Genesis 25:19-34 (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23)
In my mind’s eye, this is starting to look like a scene from Looney Tunes.
We see the mighty hunter tramping through the meadows and wild lands, gun over his shoulder, tired from a long day in the field. Cartoon steam begins to waft across the scene – Elmer Fudd sniffs…sniffs…his nose pulls him right to a tent where a cook is ladling steaming stew into a dish. He reaches out to grab the dish, and exclaims “Give me some of that w(r)ed stuff!”
“Okay, but it’s gotta price. Your birthright. Everything you’ve got.”
“Who cawes about a biwthwight? I’m so hungwy I could die!”
“Izzat a promise, Doc?”
“Yes! Take it!”
And the chef’s hat comes off, the long ears pop free, Bugs swooshes to Fudd’s house, changes the locks, settles in in two cartoon seconds, and chomps a carrot. Fade to black on Elmer Fudd’s bewildered belated recognition that he’s lost it all and that wascally wabbit got him good.
I went down quite a rabbit hole (you might say) this week, led by some hints in a commentary that this brief, clunky, scene in which Esau sells Jacob his whole future for a simple meal might be a folksy trickster tale, meant to get a laugh as well as to outline the character and relationships of these two men who will be important players in God’s story.
Jacob comes through as scheming, ambitious and tricky, keen on self-promotion. He takes advantage of a situation, makes an outrageous demand, and gets away with it.
Esau comes off as an idiot, helplessly impulsive, the natural butt of jokes.
It’s exaggeration.
It’s caricature, more than character sketch.
It’s a Saturday morning cartoon.
And yet, here, in the Bible – in the stories told and retold for century after century after century – it’s part of the foundational story of God. Of the sorts and kinds of humans God gets close to, that God blesses.
And then the funny story maybe isn’t as comfortable.
Because in context – in a story set in the pre-history of the people of Israel – it’s actually a story about Jacob cheating Esau in a deal for God’s favor. A swindle to become the “firstborn son”, the one who is the focus of God’s promises, one who carries the blessing of God for the family.
Why would Esau throw away the promises and blessing of God… for a bowl of stew?
It might be easier to explain Jacob. Maybe his mother told him about the oracle she heard, suggesting that he’s the one who should claim the lion’s share of God’s favor, should lead the family’s relationship to God. He’s just cooperating with God’s plan, maybe?
Or maybe he wants more of God – more of God’s love, more blessing, a deeper sense of connection with God’s promises. We applaud a desire to get deeper into your relationship with God around here. So it might be easy to sympathize with Jacob, when he sees an opportunity and seizes it.
When he makes an extravagant demand for God’s favor, and gets it.
This is great news for those of us who want a big blessing – who want extravagant amounts of God’s attention and grace. Who might also find our outrageous desires for God’s blessing fulfilled.
Good news – except that the path to that blessing that Jacob is modeling looks morally questionable.
Do we have to take away God’s blessings from someone else in order to get more God, more blessing, for ourselves?
From outside the context of the story, from millennia later in the story of the people of God, I can stand here and confidently tell you that no, we don’t have to take anything away from anyone else to get more of the blessing and favor of God. (In fact, I suspect that God’s more inclined to favor those who aren’t trying to get in between someone else and God’s blessings).
And you and I can also read the whole context of the story and speculate that even if Jacob gets Esau’s birthright, it’s not actually changing the balance of God’s favor between them, since God’s already told their mother (and all of us) that Jacob will be the “stronger” brother.
It’s entirely possible, even probable, that when we reach for more of God’s favor ourselves, we can’t actually take that favor away from others.
We can grab the material effects of God’s blessing – like Esau’s birthright share of the family wealth, we can still take material benefits and status from others - and have to struggle with the moral implications of grabbing those away from our siblings.
But I’m feeling pretty confident that we can’t take someone else’s place in God’s favor. In God’s love; God’s work and dream and plan for the whole creation.
Which makes Esau look a lot less foolish to me.
I don’t know how much his mother told him of the oracle that he and his brother would switch places, that their public and expected roles would be reversed.
We don’t actually need to know.
We just know that he didn’t hold his birthright – his status and privilege – tightly. We see that it was apparently quite easy for him to let go of, to give away.
Maybe it’s because he is a thoughtless idiot, the natural cartoon victim caricatured in this story.
But maybe it’s because Esau is already aware that the minimum share of God’s favor is plenty. That he can easily give away all of the “more”, all the privilege, associated with the firstborn because the most basic allotment of blessing is enough. More than enough.
You don’t need more than infinity, after all.
Maybe Esau is like the sower of seed in Jesus’ parable today – ready to “foolishly” “waste” the precious resource of seed, of God’s favor, because a small portion is more than enough to yield abundantly.
The story bears this out, in a way. At the end of Esau’s story – spoiler alert – we see him welcoming his brother home after Jacob has spent years (probably decades) scheming and tricking and being tricked to make his fortune. Esau welcomes Jacob with open arms and turns down every attempt of Jacob’s to give him gifts, possessions, payback. He has all that he needs, he tells Jacob. He has plenty.
That’s good news for us, too. For any of us who seem to live life in God’s favor. Good news that we have nothing to fear from losing status or privilege or the outward and visible signs of that favor, whether that’s health and material wealth, respect, official or unofficial status in the church or our families, or any other recognition.
Good news for those of us who’ve never been recognized as people God might favor, too – that even the most basic allotment of grace, the least share of blessing, the smallest possible fraction of God’s love, is more than enough grace and blessing and love, more than we can use up, no matter how we spend it.
I went down a bunch of rabbit holes this week trying to make this story sensible.
But the Bible – the narrator who recorded this story for us, the oral tradition that shaped it, the faithful tradition that’s re-read this story for millennia – the Bible doesn’t really care about making logical sense, or the “rights” of things.
The story doesn’t make any moral judgements about Jacob or Esau – or their parents, or us.
The tradition of the Bible just wants us to notice that here are a pair of humans, engaged in a ridiculous transaction, maneuvering to do between themselves what God has already done.
Which might just mean that no matter how we read it, no matter who we sympathize with in this story, we, too, are already in the right place in God’s favor.
And that you and I can long and scheme and work to get more of God’s blessing – and get it.
And that we can hold all God’s love and blessing lightly – giving it away for a song, for a bowl of soup, to the birds, to make someone else happy – and not lose a single thing we need.
Maybe that Saturday morning Looney Tune would actually fade to black on a split screen – Bugs delightedly settling in all the comfort and privilege he’s just seized, and Fudd spooning up delicious stew with an expression of happy satisfaction on his face, as he satisfies his hunger and relaxes in the knowledge that – wascally wabbit or no – he has everything he needs.
And maybe God laughs along with us, as they both look a bit surprised to be enjoying what was, after all, theirs all along.
No comments:
Post a Comment