A
Sermon shared with First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN, August 6, 2017
Note:
This post relies heavily on the literary device of irony. Irony is a method of speech that
asserts something in a way to cause the reader to acknowledge, or wonder, that
the speaker must surely intend the opposite of what is said. The most effective irony
is also the most dangerous because it is misunderstood. Superbly crafted irony never lets the reader know for certain that irony is at play. It forces the mind to make a moral judgment. In such
case the speaker or writer might be considered obtuse, impolitic or immoral if the irony is not grasped. So when you read this
post understand that it completely depends upon the irony of the situation of Jacob and of
the speakers and quoted writer. My irony in the blog is probably obvious and not so superb.
What is it about us
that usually we are so impatient, and think we are so smart that we know best
how to do things? We don’t hesitate to tell someone else our idea of the best
way to do something; but we get quite upset when someone turns the table of us
and tells us how to do something.
That impatience is a
human problem that gets into our spiritual life when we get into a dilemma usually
of our own making, someone takes advantage of us, or someone important in our
life causes a such a stressful problem. We
get frustrated and impatient with God providing guidance. We want an answer on our
time, rather than God’s time. Listening to God and the HS for an answer can be
the farthest thing from our mind.
Let’s look at Jesus feeding the 5,000. It is
familiar story, but you may not have picked up on a subtle twist hidden in
verses 15 and 16. I didn’t the first few times I read or heard the story. In v.15, the disciples come to
Jesus at dusk, the end of the day, worried about the crowd and tell (order,
the Greek verb is imperative) him to send the crowd away to find a village to
buy food. This ought to strike us as a crazy, if not wrong-headed act. It is
almost dark and they have traveled to a deserted place. Most settlements close
the gates at night to keep thieves and robbers out. For that matter, how far is the nearest settlement
out there in the wilderness?
Jesus responds to this
request by the disciples in verse
16. “They do not need to go away, you
give them something to eat. (You do the morally proper thing.)
The disciples argue
with this reply. “What do you mean, give them something to eat,
we have nothing but a few loaves of bread and some fish!!” Rather than turn to
faith and do as told, they complain and tell Jesus that it can’t be done.
If we turn to Jacob,
we see that human nature did not change to the disciples’ time. Jacob’s
predicament is very similar to the situation of the disciples out in the
wilderness with the large crowd. Jacob’s experience poses a complex question about
morality.
The whole story of
Jacob becoming the bastion of Israel is drips with irony. Irony is saying something
harsh so convincingly you have to think to realize it must mean the opposite. In this case the big question is why did
God use Jacob, a deceitful and conniving man in stead of some righteous man?
God promised Abraham he would be the father of many
nations because of his righteousness. The central irony of that promise is
that blessing to lead a great nation passed on to his grandson, Jacob who at
best was a jokster and at worst, a deceitful thief with thin morality. Think
about it. He was born the
second of twins with his brother Esau. Esau was father Isaac’s favorite son
and Jacob was his mother, Rebekah’s favorite. Jacob cheated his brother Esau out
of his inheritance with a home-cooked meal, and later with the aid of his
mother, deceived Isaac on his
deathbed to believe Jacob was Esau in order to gain Isaac’s blessing and
fortune that was rightfully that of Esau. Esau in violent anger vowed to kill
Jacob. Rebekah sent Jacob into hiding to her brother Laban to avoid a fight to
the death.
As he fled from Esau,
Jacob came to a place and spent the night and fell into a deep sleep and had a
dream. The dream was about
what we call “Jacob’s Ladder” in which angels descended and ascended this ladder
from heaven as God stood above in grandeur repeating his promise to Jacob that
he made to Abraham. We might have thought Jacob’s conscience would evoke a
dream about the mess his misdeeds with Esau and Isaac caused, but no.
When Jacob finally
got to Uncle Laban in Haran he met and fell in love with Rachael. In a
turnabout, Laban tricked Jacob into working for him for 20 years and first marry the oldest daughter, Leah,
before he allowed Jacob to marry Rebekah. Even then Laban would not let
Jacob leave Haran until Jacob
tricked Laban out of his daughters, all his sheep and household gods. Laban
pursued Jacob but they made peace with each other. Immediately Jacob heard Esau
was coming with 400 men.
Faced with what he
thought was a fight to death, he sent his family across the Jabbok River into
the Promised land and stayed behind by the river. That night he wrestled with someone
throughout the night and prevailed even after his opponent dislocated Jacob’s
hip. But, Jacob held onto the man until he got his ultimate blessing from whom
we later find is God, his maker. We learn this because Jacob named the place of
the wrestling match, Peniel – or face of God. God gave Jacob a new name, Israel
whose translation is disputed. It can mean, He wrestles or struggles with
God, or God struggles but you get the point.
Since Jacob, or
Israel, was the only witness, this must be his account that he wrestled with
God and won. It sounds a little fishy. Do we believe a trickster who cheated
brother, uncle and father? Why would God wrestle with him, after having given
Jacob the blessing in the last dream?
Jacob is in the
middle of a struggle with Esau who swore to kill him twenty years ago. Does he
fear Esau, Laban or God? Or is he finally fighting with his own conscience? Is
this trickster’s story correct, or was Jacob more interested in his
self-preservation forcing another blessing from God than keeping faith in God’s
original promise??
Frederick Buechner, a
very bright preacher with a lot of good insight contemplated Jacob’s situation
trying to figure out the morality of this story of a man who gained everything
of great value by trickery, deceit or force. Buechner’s assessment of the passage drips of
heavy irony because for Buchner, Jacob is a stand-in for all humanity.
I
provide an emended version of the finely crafted irony by Buechner:
“…
far from suffering for his dishonesty, Jacob clearly profited from it. He
gained Isaac’s” blessing…, not to mention the birthright,…
“For anyone who seeks an easy moral in
this passage about Jacob’s success in this struggle with this unidentified man), they
find despair instead. In the very process of trying to escape the wrath of
the brother he had cheated, this betrayer of his father camped for the
night in the hill country to the north, and dreamed not the nightmare of his
guilty acts but of a thing of beauty that nearly brings tears to the eyes - The
wonderful unexpectedness of ...God himself. He dreamed of a great ladder
set up on the earth reaching into heaven and the angels ascending and
descending upon it; and there above in the blazing starlight stood the
Lord God himself, speaking to Jacob the great comforting promise to
Abraham: ‘The land on which you lie I will give to your descendants, and
your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and behold, I am
with you and will keep you wherever you go.’
(The
question that comers to my mind is, “Why does God give this gift to a trickster
who would cheat his brother and father?”)
Buechner
says you will not find morality here, much less a God-fearing morality. In a
very tricky way Buechner’s irony drags us into a dark place we seldom visit: thinking
about our own feet of clay.
He
continues,
“Do
not misunderstand me about moralists. …I (am
talking about) the (person) who stays within the law and would never
seriously consider taking other people's lives, but who from time to
time might simply manipulate (or remain indifferent to) people a little
for his own purposes …
“After
all honesty is the best
policy. But the thing to remember is that one cannot say that until one
has said something else first. And that something else is that,
practically speaking as Jacob might, dishonesty is not a bad policy
either. I do not mean extreme dishonesty-larceny, blackmail, perjury,
and so on-because practically speaking that is a bad policy. (Even without
a moral demand not to do so, a person is motivated to avoid these acts on
practical grounds to avoid landing in jail, or keeping so busy trying to
stay out of jail that he hardly has time to enjoy his ill-gotten gains
once he has gotten them.)
Buechner continues,
“Jacob's kind of dishonesty… is also apt to be your kind and mine. (It) is a
policy that can take a person (man) a long way in this world, and we
are fools either to forget it or to pretend that it is not so.
“This
is not a very noble truth about life, but …it is a truth … faced … in the
relentless wisdom of the recorders of this ancient cycle of biblical stories
(about Jacob.)… the shrewd and ambitious person… is (usually) strong on
guts and weak on conscience, know(ing) very well what he wants and
directs all his energy toward getting it, the Jacobs of this world,
all in all do pretty well. Again, I do not mean the criminal who is
willing to break the law to get what he wants or even to take somebody's
life if that becomes necessary. I mean the man who stays within the law…,
but who from time to time might simply manipulate the law a little for his
own purposes. There is no law against taking advantage of somebody else's
stupidity.”
After
all, Caveat Emptor means “let the buyer beware.
Buechner
paints a brutal picture of Jacob and of humanity, itself, and I hope you get
his irony.
But
let’s turn the tables on Buchner and look at it from Laban and Esau’s
perspective of being tricked out of something. Esau and Laban forgave Jacob.
I think Buechner is trying to get us to that point so we see Jacob from the
perspective of Esau, but even more so, for us to take on Jacob’s name literally
as “The one God struggles with” and think of the grace of Jesus faced with the
hungry crowd simply to say to his arguing disciples, “Give me the bread and
fish and I’ll do it for you.” It reminds us of what grace is all about: God
gives us comfort when we deserve a rebuke.
Do
you recall the words of Paul from last week (Romans 8:36- 39), his lament
that “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep
to be slaughtered.” No, in all
these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” There is an old, true saying about “doing the
right thing.” “Every good deed gets punished.”
Buechner suggests Jacob is struggling finally
not with God but himself, his conscience, the Promise of God. Maybe, just maybe
finally Jacob admitted to himself who he was in that fight, one whose deeds try
the patience of God.
Buechner never states
clearly the upside of Esau’s forgiveness, but let me try. Jacob’s experience
parallels of the argument between Jesus and the disciples and points to the
implicit grace of forgiveness of a God who wants to love us even when we
challenge him.
It is our nature to
argue. However, we walk on a razor’s
edge when we struggle with God, even though his nature is to bless us. But, arguing
with God is not always such a bad thing if it opens our eyes to God’s grace (we
only have to read the Psalms). The caution I leave with you is when those times
of struggling with God come to us, do not lose your humility, be careful what you
ask for, and try to bring a good, honest attitude to it. Attitude is everything
and the key to listening. Later
we will find Jacob did listen for God. Listening can be more rewarding than
arguing about the right thing to do because listening leads to understanding.
Amen.
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