Proper 10A | Genesis 25:19-34, Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
Abraham, the patriarch, the one chosen and called, promised a future he couldn’t have—yet. God promised him a yet to end that sentence. His life in so few words, and God offered a future, a whole new world in a whole new land.
Then God did the same for Sarah. And she laughed. Of course, who wouldn’t? That’s crazy talk. But God just returned the laughter like tennis, like conversation. As if to say, “you think that’s funny? Guess what I have in store for you!” And God made a promise to her. A son. They named him Isaac.
A son that God told Abraham to sacrifice like a cruel joke. A test of obedience, I guess. But something we still can’t get over. I don’t think anyone actually involved ever did. I don’t think the promised nation ever has.
Forty years later, Isaac is married and his mother is dead and his father remarries. We always skip over that part. To a woman named Keturah. With her, Abraham has more sons, who he loves and cares for in life, but not in death. He gives everything to Isaac. And lest we forget, it was God who took care of Ishmael.
Families, amIright?
Family Blessing
It took Abraham dying for Isaac to receive the blessing. A blessing his son Esau will receive at his birth. It doesn’t seem fair, does it? All of the attention we give the warring siblings, in the womb and out; we are so eager to dispatch with Isaac, just as much as the narrative does. To let him go. This broken man whose parents were so old when he was born, they couldn’t keep up with him. Parents who sent his older brother away, hoping he would die in the desert. Can you imagine how he would look them in the eye and think I know what you did. How lonely his life was. And then how amazing it was to meet a woman like Rebekah. Who was willing to join this messed up family.
Even in the womb, the conflict is noticeable. These boys are fighting before they take their first breath. Jacob jockeying for position ahead of Esau. Parents aren’t supposed to play favorites, of course, but Rebekah can’t help it. She likes that fire, that force she sees in Jacob. The one who is only technically younger by minutes. Esau, on the other hand, so resembles his dad. They could be the same person. Distant and yet direct. Emotionally centered. So . . . healthy? Is that the word?
We get this story and this family with the imprimatur of history and tradition. These are the Patriarchs (with a capital P!). But they are so messy and the situation doesn’t make anyone look good. There are no heroes in the Superman sense where he is just good down to his core. No, these are flawed, messed up people and we are left to make sense of what this means for us.
Digging Deeper
When we read this passage in Bible Studies, we always ask about the trade: how these two brothers can exchange a birthright for stew. How God could go along with it.
And I think this question reveals something about our own place, because it only makes sense if we take a lot of it as given. That such a transaction could be binding, that Esau could know what he was giving up, that God is passive in this arrangement. Like God’s out there going “Oh, Esau! Now I’m obligated to pass the ownership from you to him. If only there were something I could do! I’d have to be divine!”
The church does try to make sense of the exchange by naming something God prefers in Jacob to Esau, which, let’s be clear, is problematic enough on its own, thank you. But it wants to say that God is like Rebekah, who loves Jacob for his ingenuity and tenacity. Which doesn’t seem like an improvement, if we’re being honest. And further, this preference is going to come back and bite him as Jacob just schemes like a villain all over the narrative until he has kids of his own and the narrative kicks him to the curb like his dad.
It’s almost like possessing this precious birthright isn’t winning, really. It isn’t a World Cup victory or a Nobel Prize. Jacob doesn’t achieve anything or gain the world. He gets God’s promise and the irony is that it doesn’t make him happy.
What We Take Away
It should be clear by now, as we continue this journey through Genesis, that the old chestnut that the Bible is an acronym: Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth is just bad teaching. Because there isn’t a simple takeaway here that helps you be a better person. It’s more like working under a terrible boss and making a list based on your experience of what not to do.
“Do not sell the birthright for stew” isn’t that helpful. And similarly, trying to treat Jacob like someone we should emulate is the same level of mistake.
The harder thing to parse, however, is to avoid making the same mistake about God. That God wants us to be liars and to swindle the blessing out of our brothers. Literalism takes us there, even as all our instincts are screaming “Turn around! Go back!” and we’re like “But it says . . .”
No, these are brothers and Jacob is a world-class conman and God doesn’t play favorites based on merit or beauty or success at making money or even swindling people out of their inheritance. God doesn’t prefer people like that. What God does favor, however, is the underdog. The one who doesn’t deserve to win. The God who will be revealed by Jesus as making the last on earth the first in heaven because the people who are unloved now need all the more love then.
We aren’t seeing the whole of God in this story. Just a sliver. A single justified case of bias. A bias that rejects merit and human patterns of inheritance. Something worthy of our notice.
The Teaching About Soil
Our other story skips a chapter, jumping from Matthew eleven to thirteen. What we miss is Jesus being called out for letting his followers pluck grain on the Sabbath with a kind of rebellious spirit we all like, whether we admit it or not. It seems so righteous. So much, Come on! You think this is what God means by work? And then Jesus heals a guy on the Sabbath and the leaders argue with him and start to think, maybe we’d be better off if this guy were dead and he gets compared to a demon and he sends evil spirits out of someone and they come back and it is a whole thing that the lectionary is like “we cover that in a different year in the lectionary cycle”.
We do get a teaching that the evangelist calls a parable (but it isn’t a parable) about a sower throwing seeds onto different kinds of soil and only one kind of soil takes. It feels very much like Get your soil together, people.
And then the lectionary jumps again, skipping over a question from his disciples about why he speaks in parables and Jesus is like, Because people aren’t going to get it anyway. No wonder we skip it! High levels of harsh from Jesus here.
By skipping that middle part, the lectionary seems to be doing what Jesus is implying. Because people aren’t going to get it. And sometimes, when we read stuff we aren’t getting, we take the wrong message. And we go out and we do stupid things.
It is also easier if we go straight to this apparent answer key to the supposed parable that reveals that yes, your intuition about the soil and hospitality is right on.
Imperfect Soil
The thing about this teaching: about the kind of soil that makes a perfect home for God’s seed to grow: is that we ought to understand it as outside our physical constitution, permanently rendered and established as us. That Jesus isn’t saying some of us are born with good bodies and some aren’t. Nor is it about a temperament or some other permanent characteristic about us.
What Jesus does seem to be communicating is that being too impractical will lead to corruption. But so will being too practical. And rather than rating the temperature of the porridge or the softness of the bed, I think the better way of describing this teaching is to say it isn’t a debate about being faithful or being rational but that both are valuable and make true life grow from the most challenging of conditions.
This is what we look for in great works of art and self-help books. It is the kind of thing we want our therapists to remind us about. That it isn’t all one or the other. We must have faith and understanding. That helps us build resiliency.
Loving Us
For all I trust and all I know that God loves us, I still struggle to love myself the way I know I am loved, the way I know you are loved, the way I love each of you. This is something I’ve been working on for a long time and this year more intentionally. Because it can be something I believe: that God loves me. And something I can reason and know: that God loves everybody. And I can even feel that love. To let it be real, to open my heart to it, and trust that God’s love is in there—I can even do that, too! But for me to share that grace with myself; that is what has felt impossible.
We can cultivate the best soil, and still struggle.
So it isn’t about the quality of the soil we tend. It isn’t the birthright we steal. I think it’s about the radical act of showing up. And learning how to trust the equity of God’s love in spite of our meritocratic obsessions. That God’s love is for all and justly raises up the lowly. That it isn’t just that everybody gets a piece, it’s that some people are starving and need a whole dinner. And we can feed and love and God feeds and loves and it isn’t one or the other, but a big portion of both. Like a birthright, a promise, for us all.