SIBLING RIVALRY
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Text: Genesis 32:22-31
As someone who has studied, practiced and taught marriage and family therapy, the complex and often dysfunctional dynamics of the family of Isaac and Rebekah provide enough for material for a hefty volume or a year long course. If we were to go back and look carefully at what is recorded in the 25th through the 36th chapters of Genesis, we might be amazed to read about the kind of people who gave birth to a nation and a great religious tradition. Of course, we might also recognize ourselves and our own family experience along the way.
In the latest issue of Christian Century, that wise Presbyterian sage, John Buchanan, likens this tale of Jacob and his brother to a great Shakespearean drama, complete with “betrayal, revenge, forgiveness and (possible) reconciliation…romance, deception, theft and…eros…all… in one family.” He writes, “Every time I read a portion of the Jacob-Esau saga, I end up reading the whole drama. Esau is so good,” he argues, “straightforward and innocent; Isaac is so vulnerable, trusting and human; Jacob so opportunistic, devious and dreadful; Rebekah so committed to the success of her favorite son, Jacob, and so efficient in her choreography of one of history’s greatest scams” (John M. Buchanan, “The Reach of Grace” in The Christian Century, August 12, 2008, p. 3.)
Because this is a difficult, challenging text, I found myself sharing Buchanan’s desire to read the entire Jacob narrative in order to understand how this one piece fits into the whole. Now trust me, I am not going to rehash the entire 11 chapter saga from Genesis, but I do think we need to know something about the characters and the context to understand what is happening in this pivotal event. From twins doing battle in Rebekah’s womb to purchasing his older brother’s birth right for a bowl of lentil soup to conniving with his mother to steal the blessing due his brother from his blind and aged father, Jacob is a scoundrel, determined to get ahead. Others more kindly have compared him to the mythical archetype of the trickster or have graciously considered that Jacob reflects a very human figure in comparison with the sainted figures who are his ancestors. Walter Brueggemann suggests that “Much more than the Abraham story, this narrative is realistic about power and position in the family, about the practices of promise and deception, about wages and departures and reconciliation. The narrative,” he says, “is attentive to all those interactions which betray or enhance humanness and the well-being of family” (Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Genesis, p. 206.)
If we delve more deeply into the narrative, we find that, after scamming his brother Esau out of his birth right and his father’s blessing, Jacob is forced to flee the murderous wrath of his revenge-seeking brother. Again through his mother’s manipulations, he is sent off to find a wife in the family of her brother, Laban, who conveniently lives far, far away. Poor Jacob, left to his own considerable devices, is conned by his uncle into marrying his older daughter, Leah, when Jacob had fallen for and contracted to marry the younger daughter, Rachel. Deception and trickery seem to be family traits on his mother’s side of Jacob’s family tree. As Jacob is taken in again and again by his wily uncle, he also learns well the lessons that the master teaches, until he can finally turn the tables. Along with the two daughters to whom he is now married, he appropriates much of Laban’s wealth, and then escapes Laban’s land, headed home to face his own family and his estranged brother.
Today’s text finds Jacob on the run. Well, he’s really between a rock and a hard place. Laban and sons are behind him, giving chase, while he has received word that his brother, Esau, and 400 of his closest associates are coming to meet him from the other direction. Pretty desperate, Jacob works overtime to think of ways to preserve his own family and possessions (for he is now a wealthy man) at the same time he seeks to placate his adversaries. He manages to negotiate a practical, if not exactly heart-felt, covenant of peace with his uncle, he divides his family into two groups, thinking that if one is lost he may at least preserve the other, and he sends ahead generous gifts from his own flocks to soften his brother’s anger.
Tying up all the loose ends of these elaborate strategies, he sends his wives and sons, servants and possessions on across the Jabbok River. Hoping for salvation and fearing destruction, he falls, exhausted, into fitful sleep. It is not at all difficult to argue that Jacob has made his own proverbial bed and now must lie in it. The chickens are finally coming home to roost, as the old saying goes. This is a fine mess he’s gotten himself into this time. When will he ever learn?
Oh my, oh my! Have you ever found yourself in such a position? Have you ever fallen into fitful sleep, wondering how you will find your way out of some dilemma into which you have wandered or which you have created? Do you ever lie there in the middle of the night, wide awake, your mind working overtime to find the solution to a family fix? Have you ever encountered the night demons that challenge you with those questions about life and meaning that the daylight allows you to avoid or deny? Do you know what it’s like, in the darkest midnight, to wonder if this is really all there is, to feel at the end of your rope, to question your own sanity?
It is in this very vulnerable state that Jacob, the scoundrel, the trickster, the scammer and conniver, comes face to face with himself. I know the text says he claims to come face to face with God and we’ll get to that in a minute, but I think first and foremost, Jacob has to confront his own bad self. What has he done with his life? What kind of brother, son, son-in-law, husband, father, master, friend has he been? How has he treated those who loved and cared for him? How has he cared for those for whom he had responsibility? Has he put survival and then prosperity ahead of the state of his own soul? He is a fierce and formidable competitor. He rarely loses, and certainly not in the end, but at what cost to his relationships and the state of the world in which he lives?
In his theory of human development, Carl Jung argues that life is divided into two halves. The first half is a journey outward. It is often a striving with the world to get ahead. In the first half of life, we live our way into the world, we develop those very useful masks called personas; we concentrate on career and social connection and life-style. The persona is a useful character we build for ourselves that allows a greater or lesser degree of success in life, at least in the world’s eyes. But, in Jung’s thought, a persona is a mask not a true self. The task of the second half of life is to find and develop that true sense of self. It is a journey inward. It is a taking stock, often precipitated by that event known as a mid-life crisis in which we ask ourselves if our activities and our successes are really all there is to life; sometimes it is precipitated by something more traumatic like the sudden death of a loved one or the collapse of a marriage or children leaving the nest. In Jung’s mystical thinking this second half of life journey is not only a journey of personal self discovery, it is also a journey toward the heart of the great archetypal Self with a capital “S,” which is very close to his understanding of God.
It seems to me not so much of a stretch to say this is exactly the kind of shift that goes on in the life of Jacob at the moment when he falls asleep, alone and under assault, on the banks of the river. God has come to him before with visions of promise, showing him the very stairway to heaven. Jacob has rather perfunctorily received these visions as his right; he’s entitled. But this vision is different. This time God jumps him, challenges him to the core of his being, shakes and rattles and flips him so he can see in new ways the God who calls him and whom he must serve. It is true that Jacob himself is a fierce and formidable foe, that he prevails in his persistence that God bless him, but in the end God shifts the confrontation to another level at which Jacob cannot compete. God must show Jacob power beyond Jacob’s grasp or control in order for Jacob to see the light. In the end, the wounding is a gift that marks Jacob forever as one who has truly come face to face with God, learned his lesson and lived to tell the story.
For God’s own reasons, which are never revealed to the ancients or to us, God has selected Jacob, the second son, over his brother Esau, to be the next patriarch of the God’s chosen people. In this ancient time, the first born son was highly privileged; second sons were left to fend for themselves. In some ways you can’t blame Jacob for trying to beat odds that were so stacked against him. “Primogeniture,” says Brueggemann “…is the linchpin of an entire social and legal system which defines rights and privileges and provides a way around internecine disputes. But that same practice which protects the order of society is also a way of destining some to advantage and others to disadvantage. That world of privilege and denial is here disrupted by the God of blessing who will sojourn in the land of the ‘low and despised’” (Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Genesis, p. 209.)
Here, perhaps, is a most telling word for us. As people of privilege, how do we relate to a God who is always threatening to turn things upside down in favor of the “low and despised,” who is casting down the proud and mighty and lifting up the poor and lowly, who is constantly challenging our self-congratulatory, complacent attitudes about how we have it made or have it so good compared to the rest of the world? With our relative wealth and in our self-satisfaction, how may we be free to receive God’s grace? Is it only in the wrestling and the wounding that we may finally find our way fully into God’s gracious presence?
In the end, we need to make a little room for Esau. What happens when Jacob, now limping along on his journey of self-discovery, and his brother finally meet face to face? “… Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and four hundred men with him.” Pretty scary stuff, but we find Jacob, lamely moving forward to meet his brother, his family and possessions following behind. Here is Jacob, still full of fear, facing his just reward, bowing before his brother, waiting for the axe to fall. And the text says, “Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and – folks - they wept” (Genesis 33:4.)
May we be so gracious with our sisters and brothers of every shape and persuasion, even the ones we have named enemy and endeavored to hate, and may it never be more so than when we gather around this table of welcome, seeking self understanding, wrestling with the presence of God and reconciling all of our family feuds and sibling rivalry in the name of the Christ who lifts our fears and makes us all one. Amen.