A Blessing In Disguise
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
I wonder how many of us here are named after someone.
Chances are that a good many of us carry family names. We are named for a parent, a grandparent, an uncle, or an aunt somewhere on the family tree. Others of us had parents who named us after a character in the Bible, or perhaps some other significant character from history.
All told, I expect a pretty fair number of us are named after someone else.
When Isaac and Rebecca had their twin boys, they took an unusual approach to naming their babies. They named the boys for the boys themselves. They took a look at each boy when he was born, and they gave him a name based on what they saw.
Typically, we don't get named for ourselves until much later in life, and then we call it a "nickname." There is some feature, some trait, some characteristic, some behavior that we become known for, and that results in a nickname. We are, thus, named for ourselves.
But Jacob and Esau -- the two boys born to Isaac and Rebecca -- were named for themselves right from the start.
Esau was born first. The Bible reports that baby Esau came out noticeably red and unusually hairy. And so they named the boy "Esau" because, in their language, that sounded like the word for "hairy." They named Esau for himself.
Then, right after Esau, came Jacob.
We have an expression when one person arrives right after or right behind another person, we say the second person is "right on his heels." Jacob arrived, literally, right on Esau's heels. That second baby boy came out holding onto the heel of his slightly older brother, and so Isaac and Rebecca named him "Jacob," meaning "heel grabber." They named him for himself.
I suppose it is hard to trace the cause-and-effect relationship between what parents perceive their child to be and what that child is. To what extent does a child earn the reputation he has within his family? And to what extent does the reputation he has with his family continue to shape and condition the child?
Isaac and Rebecca called him "Jacob," and their boy lived up to -- or down to -- that name, that identification. Jacob was a heel-grabber. He was forever trying to supplant or usurp, to trip up or outmaneuver, to get ahead, or to cheat someone nearby.
Jacob's name suited him well. From his birth on, he was a heel-grabber. And indeed, for his early years, it continued to be his older brother, Esau's, heel that Jacob kept grabbing.
There was an occasion when they were both young men living at home that Esau came in from the fields and found Jacob in the kitchen making some sort of stew. Esau was hungry, and so when he walked inside, smelled the aroma, and saw the food, he asked Jacob for some of it. Jacob responded by suggesting a trade: He would give Esau a bowl of the stew if Esau would give Jacob his birthright.
The birthright was the entitlement that belonged to the firstborn son. It carried authority, and it carried property and financial advantages. Jacob's proposition -- to trade a birthright for a bowl of stew (or a mess of pottage, in the old vernacular) -- was an absurdity. To give away a significant future inheritance, as well as a position of authority, for a lunch? Only a fool would agree to such a preposterous deal.
Enter Esau.
Esau, in a response that no doubt seemed like cleverness to him, said to Jacob, "What good will my birthright do me if I die of starvation right now?" And so, the writer of Genesis ominously concludes, "Thus Esau despised his birthright" (Genesis 25:34).
Jacob tricked his stomach-driven brother out of his birthright.
Then, some time later, Jacob cheated him out of his blessing, too.
The blessing, incidentally, is a spiritual currency that has lost its sense of value in our culture. We don't use blessings in our day-to-day life anymore, apart from when someone sneezes, and even then, we do not much take it seriously. It is more politeness than power.
I don't think that blessings have lost their value in heaven, however. In the Old Testament, there is no question about the power and the importance of a blessing. The blessing was a serious enough business that Isaac wanted to give his to Esau. And the blessing was serious enough business that Rebecca coveted it for Jacob.
Esau, you see, was Isaac's favorite son: rugged, outdoorsy, a man's man. Jacob, however, was Rebecca's favorite: cleaner, more civilized, more brains than brawn.
When Isaac was an old man -- blind, feeble, and presumably about to die -- he sent for Esau to give him his blessing. But before Isaac would bless him, Isaac instructed Esau to go hunting, prepare a meal, and then bring it to his father. Then, after eating the meal, Isaac would give Esau his blessing.
Rebecca overheard the plan, and she immediately put a plan of her own into action. Eager for her preferred son to receive the coveted blessing, Rebecca arranged for Jacob to disguise himself as Esau, and then to carry in a meal she prepared for Isaac to eat. Because Isaac was old and blind, the disguise did not have to pass the sight test; only the touch and smell test.
(Rebecca found, incidentally, that she could achieve both of those results by draping Jacob's arms and neck with goat skins, which gives us a sense for what Esau must have been like.)
While Esau was still out hunting, Jacob entered their father's tent, and effectively stole his father's blessing, disguised as his hairy brother, Esau.
Now we fast-forward the story twenty years.
Jacob is a middle-aged man, married, a dozen children, and wealthy with flocks, herds, and servants. He and his household are traveling -- making a major move, really -- uprooting themselves from what had been their home in northern Mesopotamia, and going to create a new home for themselves in southern Canaan.
One night, Jacob is in the midst of a personal crisis, and he senses the need to go through it alone. He separates himself from the rest of his group. He sends his family, his flocks, and his servants across the River Jabbok, and then he stays behind, alone, through the night.
As it turns out, he is not alone for long. Someone -- some man, some at-first unidentified personage whom we later discover is the Lord or the angel of the Lord -- appears out of nowhere and wrestles with Jacob through the night.
Charles Wesley tells the story in song.
Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
and I am left alone with thee;
with thee all night I mean to stay
and wrestle till the break of day.
Jacob wrestles with God. A compelling image, and very probably an experience familiar to some here.
When daylight begins to break, the mysterious visitor tries to leave, but Jacob holds on. Like the stubborn newborn holding his brother's heel, Jacob holds on.
Jacob says, "I will not let you go until you bless me."
And the Lord responds, saying, "What is your name?"
I wonder what flashback Jacob experienced in that moment. A young man, slinking into his father's tent, bringing his misleading meal, and wearing his makeshift disguise, seeking his father's blessing. His father asked him who he was, and he lied: "I am your firstborn son, Esau."
Now Jacob seeks a blessing from God himself, and now God himself asks him who he is.
Isaac had been old and blind: He didn't know who had entered the room. But God? God is not old and blind. God knew. This omniscient wrestler in dawn's light knew who Jacob was. Ah, but see the honesty -- the confession, if you will -- that is a prerequisite for God's blessing. Who are you? What is your name?
This is the same God who asked the guilty, leaf-clutching couple, "What have you done?" He does not ask what he needs to know. Rather, he asks what we need to answer. He asks Jacob, "Who are you? What is your name?"
We human beings are torn creatures, at this point, you know. We long, on the one hand, to tell who and what we really are, while at the same time we are so desperate to hide it.
The hostess works hard to clean the house for guests. She says she'd be mortified if they saw what a mess it was. But then, when they arrive and remark how lovely everything is, what does she do? She says, "Oh, you should have seen it a few hours ago" or "Just don't look in the closet where I stuck everything." She doesn't want them to see her mess, but somehow she is still eager to confess it.
A couple with trouble at home tries hard to be on their best behavior in public, not to air their dirty laundry. But then they freely make jokes in public -- jokes that nibble around the edges of their painful truths.
We are a mixed bag: so eager to hide our blemishes, and yet so needing to get them out in the open. We suffer from the conflict of a fundamental fear and a fundamental longing. I fear that if so-and-so really knew me, he wouldn't like me, wouldn't accept me, wouldn't respect me, or wouldn't love me. And, at the same time, I long just to be loved and accepted for who I really am.
We wear our own facades, like Jacob in his smelly goatskins, seeking to be accepted or respected because of who people will think we are. We seek their blessings in disguise.
Then comes the time to do business with God, and he won't let us get away with it.
Before God will bless Jacob, Jacob has to tell him his name. Before God will bless Jacob, Jacob has to say -- indeed, has to confess -- "I am Jacob. Heel-grabber. Manipulator. Selfish. Cheat." Then God will bless him.
This is swimming upstream against both our instinct and our experience. Our instinct and experience in the rest of life is that we fare better when we cover our blemish, when we conceal our weakness, when we hide our vices. But God will not bless us in disguise. God required Jacob to tell him his name, before God would bless him.
And how does God bless him? Glory be, God changes his name!
The Lord says, "No longer shall you be called Jacob ... Now you will be called Israel -- prince -- for you have persevered with man and with God, and prevailed."
Jacob has a new name: a name -- an identity -- born out of an encounter with God.
In the name "Israel," you see, the last syllable "el" represents one of the Hebrew words for God. "El." So, for example, "Beth-el" means "house of God." "Emmanu-el" means "God with us." "Ishma-el" means "God will hear." "Dani-el" means "God is my judge." And "Isra-el," the name that God gave to Jacob, literally means "God prevails."
So Jacob was changed from being named for himself and what he did to being named for God and what he does.
We come to do business with God this morning. We come to receive blessings from him. We find that there is no opportunity for a disguise with him. And, much to our relief, we discover that there is no need for a disguise with him!
We must confess our name -- who we are, what we are -- and we discover that, unlike the world around us, he loves us even knowing the truth about us.
Then he changes our name, our identity -- from sinful to forgiven -- from filthy to clean -- from distant to close -- from lost to found -- from Jacob to Israel. Amen.
____________
1. Charles Wesley, "Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown."
Chances are that a good many of us carry family names. We are named for a parent, a grandparent, an uncle, or an aunt somewhere on the family tree. Others of us had parents who named us after a character in the Bible, or perhaps some other significant character from history.
All told, I expect a pretty fair number of us are named after someone else.
When Isaac and Rebecca had their twin boys, they took an unusual approach to naming their babies. They named the boys for the boys themselves. They took a look at each boy when he was born, and they gave him a name based on what they saw.
Typically, we don't get named for ourselves until much later in life, and then we call it a "nickname." There is some feature, some trait, some characteristic, some behavior that we become known for, and that results in a nickname. We are, thus, named for ourselves.
But Jacob and Esau -- the two boys born to Isaac and Rebecca -- were named for themselves right from the start.
Esau was born first. The Bible reports that baby Esau came out noticeably red and unusually hairy. And so they named the boy "Esau" because, in their language, that sounded like the word for "hairy." They named Esau for himself.
Then, right after Esau, came Jacob.
We have an expression when one person arrives right after or right behind another person, we say the second person is "right on his heels." Jacob arrived, literally, right on Esau's heels. That second baby boy came out holding onto the heel of his slightly older brother, and so Isaac and Rebecca named him "Jacob," meaning "heel grabber." They named him for himself.
I suppose it is hard to trace the cause-and-effect relationship between what parents perceive their child to be and what that child is. To what extent does a child earn the reputation he has within his family? And to what extent does the reputation he has with his family continue to shape and condition the child?
Isaac and Rebecca called him "Jacob," and their boy lived up to -- or down to -- that name, that identification. Jacob was a heel-grabber. He was forever trying to supplant or usurp, to trip up or outmaneuver, to get ahead, or to cheat someone nearby.
Jacob's name suited him well. From his birth on, he was a heel-grabber. And indeed, for his early years, it continued to be his older brother, Esau's, heel that Jacob kept grabbing.
There was an occasion when they were both young men living at home that Esau came in from the fields and found Jacob in the kitchen making some sort of stew. Esau was hungry, and so when he walked inside, smelled the aroma, and saw the food, he asked Jacob for some of it. Jacob responded by suggesting a trade: He would give Esau a bowl of the stew if Esau would give Jacob his birthright.
The birthright was the entitlement that belonged to the firstborn son. It carried authority, and it carried property and financial advantages. Jacob's proposition -- to trade a birthright for a bowl of stew (or a mess of pottage, in the old vernacular) -- was an absurdity. To give away a significant future inheritance, as well as a position of authority, for a lunch? Only a fool would agree to such a preposterous deal.
Enter Esau.
Esau, in a response that no doubt seemed like cleverness to him, said to Jacob, "What good will my birthright do me if I die of starvation right now?" And so, the writer of Genesis ominously concludes, "Thus Esau despised his birthright" (Genesis 25:34).
Jacob tricked his stomach-driven brother out of his birthright.
Then, some time later, Jacob cheated him out of his blessing, too.
The blessing, incidentally, is a spiritual currency that has lost its sense of value in our culture. We don't use blessings in our day-to-day life anymore, apart from when someone sneezes, and even then, we do not much take it seriously. It is more politeness than power.
I don't think that blessings have lost their value in heaven, however. In the Old Testament, there is no question about the power and the importance of a blessing. The blessing was a serious enough business that Isaac wanted to give his to Esau. And the blessing was serious enough business that Rebecca coveted it for Jacob.
Esau, you see, was Isaac's favorite son: rugged, outdoorsy, a man's man. Jacob, however, was Rebecca's favorite: cleaner, more civilized, more brains than brawn.
When Isaac was an old man -- blind, feeble, and presumably about to die -- he sent for Esau to give him his blessing. But before Isaac would bless him, Isaac instructed Esau to go hunting, prepare a meal, and then bring it to his father. Then, after eating the meal, Isaac would give Esau his blessing.
Rebecca overheard the plan, and she immediately put a plan of her own into action. Eager for her preferred son to receive the coveted blessing, Rebecca arranged for Jacob to disguise himself as Esau, and then to carry in a meal she prepared for Isaac to eat. Because Isaac was old and blind, the disguise did not have to pass the sight test; only the touch and smell test.
(Rebecca found, incidentally, that she could achieve both of those results by draping Jacob's arms and neck with goat skins, which gives us a sense for what Esau must have been like.)
While Esau was still out hunting, Jacob entered their father's tent, and effectively stole his father's blessing, disguised as his hairy brother, Esau.
Now we fast-forward the story twenty years.
Jacob is a middle-aged man, married, a dozen children, and wealthy with flocks, herds, and servants. He and his household are traveling -- making a major move, really -- uprooting themselves from what had been their home in northern Mesopotamia, and going to create a new home for themselves in southern Canaan.
One night, Jacob is in the midst of a personal crisis, and he senses the need to go through it alone. He separates himself from the rest of his group. He sends his family, his flocks, and his servants across the River Jabbok, and then he stays behind, alone, through the night.
As it turns out, he is not alone for long. Someone -- some man, some at-first unidentified personage whom we later discover is the Lord or the angel of the Lord -- appears out of nowhere and wrestles with Jacob through the night.
Charles Wesley tells the story in song.
Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
and I am left alone with thee;
with thee all night I mean to stay
and wrestle till the break of day.
Jacob wrestles with God. A compelling image, and very probably an experience familiar to some here.
When daylight begins to break, the mysterious visitor tries to leave, but Jacob holds on. Like the stubborn newborn holding his brother's heel, Jacob holds on.
Jacob says, "I will not let you go until you bless me."
And the Lord responds, saying, "What is your name?"
I wonder what flashback Jacob experienced in that moment. A young man, slinking into his father's tent, bringing his misleading meal, and wearing his makeshift disguise, seeking his father's blessing. His father asked him who he was, and he lied: "I am your firstborn son, Esau."
Now Jacob seeks a blessing from God himself, and now God himself asks him who he is.
Isaac had been old and blind: He didn't know who had entered the room. But God? God is not old and blind. God knew. This omniscient wrestler in dawn's light knew who Jacob was. Ah, but see the honesty -- the confession, if you will -- that is a prerequisite for God's blessing. Who are you? What is your name?
This is the same God who asked the guilty, leaf-clutching couple, "What have you done?" He does not ask what he needs to know. Rather, he asks what we need to answer. He asks Jacob, "Who are you? What is your name?"
We human beings are torn creatures, at this point, you know. We long, on the one hand, to tell who and what we really are, while at the same time we are so desperate to hide it.
The hostess works hard to clean the house for guests. She says she'd be mortified if they saw what a mess it was. But then, when they arrive and remark how lovely everything is, what does she do? She says, "Oh, you should have seen it a few hours ago" or "Just don't look in the closet where I stuck everything." She doesn't want them to see her mess, but somehow she is still eager to confess it.
A couple with trouble at home tries hard to be on their best behavior in public, not to air their dirty laundry. But then they freely make jokes in public -- jokes that nibble around the edges of their painful truths.
We are a mixed bag: so eager to hide our blemishes, and yet so needing to get them out in the open. We suffer from the conflict of a fundamental fear and a fundamental longing. I fear that if so-and-so really knew me, he wouldn't like me, wouldn't accept me, wouldn't respect me, or wouldn't love me. And, at the same time, I long just to be loved and accepted for who I really am.
We wear our own facades, like Jacob in his smelly goatskins, seeking to be accepted or respected because of who people will think we are. We seek their blessings in disguise.
Then comes the time to do business with God, and he won't let us get away with it.
Before God will bless Jacob, Jacob has to tell him his name. Before God will bless Jacob, Jacob has to say -- indeed, has to confess -- "I am Jacob. Heel-grabber. Manipulator. Selfish. Cheat." Then God will bless him.
This is swimming upstream against both our instinct and our experience. Our instinct and experience in the rest of life is that we fare better when we cover our blemish, when we conceal our weakness, when we hide our vices. But God will not bless us in disguise. God required Jacob to tell him his name, before God would bless him.
And how does God bless him? Glory be, God changes his name!
The Lord says, "No longer shall you be called Jacob ... Now you will be called Israel -- prince -- for you have persevered with man and with God, and prevailed."
Jacob has a new name: a name -- an identity -- born out of an encounter with God.
In the name "Israel," you see, the last syllable "el" represents one of the Hebrew words for God. "El." So, for example, "Beth-el" means "house of God." "Emmanu-el" means "God with us." "Ishma-el" means "God will hear." "Dani-el" means "God is my judge." And "Isra-el," the name that God gave to Jacob, literally means "God prevails."
So Jacob was changed from being named for himself and what he did to being named for God and what he does.
We come to do business with God this morning. We come to receive blessings from him. We find that there is no opportunity for a disguise with him. And, much to our relief, we discover that there is no need for a disguise with him!
We must confess our name -- who we are, what we are -- and we discover that, unlike the world around us, he loves us even knowing the truth about us.
Then he changes our name, our identity -- from sinful to forgiven -- from filthy to clean -- from distant to close -- from lost to found -- from Jacob to Israel. Amen.
____________
1. Charles Wesley, "Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown."
