April 30, 2006 Sermon

A Mess of Pottage
Genesis 27:1-40

Last week we learned how Jacob forced his starving brother Esau to trade his double share of the inheritance for a bowl of stew. This week we read how Jacob tricked their father, Isaac, into giving him the blessing due to Esau. Why do we tend to think of Jacob as one of the good guys?

The lineup rolls off the tongue: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The patriarchs. The ancient fathers of the Jews. Jacob, as we will note in the coming weeks, will sire twelve sons who will father the twelve tribes of Israel . Though Jacob is a cheat and a thief, God uses him to produce the Chosen People. Through him, God will keep his promise to Abraham to create a people. Jacob becomes part of the covenant coming true.

God used even Jacob. And praise God: because if God used only holy people to accomplish His plan, what hope would we have? Jacob helps us learn one of the lessons Jesus taught: God uses even us.

Admit it: we love a trickster. Many tricksters have won our affection: the Athenians who used the Trojan Horse to trick their way into their enemies’ city, Tom Sawyer tricking his friends into whitewashing the fence. The ancient biblical peoples also admired a trickster. They felt trickery was intelligent, admirable. When somebody got tricked it was their own fault.

God’s plan required people to inhabit the Promised Land. God used Jacob to advance the plan. The plan led from the twelve tribes of Israel to slavery in Egypt . The plan led to Moses and the Exodus from Egypt . The plan led to the gift of the Law of God on Mt. Sinai . The plan led to taking over the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua. The plan led to King David, to the prophets, and ultimately to Jesus. But first Jacob had to trick Esau out of their father’s birthright and blessing.

It seems arbitrary, even tragic that Esau gets cursed instead of blessed. Why, when Isaac learns of his younger son’s trickery, can he not take back the blessing and give it to his older son? The answer has to do with the Old Testament understanding of a spoken blessing. We think of a blessing as an afterthought to say before a meal or when somebody sneezes. The ancient Hebrews believed a spoken blessing had power.

When Isaac blessed Jacob he believed that the act of speaking the words gave them reality and force. His eyesight had gone. He was an aged man near death. Yet he still had the power to give his blessing and he meant to use that power. Years before his younger son had gypped Esau out of his inheritance. We might think that once he learned of Jacob’s deceit Isaac could have decreed that the inheritance would still go 2/3 to Esau and 1/3 to Jacob. But that simply was not how it worked. Esau gave his shares away. They could not come back unless Jacob, their new owner, gave them back. Jacob had no intention of doing that.

Isaac wants to use the blessing to restore Esau’s prospects. He takes great care to make sure he gives it to the right son. When Jacob walks into the tent and asks for his brother’s blessing Isaac is suspicious. How can the hunter have returned so soon? Does he feel hairy? Does he smell like wild game and the great outdoors? But Jacob (and let’s be honest, Rebekah, his mother and Isaac’s wife) has anticipated all these tests. He passes them all by trickery.

Isaac gives him the powerful, good blessing. He pours everything into it. When Esau returns and asks for his blessing, Isaac has nothing left to give him. Nothing good, that is. Once again Jacob has taken his brother. He has taken his property and his hope. Isaac has only a curse—a curse he probably meant to throw at his younger son—to give Esau.

Have you ever felt cursed? I do not mean cursed in some voodoo, hocus-pocus way. Have you lost hope that you will ever prevail over all the tricksters, the cheaters, the thieves? Well, take heart. God’s plan remains in force. You have a place in God’s plan. The very fact that you have come to worship Jesus Christ and now listen to these words means you belong here. You have a place.

Two Presbyterian churches stand about five miles apart. Founded over one hundred years ago, when their little towns throve on coal mining, the churches have dwindled with their communities. The coal played out fifty years ago. Neither church can afford a full-time pastor. About twenty-five years ago they contracted to hire a pastor together. One church would have him 60% of his time; the other, 40%. He could live in a manse sort of in between the two villages.

It was a doomed arrangement. As usually happens when two churches share a minister, each demanded more than its agreed-upon share of his or her time. The young pastor they called fresh from seminary (we’ll call him Rick), worked seventy and eighty hours a week without satisfying either congregation. Each suspected the other was getting “more” of him than it deserved.

Under Rick’s leadership one of those tiny congregations grew, while the other continued its steady decline. The smaller of the two began seeing families with children and teenagers in worship services, families that had lived among them for generations but had stopped going to any church years before. They had to buy folding chairs to set up behind the five rows of pews in their tiny sanctuary so they could seat everybody who came. Their youth group became a legend in the community. They sent a work crew of thirty to clean up the Presbytery camp.

Meanwhile, the church in the larger town kept dying. Though it claimed more of Rick’s time, its leaders actively opposed his ideas—even the ideas that were working five miles down the road. Especially the ideas that were working five miles down the road. The killer came when one of the three families on its rolls that actually had kids started driving to attend the other church.

A member of the larger but dying church told a committee on which I served that Rick was preaching heresies in the other church. The gist of it was that he was telling people what they wanted to hear, not God’s Word. Though we found the accusation suspicious we had to investigate. We found no problems. Rick had grown up a Presbyterian and graduated from a Presbyterian seminary. He was preaching Jesus. But the jealous members of the dying church found ways to keep the pressure on him. They told lies and played dirty tricks against him. After about a year of such treatment, he left. Both churches. He accepted the call to preach in a medium-sized church across the state.

Rick tried to find a way to stay in the growing church only, but it could not afford him. After his departure it quickly went back to sleep. The dying church started dying even more quickly. And the church Rick went to serve began growing like a weed. Fourteen years later he still serves that church. It has experienced ups and downs. Rick has made mistakes. The members have made mistakes. But God apparently meant all along for him to stay there for a long, long time. That’s the best possible outcome, for churches generally thrive best when their pastors are effective and stay with them for a minimum of twenty years.

God appears to use tricks, even dirty tricks, to advance the plan. God certainly uses fallen, sinful people to advance the plan. Tricks cause real wounds with real pain. Yet even fallen, sinful people can minister effectively in the name of Jesus. And praise God for that! We all sin. Yet in Christ God has forgiven our every dirty trick. Do not let the tricks others play on you to isolate you from the church. And do not make the mistake of believing God could never use the likes of you. He can. He does. Praise God!