Genesis 25:19-34

Proper 10 (15) – Year A

 


We are not determined by the way the world is presently organized. A pronouncement seems to come true that the two wrestling in a womb will become two nations in conflict and the younger will become stronger and the older will become servant.

We can appreciate how next generations need to move away from the combined blessing/curse of an exaggerated emphasis upon first-borns. We also can see an inversion of power simply leading to the power of a different heel, not a healing of power struggles.

Imagine a world not fixated on rights or entitlements. What kind of a story will go beyond the good news of inversion to even better news of conversion? How do we claim our worth to be more than a bowl of soup? How do we acknowledge our envy and jealousy that they not lead us to manipulate another?

Are we committed to seeing ourselves and Jacob as heroes? Are we expecting that our enemies and Esau will always be trodden underfoot?

May we find a way to break the “last shall be first” routine that finds the latest last shall become the latest first, etc., without falling into an equal danger of first always being first. What story do you know that is opening us to a new stage of human development or a new understanding of G*D’s mercy?

 

- - - - - - -


brother wrestler
heel grabber
stew chef
lineage stealer
flock grabber
G*D wrestler

go out
anguished loneliness
to accomplish
more than you purposed
to return
a brother’s embrace

even here
instead of a thorn
a sound of singing
in the myrtle
an everlasting sign
none are cut off

 

As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience

 


 

We are not determined by the way the world is presently organized even if a pronouncement seems to come true that the two wrestling in the womb will become two nations in conflict and the younger will become stronger and the older will become servant.

Though we can appreciate how the next generation needs to move away from the combined blessing/curse of an exaggerated emphasis upon first-borns, we also can see the inversion of power simply leading to the power of a different heel, not the healing of power struggles.

Imagine a world not fixated on rights or entitlements. What kind of a story will go beyond the good news of inversion to even better news of conversion. How do we claim our worth to be more than a bowl of soup? How do we acknowledge our envy and jealousy that it might not lead us to manipulating another?

Are we committed to seeing ourselves and Jacob as heroes? Are we expecting that our enemies and Esau will always be trodden underfoot?

Is there not an eternal alternation implied here. Jacob supplants Esau. Later, in Romans 9, Paul uses this story to have the Esauean Edomite Gentiles resupplant the Jacobean Israelite Jews. These days we are almost to another new story to clarify that the institution of privileged church is being supplanted?

At the time of this jotting, a commercial tie-in with the movie Ten Commandments (a “monument” hardly readable) may be removed from a public park. The cold-war rhetoric of “under God” may no longer break the scansion of a flag-pledge. The failed attempt to merge G*D with Mammon may fall and erase the motto, “In God we trust” – while really trusting in dollars. Can the church with an Esau claim of birthright, care for those without that birthright without renouncing its own worth or engaging in entitlement fallacies?

May we find a way to break the “last shall be first” routine that finds the latest last shall become the latest first, etc., without falling into the equal danger of first always being first. What story do you know that is opening us to a new stage of human development or a new understanding of G*D’s mercy?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/july2002.html

 


 

A seed is sown. Will it be rain or snow? Will it be Esau or Jacob? Either way, they journey forth and will not return until they have watered the earth, until they have revealed more about themselves, one another, and G*D.

This feels like an appropriate spot to note that old gospel hymn, "The Songs of the Reaper" – Seeds scattered, tears and songs and joy flow mingled down, life is invested and gone beyond.

Friends, keep scattering those seeds. [note: just mistyped that and noted the similarity between seeding and seeking – my but isn't that what progressive Christians do!]

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html

 


What would it be like to read Paul as a frustrated parablist who simply can’t get past his juridical language base?

We need a midrash cyclotron that can speed Paul and Jesus to light speed and smash them into one another. Then we might see Spirit as seed and Flesh as seed. We might understand soil as Spirit and soil as Flesh. In so doing new sparks will fly off into our lives today and we would care less about any traps of our own or other’s devising and simply pay more attention to a joyful heritage of a good creation and universal salvation and simply incline our hearts to both short- and long-term good at the same time.

- - - - - - -

brother wrestler
heel grabber
stew chef
lineage stealer
flock grabber
G*D wrestler

go out
anguished loneliness
to accomplish
more than you purposed
to return
a brother's embrace

even here
instead of a thorn
a sound of singing
in the myrtle
an everlasting sign
none are cut off

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

 


What is the family relationship here? Are either Esau or Jacob any better at being their brother’s “keeper” than were Cain and Abel or Jesus and his mother/brothers/sisters?

It is so easy to trick and to give up on one another. I expect that Esau thought he was tricking Jacob, even as Jacob was returning the favor. Family knows all too well the weaknesses of the others. With this power over weakness we manage to take just a little advantage of each other. And, in this case, a little is as good as a mile.

If you were to compare semen with seeds and wombs with soils, what sort of seed did Isaac sow, what kind of soil did Rebekah carry? Lest we get too categorical and deterministic, consider also ovaries and testes. What sort of egg did Rebekah sow, what kind of seminiferous tubule did Isaac carry?

And yourself?

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html

 


 

There are folks struggling within every denominational polity. Our usual characterization of them is “left” and “right”. A church body has every right to join Rebekah in wondering how it is going to make it.

When Rebekah or the church searches for a larger perspective on what is going to come of this internal struggle, the easy and predictable response is that there is a division coming. A shift from rural to urban is anticipated. A shift from patriarch (Isaac) to matriarch (Rebekah) is already underway. What shift today do you see as building on these shifts of the past?

What do you consider your birthright to be - beloved? assured? - and what is it worth to you? Perhaps the question of Matthew about what sort of seedbed you are, may here be looked at in terms of what kind of seed you are.

At what point do you think Isaac rued having prayed for children by Rebekah? He seems to have gotten more than he expected, which may be as great a difficulty as getting less.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/genesis-2519-34.html

 

 

In light of the parable of the sower we would claim the problem was that Rebekah was some blackbird she-devil, ultra-frigid, or shallow beyond belief. Obviously barrenness is a situation that calls out for a prayer that will call out G*D.

If we were to take a second look, beyond our culture’s male privilege, we might see low motile sperm that did not have vitality traced back shock to a newly hormonal Isaac all but sacrificed. His body’s reaction, “I’m never going to try that with a child, no children for me.”

Here the storyline is that such that Isaac had a conversion experience to wanting a child or at least wanting Rebekah to not be embarrassed by not having a child and a prayer was more than answered. It was as if G*D says, “OK, you want to play games around conception, here’s a trick for you.”

In usual circumstances sowing millions of sperm get you a yield of (1) one. Here it doubled that, but still pretty profligate sowing. If it was prayer, perhaps we can say (1) one prayer yielded a yield of (2) two. When “division” is factored in, we may be at a final yield of (1/2) one-half.

So where does all this silly playing around get us, beyond a doctoral thesis? First, that parables are tricky when applied to a particular situation. Second, we still attribute qualities to physical characteristics (ginger ruddiness) or situations that call forth a nickname (Jealous Jacob).

From almost sacrificed Isaac we get Jacob, whose sons almost sacrificed one of their own. And how much further have we grown in our divisions and sacrifice of one another? Consider the schism talk in The United Methodist Church and its sacrifice of LGBTQ persons.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/07/genesis-2519-34.html