply taken for ourselves. Long before we were born, we were chosen for God’s love.

Loss (or even the threat of loss) often helps us value what we otherwise may take for granted. Coming from a broken home left me with a longing for family. A cancer diagnosis focuses us to live without the pettiness that can drive our worries. I have found that the moments when I fear losing are the moments where I must discover God’s value the most. It is these moments where I learn what matters – even though others may regard it as worthless as a bowl of soup. So I invite us this morning to consider what threatens us, what makes us feel like losers, and what it means to know that even though we may be second-rate, God loves us deeply.

And this is a crucial aspect to the narrative of God that we often miss. How he lifts up the lowly, honors the humble, celebrates the mourning and blesses the poor. God is the ultimate trickster, the one who takes what seems unseemly and makes it beautiful – shaming those who hurled insults along the way. The cross of Christ and the resurrection of Jesus is the punchline – the surprising reversal that few saw coming. You thought death was the final word? Well, joke’s on you.

What else can we do but smile? In the background of doubt and disappointment, of name-calling and cruelty, God stands up for those who are hurting. But even those like Esau – the supposed winners and strongmen – are not far from redemption. Though the brothers soon find themselves bitter enemies, God calls them toward reconciliation – instead of soup they eat a little crow. And so even if we have stories to tell where we were the ones pushing the other through the window, we can find that God will brings us back into grace. Because the love of God embodied in the story of Jesus promises that we are never too far gone that redemption cannot find us. May we be led by God’s spirit to a place where God’s favor finds us – and may we never take it for granted.