July 17, 2011

I have college professor friends who amuse themselves and us by keeping track of the most outrageous things students write on essay papers and exams. I never did such things, in large part, because writing such things down took time away from grading. So only a few such statements stand out in my fifteen years of teaching. And perhaps the most outrageous, absolutely, incorrect things I ever read was the opening sentence of an essay exam, “Jacob was a good Christian man.”

Now, I don’t remember how much I wrote in response to that short sentence but it was one of those moments when as a teacher, you realize that sometimes, there’s nothing you can do in the face of someone who is willfully ignorant. For it ought to have been obvious, we had spent several days on the stories of Jacob and Esau, that Jacob wasn’t good. That he wasn’t Christian should have gone without saying, since he lived one and a half millennia before Jesus Christ.

The student was expressing something that many readers of the bible take for granted, that its stories are meant for our edification, and that those of whom the stories are told are intended to be examples of the faith for us. In the case of Jacob, however, it’s only over the course of a long life that we begin to see him as a man of deep faith. The dramatic episode we heard today is one step in that long process.

Before we look at today’s text, let’s remind ourselves of what happened in last week’s reading, and in the interim. Last week, we heard of the birth of twin sons to Isaac and Rebecca—Jacob and Esau. They were struggling with each other in the womb and as they emerged from it. Jacob, the younger, was grasping his brother’s ankle. The text tells us that his name, Jacob, derives from that—it might mean “he supplants.” Esau grew up to be a he-man, a hunter, while Jacob stayed close to home; he was perhaps something of a momma’s boy. We heard last week how he was cooking a stew when his brother came in from the fields, and used it to as a bargaining chip to gain the birthright from his older brother.

There’s another explanatory story for the ultimate preference shown to Jacob by God. In that story, his mother convinces him to cook a meal for his aged and blind father, to masquerade as his older brother. The trick worked, and Jacob received from his father the favored blessing. When Esau returned and learned what had happened, he was enraged, and Rebecca helped Jacob escape, urging him to go to her father’s family for safety. It is on this journey that today’s story takes place.

To this point, the text has made no mention of a relationship between Jacob and Yahweh. But now, suddenly, we have this wonderful story of Jacob’s encounter with Yahweh. The contrast is striking. We have seen Jacob (and his mother) conniving, striving, and struggling to gain favor from Isaac. He has fought with, and swindled his brother. Although the text described him as a quiet man, he is anything but. He’s a con man, a trickster. But now, he comes to rest, and sleeping he has a vision. As he sleeps, he dreams of a place where heaven and earth meet, where the sacred and profane intermingle, where God is present. God reveals God’s self to Jacob extending to him the same promise Yahweh had given Abraham and Jacob—a promise to make him the father of a large nation, and to give him the land of Canaan. More than that, God also promises to be with Jacob throughout his travels and that God will bring him back to this place.

Then we see Jacob wake up and anoint the stone with oil, to set it apart as a sacred object, an altar to God. But that’s not the end of the story. One would think that after such an awesome experience, Jacob would be convinced of God’s power and of God’s blessing. That’s not quite so. In response to God’s promise, Jacob, challenges God, or makes his commitment to God conditional on God’s coming through with the promise: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God.”

Now, there’s a great deal going on in this story. Yes, it’s a story about covenant and about God choosing Israel, the people descended from Jacob. But it is also about the conflict between two brothers. There are parallels here that remind us of the story of Cain and Abel, in which God preferred the offering of the younger son, and in retribution, the older son killed him. This is a story about God’s arbitrary choice of someone who was undeserving of God’s favor, either through heredity or through his own good efforts or faith.

It is also a story about those powerful experiences that can change our lives in a moment, or sometimes, only after long reflection, or repeated encounters with the divine. Jacob would go on from this place to his uncle Laban, and where he would work, and marry, be tricked by his uncle, and in turn, trick him. Only much later in life will we encounter Jacob as a man of deep faith and commitment to Yahweh.

But still, this encounter is an important step on that long journey. And it reminds us that God encounters us even when, like Jacob we are less than “good Christian people. To be open to the presence of God may be enough. In the reading from Romans, Paul is describing one of the realities of Christian life. We have had the sort of experience Jacob had. The specifics are quite different of course, but we have experienced the transforming power of Jesus Christ in us. That experience leaves us eager for more—we want it all the time. But like Jacob, we are stuck in the reality of our bodies and our lives, lives in which the daily grind of work, family, and responsibilities keeps us stuck in habits and manners of life that are far from the joy we may have once experienced.

Paul’s words remind us, however, that the memory of that experience, the foretaste it offers of a life filled with God’s present should keep us yearning for more. Our lives may frustrate us, the decisions and choices we make may disappoint us. But Paul challenges us to remember that there is more, that we need not settle for life as it is now. We may hear Paul’s words and relate them to our personal experience of joy and frustration, but Paul is not primarily interested in speaking to us as individuals. We are not alone, Paul says. Indeed the hallmark of our experience of Jesus Christ is that it brings us into relationship with Christ and with God, who is our loving parent. We are made God’s children by adoption. It is even more than that, however. It binds us to all of creation, uniting us in a shared desire for God—all creation groans, Paul says.

Jacob continued on his journey after that nighttime encounter with God. He would have another encounter later in life, but for now, his experience would not transform him. He continued in those old patterns of trickery and deceit. We might imagine that the memory of this encounter would continue to haunt him, until the time when he was ready to accept the relationship with God that had been offered him. We too are haunted, by our taste of the joy of life in Christ, and by the hope that one day our joy will be full and eternal. Till then, with creation, we groan, and hope, but we can be certain that we are God’s children, filled with God’s spirit and open to those mysterious encounters with God along our journeys.