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| Jakob Steinhardt, Jacob and Esau |
We all know about oldest children. Esau's not quite your stereotypically conscientious, over-responsible, people-pleasing firstborn, but anybody who has one of those types for a brother or sister knows that the notion of a birthright is still kicking around in our day and age. Ever have a teacher, or a coach, or a minister call you by your older sibling's name, or ever have to listen to adults tell stories about what a great student he was, or what a great runner she was, or what a joy it was to have so-and-so in confirmation class? Did you ever sense, like Jacob and Esau both did, that somebody was playing favorites in your family? That mom or dad liked one of you best, for whatever reason, or that the adults who were supposed to love you equally sided with the kid who was more like them, or more like who they wanted to be? That one of you was the chosen one?
That's one reason why this story's hard to stomach. From the very beginning we see not only two brothers at each others' necks, but a whole family dividing up. Isaac and Rebekah each have a favorite child. On the one hand, Esau's a great hunter, so Isaac favors him because he really likes eating game. Sounds practical enough, but it's hard to avoid the image of Esau as a very handsome, very athletic, very masculine guy who fulfills a certain active, physical ideal of what a man should be, and Isaac is just really proud to be the father of such a commanding person. Whereas Jacob is quieter. We're told that Jacob prefers to live in tents, which means he farms, he cooks, he hangs close to home. He's probably with his mother more, but even so we don't know why Rebekah favors him. Maybe it's because he's the youngest, and she has a mother's sensitivity to her more vulnerable child - which, by not having the birthright, he is by default. Or maybe it's that oracle, that thing God spoke to her before the boys were ever born: "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." In which case, she isn't siding with the more vulnerable child at all - she's siding with God, who seems to be saying that Jacob is the one that God chooses and that God will use to do special things.
So there's the real problem with this story. God appears to be playing favorites. God appears to be acting inequitably. And this favoritism, this siding on the side of Jacob then becomes part of a whole biblical tradition: Jacob's children will become Israel ... and Esau's children will become the kingdom of Edom, which for many years is Israel's bitter enemy. There's so much strife between these two nations that prophets will write about it, and years later our Apostle Paul will pick up their writings and ponder a phrase that many of us have heard before and that sends chills up the spine of anyone who cares about fairness: Paul repeats the words of God in the prophet Malachi, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."
I don't like that phrase. Nobody likes that phrase, because it doesn't make any sense to us. It doesn't sound like our God. Like I said, we care about fairness. You don't give a cookie to one kid and a carrot to another; you don't let the guy on steroids into the hall of fame. And we care about equality: no person is worth more than another. So where does God get off loving Jacob best? Where do the prophets and Paul get off inscribing this into our religion? Where are we left if our God isn't the all-loving, all-accepting, all-favoring parent that we want God to be?
How about another question: why do we care? Why does it matter who God loves best? Recently, a group of us at the church had a pretty passionate discussion about a joking nickname some Lutherans, Episcopalians, and other Protestants use to describe themselves: "the frozen chosen." And none of that passion was around the frozen part, the part that suggests that we're reserved or rigid or chilly - it was around the word "chosen" and the idea that we might view ourselves as God's elect, or even as an elite group within our own society - an in-crowd, set apart from the rest of the world. The people who hated the nickname hated it because it sounded exclusivist and superior - so their hatred was in the right place. But the energy there, the empathy, the reason we cared so much about the word "chosen" is because we all know what it's like not to be chosen. No matter how great things have turned out for you, no matter how well you are loved or how secure your situation seems, you have been picked last for the kickball team. You have been turned down for a date. You have lost a job, or a 401K, or a marriage, or somebody you loved. You may have lost hope. At those times, you feel left out. Left out of the blessing, left out of the promise. Or chosen, but for the wrong things. Singled out to carry burdens that are too heavy. And the idea that God might have something to do with all this is unbearable.
Because what we want from God is love, a love we say is bigger than anything we can imagine, that nothing or nobody else could give us, and we don't want to be left out of that, let alone anyone else. We believe our God is the one who takes away the sin of the world - not a chosen few. We believe our God is the one who draws all things unto God - not one or two or twenty things. We believe our God is the one who renews the entire creation - not a tree here and a mountain there, and this or that particular, chosen human being.
And we're right. In fact, that's what the prophet Malachi and Paul are trying to get their brains around. Because while we’re worried about God being too choosy, too small, they’re confused by the fact that God seems to be expansive, and so freely choosing. They're looking for cause and effect: be good, and God will favor you; follow the law, and God will reward you; be the oldest son, and you will inherit the earth. And to them, that looks like love and hate. But God’s love they can't quite figure out. Israel survives the invasions and wars and exile that her neighbors - like Edom - don't, but Israel doesn’t feel like she's being rewarded for anything. And yet God loves her, a group of people who are defeated and dispersed and just as disobedient as any of us. Paul is working in this brand new church, among these brand new people called Christians and sees that pagans - non-law-abiding, non-Jewish people of all stripes ... us, essentially - are being brought into the communion of God's chosen people and are claiming God as their own. And he knows it's right! So he looks at the story of these two brothers, Jacob and Esau, and thinks, "Well, if God can choose a youngest son, a quiet man, a person whose father prefers his older brother - a person who stands to be left out - and make of him a great nation, then I guess God can choose anybody! I guess God is big enough and free enough to love the entire world!"
Which is good news for us. It's good news for us when we are weak and when we are hurt, because God chooses us; it is good news for us when we are the outsider, because God chooses us. It's good for the younger sibling in each of us who is longing to be seen and for the older sibling in each of us who is always striving to measure up.
But it's challenging news. For one thing, if God loves all of us and chooses every one of us to be blessed and to share in God's promises, then we have a lot of siblings we didn't count on. We have a whole world full of brothers and sisters who are also chosen, in which case fairness and equality melt away and what we are called to is radical, invested love, care, and concern for one another. Which is hard.
And finally, it’s challenging because if God loves all of us and chooses every one of us to be blessed and share in God’s promises, then we have to pay attention. It means that God is reaching out for us all the time and we have to be humble enough and willing enough to hear that voice. Like the good soil in Jesus’ parable we’ll want to be deep enough and still enough to grow.
Perhaps the best news of all, then, the thing we see in Jacob and Malachi and Paul is no matter who and where you are, God will find a way to let you know that you are chosen. God will bless you and will make you a blessing, and will use you to keep a promise to the entire world.
(This sermon was preached by Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, July 3, 2011)
