Birthright

Genesis 25:19-34

July 16. 2023

 

            When Phoebe was born, cell phones were not yet a thing, so a video camera was required to live action record the new baby. Phoebe was my first, so I had a lot more time to document her every move, facial expression, turning of her head, waving of her hands, blinking. Whatever she did, I tried to get it on video. And then I copied those videos and sent them to the grandparents so they too could see Phoebe’s every move, facial expression, turning of her head, waving of her hands, and blinking.  By the time she was a year, I had at least four full video tapes of just her.

            Then Zach was born, and life was much more hectic. Not only did I have a new baby, but I had a toddler too. So, I tried to take as many videos of Zach as I could, but I wasn’t able to document everything. I don’t think I have a video of Zach blinking. Plus, when I would pull out the video camera to record Zach, Phoebe also wanted to be in the movie. It’s just the way it was.

            But at one point when the kids were a little older, they were looking at the different cassettes with their names on them, and Phoebe saw her name on the first four tapes that were made when she arrived in this world. Then she looked at the rest of the tapes which said Phoebe and Zach. When she realized that she had four all to herself, she turned to her brother and said,

            “I have four tapes, Zach. Four.”

            I’m not trying to make Phoebe out to be a bad kid. She wasn’t. She was just being a kid, the oldest kid in her family, and she realized as every child does that this was an advantage that she had over her little brother. Thankfully, Phoebe and Zach’s sibling rivalry, which was quite intense at times, has faded and they have become really good friends. I don’t think she would turn to Zach now and rub it in about having more solo video tapes of her babyhood than he has. But Jacob might.

            Even though they were fraternal twins, and Jacob was the youngest, I suspect that if Jacob and Esau had been born in contemporary times, Jacob would have found a way to dominate the videos his mother recorded of them. And he would have made sure to let Esau know it. Four, Esau, four.

While Phoebe and Zach have become good friends and confidants as they’ve gotten older, Jacob and Esau had a long standing sibling rivalry that went on into their adult years. It’s not a leap to understand why this was true. Rebekah and Isaac both played favorites, something most parents try never to do. If contemporary Jacob were to dominate the family movies over and above his older brother, it is because Rebekah helped and encouraged him. Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Welcome to the book of Genesis, the book that contains the stories of our faith’s patriarchs and matriarchs, our spiritual ancestors, stories that if we read them carefully, 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 dysfunctional family.

            This summer, we’ve heard the stories about Abraham and Sarah’s struggle to have a child, the child that God promised them. We’ve read about Sarah’s cruel treatment of Hagar and of Abraham casting out Hagar and his firstborn son, Ishmael, and God’s intervention for them. We’ve struggled to understand the story of Isaac almost being sacrificed, and the good news of the unnamed servant praying to the Lord for wisdom when it came to finding Isaac a wife and realizing that wife was Rebekah.

            Now we’ve come to the next chapter in the story. Just as Sarah and Abraham dealt with the pain of infertility, so did Rebekah and Isaac. But finally Rebekah is pregnant and with twins! 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 just can’t die instead. She goes to the Lord to ask for an explanation or some understanding of what is happening within her, and she receives a peculiar annunciation. There aren’t just two babies fighting for space inside her, there are two nations.

            “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 destiny of dysfunction seems set. Esau and Jacob are born, Esau the oldest and Jacob the youngest. Esau’s name in Hebrew is a play on the word for hairy. He is covered in an abundance of red hair. Jacob’s name also has meaning in Hebrew. It is a play on the words heel and supplant. Jacob was born grasping his brother’s heel.

            And as I said, Isaac and Rebekah play favorites with their sons. Isaac loves game, and Esau is a skilled hunter and he can provide his father with the game that he loved. Jacob is quieter. He stays closer to home, and he has clearly honed his cooking skills. It is Jacob’s savory stew that starts a world of trouble between the two brothers.

            Jacob is making a stew of “red stuff,” probably beans and grains. Esau comes in from the fields and he is, “famished.” He asks Jacob to give him some of his stew, and Jacob agrees, but the younger brother seizes this moment just as he seized his brother’s heel at birth.

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

            Esau does not want to think about birthrights … or consequences. He is hungry. He is famished. He just wants something to eat, so he willingly gives up his birthright for a bowl of beans.

            One commentator pointed out that this may not have been just a random moment between the two brothers. It’s quite possible that Esau often came home from the fields ravenous with hunger. It’s possible that Jacob had observed this many times, and realized that if he played his cards right, he could use Esau’s hunger against him. Jacob had an incentive, then, to make a good stew. Maybe it was no coincidence that he was cooking a stew at the same time his brother was expected back. If you’ve ever been really, really hungry after a long day’s work, you can imagine what the aroma of stew must have done to Esau. I can imagine Jacob fanning the scent toward Esau as he walked up, just to make sure that Esau could think only of his stomach and nothing else. Jacob knew the time was right to strike a deal. You want food, brother, fine, but give me your birthright.

            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?  Surely other food was available to you. Yet you sold your birthright, you sold out your family heritage, because you had to have food at that moment?  Consequences anyone?

            A second thought is why was Jacob so mean, so calculating? Is this just the younger brother motif? I mean, Jacob, this is your brother for Pete’s sake! Just give him some food. It makes me think of every corny family sitcom where one sibling needs a favor from another and has to promise to give up allowance or do chores or some other menial tasks in order to get the favor from the first sibling. But this goes far beyond a favor. This is about the birthright of the firstborn son, which was everything in that time and context. It was about leadership in the family and inheritance. Yet sibling rivalry can be a dangerous thing, and in this dysfunctional moment, in this dysfunctional family, Jacob knew he could 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, the trickster, has the tables turned on him by another trickster. He will be 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. But 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 touch 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 or where they might land. 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.