4 Pentecost A – July 10, 2011

4 Pentecost A – July 10, 2011

Genesis 25: 19-34         Psalm 119: 105-112

Romans 8: 1-11                  Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Grace and peace to you from God who created us, Jesus who redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit who sustains and comforts us.  Amen.

My husband, Bruce, is the youngest of two children.  I am the oldest of two children.  For those of you who keep up with the ramifications of birth order, you can express your sympathies to Bruce after our worship service ends today.  He married a first born.  Photos of me at my younger brother’s birthday parties show me taking all of his birthday gifts, organizing them, and handing them to him one by one to open, in the precise order I thought he should open them.   Photos of Bruce at his brother Rick’s birthday parties show him running around with multiple party hats on his head and a piece of cake in each hand.

When we were getting ready to move a year or so ago, we came across Bruce’s baby book.  Imagine how amused I was to read that his first complete sentence was, and I quote, “Put that gun down, Ricky!”  When I was reading him this page of the sermon and the story of he and brother Rick,  Bruce looked at me and said “You could also mention that he once stabbed me in the head with a Cub Scout knife.”

The reading from Genesis today is the story of two brothers and their parents.  This snapshot we have from today’s reading almost plays out like a television show.  Others have described reading it as feeling like “walking into a county courthouse and sifting through a musty box of birth, marriage, and death certificates, not to mention public records of lawsuits born of family pathology and resentful letters never meant to be read by others.” [1]  But however it feels, to you, we are, in the course of these few verses, witness to some of the most intimate of family details.  It is heartbreaking to read verse 28, “Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.”  Encapsulated within this verse is the kernel of the problem within this particular generation of this family of Abraham….these are, after all Abraham’s twin grandsons…but the mother strongly prefers one child and the father strongly prefers the other.

Biblical scholarship reminds us that this story is told from a pro-Jacob point of view because Jacob represents Israel, God’s chosen people.  So, while it is possible to read this story allegorically, as something of a history lesson, it is hard, I think, to completely ignore the family dynamics present within these verses from Genesis.

Two weeks ago I read an obituary in the Sunday Seattle Times.  I will change the names when I read it to you, but that is all I will change.  The rest is word for word.  “Margaret passed away at the age of 65 from pancreatic cancer.  She leaves behind a daughter, Dr. Samantha Miller, and a son, Dr. Kris Hedlund.  She is also survived by another daughter, three brothers, two sisters, three granddaughters, three grandsons, and a whole lot of other very sad extended family members and friends.”

One of this woman’s children gets no mention other than to be referred to as “another daughter” in a long list that appears to include everyone associated with the deceased.  What, I wondered, had this daughter done to deserve to be relegated to anonymity?  Was it merely that she had not obtained the status of Doctor, as her other two children had done?  Or was it something else, something that caused a rift so large that it meant her name could not be spoken or written, her presence could not be acknowledged?

It seems that throughout time there has been much to divide families.  In these very ancient Biblical stories there are disputes over land and faith and who owns what and who will inherit what.  And in our time there are disputes in families over those very same things as well as many other things that divide us.  There are family feuds that go back so far no one can really remember what they are truly about or when they started and no one is courageous enough to take a step toward ending them.  So names are erased from address books and hearts in worst case scenarios.  In other instances families only manage to see one another on special occasions, even if they live relatively close to one another.

Strife and dissension and brokenness within families is among some of the most painful stuff there is.  We have these mental pictures of how families are supposed to look.  Where do we get those mental pictures?  Probably from the media…those of us who grew up watching Samantha fix Darrin a drink every evening when he came home, or June Cleaver having dinner on the table for Ward and the boys at exactly six o’clock every night, when they sat down to admire what they had each accomplished over the course of the day.  Those are the places where we’ve learned what family is supposed to be about.  Even in the shows where the family is not your conventional family, where they face some kind of challenge, they always do so with courageous good humor.  Uncle Bill is there to take care of Buffy and Jody; Uncle Joe is there to take care of his nieces in the Junction, and Carol and Mike Brady managed to fit their children together like pieces of a perfect puzzle.

And so when our family lives prove to be less perfect, less idyllic, we think that somehow we have fallen short.  That, like the unnamed daughter in the obituary, we are not worthy of even a mention of our names.

How is it, that we Christians have perpetuated this myth?  How is it that we have given greater credence to the stories of families on the small screen than we have to the families in our sacred Scripture?  Because, as we are finding out in our Old Testament readings this summer, the families whose stories we find in the Bible are certainly not worthy of a television show unless it’s Jerry Springer or a very sad reality TV show.  They are not picture perfect.  Their stories are filled with struggles and challenges and betrayals and bad behavior.  And yet, these, these are the very people and the very families in and through whom God chooses to move and act.  Even in this story of Jacob and Esau and their parents, who loved them each differently, God is present in the midst of them.

It is not a coincidence that we are told of the way they behaved prior to hearing the tale of the way the birthright changed hands.  We hear how Jacob was a quiet person and how Esau was a rowdy hunter.  We are told, as Rebekah was, that the oldest son, Esau, would serve the younger one, indicating that somehow Jacob was more worthy than Esau.  And then we get the story of the birthright.  As I was studying what has been written by theologians and scholars about this story, I found it fascinating how the language that was chosen to describe what happened often revealed what the writer thought of the story and of the characters in the story.  Some scholars called it the story of how Jacob stole the birthright from Esau, while others described the story as how Esau gave away his birthright.

We bring our own family experiences to all that we do.  And that can make our lives very complex.  Understanding a bit about how the order of our birth affects the way we live and interact in the world can be helpful learning.  And the more we can objectively look at our families of origin, the more we can understand ourselves and how we perceive who we are.  Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “I think Jesus knew how powerful families are in our lives, whether they are working too well or not at all, whether we are snuggled down deep in the bosom of them or utterly estranged from them. I think he knew how easy it is for us to be consumed by them so that we forget who we are apart from them – and I also think he knew that it is only when we discover who we are apart from them that we can be a part of them in a healthy way.”[2]

It is helpful to us all, no matter how things are working or not working in our families, to recall these familial stories from Scripture. It is significant to us to know that “things can be awful and embarrassingly dysfunctional – and God can still move, God can still do great things.” [3]  God does not need for us to have perfect lives before God can work in those lives and through those lives…and in and through us.  God’s people, as we are being reminded in these stories, were seldom perfect, only Jesus fit that description.  Instead, God comes into our messy, muddled lives and works through the cracked and broken places.  God comes into our feuds and fusses and brings faithfulness and fidelity.  Because God is greater than our greatest division.  As Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans and our second reading for today, we have been set free from the law of sin and death to live in the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.  And it is that freedom that enables us to live full lives, being used by God for the work of the Kingdom, in spite of what might enslave us.

Friends in Christ, this, is good news.  This is news that promises us that we are not bound by the struggles of this life, but set free by new life in Christ.  And this is Gospel news for this day and all days.  Thanks be to God.  Amen



[1] Clendenin, Daniel B.  Journey With Jesus Foundation, 2005.

[2] Taylor, Barbara Brown. “Learning to Hate Your Family” in God in Pain.  1998.

[3] Morely, Rick. A garden path. 2011.

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