What Do We Keep?
Commentary
Our three selections for today have not much in the way of similarities. We have the story of Jacob, who cheated his own brother, Esau, and so had to leave home; his mother sends him to her brother Laban, who in turn cheats Jacob. It seems this talent for being a cheat runs in the family. But this is no excuse for anti-Semitism, despite what Shakespeare apparently thought.
In Romans, we have the deep theological musings of Paul, who figures he’ll be executed in Rome. He is ruminating, as do all of us who face the reality of death, on his relationship with God, and his faith that “all things work together in God” and that “nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God.” This is not mere whistling in the dark. It is evident in his words as well as his conclusions that these are, for him, deep and hope-begetting truths. He has lived most of his life since he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, and keeps his mind set on God in the flesh — the Anointed One, Jesus.
Finally, we have some of Jesus’ stories about the kingdom of God. “The kingdom of heaven is like…a mustard seed; the yeast a woman puts in flour to make it into bread; a treasure you can never own, or that will cause you to sell all you have in order to gain it; or like a catch of fish (!) where you have to separate the useful from that which is not useful.” Again, the kingdom of heaven is like sorting through all that you have, new or old, to decide what to keep or not.”
The World Council of Churches of Christ is responsible for selecting the scripture readings for each Sunday in the Christian year. They do not claim that all of these readings work together, but one or the other of the Epistle or the Gospel supposedly goes with the Old Testament Reading. And then there are weeks like this one, where the Epistle and Gospel obviously work together, but we have to struggle to see any connection with the Old Testament Lesson.
Even so, Jacob the Cheat has learned that his uncle Laban is also a cheat. Even more, he has learned how it feels to be cheated, especially when one is being cheated about something so important as which daughter he is working to marry. Or the blessing of the first-born by one’s father. Jacob is learning about the importance of how we treat family members, and this will serve him well when he returns home. Late in his life, he will have reason to think on this again, as his favorite son, the first boy born of his favorite wife, is sold into slavery by his eleven brothers. How many times, and in how many ways, does this man have to be taught? Are we any different? Therefore, how good is it that “nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God shown in Jesus?”
Genesis 29:15-28
Our lesson for today is about families — treacherous relatives, family secrets, and how individuals can be deeply hurt by the machinations of those who head those families. As is usual in this part of the scriptures, the women involved are pawns, not real people. They are used by a man against his son-in-law in order to rid the father of a daughter he despairs of marrying off.
We don’t know what the Hebrew is for the word used to describe Leah’s eyes. Look at three different translations, and you may well see three different English words used to explain what the editor meant. Her eyes were ‘weak,’ (NIV) or ‘lovely’ (NRSV) [the kindest translation] or ‘tender.’ (NAS) In a society where most people had dark eyes, it could be simply that for some reason she had hazel eyes. It could mean that she was nearsighted, and therefore squinted to see things outside the home. Or, she could have been light-sensitive and squinted against the sun. In ancient societies, the lack of Ray-Bans, or any kind of glasses makes all of these explanations possible. To be able to see well, to tolerate day after day of bright sun so close to the equator, says a person is hardy, and will survive. When looking for a mate, strong eyes are valued in all societies, even today. So Leah was at a disadvantage in her world, and perhaps despaired of ever being married. Certainly, from the text, we can gather that her father did not see her as valuable, or he would not have tricked Jacob into this mess.
So the usual thing happened. Jacob, running away from his brother and father because he tricked his father into giving the blessing for the eldest male in a family to him rather than to his twin brother, (Genesis 25:24-26) arrives at Laban’s camp. As his nearest relative by blood, Laban is required to take him in. And his mother has sent him, so he has some token from her to assure Laban that this is his kinsman. Laban does welcome him joyfully, and introduces him to his family. And upon meeting his cousins, Jacob falls madly in love with Rachel, who was beautiful in every way — and had eyes a man could fall into. He asks Laban for his daughter in marriage, but he has no bride price, so he agrees to work for Laban in return for the privilege of marrying Rachel.
Laban agrees, and Jacob goes to work for him. And here we have one of those things that we must know before we take the scripture literally: the seven years of labor clause in their agreement.
First, we know that the number seven is a sacred number, reflecting one of the phases of the moon and the length of time it took God to make the universe.1 The last day of the seven, God rested from his labors, which meant also that humans are to rest on the last day of the week, the Sabbath. The land was also to have a time for rest every seventh year. The Hebrews were not to plow or plant in that seventh year, so the land could rest. they were not even to harvest whatever grew wild in the fallow fields — that was for the poor to come and pick, to relieve their poverty. In the same way, the olives and grapes that grew in the Sabbath year were to be left for the poor to come and pick. So the seven years is a Godly number, not necessarily literally seven years of labor.
So, when we read that Jacob worked for Rachel for seven years but got Leah; and then worked seven years for Rachel again, we should understand that Jacob was being godly in sticking with the agreement. He would have every right to make Laban pay for his treachery, but he does not. Of course, Jacob’s anger was assuaged by Laban offering “to give you the other also” and the seven years’ additional time came after Jacob had Rachel as his wife. Even so, Laban has dealt falsely with Jacob. The agreement was for Rachel, and clever Jacob would never let himself be bested by this uncle. And, just as a footnote, notice that Laban doesn’t even speak Rachel’s name — he offers to “give you the other also.” Laban is not a nice man. But then neither has Jacob shown himself to be a “nice guy.” But he’s learning.
How could Jacob not know which woman he was making love to? Let’s start with the observation that Laban’s family was nomadic, moving their flocks from one feeding ground to another, and therefore lived in tents, rather than houses. Therefore, they lit their rooms with small clay lamps filled with olive oil. So, the room to which Jacob and Leah retired was fairly dark even if there was a lamp in there. Second, weddings were, like ours today, occasions for feasting and drinking and dancing. So, perhaps he couldn’t tell which woman he had. Jacob had no reason to be suspicious.
Nevertheless, having had intimacy with Leah, he now had responsibility for her — and for her maid, Zilpah, whom Laban had given to Leah. But that didn’t mean he had to love them. And he didn’t, at least not at first; and always, Jacob loved Rachel best.
This was a set-up for disaster. Not only did Leah’s father show no respect for her, he made her live with her (better-looking?) sister for the rest of her life, knowing that her husband had not meant to marry her and in fact preferred her younger sister. And Jacob had to live with the treachery of his uncle.
Romans 8:26-39
This scripture passage is one of the most beautiful statements of faith in the Bible. It comes in Paul’s last letter (never mind the order in which it appears in our scriptures), and it shows the fruit of his years of labor in the service of our Lord. If we wonder how Paul could bear his imprisonment and the likelihood of his death, we can turn to these verses. In fact, I usually read at least the latter half of these verses at funerals, as they hold out the assurance that we can never outrun the love of God. In fact, the 8th Chapter of Romans could sustain any believer, even if it were all of the Bible that s/he had.
Paul has been talking about the life in the Spirit, and he comes to the 26th verse through a comparison of the sufferings of the beleaguered early Christians in Rome with a woman in labor, groaning with the effort of delivery. As women deliver new life in the form of a child, the earth groans for the salvation of all people, indeed for all of creation, which is in trouble with us.
Do we have problems praying? Do the problems of our world lay so heavy on our hearts that we even cry as we pray? Perhaps, as we hear our President say he wants us to cut back on testing for a virus that has had deadly consequences in our nation, we despair. Will we really abandon those with serious conditions or who are simply growing old to the ravages of a disease that causes the lungs to fill with mucus and pain to take over every joint? Does it mean nothing to us that the European Union is closing its borders to us as the numbers of sick and dying are doubling every day in some areas of our country? Have any in our congregations already lost family members to a disease we underestimated?
I live in a city that even during the quarantine period had several days of air quality so poor that anyone with lung problems were advised not to go outside. Still, the sky above our city has been blue for the last month — a nearly-unheard of color for us. Air pollution has prevented us from seeing the puffy clouds of my childhood, when we would search for faces, animals and pictures. Now we can again play that game, because there are almost no airplanes flying over, and few automobiles are on our freeways.
Do we pray for our planet and its beauty? And what words can we use to ask God to prevent the destruction of our societies? What actions can we take to see to it that our post-quarantine skies not only stay blue, but continue to improve in breathability? The fact that we can look up and see more clearly after only three months ought to give us hope that the damage we have contributed to the pollution of our home can be rolled back, rather than causing us to throw up our hands in surrender to our worst instincts.
Paul says, “Never mind about what words you need to say. The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought…” All we need to do is to hold up our hands as though dipping for a drink of water, and picture our hopes as sitting in the hollows of our hands. We can give up our fears to God in this way, and then spread our fingers so that we let go and let God take over. We can do the same for those who have the power to make changes. Just picture them in our hands and ask God to heal them. Then release them to God, trusting that God will fulfill the promise that what we ask in Jesus’ name will be fulfilled.
Do you find yourself sighing over the troubles we see around us? Do you wonder how anyone can say some of the vicious things we hear on TV? Or, have you stopped watching the news? We need not be eloquent; the Spirit listens to our sighs, and brings our fear, sadness and anger to God. We not only do not need to struggle with negative thoughts and energies, we can release all that, and God will fulfill the promises that Jesus the Anointed preached when he was on earth. (“Come to me, all of you who are heavily loaded with care, and I will give you rest.”)
Back in the first days of my walk with Christ, verse 28 became very important to me, and I would repeat it several times a day nearly every day: “All things work together for good for those who love God.” But these days, I prefer the alternate (and legitimate) translation: “In all things God works for good” because God’s work is not limited to those who love God. God often works for good for people who are not at all good, who do not respect God, in order to convert those who have never known love. Our ability to love our neighbors is possible only if we know that we have been loved. And there are those who have grown up in homes where there was no love, not for them, perhaps for no one. How are we to love one another when we believe that we are worthless? How can we love our enemy when we are so afraid? We need to pray for ourselves and others who are operating out of fear.
Also, the alternate translation of this verse speaks to something I have learned: there is nothing that I have suffered in this life that God has not made use of in my ministry. And though I had to take disability rather than preach as long as I had hoped, I still see God using my diminished strength to share God’s love with others. Think on these things! Is there any adversity you have suffered that God has not used to give you a better understanding of the weaknesses of others? Have you been able to encourage someone to reach beyond their resources to help those in dire need? Have you been able to comfort those who have lost a job, help them overcome abuse, addiction, or despair based on your own experience? How many times have you comforted someone by saying, “I understand. I’ve been where you are.”?
God does not wait for us to make up our minds to be comforted, to turn around from a bad path. God comes to us, to give us the impetus and the strength to surrender to Holy Love.
Paul then assures us that “If God is for us, who [can be] against us?” Too many times, people talk about leaning on Jesus, as though God is an angry judge, and we need Jesus to keep God from punishing us. But that is not what Paul says here. “It is God who justifies.” Yes, he says that Jesus “intercedes for us.” But since God is three persona2 this would make God fight with Godself over whether or not we deserve to be loved and given peace.
Therefore, Paul asks, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” And he lists all the things we sometimes believe get between us and God: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword. Death, life, angels, rulers, whatever is the disaster of the day, the future, power (which we hope will be used for good, but all too often corrupts those who achieve it), height (flying in a plane? Standing on a mountain?), depth (to the bottom of the deepest trench under the sea? To the pits of grief or despair?). And he nearly shouts: NO! None of these, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God we have in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s a long selection to memorize. Maybe just print it out and put it on the bedroom wall where we can read it every morning and every night. Sometimes, that’s as good as the Bible gets.
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Here we have six short allegories, too short to even be called parables, taken from everyday life or the hopes and dreams of his listeners. As with all allegories, they contain hidden truth. This is Jesus at his best, revealing to the uneducated people he had called into his inner circle, and leaving the “wise” shaking their heads at the apparent flaws in them.
Mustard trees originated in Persia — the same area of the world as those Magi Matthew says came to see the infant Jesus. They are drought-resistant evergreens, and need sandy soil, such as that found in Israel. In the Middle East, the leaves or flowers are eaten as well as the seeds. We use whole mustard seeds as flavoring for pickles; the ground-up seed is used on hot dogs, eggs, and meats; and a generation ago the seeds were used to prepare dressings to fight chest congestion. Toothbrushes are made from the branches in rural Middle Eastern and Indian communities because they contain properties that resist bacteria and plaque. In those area of the world where pepper trees grow, they reach a height of 20 feet, and provide shade for people and animals.
When Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, the tiniest seed to produce a tree. But Jesus points to the birds which come and make nests in its branches, an icon of peace referring to v.28, where Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “Come to me, all you who labor and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” This is the kind of message that draws people into our communities of faith. It is sometimes the hardest to claim for ourselves, as laborers in the fields of the Lord, but we need to remember Jesus going off by himself to talk with God after a hard day ministering to the crowds.
The second allegory is “the kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman mixed into flour until all of it was leavened.” Again, we have a complex meaning wrapped up in a simple story, and an element that would have been surprising in his day: the figure of a woman, mixing yeast with flour, an activity that every housewife would do daily. It must have surprised them that Jesus inserted a woman as God, tucking the kingdom into the unclean world around them.
The entire parable would have been shocking to them. Yeast was considered unclean to the people of Jesus’ day. In preparation for Passover, the matriarch of the family would thoroughly scrub the entire house, to remove any unclean substance. Then, just before the Passover candles were lit, the patriarch of the family would ceremonially go through the house, looking for any crumb that might have been missed. His wife had left a piece of yeast bread someplace obvious, so it could be found. With Papa having found the yeast, he can destroy it and they can eat the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
But there is more here than the eye sees: yeast is pervasive in a home where bread is baked daily. The bowl where the yeast is put to prove would be inhabited by yeast spores, which have grown into the tiny holes of the pottery; the stone on which the bread is lain to bake would likewise contain the yeast in its structure. The wooden table on which the dough is worked before it is cooked would retain the signature of the yeast. For that matter, so would the very walls, the shelves or cabinets, the plates the family ate from, even their clothing would contain yeast, invisible, but still there.
Many years ago, I moved into a parsonage where the male pastor who lived there before me had seldom cooked for himself, let alone baked. I was used to baking my own bread, and so I got out my bowls and loaf pans and baked a loaf of bread. Well, not really — it looked awful, and since it was slow to rise, I had over-proofed the dough. Shortly after it emerged from the oven, it sank. I complained to one of the women of the church about my results, “I guess I tried to bake too soon. I was looking for the release of kneading the bread.”
She said, “No, Pastor. I don’t think anyone has baked bread in that house in twenty years. You’ll have to do a couple of batches of bread to get the yeast up and running.” I had never been told that it takes yeast in the air as well as yeast in the bowl to make a ‘happy’ loaf of bread. But she was right. The second batch looked a bit better, but it was the third batch that finally looked good — and tasted good, too.
What is Jesus trying to say? That yeast, which they thought of as unclean, is like the kingdom of God. That when you mix it into flour, the yeast is no longer visible, but it transforms the flour into the staff of life. That we cannot separate the flour from the yeast once they are mixed, and therefore cannot divide the kingdom of God from the world around us. That we think of things, even people, as ‘clean’ and ‘unclean,’ but God is calling us to invite all people into the kingdom,3 which is everywhere. That this was always God’s plan. That we are all children of God, not just the ‘Children of Abraham.’ The point is that the kingdom of heaven is hidden, yet everywhere, making us all one.
Then follow three more aphorisms (parables) about the hiddenness of the kingdom. The first is a simple sentence, but the meaning is not simple, it’s a trick. Under the Law, it belongs to the owner of the field at the time the treasure was hidden there. This is not like pirates’ gold which men may labor for years to find and sell to the highest bidder. The finder does not own the treasure but must look for the true owner. The true owner may offer a reward for the return of the treasure or may give the finder some portion of the find, but it is up to the true owner to decide that. It would be as though we found a wallet on the street, full of money but with no I.D. in it. We could keep the money, but we would know it is not ours, but belongs to the wallet’s owner. What to do? What to do? Take it to the police. Go to the door of the building where we found it and ask if anyone has lost a wallet. Put an ad online or in the local newspaper asking the owner to identify the wallet. Only after all of that can we in good conscience spend the money.
The second of these three stories is even trickier as Matthew tells it: a merchant in search of fine pearls finds one that is worth more than he is. It is the kind of pearl one can only hope to find in one’s life. So the merchant ‘went and sold all that he had and bought it.’ Here we have an open sale. The merchant sells first one thing and then another until he has sold everything he has and takes the money to the seller and buys the pearl.
There’s just one thing wrong with this story: now the merchant owns this fabulous pearl, but that’s all he has. He has sold his bed, his chair, his house itself. He has divested himself of the art, books, CDs and DVDs, the sheets for the bed, his own clothes (we can hope he kept a couple of good suits as well as his blue jeans and T-shirts), his briefcase and his entire stock of goods to sell, all for this pearl that is fabulously valuable. Now what? He owns the pearl, but not much else. He can’t eat the pearl. He can’t sleep on it. He doesn’t want to sell it, it’s too precious.
The point of all this is that the people who want to be part of the kingdom of heaven need to want only the kingdom of heaven. But then how shall we live in the world any longer?
The last of these three parables is about a fisherman who casts his net and draws in fish of every kind. Sharks, cod, suckers, flounder, whitefish, trout, are dragged back to shore in the net. Then the crew sets to sorting the catch. Some of these fish are good for eating, but some are tasteless or positively disgusting. The ‘good’ fish are tossed into baskets for sale, but the ‘bad’ are thrown out.
Jesus ends the story by drawing a parallel — this is like the end of the world, when the angels will do the sorting, throwing the evil into the furnace of fire but keeping the righteous. And Matthew ends the story with a phrase he frequently quotes “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” in that furnace of fire. Too late, those who have done evil will want to escape that fate. Too late, they will be burnt as one burns trash.
Do we understand this? Do we know that what we produce out of our lives will be measured, and whatever does not measure up will be thrown out.
In our society today, we accumulate. We collect. We buy and bring home things we find beautiful as well as things necessary for life. When do we divest our treasures? What do we do with all the things we thought we could not do without? But things are just that — things. How do we measure their value in the end?
A few years ago, a woman in the church I served called me to come and visit. When I arrived at her apartment, she had a number of lovely things sitting on her coffee table, things that I had admired from time to time. She told me to pick out whatever I would like to have. She was moving to Assisted Living and couldn’t take much with her. Among those things was a porcelain teacup and saucer, and I picked that. She immediately picked up another and put it with the set I had asked for. When I protested, she said, “My kids don’t want them. They mean nothing to them. This one, I picked up in Italy on my one trip back home. I remember that you told me about your grandmother’s teacup collection. I want you to have it, because you thought it was beautiful.” I was so touched, tears came to my eyes. My grandmother had died before I had even met Carlotta, but this woman remembered the story about my grandmother.
The day comes for most of us, like the master of a household in Jesus’ story, when we have to sort through our things. We go through our treasures — the souvenirs of our life events, the baby shoes, the wedding crown, the photos we love, our favorite clothes, the handmade gifts our children or grandchildren have given us. We sort through. What is worth keeping? What has lost whatever meaning it ever had for us? In the end, we cannot take any of it with us. Even our memories of these things and what they symbolized may fade away.
So, what do we keep? We keep the person we have become over time, living through whatever life has presented to us. We keep the gifts of the Spirit that we have worked to develop. And we take all of these and present them to our God: “These are the gifts you have given me. I invested them in the life you gave me to live. And this is who I have become. Thank you, Lord. I hope I have invested well what you entrusted to me.”
The good news is that God has promised, as Paul says, “…[nothing] in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It is God who made us, God who sustains us, God who reassures us and God who redeems us so that we may trust in God’s love and rest in God’s arms.
1Genesis 1: six days of labor, and one of rest.
2 The Greek word for the role an actor takes on. Literally, the mask an actor would use onstage so the audience could identify the part being played — the hero, the villain, etc. — it does not mean person, but role. So God came in the flesh (the meaning of incarnation), and appeared as Jesus, so that he could speak authoritatively of God’s love.
3 See the story of Peter’s rooftop vision in Acts 10
In Romans, we have the deep theological musings of Paul, who figures he’ll be executed in Rome. He is ruminating, as do all of us who face the reality of death, on his relationship with God, and his faith that “all things work together in God” and that “nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God.” This is not mere whistling in the dark. It is evident in his words as well as his conclusions that these are, for him, deep and hope-begetting truths. He has lived most of his life since he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, and keeps his mind set on God in the flesh — the Anointed One, Jesus.
Finally, we have some of Jesus’ stories about the kingdom of God. “The kingdom of heaven is like…a mustard seed; the yeast a woman puts in flour to make it into bread; a treasure you can never own, or that will cause you to sell all you have in order to gain it; or like a catch of fish (!) where you have to separate the useful from that which is not useful.” Again, the kingdom of heaven is like sorting through all that you have, new or old, to decide what to keep or not.”
The World Council of Churches of Christ is responsible for selecting the scripture readings for each Sunday in the Christian year. They do not claim that all of these readings work together, but one or the other of the Epistle or the Gospel supposedly goes with the Old Testament Reading. And then there are weeks like this one, where the Epistle and Gospel obviously work together, but we have to struggle to see any connection with the Old Testament Lesson.
Even so, Jacob the Cheat has learned that his uncle Laban is also a cheat. Even more, he has learned how it feels to be cheated, especially when one is being cheated about something so important as which daughter he is working to marry. Or the blessing of the first-born by one’s father. Jacob is learning about the importance of how we treat family members, and this will serve him well when he returns home. Late in his life, he will have reason to think on this again, as his favorite son, the first boy born of his favorite wife, is sold into slavery by his eleven brothers. How many times, and in how many ways, does this man have to be taught? Are we any different? Therefore, how good is it that “nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God shown in Jesus?”
Genesis 29:15-28
Our lesson for today is about families — treacherous relatives, family secrets, and how individuals can be deeply hurt by the machinations of those who head those families. As is usual in this part of the scriptures, the women involved are pawns, not real people. They are used by a man against his son-in-law in order to rid the father of a daughter he despairs of marrying off.
We don’t know what the Hebrew is for the word used to describe Leah’s eyes. Look at three different translations, and you may well see three different English words used to explain what the editor meant. Her eyes were ‘weak,’ (NIV) or ‘lovely’ (NRSV) [the kindest translation] or ‘tender.’ (NAS) In a society where most people had dark eyes, it could be simply that for some reason she had hazel eyes. It could mean that she was nearsighted, and therefore squinted to see things outside the home. Or, she could have been light-sensitive and squinted against the sun. In ancient societies, the lack of Ray-Bans, or any kind of glasses makes all of these explanations possible. To be able to see well, to tolerate day after day of bright sun so close to the equator, says a person is hardy, and will survive. When looking for a mate, strong eyes are valued in all societies, even today. So Leah was at a disadvantage in her world, and perhaps despaired of ever being married. Certainly, from the text, we can gather that her father did not see her as valuable, or he would not have tricked Jacob into this mess.
So the usual thing happened. Jacob, running away from his brother and father because he tricked his father into giving the blessing for the eldest male in a family to him rather than to his twin brother, (Genesis 25:24-26) arrives at Laban’s camp. As his nearest relative by blood, Laban is required to take him in. And his mother has sent him, so he has some token from her to assure Laban that this is his kinsman. Laban does welcome him joyfully, and introduces him to his family. And upon meeting his cousins, Jacob falls madly in love with Rachel, who was beautiful in every way — and had eyes a man could fall into. He asks Laban for his daughter in marriage, but he has no bride price, so he agrees to work for Laban in return for the privilege of marrying Rachel.
Laban agrees, and Jacob goes to work for him. And here we have one of those things that we must know before we take the scripture literally: the seven years of labor clause in their agreement.
First, we know that the number seven is a sacred number, reflecting one of the phases of the moon and the length of time it took God to make the universe.1 The last day of the seven, God rested from his labors, which meant also that humans are to rest on the last day of the week, the Sabbath. The land was also to have a time for rest every seventh year. The Hebrews were not to plow or plant in that seventh year, so the land could rest. they were not even to harvest whatever grew wild in the fallow fields — that was for the poor to come and pick, to relieve their poverty. In the same way, the olives and grapes that grew in the Sabbath year were to be left for the poor to come and pick. So the seven years is a Godly number, not necessarily literally seven years of labor.
So, when we read that Jacob worked for Rachel for seven years but got Leah; and then worked seven years for Rachel again, we should understand that Jacob was being godly in sticking with the agreement. He would have every right to make Laban pay for his treachery, but he does not. Of course, Jacob’s anger was assuaged by Laban offering “to give you the other also” and the seven years’ additional time came after Jacob had Rachel as his wife. Even so, Laban has dealt falsely with Jacob. The agreement was for Rachel, and clever Jacob would never let himself be bested by this uncle. And, just as a footnote, notice that Laban doesn’t even speak Rachel’s name — he offers to “give you the other also.” Laban is not a nice man. But then neither has Jacob shown himself to be a “nice guy.” But he’s learning.
How could Jacob not know which woman he was making love to? Let’s start with the observation that Laban’s family was nomadic, moving their flocks from one feeding ground to another, and therefore lived in tents, rather than houses. Therefore, they lit their rooms with small clay lamps filled with olive oil. So, the room to which Jacob and Leah retired was fairly dark even if there was a lamp in there. Second, weddings were, like ours today, occasions for feasting and drinking and dancing. So, perhaps he couldn’t tell which woman he had. Jacob had no reason to be suspicious.
Nevertheless, having had intimacy with Leah, he now had responsibility for her — and for her maid, Zilpah, whom Laban had given to Leah. But that didn’t mean he had to love them. And he didn’t, at least not at first; and always, Jacob loved Rachel best.
This was a set-up for disaster. Not only did Leah’s father show no respect for her, he made her live with her (better-looking?) sister for the rest of her life, knowing that her husband had not meant to marry her and in fact preferred her younger sister. And Jacob had to live with the treachery of his uncle.
Romans 8:26-39
This scripture passage is one of the most beautiful statements of faith in the Bible. It comes in Paul’s last letter (never mind the order in which it appears in our scriptures), and it shows the fruit of his years of labor in the service of our Lord. If we wonder how Paul could bear his imprisonment and the likelihood of his death, we can turn to these verses. In fact, I usually read at least the latter half of these verses at funerals, as they hold out the assurance that we can never outrun the love of God. In fact, the 8th Chapter of Romans could sustain any believer, even if it were all of the Bible that s/he had.
Paul has been talking about the life in the Spirit, and he comes to the 26th verse through a comparison of the sufferings of the beleaguered early Christians in Rome with a woman in labor, groaning with the effort of delivery. As women deliver new life in the form of a child, the earth groans for the salvation of all people, indeed for all of creation, which is in trouble with us.
Do we have problems praying? Do the problems of our world lay so heavy on our hearts that we even cry as we pray? Perhaps, as we hear our President say he wants us to cut back on testing for a virus that has had deadly consequences in our nation, we despair. Will we really abandon those with serious conditions or who are simply growing old to the ravages of a disease that causes the lungs to fill with mucus and pain to take over every joint? Does it mean nothing to us that the European Union is closing its borders to us as the numbers of sick and dying are doubling every day in some areas of our country? Have any in our congregations already lost family members to a disease we underestimated?
I live in a city that even during the quarantine period had several days of air quality so poor that anyone with lung problems were advised not to go outside. Still, the sky above our city has been blue for the last month — a nearly-unheard of color for us. Air pollution has prevented us from seeing the puffy clouds of my childhood, when we would search for faces, animals and pictures. Now we can again play that game, because there are almost no airplanes flying over, and few automobiles are on our freeways.
Do we pray for our planet and its beauty? And what words can we use to ask God to prevent the destruction of our societies? What actions can we take to see to it that our post-quarantine skies not only stay blue, but continue to improve in breathability? The fact that we can look up and see more clearly after only three months ought to give us hope that the damage we have contributed to the pollution of our home can be rolled back, rather than causing us to throw up our hands in surrender to our worst instincts.
Paul says, “Never mind about what words you need to say. The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought…” All we need to do is to hold up our hands as though dipping for a drink of water, and picture our hopes as sitting in the hollows of our hands. We can give up our fears to God in this way, and then spread our fingers so that we let go and let God take over. We can do the same for those who have the power to make changes. Just picture them in our hands and ask God to heal them. Then release them to God, trusting that God will fulfill the promise that what we ask in Jesus’ name will be fulfilled.
Do you find yourself sighing over the troubles we see around us? Do you wonder how anyone can say some of the vicious things we hear on TV? Or, have you stopped watching the news? We need not be eloquent; the Spirit listens to our sighs, and brings our fear, sadness and anger to God. We not only do not need to struggle with negative thoughts and energies, we can release all that, and God will fulfill the promises that Jesus the Anointed preached when he was on earth. (“Come to me, all of you who are heavily loaded with care, and I will give you rest.”)
Back in the first days of my walk with Christ, verse 28 became very important to me, and I would repeat it several times a day nearly every day: “All things work together for good for those who love God.” But these days, I prefer the alternate (and legitimate) translation: “In all things God works for good” because God’s work is not limited to those who love God. God often works for good for people who are not at all good, who do not respect God, in order to convert those who have never known love. Our ability to love our neighbors is possible only if we know that we have been loved. And there are those who have grown up in homes where there was no love, not for them, perhaps for no one. How are we to love one another when we believe that we are worthless? How can we love our enemy when we are so afraid? We need to pray for ourselves and others who are operating out of fear.
Also, the alternate translation of this verse speaks to something I have learned: there is nothing that I have suffered in this life that God has not made use of in my ministry. And though I had to take disability rather than preach as long as I had hoped, I still see God using my diminished strength to share God’s love with others. Think on these things! Is there any adversity you have suffered that God has not used to give you a better understanding of the weaknesses of others? Have you been able to encourage someone to reach beyond their resources to help those in dire need? Have you been able to comfort those who have lost a job, help them overcome abuse, addiction, or despair based on your own experience? How many times have you comforted someone by saying, “I understand. I’ve been where you are.”?
God does not wait for us to make up our minds to be comforted, to turn around from a bad path. God comes to us, to give us the impetus and the strength to surrender to Holy Love.
Paul then assures us that “If God is for us, who [can be] against us?” Too many times, people talk about leaning on Jesus, as though God is an angry judge, and we need Jesus to keep God from punishing us. But that is not what Paul says here. “It is God who justifies.” Yes, he says that Jesus “intercedes for us.” But since God is three persona2 this would make God fight with Godself over whether or not we deserve to be loved and given peace.
Therefore, Paul asks, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” And he lists all the things we sometimes believe get between us and God: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword. Death, life, angels, rulers, whatever is the disaster of the day, the future, power (which we hope will be used for good, but all too often corrupts those who achieve it), height (flying in a plane? Standing on a mountain?), depth (to the bottom of the deepest trench under the sea? To the pits of grief or despair?). And he nearly shouts: NO! None of these, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God we have in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s a long selection to memorize. Maybe just print it out and put it on the bedroom wall where we can read it every morning and every night. Sometimes, that’s as good as the Bible gets.
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Here we have six short allegories, too short to even be called parables, taken from everyday life or the hopes and dreams of his listeners. As with all allegories, they contain hidden truth. This is Jesus at his best, revealing to the uneducated people he had called into his inner circle, and leaving the “wise” shaking their heads at the apparent flaws in them.
Mustard trees originated in Persia — the same area of the world as those Magi Matthew says came to see the infant Jesus. They are drought-resistant evergreens, and need sandy soil, such as that found in Israel. In the Middle East, the leaves or flowers are eaten as well as the seeds. We use whole mustard seeds as flavoring for pickles; the ground-up seed is used on hot dogs, eggs, and meats; and a generation ago the seeds were used to prepare dressings to fight chest congestion. Toothbrushes are made from the branches in rural Middle Eastern and Indian communities because they contain properties that resist bacteria and plaque. In those area of the world where pepper trees grow, they reach a height of 20 feet, and provide shade for people and animals.
When Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, the tiniest seed to produce a tree. But Jesus points to the birds which come and make nests in its branches, an icon of peace referring to v.28, where Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “Come to me, all you who labor and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” This is the kind of message that draws people into our communities of faith. It is sometimes the hardest to claim for ourselves, as laborers in the fields of the Lord, but we need to remember Jesus going off by himself to talk with God after a hard day ministering to the crowds.
The second allegory is “the kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman mixed into flour until all of it was leavened.” Again, we have a complex meaning wrapped up in a simple story, and an element that would have been surprising in his day: the figure of a woman, mixing yeast with flour, an activity that every housewife would do daily. It must have surprised them that Jesus inserted a woman as God, tucking the kingdom into the unclean world around them.
The entire parable would have been shocking to them. Yeast was considered unclean to the people of Jesus’ day. In preparation for Passover, the matriarch of the family would thoroughly scrub the entire house, to remove any unclean substance. Then, just before the Passover candles were lit, the patriarch of the family would ceremonially go through the house, looking for any crumb that might have been missed. His wife had left a piece of yeast bread someplace obvious, so it could be found. With Papa having found the yeast, he can destroy it and they can eat the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
But there is more here than the eye sees: yeast is pervasive in a home where bread is baked daily. The bowl where the yeast is put to prove would be inhabited by yeast spores, which have grown into the tiny holes of the pottery; the stone on which the bread is lain to bake would likewise contain the yeast in its structure. The wooden table on which the dough is worked before it is cooked would retain the signature of the yeast. For that matter, so would the very walls, the shelves or cabinets, the plates the family ate from, even their clothing would contain yeast, invisible, but still there.
Many years ago, I moved into a parsonage where the male pastor who lived there before me had seldom cooked for himself, let alone baked. I was used to baking my own bread, and so I got out my bowls and loaf pans and baked a loaf of bread. Well, not really — it looked awful, and since it was slow to rise, I had over-proofed the dough. Shortly after it emerged from the oven, it sank. I complained to one of the women of the church about my results, “I guess I tried to bake too soon. I was looking for the release of kneading the bread.”
She said, “No, Pastor. I don’t think anyone has baked bread in that house in twenty years. You’ll have to do a couple of batches of bread to get the yeast up and running.” I had never been told that it takes yeast in the air as well as yeast in the bowl to make a ‘happy’ loaf of bread. But she was right. The second batch looked a bit better, but it was the third batch that finally looked good — and tasted good, too.
What is Jesus trying to say? That yeast, which they thought of as unclean, is like the kingdom of God. That when you mix it into flour, the yeast is no longer visible, but it transforms the flour into the staff of life. That we cannot separate the flour from the yeast once they are mixed, and therefore cannot divide the kingdom of God from the world around us. That we think of things, even people, as ‘clean’ and ‘unclean,’ but God is calling us to invite all people into the kingdom,3 which is everywhere. That this was always God’s plan. That we are all children of God, not just the ‘Children of Abraham.’ The point is that the kingdom of heaven is hidden, yet everywhere, making us all one.
Then follow three more aphorisms (parables) about the hiddenness of the kingdom. The first is a simple sentence, but the meaning is not simple, it’s a trick. Under the Law, it belongs to the owner of the field at the time the treasure was hidden there. This is not like pirates’ gold which men may labor for years to find and sell to the highest bidder. The finder does not own the treasure but must look for the true owner. The true owner may offer a reward for the return of the treasure or may give the finder some portion of the find, but it is up to the true owner to decide that. It would be as though we found a wallet on the street, full of money but with no I.D. in it. We could keep the money, but we would know it is not ours, but belongs to the wallet’s owner. What to do? What to do? Take it to the police. Go to the door of the building where we found it and ask if anyone has lost a wallet. Put an ad online or in the local newspaper asking the owner to identify the wallet. Only after all of that can we in good conscience spend the money.
The second of these three stories is even trickier as Matthew tells it: a merchant in search of fine pearls finds one that is worth more than he is. It is the kind of pearl one can only hope to find in one’s life. So the merchant ‘went and sold all that he had and bought it.’ Here we have an open sale. The merchant sells first one thing and then another until he has sold everything he has and takes the money to the seller and buys the pearl.
There’s just one thing wrong with this story: now the merchant owns this fabulous pearl, but that’s all he has. He has sold his bed, his chair, his house itself. He has divested himself of the art, books, CDs and DVDs, the sheets for the bed, his own clothes (we can hope he kept a couple of good suits as well as his blue jeans and T-shirts), his briefcase and his entire stock of goods to sell, all for this pearl that is fabulously valuable. Now what? He owns the pearl, but not much else. He can’t eat the pearl. He can’t sleep on it. He doesn’t want to sell it, it’s too precious.
The point of all this is that the people who want to be part of the kingdom of heaven need to want only the kingdom of heaven. But then how shall we live in the world any longer?
The last of these three parables is about a fisherman who casts his net and draws in fish of every kind. Sharks, cod, suckers, flounder, whitefish, trout, are dragged back to shore in the net. Then the crew sets to sorting the catch. Some of these fish are good for eating, but some are tasteless or positively disgusting. The ‘good’ fish are tossed into baskets for sale, but the ‘bad’ are thrown out.
Jesus ends the story by drawing a parallel — this is like the end of the world, when the angels will do the sorting, throwing the evil into the furnace of fire but keeping the righteous. And Matthew ends the story with a phrase he frequently quotes “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” in that furnace of fire. Too late, those who have done evil will want to escape that fate. Too late, they will be burnt as one burns trash.
Do we understand this? Do we know that what we produce out of our lives will be measured, and whatever does not measure up will be thrown out.
In our society today, we accumulate. We collect. We buy and bring home things we find beautiful as well as things necessary for life. When do we divest our treasures? What do we do with all the things we thought we could not do without? But things are just that — things. How do we measure their value in the end?
A few years ago, a woman in the church I served called me to come and visit. When I arrived at her apartment, she had a number of lovely things sitting on her coffee table, things that I had admired from time to time. She told me to pick out whatever I would like to have. She was moving to Assisted Living and couldn’t take much with her. Among those things was a porcelain teacup and saucer, and I picked that. She immediately picked up another and put it with the set I had asked for. When I protested, she said, “My kids don’t want them. They mean nothing to them. This one, I picked up in Italy on my one trip back home. I remember that you told me about your grandmother’s teacup collection. I want you to have it, because you thought it was beautiful.” I was so touched, tears came to my eyes. My grandmother had died before I had even met Carlotta, but this woman remembered the story about my grandmother.
The day comes for most of us, like the master of a household in Jesus’ story, when we have to sort through our things. We go through our treasures — the souvenirs of our life events, the baby shoes, the wedding crown, the photos we love, our favorite clothes, the handmade gifts our children or grandchildren have given us. We sort through. What is worth keeping? What has lost whatever meaning it ever had for us? In the end, we cannot take any of it with us. Even our memories of these things and what they symbolized may fade away.
So, what do we keep? We keep the person we have become over time, living through whatever life has presented to us. We keep the gifts of the Spirit that we have worked to develop. And we take all of these and present them to our God: “These are the gifts you have given me. I invested them in the life you gave me to live. And this is who I have become. Thank you, Lord. I hope I have invested well what you entrusted to me.”
The good news is that God has promised, as Paul says, “…[nothing] in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It is God who made us, God who sustains us, God who reassures us and God who redeems us so that we may trust in God’s love and rest in God’s arms.
1Genesis 1: six days of labor, and one of rest.
2 The Greek word for the role an actor takes on. Literally, the mask an actor would use onstage so the audience could identify the part being played — the hero, the villain, etc. — it does not mean person, but role. So God came in the flesh (the meaning of incarnation), and appeared as Jesus, so that he could speak authoritatively of God’s love.
3 See the story of Peter’s rooftop vision in Acts 10
