Jacob the Sneak

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Revised Common Lectionary Year A, Proper 10

Genesis 25:19-34

Grace Episcopal Church, Norwalk, CT

Loving God, you call us to be your stories in the world. We come before you seeking to be touched by your story. Open our lips to share our stories with one another and open our hearts to bring comfort, inspiration, joy and laughter to each other. Amen.

“Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.” Does this sound familiar? It does to me. When we were growing up Scott and I each claimed, only half jokingly, that our parents loved the other brother best. Then came the year when Scott brought Maureen up from college to meet the family, and I arrived with Brian in tow for the same reason. For many years after that the family joke was that our parents loved Maureen and Brian best.

Sibling rivalry is nothing new, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Bible is familiar with its stories of siblings living in the various parts of what one friend of mine calls Jesus’ big, fat, dysfunctional family tree. But how many families do you know that hang their dirty laundry out for the world to see? And yet, that is exactly what the writers and editors of the Hebrew Scriptures have done. Not in terms of Jesus, although we Christians have done enough of that in our own Scriptures and traditions, but definitely in terms of their own history. Who celebrates ancestors who are not, shall we say, the most upstanding examples of human beings, especially when measured against their own laws and traditions?

Yet those are the very stories that have been passed down and repeated through the generations. Cain the murderer; Joseph the spoiled brat; Rahab the prostitute; Sampson the lustful; David the Adulterer; Ruth the foreigner; and in today’s reading, Jacob the sneak.

A sneak? The great patriarch of Israel? The man God names Israel, the father of a nation? Well let’s look at the story.

During her particularly difficult pregnancy Rebekah goes to God to ask why. It is God, after all, who, in response to Isaac’s prayers for his barren wife, “granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived.” She asks him directly, "If it is to be this way, why do I live?" God responds by telling her that "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger."

Yet Jacob feels the need to maneuver Esau into selling the birthright due to the oldest son by tradition, even though God has already promised that Jacob is the favored child. Once again we have a younger son favored by God. What is it with the writers of Scripture and younger sons? Let me tell you, as an older son, this kind of stuff makes me nuts. On the other hand, the word games used in this story mean that it is as much about tribal rivalry as sibling rivalry. The Hebrew that describes Esau as red and hairy plays on the location and name of a neighboring tribe, the Edomites.

Ralph Milton writes:

In many tribal cultures a sense of what is right and wrong depends on who is doing what to whom. If you can [needle] someone from another tribe, that’s just fine. In fact, it’s your responsibility to do that if you can. The Israelites told with relish, how their Jacob [hoodwinked] those slow, stupid Edomites. We think it reprehensible of Jacob to cheat Esau, but the Israelites would have considered it downright traitorous not to rip off another tribe, provided you could get away with it. (http://ralphmiltonsrumors.blogspot.com/2008/07/preaching-materials-for-july-13-2008.html, as of July 8, 2011)

So here we are back to Jacob the sneak.

Why do I call him a sneak? Because, in spite of the fact that this story is probably as much about two tribes as two brothers, it’s the story of the brothers that has come down to us as Christians, not the tribal story. And there are a few pieces of the story that we aren’t even going to hear because of the way our lectionary is laid out. The part of Genesis we’ll hear next week is the story most of us know as Jacob’s Ladder. There are three, count them, three whole chapters between today’s reading and next week’s. We won’t read about famine causing Isaac to move his family a number of times and repeat many of the things that his father did. Nor will we read a few short lines about Esau’s wives. Nor the story of Esau and Jacob that we’re probably most familiar with.

And that’s where we learn just how much of a sneak Jacob can be.

Isaac, now going blind, calls Esau, his favorite son, and says, “See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quivers and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. Then prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.” Rebekah happens to overhear them, and she quickly goes to find Jacob, her favorite son. She tells him, “Go to the flock, and get me two choice kids, so that I may prepare from them savory food for your father, such as he likes; and you shall take it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.” Jacob points out that he isn’t hairy like Esau, and his father, though blind, will be able to feel the difference and curse him instead. As we might say today, Rebekah has an App for that. While the dish is cooking, she dresses Jacob in some of Esau’s clothes and puts the skins of the slaughtered kids on his hands and the back of his neck.

But doesn’t that make Rebekah the sneaky one? Okay, I’ll give you that one, but Jacob goes along without protest. Not to mention he’s already manipulated Esau into selling his birthright for a meal of bread and stew. Not a particularly fair deal, if you ask me. So he comes by it naturally. He takes after his mother.

With the preparations complete, smelling and feeling like his brother, Jacob goes to his father and fools Isaac into believing that he is Esau. And so Isaac eats and then gives his younger son the blessing that should have been the older son’s. Now Jacob has not only his brother’s inheritance, but his patriarchal blessing as well. What was it we heard God say before these men were born? “The elder shall serve the younger." So why did Jacob find it necessary to use deceit to obtain what he has already been promised?

Jacob the sneak, indeed.

No sooner does Jacob depart from his father’s tent then Esau returns from his hunting, prepares a savory dish, and takes it to Isaac, who realizes the trick. Can we blame Esau for saying to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” Unfortunately, he says that out loud, and again Rebekah overhears something not meant for her ears. And again she runs to her younger son, warns him of his brother’s intention, and sends him off to her brother in the land of her birth. (Genesis 27)

And so Jacob the sneak runs off in the night.

But before we get to the story of the ladder, there’s a slightly different version of the blessing story, which many scholars believe comes from a different source. Here Isaac calls Jacob to him and blesses him and then sends him to his mother’s family to find a wife there rather than marry one of the Canaanite women from the land where they are currently living. (Genesis 28:1-5)

So we have Jacob the sneak, and Jacob the dutiful son. Two traditions placed in tension for our reading, reflection, and interpretation.

This week I find myself in a place where I strongly identify with Esau. Some of it has to do with being an older son, but mostly I’ve been put in the role of the metaphorical big brother over and over. I’ve watched those younger brothers and sisters receive blessings and inheritances I will not. I have seen them go places I cannot. Next year, next month, next week, or even tomorrow, I might find myself interpreting the story of Esau and Jacob differently. Neither interpretation is wrong. They are reflections of where I am in my life and how that affects the way in which I tell my story of being part of God’s creation.

You will have your own reflections and interpretations. How do they affect the way you tell your story of being part of God’s creation? Can we share those stories with each other? I invite you to do so, ending as I began:

Loving God, you call us to be your stories in the world. We come before you seeking to be touched by your story. Open our lips to share our stories with one another and open our hearts to bring comfort, inspiration, joy and laughter to each other. Amen.