How God’s Blessing Grows Beyond Social Convention
Transcribed from the Sermon preached July 10, 2005
The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor
Scripture Readings: Mt. 13:1-9 Gen 25:19-34 Rom 8:1-11
Is Your Fate Set By Where You Are Born?
It took me forever to get started with this sermon. To tell you the truth, on first glance I don’t see much I like about this Old Testament story. But perhaps before we try to like it we can take a look at how it fits in the grand scene of David’s first edition to Hebrew scripture. David, it helps to remember, wants to solidify power as King in Palestine, so he does come with the perspective of the patriarchal ruling elite. On the other hand, he has risen up through the ranks in unconventional ways, and is still a little King, precariously balancing between the superpowers on the Nile and the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. He wants to be, and to be seen as a legitimate and good ruler who is not so different from the common peasant. His scribes weave Israelite History to tell this story.
To begin with this mornings passage, it may be helpful to look at the meaning of the names Jacob and Esau. Jacob stands for Israel, Esau for Edom, Israel’s neighbor who they are often in conflict with. Esau is described as “red” which Bob Coote in the Bible’s First History says is a pun on his other name, Edom, and “hairy” is a pun on the name of the mountainous region of Edom. Se’ir.
Coote notes a connection in this story with Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve. We remember that Cain fought with Abel and eventually this led to murder. Later, the brothers Abram and Lot were able to avoid such a fate as Abram deferred to Lot. Then both the stories of Jacob and Joseph carry the same theme. There is a struggle between brothers, but the result is not murder. They work it out.
Coote gets to the point: “The nations Israel and Edom in the south of Palestine, then constitute groups of the nation Israel itself. National harmony was an essential component of the success of the Davidic regime. Solomon’s failure either to communicate or maintain that harmony played a primary role in the collapse of the regime at his death.” David wants to show that peace is possible.
Second, the theme of the second son prevailing over the first is carried throughout. Abel prevailed over Cain, until Cain killed him. Jacob and Joseph are also prevailing younger sons. This represents a powerful overturning of social norms, for in this ancient patriarchal culture the first son received everything. There are two reasons this is important in David’s story. First David is not the first-born and yet he wants his rule to be viewed as legitimate. Second, Coote believes David is asserting royal dominion. If the norm of giving inheritance to the first-born was weakened, and its violations sanctioned by the court, “it would mean that the king himself could exercise a broader prerogative within the resulting looser social framework. The king could make assignments of inheritances.”
Now let’s look at the characteristics of the two guys in the story. Esau is a man’s man, a man of the world, a hunter and favored by his father Isaac. Jacob is described as innocent or naïve, a quiet man says the NRSV. He is the favorite of Rebecca. He liked to hang out with her around the tents. But, as it turns out, Jacob is not so naïve. He is a trickster. Jacob is able and resourceful. He provides where provisions seem absent. He was cunning, able to use is intellect and craft to accomplish his ends. It appears there is connection made here between the resourcefulness of humans and God’s blessing. Up to this point, God’s blessing has been in contrast to the self-made character of humanity. Coote believes this union of blessing with human ingenuity reflects the resourcefulness and self made character of Israel, and in particular of Kind David himself.
So are we any less turned off by this story after hearing of its context? We may be more turned off by recognizing that the scripture itself, indeed God is used in a crafty way by David’s scribes to legitimate his reign. Yet, as usual, there are a few helpful twisted lessons we may gleam from the story. First, God’s blessing doesn’t necessarily follow conventional social norms. “The first will be last and the last first,” Jesus says.
Second, it may be that we find a precursor here for the protestant work ethic. God helps those who help themselves. We shouldn’t dismiss the value of hard work or resourcefulness. The dangerous flip side of this idea is that those who are not doing well are either not blessed by God, or are not sufficiently resourceful, or both.
On the other hand, if God’s blessing is not tied to conventional cultural norms, and the norm says that you are to remain a lowly peasant, a second born servant of the family, a submissive wife that goes with the patriarchal flow, then maybe there is a blessing and purpose for you after all. Perhaps with a little blessing from God and a little resourcefulness you can bust out of the place society has prescribed for you. Maybe, if inheritance and blessing is not tied to birthright, then it doesn’t need to be tied to the King either. Maybe resourcefulness can pay off.
In highly prescribed societies, it doesn’t pay off to do more than what you need to do to maintain your status, since raising status is not an option. But if we find, even in these tightly prescribed societies, that God’s blessing doesn’t always follow the social prescriptions, then maybe there is more for us to do, more for us to be. The way things appear to be is not always the way they must be.
Fundamentalists have often made the argument that if they relent on one social norm, the whole house of cards will fall. This was part of the pro-slavery argument and comes up in the debate of almost every social convention. They argued, that if we offered a different interpretation of scripture on the social convention of slavery that women would surely think they were next. In Willard Swartley’s Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women, he quotes Bledsoe who argues in his treatise entitled “Liberty and Slavery” that if we change our interpretation of scripture and let this institution fall, “then there is an end to all social subordination, to all security for life and property, to all guarantee for public or domestic virtue. If our women are to be emancipated from subjection to the law which God has imposed upon them…if, in studied insult to the authority of God, we are to renounce in the marriage contract all claim to obedience, we shall soon have a country…from which all order and all virtue would speedily be banished… It would not be fair to object to the abolitionists (in this way)…were not these opinions the legitimate consequences of their own principles. Their women do but apply their own method of dealing with Scripture to another case.” Note that Bledsoe ties virtue with knowing one’s place in the social hierarchy. Bledsoe was correct in his prediction.
The fact is, the fundamentalists have a point, though I think they are wrong about scripture. It is God’s Scripture that opens the floodgates on social convention. It didn’t start with the abolitionist movement, it started with the second born receiving a blessing when convention says it should be the first. It is here that the structure of patriarchy begins to fall. The next thing you know all sort of strange people start thinking they have the blessing of God. First Jacob is grasping at the heels of Esau, then we find gentiles grasping at the heels of the Jews wanting to be included in the covenant, slaves grasping at the heels of their masters and sisters grasping at the heels of their brothers. And the fundamentalist would be rightly nervous that someone might make the connection between Jacob’s personality traits and that of a gay man. Could it be that God would jump social convention and bless a man with feminine characteristics over the macho hunting dude? Could it be that the more feminine son’s resourcefulness could be put to use toward the service and peace of the family and society? Scripture tells the story.
This passage of God’s choosing of Jacob is usually connected in Christian sermons to the idea of salvation by grace. Jacob is not blessed by anything that he has done or not done. In fact he receives God’s blessing before he is born, and therefore could not have earned it. God simply chooses Jacob to fulfill his purposes. But grace here does not so much pass over works as it does social status. The Hebrew law prescribes not only behavior from an individual point of view, but also how individuals were supposed to fit within society. Today’s scripture opens the window on the idea that our blessing and call from God is not determined by where we find ourselves on the hierarchical ladder. It is determined by our ability to receive the grace and love of God.
Clearly there are all sorts of ways this seed of grace and blessing may fail to take root and grow. It needs to find deep soil within our soul where it will not be pecked at by birds of criticism and despair, or withered by the hot reality of difficult life. It runs the risk of being choked by the weeds of greed and addiction, whether to sex, alcohol drugs, work, power or material things.
The bible is very concerned with the thorns of idolatry. I believe from my study that idolatry is addiction, or addiction is idolatry. Somehow we place our trust in something other than God, and that thing or action becomes our god. This is especially dangerous if we do not know God, or if we do not know of God’s love for us. If we have been dealt a hand that is less than stellar, if we have been told by our early relationships and society that we are second-class, outside the range of God’s blessing, we may just believe it. We may decide that since we are deemed to be sinful or damned, we might as well accept our fate and act like it. We search for a distraction, an idol, to hide from God, or to hide our perception of God, or our perception of ourselves.
There are many examples of this. One, I think is in the out of control activity of some gay men. We hear of young gay men losing themselves in addiction to drugs and sex, going out night after night and having unprotected sex with multiple partners. Even if we weren’t in the age of AIDs, this seems to be a slow method of suicide. It is too often followed by a fast method of suicide. This is what Paul calls being trapped in the law of sin and death. Why try when you are a lost cause? Why live? But if there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… If we are no longer identified as lost and damned in our very nature, If we receive blessing not by where we fit in societies scheme of things but through the grace and mercy of God, before we were even born, much less before we discover our sexuality, then maybe we can use our resourcefulness and creativity not to act out but to act up. “Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” This is a great liberation; there is nothing that says we must be stuck in a destructive pattern, bowing down to worthless idols. In fact God calls us out by the Spirit, to live life with love in all its fullness. God wants us, God is calling us to step forward into our blessing, into a future not controlled by birth order, level of masculinity or femininity, nationality or the color of our skin, but by the simple joy of contributing to the community of God.
What if we no longer saw ourselves primarily as victims or condemned, as recipients of judgment? But instead saw ourselves as deliverers of God’s Spirit of life and love. What if we acted as if we had the power to live out a blessing? A blessing not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole community? What if? We just might see a new social order where virtue flowed not from the fear of condemnation but from joyous and grateful hearts.