June 26, 2005
The Rev. Marlene Wagner Pomeroy
"The Hunger of the Moment"
Genesis 25:19-34
 
Edwina has a t-shirt that she often wears on youth outings.  It is bright orange and in bold letters across the front it says, SAVE THE DRAMA.  It makes me laugh every time I see it.  When I think of drama I usually think of television.  There are some great over-the-top dramas on television:  "Alias," "Desperate Housewives," and now "Gray's Anatomy."  Ms. Magazine devoted their cover article this spring to "Desperate Housewives," debating inside the magazine as to whether this show was "good feminist fun, or sexist backlash?"  I'm pleased that women over forty are starring in a television show, and I love seeing women profiled as doctors and  secret agents; but television is just entertainment,  right? - showing us on-screen action that we would never see in real life.  Another source of good over-the-top storyline drama is literature.  "Willful mother plots with her favorite son to cheat his twin brother out of his inheritance by deceiving their blind father?" Greek tragedy?  Shakespearean yarn?  Nope, the Hebrew Bible!  In the story that we hear a brief bit from in today's reading, we get a glimpse of a family drama that is spun through 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.  It's an ancient version of desperate housewives - mother manipulates behind the scenes to have her favored son inherit the power and privilege that is due his older brother.  But this particular story is found in our Bible - the sacred text of the great monotheistic religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  This drama begs our attention because it promises something deeper!
 
Many writers have explored these Genesis texts and stories, for they are the
beginnings of our Judaic-Christian heritage and they cover the themes of God's call and sacred covenant.  But what makes them so intriguing is that the settings are ones that are familiar to all of us - families.  God just didn't call individuals or set down some laws for people to adhere to.  The Bible portrays our spiritual  forebears within their families, showing us their relationships with mothers and fathers, siblings and spouses.  It explores the differences in their personalities and work.  It would be nice if the characters were admirable role models, holding up under extreme situations, making morally superior decisions when faced with choices.  Instead, by contrast, these early patriarchs are imaginatively human - they murder, exact revenge, are deceitful and they steal.  There are people profiled here that we wince at.  Couldn't our religious tradition clean up  the mess just a little bit?  Look at our historical treatment of our founding fathers  in America. You have to scratch to find their infidelities and their flaws.  Well, I believe that the strength of the "warts and all" decision of the biblical writers was to remind us of our humanity.  We can relate to these people and we can rise to the occasion like these people do.  They are not heroic gods so removed
from us that we hold them on pedestals.  They are much like the heroes in our lives today who use and misuse power, fall from grace, and seek forgiveness for what they have done.
 
Whether we are talking about sport heroes who cheat on the game, or political heroes who make foolish personal choices or align themselves with evil to further their own gain, most people are complex characters that are full of contradictions and their own humanity.  All of which is to say, that we are human and God is God.  Genesis reminds us of this, and yet God still uses us to further God's purposes in this world.
 
In these stories of Genesis, we see the hand of God in the lives of people who are very human.  We are invited in to listen to their struggles, imagine their conflicts, and to ponder how on earth God is going to clean up their mess.  There aren't always easy answers or culminations to the storyline. Even the theological season finale with Jesus ends the divine drama with more questions than answers.  Yet we are invited into this family to imagine what their callings are; and they in turn, instruct us to discover what our callings are.  After reading Genesis we can never say, I'm not good enough to participate in God's unfolding drama.  You think you have problems and tensions in your life?  Come and spend some time with the first family of Christianity.

The story today picks up today with Abraham's son, Isaac.  Isaac married
Rebekah and after some difficulty getting pregnant, she finally conceives and
is carrying two babies in her womb.  Well, there the trouble begins.  Clearly this pregnancy is not going smoothly and Rebekah turns to her God and asks for help.  In return she is given a divine oracle that states that within her are two separate nations that shall be divided.  The elder shall serve the younger.  Scholars suggest that this was edited in after the facts to help us understand the way events unfolded.  For normally in the patrilineal culture the eldest son received the family land and the power, not the younger son. And sure enough, Jacob the younger twin is born clutching the heel of Esau his older brother.  Don't we hear stories like this from our own childhoods? Characteristics bred into us from the womb.  I saw picture of you sucking your thumb in utero!  You came into the world feet first and have been jumping into things every since then!!!

And then we hear of the worst thing parents can do to their children - choose favorites.  Don't we all know of children who chafe under their siblings favor?  In this case, mom favored Jacob and dad favored Esau.  Jacob would spend his days cultivating the land and near his mother.  Esau was a hunter and would be out catching game for his father to enjoy when the hunt was over.  You can feel the tension building.  And then we hear this funny little story of Esau coming home one day, famished.  So famished that he had to have some of the stew that Jacob was cooking.  "Let me have some of that stuff you are cooking, for I am famished!" he exclaims.  And then we get a glimpse of quiet Jacob, calculating for his future.  "Sure, you can have some stew.  But sell me your birthright first."  "I'm about to die," says Esau. "What good is a birthright if I am already dead?"  "No, swear to me first and then you can eat," says Jacob.  And then in a moment, the storyline has taken its first hard turn.  Esau tosses away his birthright, his power, his entitlement, for a bowl of soup.
 
Well, at first you think, wow, aren't we lucky. Can you imagine this one being the chosen son and having your lineage come down through him?  This is how Esau had been portrayed throughout history.  But it's a little deceiving. Jacob has tricked him and Jacob will trick him again.  If you fast forward to chapter 27 you see that Rebekah conjures up and involves Jacob in to get his father's blessing.  Isaac is ailing in health and blind and Jacob comes to him with some food for his father to eat; he is dressed falsely in Esau's clothes and wearing hairy animal skins because apparently Esau was hairier than Jacob.  Isaac must be a little suspicious because he asks his son four questions to clarify his identity:  Who are you?  How did you go and find game so quickly when I just asked you for it?  Come here so I can feel you and know you are Esau.  And, Are you really my son Esau?  Four chances for Jacob to fess up with the truth, but he never does.  So Isaac accepts the food from his son and blesses him with an irrevocable blessing.  Now the course of history has shifted and Jacob will inherit the power and bulk of the inheritance because his father has blessed him as the first son.

It is fascinating and distressing to read this narrative.  Esau, bless his heart, is duped.  He is ignorant of the plot to have his birthright stolen.  Isaac is exploited for his ailing health.  Rebekah is manipulative and Jacob is compliant.  And this it he first family of Israel!! But there are consequences to these actions and certain acts that also redeem this family.  Yes, the lineage of Abraham will go through Jacob and not Esau.  Fourteen generations later King David will come to the throne through this line and be the greatest king that Israel has ever known.  Knowing that Esau is murderously angry, Rebekah sends her son Jacob away to her brother's house to protect him and never sees her beloved son again.  Jacob is in self-imposed exile to save his life.  Jacob is the heir but he never receives the genuine blessing from his father.  The postscript to the story is that Esau
never hunts his brother down and in many chapters later, when Jacob attempt to return and buy off Esau's forgiveness with many flocks and offering, Esau comes out to greet him with 400 men and instead of fighting him, embraces him and forgives him on the spot.  Esau seems pretty heroic to me - forgiving the the who has stolen his future from him.   As Frederick Buechner says, "Jacob stole Esau blind...and went on to become the father of the twelve tribes of Israel?  Yet he was as hoodwinked by his own sons as both his father and Esau had been hoodwinked by him, and he died with the clamor of their squabbling shrill in his ears.   Esau, on the other hand, though he'd lost his shirt, settled down in the hill country, raised a large if comparatively undistinguished family, and died in peace.  Thus it seems hard to know which of the two brothers came out ahead in the end."
(Buechner's Peculiar Treasures, p. 32).

And what do we make of Rebekah?  It would have been so much easier if there had just been one baby in her womb!!  Is this a woman who took matters into her own hands because of her favoritism to one of her babies?  Or is this a woman who discerned that her eldest son did not have the strength and cunning to be the inheritor of the family blessing?  Is she using the power at her disposal to shape history according to God's plan or is she just meddling?

There are no easy answers in this narrative, just as there are no easy answers sometimes in the lives of those we live amidst.  Our parents are loving and  flawed.  Our children's teachers are a mixture of their own strengths and weaknesses.  Our child's coach may by brilliant and overbearing at the same time.  We love to portray Jesus as the loving teacher and Messiah who blesses the children and loved the stranger.  But I think Jesus was unrelenting with his disciples, pushing them beyond their comfort zone and boundaries.  I think Jesus was harsh on those who were self-serving.  I think Jesus drew a line in the sand and said you either live for God or you live for yourself.  I can't imagine being the founder of a great movement and not ruffling some feathers along the way.
 
Like any good story, the elaborate stories of the first family of our faith are full of grace and despair, hope and shame.  They're not neat and tidy.  They are messy and complex just like our lives.  And yet, God uses them just as God uses us to further God's purposes in this world.  Divine plans are lived out through human hands.  We can debate the characters in this drama and wish that they had acted differently.  But more importantly, we can weigh our own choices and let God's gracious spirit work through us so that others who come after us don't have to clean up our mess.
 
May we be inspired by the honesty of these stories and see the hand of God at work despite the human shortcomings.  And may we rise to the occasion of our own callings in and through our humanity.  Amen.