What a joyous story, what a glorious vocation to struggle and to prevail in, and by, the grace of God.
The sermon text follows the sermon video.
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Sermon Preached at Zion Episcopal, Washington, NC
Sunday July 16th 2023
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Bloom Where You Are”
At the beginning of his novel, Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy begins with these memorable words, ““All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.
The English satirist, Quentin Crisp (author of The Naked Civil Servant) writes also of families but with a bite, “The family is an institution that provides the greatest need for courtesy with the very least reason for doing so!”.
These past week, my esteemed preaching colleagues (Ann-Marie and Jim), have introduced us to family life in the book of Genesis. Here we do not find examples of the Brady Bunch and the Walton’s, more like the Addams Family and Archie Bunker and family.
One commentator wryly remarks, “The book of Genesis highlights family conflict as a context within which God works” – good news, yes?
Dysfunctional family life seems de rigeur for godly families in Genesis – Abraham has sex with his slave-girl in order to… help God a little, his son and step-son argue and create division. Joseph lords it over his brothers, is thrown into a well (maybe to die) – just be careful what you wear, no coats of many colors/sleeves. And now barren Rebekah gives birth to twins who fight even at the point of birth.
There may well be a card-game entitled “Happy Families”; this is not a title for the book of Genesis, at least initially though, in the words of our Epistle, generally “the Spirit of life sets us free from laws of sin and death”.
The womb of Rebekah becomes the arena for fraternal strife (Genesis 25:22 “The children struggled together within her”); the Hebrew word for “struggle” (raw-tsats) can be translated “bruised, crushed, oppressed” – as a man, I can only imagine. And the Lord comments to Rebekah, “Two nations are in your womb, two peoples butting heads while still in your body” (Genesis 25:23 Message Translation).
Now, an aside, I believe that when the Lord shares this message with Rebekah he is not foreordaining that this is how it will be post-partum; but He is, with fore-knowledge, describing what will take place. We forget, at our peril, this distinction between foreordaining and foreknowing… but enough of that!
The characters, the persona, the natures of Esau and Jacob are recognized from the very beginning. Right now, Wendy and I are watching the TV Series “Suits”, seeing the future wife of Prince Harry literally in action! Friday, one character said, “People are who they are”! Profoundly and unutterably true. I learned a new word this week, Anagnorisis! It means, “The point in a play/novel in which the principal characters discover their true identity” – well, for Esau and Isaac anagnorisis happens right at the beginning of their stories. Esau (meaning red, is red in color, red in haste, red in passion), whereas Jacob (meaning the “one who grasps the heel”) is sly, cautious, a trickster and, yes literally, a heel!
These twins, their psychology and temperament ingrained in their very DNA, continue in like manner as their lives continue – here in Genesis 25, they push and pull in the womb and Esau is duped into surrendering his birthright. And later, in Genesis 27, Jacob steals from Esau Isaac’s paternal blessing – by pretending to smell and feel like Esau to the old and blind Isaac!!!
(Now, just fyi, later in Genesis 29 Jacob is duped by Laban into marrying Leah before he marries his chosen Rachel – I really do not like this phrase but often, in the economy of God, “what goes around comes around” (sounds better in Latin – id quod ambit, redit.)
Eventually Jacob and Esau are both blessed by the Lord – they become ancestors of a multitude (Edom an d Israel), they are blessed with abundance to meet their families’ needs. And, oh hallelujah, in their ultimate reconciliation Jacob is graced to be able to say to Esau his twin, “Accept my present from my hand, for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:10).
This story of troubled twins reminds us powerfully of the presence and victory of grace; we do not need become worthy, to be recipients of God’s grace, favor, acceptance… we receive His grace so that we might be worthy; it is not when we are of value, that God showers blessings upon us; God showers blessings upon us so that we might know we are of value! Romans 8:11 “When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!” (Message Translation).
Today’s parable (probably one of the most well-known of Jesus’ parables) is not called the parable of the seed, the earth but rather the parable of the Sower… then, and now, and forever, Jesus scatters seeds in all forms and types of soil… trusting that through wind and rain, through common thoroughfares, the seed will pollinate and grow. To me it seems wasteful, almost irresponsible, to scatter seeds anywhere and everywhere. But to the God of abundance, to the God of grace and mercy and love, perhaps it is exactly the right way to go about it. We might deem people, places and things beyond redemption but not to the God of grace; we might deem ourselves from time to time (if not for much of the time), beyond redemption but not to the God of grace. Neither Abraham nor Sarah, neither Hagar not Ishmael, neither Esau nor Jacob – not one of them, not one of their relationships was beyond the reach of the good seed of the grace of God.
And, friends, as with them…. so with us, so with you, so with me today! Worth a hallelujah? Oh yes!
Jacob, writes one commentator, “is neither a moral exemplar nor a villain. He is a complicated figure” (did you see one of those in the mirror this morning?). At the very beginning of his story, Jacob is described as “a quiet man”, better translated as “complete, whole”. Yes, even with his ingrained psychological flaws and wild attraction to duplicity, Jacob was a “complete as he could be”; Jacob is obsessed with God’s blessing (mediated through his father), the blessing “which he can never possess as fully as it possesses him”. Yes, I will settle for that as well.
This conflicted, duplicitous, self-obsessed man will one day be transformed by grace in his struggles (both personal and divine) and so we leave him (in Genesis 32:38) as no longer Jacob (Cheater, Grasper) but as Israel (One who struggles with God and prevails).
Do not forsake the struggle, do not lose sight of victory, for God is with you to struggle and to prevail. AMEN!