SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: God may the words of my mouth, the meditations of each heart here be acceptable to you, our rock, and our redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is not about being a good person.
SPEAKER_00: I know what you're thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Who let this guy into the pulpit again?
SPEAKER_00: But hear me out.
SPEAKER_00: Its heroes are often unheroic, its victories are often complicated.
SPEAKER_00: Even when the Bible does venture into explicit moral instruction, it often serves to remind us that being a good person is a far loftier achievement than we would like to admit.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is not about being a good person.
SPEAKER_00: Not that the Bible and human goodness are unrelated.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible does contain wisdom and guidance and truth, which help us to maintain right relationship with God and with one another.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible is not about being a good person.
SPEAKER_00: It is not, as the acronym goes, simply a collection of basic instructions before leaving earth.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, the Bible is about God.
SPEAKER_00: That is, it shows us who God is, how God is for us, and the ways God works in the world and in human lives to bring about the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is largely about God's mercy and grace.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is not about being a good person.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why we find in its pages stories like today's Old Testament reading.
SPEAKER_00: Stories of double crossing, slyness, deceit, polygamy, and theft, jealousy, and objectification.
SPEAKER_00: Typically, we mine these stories for helpful little tidbits and sound bites to make them easier to digest, and then we ignore the rest.
SPEAKER_00: Take the story of Jacob, for instance.
SPEAKER_00: Two weeks ago we heard a little snippet about Jacob and his twin Esau's birth, and Jacob's infamous stew-based heist of his brother's birthright.
SPEAKER_00: One week ago we heard about Jacob's journey out of Beersheba and his famous ladder dream with the angels going up and down.
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps we have forgotten that Jacob fled Beersheba in the first place because he had deceived his blind father Isaac into giving him Esau's blessing, and Esau, understandably, was really, really mad.
SPEAKER_00: But today's lection does us a favor.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't let us skip the unpleasant bits.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it dumps us right into the middle of what I consider to be one of the most unsettling episodes of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't bother to soothe or discomf soothe our discomfort with any tidy sound bites or any memorable imagery.
SPEAKER_00: All we seem to have here is a short account of two women being treated like bargaining chips.
SPEAKER_00: So the question becomes more pressing.
SPEAKER_00: What does today's Old Testament reading tell us about God?
SPEAKER_00: When we run into these troubling bits of scripture, it's often a good thing to lean into the discomfort, not away from it.
SPEAKER_00: To read between or behind the lines, to discern the tensions between what is said and what is meant.
SPEAKER_00: And trying to peer into a murky text, we often catch a glimpse of some fresh insight to us about God.
SPEAKER_00: The difficulty of seeing God is precisely that which prompts us to look even more intently.
SPEAKER_00: So, again, what is God up to in this pact between Jacob and Laban?
SPEAKER_00: We assume that this is a story about Laban's dishonesty.
SPEAKER_00: But I ask, is Laban really the bad guy here?
SPEAKER_00: To understand the significance of this strange wedding arrangement and what it could possibly tell us about God, it may help to bracket our assumptions about Laban's guilt or Jacob's innocence, and to retell Jacob's broader story, as it's found in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Years before he met Rachel, Jacob, the supposedly heroic patriarch, is greeted by his famished brother Esau.
SPEAKER_00: Esau is starving, even to death, and Jacob sees an opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: He takes advantage of Esau's weakness and vulnerability to trade a bowl of stew for Esau's birthright.
SPEAKER_00: Some years later, their father Isaac is blind and dying.
SPEAKER_00: Esau may have lost his birthright, but Isaac still wants to give his son one last blessing.
SPEAKER_00: So Jacob and his mother Rebecca concoct a plan.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob simulates Esau's hairy arms, and he tricks his disabled and elderly father into giving him Esau's blessing instead.
SPEAKER_00: And for reasons lost to time and culture, Esau cannot receive an equivalent blessing, and he receives a lesser one.
SPEAKER_00: Thus Jacob deceives and manipulates vulnerable people once again.
SPEAKER_00: Esau, perhaps after years of being taken advantage of by Jacob, finally breaks.
SPEAKER_00: He plans to kill Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: So their mother Rebecca sends Isaac to live with his uncle Laban, hoping that he will also happen to find a wife there.
SPEAKER_00: Thus Jacob escapes the wrath of his brother.
SPEAKER_00: Well, eventually Jacob reaches Haran, where Laban lives.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe Laban already knows about Jacob's character.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not.
SPEAKER_00: But regardless, after Jacob tells Laban all that had happened, a confession, perhaps, Laban sympathetically says to Jacob, You are truly my bone and flesh.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder, is this a statement of welcome to his nephew?
SPEAKER_00: Or is this a statement of recognition?
SPEAKER_00: Does Laban himself, as we see today, a clever and somewhat deceitful man, see his own dark reflection in his nephew Jacob?
SPEAKER_00: Well, after a month, Laban hands Jacob a blank check.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me, he asks, what shall your wages be?
SPEAKER_00: Jacob could have asked for money, which a newfangled invention in the Bronze Age, so maybe that would have been pretty cool for him.
SPEAKER_00: Or he could have asked for precious metals.
SPEAKER_00: Could have asked for trade goods, could have asked for flocks.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, Jacob asks for one of Laban's daughters, a human being, treated as nothing more than wages paid.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but by rights, Leah, the elder sister with the tender eyes, has first dibs on any suitors.
SPEAKER_00: But as we've seen, Jacob does not have a particularly good track record when it comes to respecting elder siblings' rights.
SPEAKER_00: So he demands the younger sister, Rachel, and he offers seven years of service in exchange for her.
SPEAKER_00: Laban appears to agree to the terms, and after seven years, Jacob tells Laban to give him Rachel so that he may go into her.
SPEAKER_00: A biblical euphemism that implies Jacob's desire for Rachel was more physical than it was romantic or familial or even economic.
SPEAKER_00: Surely this was not phrasing that would excite a prospective father-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: So the deceiver finally is deceived.
SPEAKER_00: Somehow, I'll leave it to your imagination how.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob does not realize that he is spending his wedding night with Leah and not Rachel.
SPEAKER_00: He wakes up the next morning, he sees who it is he's spent the night with, and he confronts Laban, who explains that Leah has the birthright in their country.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob, if he wishes, can serve another seven years if he wants to marry Rachel.
SPEAKER_00: And he does.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jacob and Leah do not have a particularly happy marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It is so challenging for Leah that, as with Hagar in the desert before her, we are told that God sees her.
SPEAKER_00: A few verses after today's lection, the text says that the Lord saw that Leah was unloved.
SPEAKER_00: Leah ultimately bears more children than her sister Rachel, and those children, at least, are a delight and a consolation to her.
SPEAKER_00: Story goes on.
SPEAKER_00: Laban and Jacob have more disagreements.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob accuses Laban of changing his wages ten times, though I should note the text never actually confirms that accusation.
SPEAKER_00: And Jacob and Rachel seem to commandeer most of Laban's household goods and then disappear under the cover of night.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually Laban finds Jacob, and in a remarkable expression of forgiveness that foreshadows that of Esau down the line, he kisses his sons and daughters goodbye, and he sends Jacob away unharmed, with a caveat that if Laban hears Rachel or Leah have been mistreated by Jacob, all bets are off.
SPEAKER_00: All that to say, Jacob just might not be the good guy here.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone is the hero of this story, it's probably Leah, and maybe even Laban, the protective father.
SPEAKER_00: But these aren't the people that the text hones in on.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it hones in on Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Bible is not about being a good person.
SPEAKER_00: It is about how God is at work in the lives of people, good and bad and both, to bring all of creation back into right relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob may be the biblical protagonist here, but he is not a role model.
SPEAKER_00: He is deceitful, conniving, lustful, objectifying, and greedy.
SPEAKER_00: We see our own reflection there.
SPEAKER_00: He is just like us at our worst.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, it is in the story of Jacob that we see how our God tends to work.
SPEAKER_00: One of the last phrases in the book of Genesis comes from Jacob's son Joseph, and it seems as good a summary of the Bible as you can get.
SPEAKER_00: Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people.
SPEAKER_00: For it was in the midst of familial havoc, either wreaked by or the indirect consequence of Jacob's misbehavior, that God saw Leah and provided for her.
SPEAKER_00: Leah received her rights as the eldest daughter.
SPEAKER_00: She went on to become a matriarch of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: She had many beloved children.
SPEAKER_00: One of Leah's children was Judah, and through Leah and Judah's line, according to the gospel genealogies of Jesus, came the Messiah, the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That is, out of a deceiver's deception, a promise broken, and a lonely marriage, would one day come the salvation of the world in God incarnate.
SPEAKER_00: God works all things for good.
SPEAKER_00: Out of unlikely situations comes the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: For neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Not even a guy like Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.