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Jacob Part 8
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
And when you truly, honestly absorb the hurt that has been done to you, and you sit with it, and you own it, and then you promise yourself that you will not pay it forward to someone else. That is more than just an act of kindness. That is an expression of the sacred divine at work in the world. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. But welcome today. My name is Jeremy, and I'm one of the people who get to hang out here around Commons. Thanks for being here, particularly as we head into this busy Christmas season together. I really hope that you find some space to rest and anticipate this Advent.
Speaker 1:Now technically, Advent begins next Sunday. This year, Christmas Eve is actually on a Sunday, and that makes Christmas Eve the fourth Sunday of Advent. But of course, we are already sliding into the Christmas season already. Next week, the decorations will be up at the church, and we will begin our advent series together. But, of course, you can also already go to commons.church/christmas and get your tickets for Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1:That will just help us to make sure that we have a seat for everyone on what promises to be a very busy day here at the church. However, one of the things that we do every year when we head into this season together is we try to take some of the generosity that is always inspired by the Christmas story, and we try to direct that outside of ourselves toward those in need. In fact, we think that this is an essential part of participating in Advent as we await the arrival of the Christ child. And so this year, perhaps more than ever, however, there is a very real concern that we may just find ourselves crisis ed out. 2017 has been a difficult year, both for a lot of us personally here in this room, but also in the world in general.
Speaker 1:We've got hurricanes and famines and wars and refugees, and it is almost a self preservation necessity at times to be able to close that all down so that we can rest and heal, and I get it. And yet, at Christmas, this is also the time where as followers of Christ, are reminded of the least of these. Christmas is a story about an unwed mother in need. Christmas is a story about a family in their own hometown with nowhere to go at night. This is a story about a family that has to flee a power mad dictator just to find safety for their child.
Speaker 1:And so even as we settle in to the warmth and radiance of this season together, we also want to push ourselves to look outside as well. And so this year, we have chosen a number of different initiatives, both globally, where we are trying to help the Rohingya who are being violently forced from their homes and villages in Myanmar, but also locally here as we invest in some of the partners in our neighborhood near us. And that is partners like Louise Dean School, which is right across the street and the work that they do with student moms. That's Aurora On The Park, couple blocks over as they provide housing for those with accessibility concerns in the neighborhood. That is even even Hillhurst Fresh Food Basket that provides healthy produce and a dignified experience for families that need some help with food this Christmas.
Speaker 1:And all of that goes along with all of the incredible number of internal stories all year where we are walking alongside members of our community and our neighborhood who are facing difficult situations. And so our goal this Christmas is to raise another $40,000 on top of our normal giving that will go outside these doors to care for those in need in the spirit of Christmas. Now, over the next three weeks, we're gonna talk more about this, and we're gonna highlight some of the partners and the projects and the amazing work that they are doing. But this is a community that really should be proud of the work that we do together all year. The work that we do to build and support a more just world, because that is just not a small part of what we do.
Speaker 1:And you can go to commons.church/advent to read details about each of these projects and what we're investing in. And if you would like to, you can contribute there online, or you can just mark your Christmas envelope with that, and we will make sure it gets into those projects. Now that said, it is not Advent yet, and that means we have one more week with Jacob. So first of all, I hope you've been enjoying this series. One of the things that I really want to accomplish in any series like this is to help us get a sense of just how fascinating some of these ancient characters are.
Speaker 1:If we can just take them out of the dusty memory of flannelgraph lessons from when we were kids and actually read them as works of literature, we find that they are incredible works of art. There is a reason that these tales have endured and been beloved in both the Jewish and Christian traditions for all these years. It's because they're great stories. And then in particular, I hope you enjoyed last week as Bobby got to walk us through the climax of this entire eight week series, the moment where Jacob actually wrestles with God. And I'm not sure how that happened.
Speaker 1:I joked with Bobby this week and I said to her, I hope everyone appreciated all the work that I did with giving you a six week introduction just so you could come in and steal the thunder in this series. But then, of course, it was also kind of perfect that the only staff member with a titanium hip, and as far as I know, the only staff member with any titanium parts at all got to tell us about Jacob's tragic hip. So who knows? Maybe God had a plan all the way along. Anyway, I hope you are enjoying this series, and I hope it is giving you at least some sense of a new lens through which to appreciate these ancient texts.
Speaker 1:Because we are here at the end, and so we need to look back quickly across the story. Jacob is born grasping his twin brother's heel. He steals his brother's birthright and then he tricks his dad into giving him his brother's blessing. And his brother is not impressed. In fact, Esau declares, I'm gonna kill that kid.
Speaker 1:So Jacob bravely runs away, and yes, that is a Monty Python reference for those who are keeping score. However, because of that, he ends up with his uncle in Haran, and he gets tricked there, and he gets married there, and he gets rich there, and he decides now to head home. But the thing is, even if you have encountered God, and even if you have learned from your mistakes, even if you have grown and become a new man, heading home still means you need to face your past and your brother who wants you dead. And so Jacob's plan is to send a bunch of gifts to his brother. He wants to sort of pay him off for all the terrible things he's done to him in the hopes that Esau will forgive him.
Speaker 1:But then, just at the last minute, right before the climax of the story and the meeting between these two estranged brothers, something like God appears in the story. And Bobby did an amazing job of walking us through the mystery of this moment last week. The text tells us that out of nowhere, a man appears and wrestles with Jacob. And we have no idea who this man is. And yet as the story unfolds, we slowly come to realize that this is not just a man.
Speaker 1:In fact, after wrestling for hours, this man touches Jacob's hip and somehow dislocates it. And then he gives Jacob a completely new name. He calls him Israel, the one who struggles with God. Somehow, this man is something divine. That even after all this, even when Jacob asks who this man is, he gets no answer.
Speaker 1:The man just simply won't tell Jacob who he is. And yet, in the morning, Jacob wakes and he says, I know that I have met God face to face. And so building on what we talked about the week prior, where Jacob wants to give gifts, but he gives them in front of his face. And he wants to placate his brother Esau, but he tries to hide Esau's face with his gifts. And then this face to face encounter with God.
Speaker 1:This is incredibly powerful. And my guess is few of us, perhaps none of us have a story quite like this. Bobby's titanium hip aside, I have never remotely physically wrestled with anything like God. And yet, there have been a few piercing clear moments in my life where I was confronted by something in a moment where I knew I was deeply fearful. And, I hold on to those moments very tightly.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes in that moment, all that I wanted was for God to show up and tell me God's name. Like, is this really you? Are you really there, or is it just the music or the moment or the fact that I am particularly vulnerable right now? Tell me who you are. And yet, like Jacob, in the end, I have rarely ever gotten a name.
Speaker 1:And so over and over and over again in my journey, I have had to take it on faith that those moments were truly divine. And I had to get up and dust myself off and put my stake in the ground and say, I know I have met God face to face whether I can prove it or not. And sometimes, that's the best I've got. But that's what faith is. This mysterious trust that God is willing to meet with you and the profound confidence to believe in your own experience of that divine encounter.
Speaker 1:Now, all of that leads us to today. And if I had the chance to do the introduction for Bobby last week, well then today, I get to do the epilogue, and it's a doozy. So let's prime. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we come one more time to the tale of your son, Isaac. To sit at the feet of your word and to hear you unfold this story in front of us.
Speaker 1:Lord, may we listen well as you tell it and wonder as you unwind it. And might we find something of ourselves in this man and this story so that we could come to know you more clearly in this moment. Lord, where we are lost like Jacob, would you bring us home? And where we are running like Jacob, would you slow us down? Where we need like Jacob, to go and to ask for forgiveness and reconciliation, would you give us courage?
Speaker 1:And then, Lord, where we are hurting like Esau, would you heal us? And where we need to be the mature one, would you teach us? Where we, like Esau, need to extend your grace and forgiveness out into the world just like Esau did, Would you grant us your mercy and your generosity and your grace so that we might. We are broken and hurt and flawed and profoundly beautiful. May we come to see ourselves as you do.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. After two months our time and twenty years story time, we are finally now here at the long awaited showdown between Jacob and Esau. And I'll say this, this is not actually the end of Jacob's story here.
Speaker 1:After this, Jacob's story transitions and it starts to be told primarily through one of his sons, a son named Joseph. You may remember him from his fabulous attire and his Technicolor dream coat. However, we want to tackle that story as well. And so we're going to wrap up Jacob today, but then next year, we're gonna come back and we'll pick up here with Joseph because there's some great stuff there as well. However, Genesis chapter 33 verse one.
Speaker 1:Jacob looked up and there was Esau coming with his 400 men. So he divided the children among Leah, Rachel, and the two female servants. He put the female servants and the children in front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph in the rear. But he himself went on ahead and he bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. Now, if you remember back two weeks ago, Jacob sent gift after gift after gift in front of his face to his brother Esau.
Speaker 1:And at the start today, it almost sounds like he's going to do something like that again. He breaks his camp up into groups. He arranges them just so, but this time, instead of sending them in front of him, Jacob actually goes first. And this is one of those miraculous things about meeting with God. Sometimes, God seems to take the shape of the thing that we are most afraid of.
Speaker 1:And yet when we meet that thing, and we face that thing, and we recognize the grace in the midst of that thing, what happens is that fear is replaced by something different. Now, that doesn't mean it's not scary anymore. In fact, sometimes it's even more terrifying. But once you have met God in your fear, you realize that fear won't end you. And so this same Jacob, who was so afraid to face his brother, meets with God face to face, then he gets up and he walks directly toward his brother.
Speaker 1:And I love that. Because it may be that there are things somewhere in your life that you need to get up and walk toward. And it may be that you need to know that God is with you when you do. Now, I'm gonna read the story of Jacob's meeting with Esau here. And, I want to let this breathe a little bit.
Speaker 1:And, I want you to try to experience this with as little of me in the way as possible. So, I'm not gonna comment like I normally do as I go. I'm just gonna read and we'll listen and then we'll talk. Jacob bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. But Esau ran to meet Jacob and he embraced him and he threw his arms around his neck and he kissed him and they wept together.
Speaker 1:And Esau looked up and saw the women and the children. Who are these with you? He asked. Jacob answered, these are the children that God has graciously given your servant. And then the female servants and their children approached and bowed down.
Speaker 1:Next to Leah and her children came and bowed down. Last of all, came Joseph and Rachel, and they too bowed down as well. But Esau asked, what is the meaning of all this? These flocks and these herds that I've met to found favor in your eyes, my lord, Jacob said. But Esau replied, I already have plenty, my brother.
Speaker 1:Keep what you have for yourself. No. Please, said Jacob, if I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably. Please accept the present that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me, and I have all that I need.
Speaker 1:Because Jacob insisted, Esau accepted. And Esau said, let us be on our way, and I will accompany you. Now, after everything that we have read over these last two months, this is about as good as anywhere to just end this series. But I do have a few things I wanna talk about before we do that. And so first of all, this is for all intents, a pretty shocking moment in the story.
Speaker 1:Right? The earlier version of Esau is not this version we're seeing here. Remember, Esau wants Jacob dead the last time we saw him. And that earlier version of Esau is described variously by scholars as an example of bestial veracity and uncouth glutton and a man of boorish manners. And, yes, those are actual quotes from actual scholars that I actually read this week, not just well spoken schoolyard bullies.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's what I assume bullies sound like in Britain. Right? If there is anything that I learned from reading Shakespeare in high school, it's that Shakespearean little British kids are around in the playground calling each other things like uncouth boorish examples of bestial veracity. Regardless, there is clearly a very real and obvious change from the Esau we knew when we left him to follow Jacob's story. And we got a hint of that.
Speaker 1:Right? Now just before the story followed Jacob to Haran, we read a quick little line about how Esau had decided to go out and find a wife his father would approve of. And now, twenty years later, that hint of maturity and that suggestion of recognition seems to have taken root. And Esau seems to have grown into something perhaps just as unexpected as Jacob has. The way I said this a few weeks ago was that remember, sometimes even when you're not the center of attention, God is still working on something inside of you.
Speaker 1:And some of us here probably do feel like Jacob. Our lives and our errors, our failings have been on display to the world, and for better or worse, we are doing our best to learn from it. But then, some of us here are probably more like Esau, and we have been out of the spotlight. And no one has even noticed what's been happening inside of us, but God has been present to us and working through us. It just hasn't been front and center.
Speaker 1:Now, maybe you have a sibling who tends to get all the attention in your house. I can only imagine what it was like for my younger sisters living in my attention seeking shadow all the time. And yet, God is no less present between the lines out of the spotlight in those hidden moments of transformation where no one pays attention. If you know that God has been present to you, that is often because God is preparing you for something somewhere regardless of whether anyone else was paying attention. And maybe if it's not you, then you know an Esau.
Speaker 1:Someone you wrote off years ago, they're a lost cause. And maybe this story is about opening your imagination to a transformation you never imagined possible in someone else. But there is of course another layer here as well. Because one of the things that we see over and over again in the Jacob story is that you are not your mistakes. No matter what you have done or who you have hurt, there is always a God who is willing to chase you down and remind you about love.
Speaker 1:But, what we see here is that you are not your hurts either. So just the same way that Jacob is more than his mistakes. What we see is that Esau is more than the way he was hurt as well. Remember back to chapter 27. After Jacob cheats him out of his birthright and steals his blessing away from him, Esau cries out in pain.
Speaker 1:He says, this is the second time my brother has taken advantage of me. And I think that some of us live back there. Someone hurt us. They betrayed us or they misrepresented us. Maybe they took something that wasn't theirs and they got away with it.
Speaker 1:But we didn't. It's been years, but we're still holding on to all that hurt. I was taken advantage of. Now, want you to hear this. I am never going to tell you when to let go.
Speaker 1:That is for you to work through, and sometimes it takes a very, very long time. But I am going to tell you that someday when the time comes and you have held on long enough, there will come a point where you need to let go. And sometimes you can forgive in a moment, and sometimes it takes a decade. It's not my place to tell you which. But eventually, if you don't let go, and if you don't choose to send that hurt away, what will happen is that it will start to feel like all of that hurt defines you, and it wasn't meant to.
Speaker 1:You see the beauty of Jacob is that he reminds us that our mistakes don't get to define us. But the beauty of Esau is that he reminds us that no one else's mistakes get to define us either. No matter how evil someone has been toward you, when you are ready, you can send that hurt away. And trust me, I don't want to minimize that or pretend that that's easy. Isaiah has had 20 to get over what happened to him.
Speaker 1:But this moment is such a powerful image of what actual forgiveness and reconciliation looks like. It's almost startling when we read it. Esau sees his brother and immediately he runs to him. He throws his arms around him. He kisses him.
Speaker 1:He weeps. He asks about his family. He says, what on earth are all these gifts for? I have plenty. I'm just here to see you.
Speaker 1:In many ways, this image right here, this is the image that Jesus uses when he builds the parable of the prodigal son so many years later. Now Esau is actually the template for the father in that story and the language Jesus uses, he uses that because he wants people to think about this moment right here in Genesis. Notice here, the past really has been sent away by Esau. He's not hanging on to it. Maybe you have had someone forgive you and it went something like this.
Speaker 1:They were like, you know that terrible thing that you did in such a horrible way that really hurt me in ways that you probably don't fully understand yet? I want you to know that I forgive you for that terrible thing that you did in such an awful, horrible, unthinkable way. And I have set aside the hurtful, painful memory of what you did to me because I want to be the bigger person in this relationship. And so I forgive you because I must overcome the tragedy of your abject failure by accepting you and all of your disgusting brokenness and welcoming you back into the loving bosom of my generous heart. For here, there is only forgiveness, no shame, except for the obvious shame that you must feel over all the terrible things that you did to me.
Speaker 1:But let's not talk about that right now because I forgive you. That is not sending the past away. Okay? That is finding a nice way to rub someone's face in their mistake and calling it forgiveness. Now, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:There's a time to go back and talk openly and frankly, and you never actually forget. What happens is that you leave it behind. But forgiveness is not about reminding someone of how terrible they have been. And if that's where you're at, then know that and own that, but don't call it forgiveness. And yet here, the only thing that Jacob has on his mind in this moment is what he has done to his brother and how he can make amends.
Speaker 1:And the only thing Esau has on his mind in this moment is reuniting with the brother he thought he had lost. And that is important. Because reconciliation rests on a kind of self forgetfulness. The willingness to be different than we were, but also the willingness to let go of where we were hurt. And that self forgetfulness from both of us being brought together, that is what saves us from the death spiral of remaining perpetually wounded.
Speaker 1:Look, if your desire is for your pain to be evened out, And for all that hurt to be paid back and your injury to be made equal with the person that hurt you, then you're not ready to forgive yet. But here, after all expectation, Esau actually is ready. And after twenty years, he has absorbed the past and he's ready to move forward. And when he does, in Jacob's words, it is like seeing the face of God. And all of this, these last two weeks in particular have been in some sense building to this moment right now.
Speaker 1:Jacob tries to send gifts in front of his face. He tries to cover Esau's face with his gifts. Then he wrestles with God and he meets God face to face. But now here in this moment, in the experience of his brother's forgiveness, after all that he has been through, Jacob says, I know this face and it is holy. So two things here as we close this story of Jacob for a time.
Speaker 1:First, when you forgive and when you truly, honestly absorb the hurt that has been done to you, and you sit with it, and you own it, and then you promise yourself that you will not pay it forward to someone else. That is more than just an act of kindness. That is an expression of the sacred divine at work in the world. And for that reason, when you are ready to forgive, not only will you look like the face of God, you will find yourself drawn closer to the truth that underpins this entire universe. That hurt was never meant to stay in circulation.
Speaker 1:See, that's what the entire Jesus story is about. That God comes and God says, I will take all of your misplaced anger and fear and violence, and I will let you enact it against me, and I will absorb it, and I will say, it is finished. It's over. It's done. That's why Esau looks like the face of God here, because the face of God is everything that soaks up your hurt and embraces you anyway.
Speaker 1:The secret of the universe is that pain was never meant to stay in circulation. But second, sometimes when something has happened and it has been truly painful or embarrassing, maybe shaming, or sometimes especially when that thing was a really, really long time ago, what happens is that we begin to tell ourselves a story about what that other person is feeling or thinking or experiencing because of us. And sometimes in our own shame, what we do is we allow our narrative about what they feel to take the place of someone else's lived experience. So maybe it goes like this. There's no way he could ever forgive me for what I did.
Speaker 1:Or there's no way she could ever trust me again because of that. For twenty years now, the picture of Esau that Jacob has had in his mind every single day when he gets up has been the image of Esau at his hurt worst. I want my brother dead. That's all that Jacob has ever imagined. But the problem is, in all of his shame over his past and what he did to his brother, Jacob has never even imagined that something like grace might have been at work in his brother too.
Speaker 1:And I don't wanna set you up for failure here. And I don't wanna promise that every time you go back to that person, things will be different because sometimes they won't. But if the thing that is holding you back from asking for forgiveness is the story that you have told yourself about how they will respond, then maybe it's time you let them decide for themselves. And I know that that is vulnerable. And I understand it might not go well, and they might be in the same place that they were twenty years ago.
Speaker 1:But if there's anything that we take from this story before we leave it, It should be that our stories are rarely predictable. And often, God is found in the space where we least expect grace to be found. Is it possible, just even possible, that even in a relationship you thought was unsalvageable, if you went back and you looked again, you might say, surely God was in this place. And, it was only I that did not see it. Whether you are Jacob or you are Esau in this moment, my prayer is that you might find peace.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God, as we set this story aside, we come to the close for this year in this tale of Jacob. We pray that we might find ourselves in each moment of the story. From the moment where Jacob grabs at things that aren't his, to where he runs away from his mistakes, to where he encounters you and undergoes a fundamental change in who he is and his posture towards the world, to now where he comes and he faces his past and he offers reconciliation with his brother and he tries to make amends. God, wherever we are in that story, might we see ourselves and find the courage to take the next step towards the destination of grace and peace.
Speaker 1:But then Lord, might we also recognize where we are Esau this day. We are being called to offer your grace and your forgiveness into the world. Being called to make ourselves vulnerable again, and to find the strength and the courage to take that step to forgive and to open the space for someone who has hurt us in the past. God, by your spirit, might you be present in whatever way we need you to be enlivening those situations so that they come to mind. And then, Holy Spirit, be present with each of us as we find the courage and the humility and the vulnerability and the strength to take the next step toward building your kingdom, one restored relationship after another.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray, amen.