Lent 4, Yr A 

March 2, 2008

The Rev. G. Hendree Harrison, Jr.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Family Reunion

            It is still Lent, and we are still plodding along in our Lenten journey looking for the gospel in Genesis, and at the same time, looking for images of the face of God.

            At Lent’s first light three Sundays ago, we watched as Adam and Eve walked heads down out of the garden in their new God-given clothes.

            On the second Sunday, we sang the song of Father Abraham and discovered that God picks broken folks to become blessings to the world.

            Last week, we winced and held our breath as Abraham lowered the knife to take his son Isaac’s life.  Isaac lived though because an angel of the Lord stopped Abraham’s hand and pointed to the Ram caught in the thicket.

            This morning we are in the company      of Isaac’s two sons, Jacob and Esau.

            Now, anyone who has ever tangled with a sibling, a brother or a sister, anyone who has ever tangled with any family member for that matter, will find the story of Isaac’s twin boys familiar.

            The boys started fighting in their mother’s womb.  Rebekah was their mother, and the twins were such a terrible tumbling twosome in her pregnant belly, that she called out to God and asked God why the unborn boys were causing her such problems.

            God answered her saying, “The two boys in your belly will        become two nations and they will be divided, and one will dominate the other, and the birth order will be reversed- the first one will become the last one and the last one will become the first one.”

            And don’t you know Rebekah thought to herself, “Oh, why did I ask?”

            Brother relationships, sibling relations really can be volatile like explosives and gasoline and they can be tender like nighttime and moonlight.

            Rebekah’s boys were of the violent variety.       They began warring with one another even in the womb.

            Esau was the oldest by a hair.  He came out first and his younger brother, Jacob, came right on his heels as the story goes, actually, Jacob had a hold of Esau’s heel as they emerged in the birth moment into the world.  So, I imagine they came out together – wrestling.

            Esau was a broad shouldered outdoorsman.  Jacob was bookish and quiet staying indoors most of the time.  Jacob found Esau easy to trick and dupe, and Esau found Jacob easy to pin when they wrestled.

            To make matters just completely complicated, their parents played favorites with the boys.  Their father, Isaac, loved Esau best.  Mother Rebekah, loved Jacob.

            From the start God chose one of the boys too.  God chose Jacob to carry on the blessing promised to his grandfather, Abraham.  That’s the sort of honor that should have gone to the firstborn (Esau), but our inscrutable God chose Jacob, and so throughout the narrative of the two brothers, Jacob is the chosen one.     

            God chose Jacob in the womb, and in a strange parallel, Isaac laid his blessing on Jacob quite by accident many years later when Jacob and Esau where grown.

            In their day it was customary for elderly fathers, before they died, to bless the oldest son and bestow upon this male heir all the rights and blessings of the “man of the house,” if you will.

            Well, when it came time to bestow the blessing Isaac was old and he was blind as the black of night.  So Jacob found his father as easy to trick, easier even, than his older brother.  And with his mother’s help, he tricked Isaac into giving him the blessing that was meant for the first born boy, Esau.

            It is a strange story colored in shades of conspiracy and deceit, but nonetheless, it’s the story we have of how the first of these brothers came to be last, and the last brother, to be first.

            And so, we are delivered to this morning’s scene, which begins with that venomous line about Esau:  “Now, Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him and Esau said to himself, “I will kill my brother Jacob.”

            Apparently, Esau was one of these guys who thinks out loud because someone heard him muttering murderous things about his brother and they told Rebekah who told her favored son, who promptly high tailed it out of town.  Jacob ran away, and he went to hide out at his uncle’s house.

            So, the stolen blessing quickly became a burden as it caused Jacob, who bore it, to have to run for his life.  He stayed gone well out of the reach of his brother, exiled for many years.

            But in the story of God and God’s chosen children, no one stays in exile forever, and so after a time, God called Jacob home.

            Fear of his brother was deeply seated in Jacob’s heart and so, even after all those years, he was still scared of Esau.  He was terrified actually, that Esau still wanted to kill him.  Nonetheless, God told Jacob to go home, so Jacob headed out in Esau’s direction. 

            The reunion scene between the two brothers is among the most remarkable exchanges in the Genesis’ story. 

            Jacob and Esau are both traveling with a great crowd of family and servants.  As they approach one another, Jacob looks up and counts some four hundred people backing up his brother Esau, and they are all coming on fast.  And Jacob thinks to himself- surely being stomped by four hundred of his brother’s men will be a gruesome death but at least it will be a swift death.

            Up until now Jacob has mostly tricked and talked his way out of tough spots and then run away.  But as Esau’s army approaches, Jacob runs out in front of his family, and in a move quite unlike anything he has ever shown us before, he bows down low to the ground in front of Esau, which is a motion that could only signal submission and respect.

            You recall what God said to the boys mother, Rebekah, when she asked why they were having a boxing match in her pregnant belly?       

            God said: “They are fighting and the older one, Esau, will submit to Jacob, the younger one.”

            But here we see the younger, with his face in the mud and dirt, in deference and marked humility before his older brother. 

            Is this one of the early signs that things with this God of ours are not what they seem or what we might expect?  We’re expecting murderous Esau to come at Jacob like a lion, right, and take off his head with one quick blow? 

            Doesn’t happen.

            Instead, Esau comes off like a bumbling clown, bent by love and uncommon affection for his kid brother.  Esau runs out in front of his crew too, and he grabs Jacob up off the ground, and he spins him around, and he kisses his little brother smooth out on the mouth.  Esau got all tripped up, and as the story goes- he fell on Jacob’s neck. 

The war was cancelled, and the two stubborn men cried like newborn babies.

            So, what does this scene do to enhance the image of God we have been drawing this Lent? 

            In a way, I suppose, it’s pretty simple.  God called these brothers back together.  God found them fighting and called them to tenderness.  God called them out of separation into connection.  And when they found each other - they found God.

            At the end of our scene this morning Jacob says to Esau, “Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God.”           

            Good friends, the Gospel in Genesis for today is – Brothers, put down your arms!  Love your enemies!  Reconcile in the name of the Lord!

            If we truly seek to see the face of God, then the gospel in Genesis for this morning would have us know that a clear image of God will be found in the face of our enemies, when we bend our bodies to bow down before our enemies, and when we grasp the brothers with whom we would wage war, in peaceful embrace.