The Founding Family - For July 10


After a brief interlude, we turn from the traumatized Isaac, unable to contribute anything to the story except for the next generation, we meet Jacob, ready to tangle, on the make, a trader with a keen eye for the main chance.  We will follow his story now for several weeks – a hinge on which the whole narrative shuts on Esau and opens on Jacob, on Joseph and his descendants, on bondage and then freedom, on Moses, Aaron and Miriam, then Joshua and the Judges, the Kings and the Prophets.

Jacob comes out of the womb ready to rumble.  At birth, he fights to be first, holding Esau by the heel and, presumably trying to pull in front of him.  What fails at birth he eventually wins by exploitation and deception.  Every classroom, every workplace, every soccer team, every extended family has one of these characters, ready to knock anybody off the ladder in order to get ahead.

It will take Jacob years to learn what “ahead” looks like.  On July 31, he will come up against an adversary more than worthy of his skill, his strength, and his determination.  Like many of us, he will win some and lose some along the way, take his lumps, and move on to the next contest.

Later on, he will favour the child of his heart’s desire, with disastrous results for Joseph.  And yet…

There is a character on the loose in this story, a Character as determined as Joseph.  As our ancestors tell us these ancient stories, that Character begins to take shape, to emerge from the shadows, to illuminate our human history.  Future scripture will refer to “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”, in what is meant to be, I think, a kind of crescendo, a rising, growing, ever more powerful sense of who God is and of what God intends.  Today, we begin to follow a central note in that crescendo, a note who, at the outset, shows little evidence of what we might think of as “godly”.

The story cries out to be read continuously, from the call of Abram in Genesis 12 to the death of Joseph at the end of the book.  This story of the founding family of faith will surprise you, appall you, delight you.  Love story, political intrigue, and the endless oscillation of human hearts turned to dignity and then lowered into moral squalor.  And always the beat laid down, sometimes lost in the tangle of sounds, sometimes rising to call them back into song, of God’s presence and purpose and practices.

But today, we simply meet Jacob, whose unlikely self will become Israel as he wrestles a crippling blessing from a Stranger.  Jacob, on the make, Jacob pressing a momentary advantage over his carelessly hungry twin, Jacob in the end limping home to the heart of the matter, and along the way introducing us to the ways of God.

Watch this space.  And keep one eye on Jacob.  He doesn’t look all that promising, but in this story it’s God who does the promising, and changes everything, and everyone.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

For Epiphany 7

Many of us, I think, have an idea about holiness that associates it with a disembodied spirituality that denies the gift of the body and the holiness of the physical world. When we think “holy” we think “heaven”, not “earth”. The heavy influence of Greek thought on Christian understanding has often invited us to think of history as a shadowy stand-in for more “spiritual” realities. But in today’s Hebrew Scripture, holiness is clearly associated with the actions of bodies in history.  God speaks: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” What follows is not a strategy to skirt history, to escape the world, or how to transcend our bodies. Instead, we learn a way of engaging the world – of acting in our bodies, of participating in history – that is holy.  Don’t reap to the edges of your field or go through the field again to pick up what you missed the first time. Don’t strip all the grapes from the vines or pick up the ones that have fallen. Leave some for the poor...
Read more

For Epiphany 2

Image
Simon and Andrew are seekers, followers of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and mentor. They are part of a reform movement within Jewish national life, a movement that seeks to restore the faithfulness of Israel to the mission of God. In the synoptic gospels, the movement’s direction and the heart of the matter is described as “the kingdom of heaven” or “the kingdom of God”, and Jesus is the focal figure who proclaims and enacts that kingdom and its ethic of love and justice. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus inaugurates something; his death and resurrection come to be understood as the embodiment of the sacrificial love in which the kingdom is founded, and the vindication of that love in the resurrection. In this fourth gospel, the focus shifts from “the Kingdom” to “the Lamb”. Much of what formed us as disciples in the church of the last several centuries has taken its cue from this shift, interpreting Jesus almost exclusively in terms of the atoning sacrifice (the lamb) of God – God...
Read more

For the Baptism of Jesus - January 9, 2011

Sometimes it feels as if all the lectionary gives us is sound-bites from the gospels. Because of that, it’s easy to see them as a collection of pixels instead of as a coherent picture of the ministry, death, and resurrection of the one we identify as the governing authority (“lord”) in our lives and in our life together. And sometimes we interpret Jesus so as to align with our preconceptions, rather than allowing his story to challenge them, break them open, and bring something new to light.   I wonder if that’s why, for example, we ask why Jesus had to be baptized if he was without sin. That is, I wonder if, having decided that baptism is all about washing sin away, we are confused by Jesus’ own baptism by John. I wonder if we might be willing to grant some authority to scripture and allow its account of Jesus’ life and ministry to change our minds about baptism. At the beginning of the events that bracket Jesus’ baptism are two identical proclamations:   “Repent, for the ...
Read more