Sibling Rivalry

Genesis 25:19-34                                                                                                                                   July 12, 2020

 

            Social media is full of silly quizzes. I don’t take the bait on most of them, but there was one I ran across and had to take. It was called, “How Southern Are You?” Some of the questions to determine your Southern-ness were, and I paraphrase,

“What’s a pig-picking and what do you do at one?”

“What is the real meaning of the phrase, ‘bless your heart’?”

But my favorite question of all was this one,

“How do you, Southerners, deal with the quirky, odd, more eclectic, and eccentric members of your family?” 

The possible answers listed options such as institutionalize them or pretend they’re not related to you.  But if you are a true Southerner, the correct answer was that the quirkiest of family members should sit in the nicest seats in the living room, or in a prominent spot on the front porch. And after those quirky family members have taken their rightful place, then the neighbors should be invited over for a barbecue. In other words, the true Southerner – or at least the true Southern stereotype – does not try to hide away the most dysfunctional family members. Quirkiness and eccentricity are a source of pride, not shame. We put the more flamboyant members of our family right out on the front porch for the whole world to see. 

            Well, fellow Southerners in our Southern church, welcome to Genesis: the front porch of the Bible. Our spiritual patriarchs and matriarchs were nothing if not quirky, eccentric and, yes, bless their hearts, dysfunctional. If we really read them carefully, the stories of our spiritual ancestors in our faith should give us pause. Perhaps they should make us question what we mean when we refer to the “family values” that are supposedly based on scripture. From Abraham and Sarah on, this is one big, dysfunctional family.

Over the last weeks, we have heard again the story of Abraham and Sarah, and their long-awaited son, Isaac. We have also read about Ishmael, Abraham’s son with Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar. It was bad enough that Sarah told Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, and he did; but just a few weeks ago we revisited the story of God telling Abraham to take Isaac and sacrifice him. As I said when I preached on that story a few weeks ago, the sacrifice of Isaac is known in the rabbinic tradition as The Akedah or the binding of Isaac. As another clergy person wrote, the rabbis of this tradition see this crucial moment in the life and faith of Abraham and Isaac as a shadow that follows the family line from that point onward. 

            We recognize this shadow when Sarah’s death follows the story of Isaac’s binding. One commentator speculated that perhaps Sarah just gave up after her God and her husband seemingly schemed to sacrifice her only son. This shadow looms large over the story of Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac was 40 when he married Rebekah, but he was 60 before Rebekah conceived.  Just as Sarah and Abraham endured decades of barrenness so too did Rebekah and Isaac. But just as God’s promise of a child and descendants came to fruition in the life of Sarah and Abraham, that promise continued when Rebekah and Isaac’s prayers for a child, were answered.  They were answered with not just one son, but two. But the shadow does not recede.

            So begins our story this morning. Rebekah is pregnant, but it is a difficult pregnancy. The text tells us that the babies “struggled inside her.” She is so uncomfortable that she wants to know why she cannot just die instead. Rebekah goes to the Lord to ask for an explanation or some understanding of what is happening within her, and she receives an annunciation. It is not just that two babies are fighting for space insider her, there are two nations jostling for room. 

            “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.”  

            Even in utero the ongoing story of dysfunction continues. Esau and Jacob are born; Esau, born first, and Jacob born second. They may be twins, but Esau is considered the oldest and therefore has the rights of the first-born son. Esau’s name in Hebrew is a play on the word for “hairy.” He is indeed covered in an abundance of red hair. Jacob’s name in Hebrew is a play on the words for “heel and supplant.” Another fitting moniker, because was born grasping his brother’s heel.   

            To add to the dysfunctional fun, Isaac and Rebekah commit what many believe to be a parental sin. They play favorites. Isaac loves game, and Esau is a skillful hunter able to give his father the food he loves best. Jacob is quieter. Rebekah loves Jacob. Jacob stays among the tents, learning to cook, and it was his ability to cook that furthered the divide between the brothers.

Jacob is making a stew of “red stuff,” probably beans and grains. Esau comes in from the field and he is, as he puts it, “famished.” He asks Jacob to give him some of the stew. Jacob seizes the opportunity just as he seized his brother’s heel.

“Sure, Esau, I’ll give you some stew. But first you give me your birthright.”

Esau does not want to think about birthrights. He is hungry, famished, so he gives up his birthright for a bowl of beans. 

            There are many directions that we can take at this point, many questions about this story that we can pursue. The first might be just how dumb was Esau? Perhaps dumb is not the right word, but I think “doof” fits. Really, Esau?  You couldn’t have walked a few feet farther and gotten food from somebody else? I imagine that other food was available. Yet you sold your birthright, you sold out your family heritage, because you had to have food at that moment?  Didn’t you think about the consequences? Clearly not.

            A second thought is why was Jacob so mean? Is this just the younger brother motif? I mean, Jacob, this is your brother for Pete’s sake! Just give him some food. Is one serving of stew too much to ask? It makes me think of every bad family sitcom, usually made in the 1980’s, where one sibling needs a favor from another and has to promise to give up allowance or do chores or some other menial task in order to get the favor at all. But this goes far beyond a favor and losing allowance. This is about the rights of the firstborn son, which was everything in that time and context. It was about leadership in the family and inheritance rights. Yet sibling rivalry can be a dangerous thing, and in this dysfunctional moment, in this dysfunctional family, Jacob saw a chance to outwit his older brother. Esau, thinking only about his immediate gratification, falls right into the trap. 

            Unfortunately, the lectionary skips the next part of Jacob and Esau’s story. Not only does Jacob take his brother’s birthright. He also tricks Isaac out of the blessing meant for Esau. Jacob wrangles for Esau’s birthright on his own. But when he tricks his father, disguised as Esau, it is done with the help of his mother. Rebekah again plays favorites.

            You would think that with all this dysfunction, this scheming and usurping and backstabbing that God would step in and restore Esau back to his rightful status as the firstborn. Shouldn’t the story of God’s people continue through Esau? That is what we would expect, but God rarely does what we expect. The covenant began to take shape through the second born, Isaac, and God continues the covenant through Jacob, Jacob the grasper, the trickster, the scoundrel. The one who should be least likely to carry the promise of God is the one who is chosen. 

            Yet, even though Esau is not the one chosen to continue the covenant of God, he is still the father of a nation. He is blessed with descendants and wealth. And Jacob is not the only trickster that we will meet. The trickster is tricked by his father-in-law, Laban, into marrying the oldest daughter Leah before he can marry his beloved, Rachel, the younger daughter.

But it still smacks of unfairness that the one least likely to be an instrument of God’s promise and God’s grace is the one chosen. Yet isn’t that the way of grace? Throughout scripture, we read that God chooses the unlikely, the underdog, the flawed and the dysfunctional to bring God’s promise to fruition. Yet, in our own lives and in our own churches, we act as though the opposite is true. We tie God’s grace to piety. If we are just good enough, just pious enough, just righteous enough, then we will be close to God. Except I’ll be honest, I rarely feel good enough or righteous enough. However if these stories in Genesis – and the stories in the books that follow – teach us anything it is that goodness and grace are not cause and effect. To paraphrase Paul, this doesn’t mean that we should intentionally seek to be scoundrels so that God’s grace is heightened. But it does mean that God’s grace is not dependent on our goodness.  And that is good news. It is good news because our flaws, our failings, our quirks and our dysfunctions do not deter God. If anything, God works through them. God works through us, dysfunctional, broken, flawed beings that we are. 

I did not preach on the story of the sower and seeds from the gospel lesson today, but one point that I have also intuited from that passage is this: the sower did not neatly plant seeds in tidy rows. The sower flung seeds, everywhere, into all kinds of soil. The sower flung seeds, seemingly without thought for how many seeds were being hurled, where they might land, and what might actually become of them. The sower flung seeds extravagantly. And extravagant is the word I associate with God’s grace. God shows us extravagant grace, even though we don’t deserve it, we cannot earn it, we will never be righteous enough to win it, and if we could it would not be grace. No, God’s grace is extravagant because God’s love is extravagant. God works through our flaws, our dysfunction, our mistakes, and our unlikeliness because God loves us extravagantly. Despite our failings and our weaknesses, God loves us. We are beloved in God’s eyes. And through unlikely and quirky people, God’s promises are still coming to fruition. God’s extravagant grace covers us, in spite of ourselves. Let all of God’s quirky, eccentric, flawed, and dysfunctional children say, “Alleluia!”  Amen.