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Jacob Part 2
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Hit the commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:If we haven't had a chance to meet before, my name is Scott and I am part of the amazing team of staff and volunteers that serve in this community each and every week. And it's a lot of fun sharing in the collective life of our community as we lean into God's goodness and then try to share that goodness in some small way with the city and world around us. The problem, though, with it being so much fun, is that as we extend ourselves into a second neighborhood, there's a little part of my heart that's actually already starting to grieve not being altogether all the time. And you should know that this soft place in my heart is actually being wounded by some of my pastoral colleagues who are already hatching plans for what they're gonna do with my desk space, which they think I'm leaving. They're like giddy empty nesters.
Speaker 2:They're just there's more space for our books, more space for our stuff, and it's a little harsh. Right? Anyway, I say all that with all kidding aside to make it clear that our community gives me so much hope and infinitely more courage for living in the world than I could ever muster on my own, and I'm thrilled to be here in this exciting time. It's exciting, yes, because there's new life and new possibility, but it's also exciting because I can sense a holy invitation for all of us these days, regardless of where we're gonna find ourselves getting together for worship in January. There's an invitation to mature as we encounter the divine.
Speaker 2:There's an invitation to trust God's faithfulness in new ways and to tell and personify the story of Jesus anew for people who are looking for light and love, maybe for the first time or maybe in a long held anticipation for a place that might look like home. Now a central component of how we do this telling and then acting a biblical narrative here at Commons is our balanced approach to the very genres, styles, and literature that we find in the scriptural texts. And I've gotta commence that I am thrilled to participate in our engagement with the story of Jacob this fall. And I can't say that I liked this story very much when I was younger because let's be honest, it's hard to spin a moral platitude to children with this guy because he's always ripping somebody off or telling a black as coal lie or working out some devious character flaw that he has. More often than not, he's actually an understated villain in the story.
Speaker 2:I mean, he wrestles with god. What's up with that? But the older I get and the more life I live and the more times I get to the end of myself and discover new but painful self awareness, the more seasons of life wash over me and bring gritty but real lasting peace, the more Jacob's story acts like a harbor in my life. Become it's become a a quiet respite for me, a place of recovery and rebuilding because it's a story in which even my less sanitized character markings can be welcomed into God's redemptive purpose. And it's this context and tone that Jeremy pointed us toward last week.
Speaker 2:I really appreciated his emphasis on the overarching, or if you prefer a more nerdy descriptor, the meta themes that Jacob's story offer us as contemporary readers. Things like Yahweh's gracious acquiescence to Rebecca, a Mesopotamian woman who's being grafted into God's story, or things like Yahweh's intentional subversion of cultural power through a preference for the younger and the weaker and the overlooked, and the divine's capacity to work both in and around the names and categories that our main characters find themselves in. And I don't just enjoy hearing these store or I didn't just enjoy those things in Jeremy's sermon last week because, as I said a second ago, I found some meaning in Jacob's narrative. No. I'm I'm thankful for these stories because they inform our collective experience right now.
Speaker 2:They're shaping our imagination of God's great affection for us. Yes. But, also, they're revealing his affection to our neighbors, our friends, and our families. Because there is no human being who can't find themselves a portion of their experience at least. There's in this story.
Speaker 2:And there's no way to read these stories without coming to see redemption's essence in the bumbling and yet grace marked journey of our protagonist. Now with that said, I wanna invite you just to pray with me before we get into Jacob and Esau round two. Gracious God, God of ancient story, of our own fractured and violent world, and also you're the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We come to the scriptures today with all kinds of perspectives. Some of us are questioning.
Speaker 2:Some of us are keen to hear the divine. Some of us come with thankful hearts. I ask that you would guide us as we seek to decipher your character and to be shaped into the image of Jesus as we read and ponder. I pray too that you would be present to our need today, to the parts of our stories that cause us pain even now, to our longings for wholeness. We pray this in the name of Christ and by the spirit.
Speaker 2:Amen. So let's jump right in. Last week, we read about what happened before Jacob and his twin brother Esau were born of their mother's anguish, of Esau's full body hair sweater, and Jacob's first minor penalty for holding or tripping or whatever it was that he was doing as he came out of the womb. Okay? I wanna point out that just before we get to our text today, there's this quick reference to Isaac being 60 when his boys were born.
Speaker 2:And without going into the specifics of how people kept time in the ancient world, I wanna say that this is important because just a few verses before that, we were told that he was 40 when he got married. And making note of this is important for us so that we read and mark time in the story, the passage of time especially. And in doing so, this makes us more present to the pain of Rebecca's delayed pregnancy, maybe up to two decades, and to what would have been exaltation at birthing two sons into the world. And acknowledging this time lapse and the joys and sorrows that are contained in them, this reminds us that this story we're reading marks a human trajectory. And that wherever our stories happen to intersect with it, whether it's in longing or in fearful anticipation, in the throes of difficulty in our own lives, or maybe in a season of new life and celebration, we read be as we are situated in the sweeping drama of god's good work.
Speaker 2:And then the story continues. The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. And Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebecca loved Jacob. Once, while Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country famished, and he said to Jacob, quick, give me some of that red stew. I'm famished.
Speaker 2:And that is why he is called Edom. And Jacob replied, first, sell me your birthright. Look, I'm about to die, Esau said. What good is my birthright to me? But Jacob said, swear to me first.
Speaker 2:So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew, and then he got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright. So full disclosure here, I am the oldest of two sons born to my parents. And my mother tells me today that she was convinced that Trent and I would hate each other as adults.
Speaker 2:Because while we may not have been twins and we didn't crash together in the womb, we certainly did not always get along. We fought physically a lot, mostly it involved me headbutting him and him biting me. We were so cruel to each other that at one point, I think we were about 10 and eight, I have a distinct memory of my of us fighting and my mom just leaving the house. No door slams, no ultimatums, though I'm sure she'd asked us to stop. Just pure unadulterated sorrow at how nasty we were being to each other.
Speaker 2:Now I don't want you to think any less of my mom, should you ever meet her, because she is super gentle and kind and loyal to this day. She did actually come back. And I don't but I don't care whether or not you have had your own children or you've been stuck around somebody else's for too long. I think that we can all agree that moments like this, sometimes we do actually consider dramatic exits like that. Right?
Speaker 2:And chances are if you have a sibling, you have a similar story or two about rivalry and animosity and attempted murder. And I say all that to be clear that I love the intensely human interactions that shape this story. Though here, we don't just read and then go and construct an abstract theology of relationships, but instead, we find ourselves invited into the happenings of two brothers, two men grappling for their sense of place in the world. And like so many of us, I suspect, those that they find themselves in closest proximity to are the ones that wound them and grieve them the most. And what the text does next or what the text does, as in the previous episode, is highlight the contrasting features of these two guys.
Speaker 2:Esau grows and becomes a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob, it says, doesn't say that he's smaller or weaker. It just says that he's content to stay among the tents. And there's a certain physiological nature to this contrast where Esau looms large in our imagination. He's strong. He's fierce.
Speaker 2:He's skillful. He's untamed, and he's tied to the wild places that are immediately beyond our purview as a reader. And by using this language, the ancient Hebrew authors drew from a masculine trope that was present in the surrounding societies, that of the warrior prince or the demigod who personifies the untamed quality of the natural world while also showing us that he has the ability to subdue it. And commentators almost unanimously point to the similarity of Esau's description and character to that of Enkidu, the mythical figure in a series of poems from ancient Mesopotamia that shaped much of the literature that would have emerged in later Greek, Egyptian, and even the Palestinian narratives. And in that story, Enkidu is a very hairy warrior who confronts the evils of the other characters and is characterized as being outdoorsy as we see from this relief representation where he is holding a wild creature as a symbol of his power.
Speaker 2:Now it isn't lost on me that Enkidu bears a striking resemblance to a well groomed Persian hipster. And this isn't because I envy those participating in the world of beard oils and dollar shave clubs because my wife and daughters won't come near me with more than two days of growth on my face. But I make this coy observation only to point out that Esau's description and his contrast with Jacob, they parallel our own culture's ongoing debate over forms of masculine identity. And I don't wanna bog down here, but there is actually a conversation happening right now about toxic masculinity. This is a term you'll hear getting thrown around referring to what scholars and advocates describe as the ways in which men and boys are exposed to and pressured by the social constructions of what it means to be a real man, A real man that's violent and success driven and unemotional and sexually aggressive and dominant and unfit to participate in anything that might be considered feminine, like looking after their appearance or being emotional or actually caring for women.
Speaker 2:Now I I want to affirm that I know and love men who grow beards and farmland and fix things and break things and play contact sports and love their partners and protect their children. In fact, I do some of those things too. Using whatever strength and tenacity and ingenuity and force of will that they have to make good contributions in this life. And in saying this, I contend that masculinity isn't toxic by definition. What is toxic is when a man is encouraged to see themselves defined by characteristics that involve the use of power to control and constrain and ultimately wound themselves and other people.
Speaker 2:And for the record, those things are just as pernicious when a woman does them. But for men, this social formation happens in a lot of ways. When a man's told to man up at the cost of his emotional health and vulnerability or when they are mocked or belittled for weakness or interest perceived as feminine or when a man comes to see sexual dominance regardless of his orientation as normative or preferred. And the reality is this, that we're actually becoming more and more aware of the costs that these forms of social construction have on men. Men are far more likely to die from suicide or by suicide than women.
Speaker 2:And while this statistic is certainly influenced by the way that men actually tend to commit suicide by means more violent than women, there is more to the story here. There was a a recent team of researchers at Indiana University at Bloomington who found in a sample of more than 19,000 male subjects, quote, conformity to male masculine forms was strongly correlated with negative social functioning. And they go on. And that conformity to specific masculine forms of self reliance, power over women, being a playboy, these were unfavorably, robustly, and consistently related to mental health related outcomes. Now in other words, there is growing evidence for how the pressure to maintain societal norms of masculinity negatively impact the mental health of men, and they also constrain their willingness to seek help when they aren't healthy.
Speaker 2:Now this discussion connects to our text today because in some way, the ancient writers appear to be commenting on masculine ideal and form. They describe Esau as being skillful. And as the unfolding story will show us in chapter 27, this skill was likely a reference to his ability as a hunter and as a warrior, his use with a sword, in fact. He's a man of the wild. He's an archetype for strength and power and restlessness, and he presents as a man who works to extend those qualities beyond the boundaries of familial tribal and community space.
Speaker 2:In no uncertain terms, he is a man's man. So what does it mean when the writers say that Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents? Now this term content that the NIV uses, it's the word tam in Hebrew. It's notoriously difficult to translate. In fact, there's almost no consensus among the scholars here, so I'm gonna go out on a limb.
Speaker 2:In other places in the Hebrew Bible, we find that it means things like perfect or blameless or upright or simple. But most commentators reject those kinds of ideal descriptors for Jacob because as we're gonna see in a second, he's not the most moral actor in the story. Some feel that it might mean something like he's just mild mannered, but I like the NIV's alternative content here. It's compelling for me because it reveals Jacob as settled in his role and place in the community. We'll see that this doesn't preclude him from having other masculine traits.
Speaker 2:He's skillful with animals. He works hard. He fathers children. He's actually a really shrewd entrepreneur. By saying that he's content, the writers appear to be contrasting him with his amped up and just beneath the surface violent brother who intimidates and bends the world around him to his control.
Speaker 2:This contrast is even more exaggerated when we consider that later Hebrew uses of this term actually translate to something more like harmless, meaning that Jacob presents as someone who knows his place, accepts it, acts in it, flourishes in it without resorting to violence and force. Now we can't move on without at least mentioning how the very next verse in the story adds some cryptic intrigue. Because it says that Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebecca loved Jacob. And while this seems like a bit of a one off verse, right, maybe just a little favoritism, there actually are hints of underlying dysfunction in this family and, ultimately, of how misconstrued notions of masculinity are actually plaguing both brothers. Because Esau's prowess, his reputation as a skilled hunter are mirrored in his father's desire for the meat that those skills produce.
Speaker 2:And that there there's at least a hint of fatherly love and accepted and acceptance only being offered because of what Esau can bring back home. And Jacob? Well, it just tells us that his mother loved him preferentially. And based on the oracle that Jeremy walked us through last week that she received while she was carrying both boys, we might just assume that she loved Jacob because he was supposed to be the preferred one. But next week, we're gonna see how the affection that Rebecca has for her son and her preference will actually catch Jacob up in manipulative strategies that portray forms of masculine coercion that are equally disturbing as those we see in Esau.
Speaker 2:Either way, as the readers were being set up to see that in each brother, these masculine projections derive from a context of broken relationships and unhealthy expectations that undermine their filial connection. And we begin to see that what makes toxic masculine forms especially harmful is the fact that they are based on strength and force that cannot last forever. And we're gonna come back to this in just a moment, so hold on to that idea. The story goes on, and it describes the fact that after one of his expeditions in the wild, Esau comes back to camp, and he happens upon Jacob cooking some stew. And the text doesn't say this, but in my mind, it kinda plays out like when you swear off carbs or sugar or both, and then you go to the mall and you realize that there's cinnamon buns around.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, an all rationale leaves you, an impulse buying commences. It's not a good scene. At at any rate, Esau asks his brother for some red stew. And in passing, the authors explain that the nation that Esau will father, Edom, derives its name from the similar Hebrew term for the word red, Adam.
Speaker 2:And this might just be an attempt by Hebrew authors to provide an origin story for later geopolitical tensions, which makes sense if we keep looking at the Hebrew Bible where in places like Numbers and first Samuel and second Kings and in the prophets Ezekiel and Obadiah, these books or these stories point to the nation of Edom's antagonistic relationship to the Hebrew people, opposing them and betraying them even to neighboring nations. But regardless of this, the tension in this story and ultimately between the two brothers comes to a head in Jacob's quick reply. You want some of this food? First, give me your birthright. And just what is it that he's asking for?
Speaker 2:Well, the term appears to be a reference in some regard to the rights of the firstborn son in an ancient culture, which Jeremy touched on last week when he discussed this concept primogeniture. And while this status holding this status for Esau would have meant that a firstborn son was seen as being God's favorite, being theologically preferred, that he would have been afforded twice of the family's earnings and holdings when his father passed, It's also possible that the oldest son would have received more everyday perks as well. And we see hints of this in the story in Genesis 43 where Jacob's son, Joseph, when giving a banquet for his brothers, subverts the firstborn rights by placing his youngest brother in the seat of honor and giving him five times as much food as anybody else. And it's maybe these kinds of extra benefits that what is what Jacob's after more than the full acquisition of Esau's economic resources and patriarchal blessing, and we'll talk more about that next week. But what we have to attend to now is what Gordom Wenham, he's an Old Testament scholar, he refers to what or he refers to Jacob's long premeditation and ruthless exploitation of his brother's moment of weakness.
Speaker 2:I mean, it does seem like something's a little bit off here in this disproportionate ask. Right? You're hungry? I have some food here. I'll trade you for your economic stability and resources.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, those two things don't line up. It's not unlike when I used to trade with my younger brother my nickels for his dimes because I had convinced him that bigger coins were worth more. And, actually, the two things are not alike. The only thing that's similar is that there's a devious form of manipulation happening here.
Speaker 2:And more than just hinting at Jacob's underlying motives, the authors are also alluding to Esau's weakness and his lack of wisdom here. Esau asks, quick. Give me some of that. I'm famished. And and his description of how he feels might actually be translated something more like, I'm really exhausted.
Speaker 2:He's been abroad, and he he's a man of tremendous power, and he has this will to succeed. And yet now he finds himself returning in the need of simple sustenance, water, and food. And where he appears unwitting and unwise is in his negotiation with Jacob. Because unless Jacob's got his stew simmering in a pop up food kiosk on the middle of a windswept plane, it's not entirely clear why Esau actually entertains this proposition. I mean, why not just keep going to the next exit where there's something for a better price?
Speaker 2:And initially, what Esau appears to be doing, he's doing what my kids do at Callaway when mini donuts are in play and they're not getting their way. He starts whining, and he says something to the effect, but I'm dying here. And what he betrays when he or he actually betrays something further when he says, what good is my birthright to me? And more than just stating that his birth status is of no use to him as the smell of Jacob's curried lentils sort of wafts over him, he seems to be shrugging off the significance and meaning attached to who he is. And he trades cheaply on the core of his identity in a moment of weakness and ill advised superficiality.
Speaker 2:And I wonder if that isn't something that we all can relate to, to some experience or choice or situation in which we traded valuable portions of our soul and strength and courage in a moment where maybe we were just tired. Maybe in a relationship that we worked hard to see work only to come and realize later that we actually weren't being cherished, or perhaps in a business venture or a career move where we sacrificed our self respect and integrity to move up and get ahead by maybe less than moral means or at least by means that weren't good for us. Or maybe it's something as benign as neglecting a project or a hobby or an activity that we love because we're tired and we're over scheduled, and we find Netflix a much less challenging alternative. It's in moments like that that we can identify with Esau because as the last line of our text says, he cuts a deal with Jacob, he scarfs down his stew, and then he goes on his way only to despise his birthright, regretting and loathing what was once a source of life for him. Now as a community that places Jesus at the center, we affirm an imagination of the divine as a reconciling and repairing force in the world.
Speaker 2:That for all of our disjointed and misguided attempts to exert our strength in this life, like Esau in the text, for all the times that we fall prey to someone else's manipulation at great cost, we affirm that hope can still be found, found in the image of a God that looks like Christ who came to the end of his strength and physical capacity too. Christ knows what it is to be misused and taken by others, And Christ invites us into the restorative space of community and relationships that we find in places like commons. And this kind and yet tender hope that we espouse in Jesus subverts the swirling powers of cynicism and determinism that are all around us. And it's to this subverting image of God that I wanna return to for a moment. Because this little eight verse story that we're talking about, about two brothers fighting over some food, it it says something powerful about the work of God in human hearts.
Speaker 2:First, we've already talked about how Esau projects us this version of the self made person, the power broker, the the forceful and violent waymaker in the world. And just like the toxic masculinity of our own time, we see how his power and strength have their limits and how ultimately they undermine his well-being and leave him destitute and full of self loathing. We also see how while cultures, both ancient and contemporary, we see how they tend to ascribe value to the strongest and the boldest and the brawniest. While we see that, we also see that the god of the scriptures brings life and renewal through decidedly different characters, through those settled and content in who they are, through those who take the radically courageous position of choosing to be harmless in their relationships, both with people and all things, in fact. But there's another subversion here as well.
Speaker 2:And we see it in the fact that God's preferred character in the story, Jacob, gets ahead while being at the very least exploitative. And Jacob's actions aren't condoned here. And in fact, it's significant that in contrast to the usual style used to describe such legal dealings in the Hebrew text, the authors refer only to Esau selling his birthright and omit any sense by which Jacob bought it by immoral means. So while ancient authors may have squirmed at the notion of the patriarch taking such devious forms and be and be they don't betray this in their choice of vocabulary. They do not hide the truth.
Speaker 2:And in this truth, we see God's divine purpose subverting a form of religious truth making that we are especially fond of, where only the moral and the upright and the honest and the noble are God's favorites, where our less than favorable moments somehow transport us beyond the reaches of God's mercy. And in this subversion, our imaginations are reshaped in powerful ways and gently reformed in their capacity to see even our missteps as opportunities for divine encounter. So as you go and live this week in a world marked by displays of power and strength, in a world which is we where it's so easy to find ourselves capitulating to manipulative forces and trading cheap on who we truly are, I pray that you would know and experience God's subverting presence. Presence that reminds you of his penchant for the overlooked and the harmless, assuring you that the force of grace can't be held back even by your mistakes and weakness. Pray with me.
Speaker 2:Gracious god, we are present to your goodness in this text today. How you have drawn near to us in our attention to culture and word and meaning. And we confess that, like in this story, our lives are marked by pain. Pain some of us cause when we live from misguided conceptions of what it means to be masculine in the world. Pain some of us receive from the manipulative powers present in our everyday experience, and these things we offer to you now.
Speaker 2:And we pray that you would help us to be mindful of your great love for the weak and wayward tendencies of our hearts. Give us grace to see and accept your gentle subversion of our projected selves, how you work your tender mercy into the fabric of our mistakes. We pray these things in the name of Christ. Amen.