Preached at St. Mark's Church, Teaneck, NJ, on July 16th, 2023.
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67, Psalm 45:11-18, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Through the written word and the spoken word, may we come to know Your living Word. Amen.
Thus Esau despised his birthright.
Not a sentence you hear everyday, and the small group of folks that I was sitting with remarked on this and other aspects of the story. Typical commentary on this passage paints Esau as a physical, even crude man, one writer going as far as to compare him to a dog who has little appreciation for the better things in life, like his little brother’s cooking which he describes so eloquently as “that red stuff.” One must wonder if despised was the best possible translation… perhaps disregarded would be more accurate. In the moment, he was hungry, and his brother Jacob had food, and Esau told him what he wanted to hear in order to get some of it. Although life then for most people was considerably harder than what we’re used to, as Isaac’s favorite son, perhaps he was, like many of us who grew up in relative privilege, used to shooting off his mouth knowing Daddy would fix it later.
But this careless exchange was enough to seal his fate in history. Esau’s act is referred to disparagingly by Paul several times. His seemingly rash decision to trade his inheritance for one meal gets him branded as “one whose god is his stomach” … relatable … and his apparent lack of focus on societal expectations and future material security somehow makes him an “enemy of the cross of Christ” … a cross he would have no means of knowing was coming some 1,500 years later, more or less.
Jacob, by contrast, is described as “a quiet man, living in tents,” which I heard as “an avid reader who avoids getting sweaty or dirty,” but that may be projecting a little. He was also a lot more calculating than Esau. One must wonder what their relationship was like that he would place such a high price on sharing some food with his own twin, who at least appears to be pulling his own weight in the family. Esau apparently forgot about it pretty quickly, but Jacob, whose name literally can mean “he deceives”, stored this away for later when it would prove useful. In a subsequent chapter, he engages in an act of trickery at his mother’s behest to ensure it is Jacob rather than Esau that receives their father Isaac’s blessing from his deathbed, so perhaps it was in character.
As a result, Jacob is set up as not only the heir to Isaac’s dynasty but ensuring his place in the lineage, outlined in Matthew’s Gospel, that continues from Abraham through some forty generations, to Jesus. As you’ve heard before, inheritance was an-all consuming concern in the culture to the point where people resorted to all kinds of things including incest and murder to ensure the lineage is known and pure, or at least appears to be. So the patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith were--like us--not without their flaws.
In our small group conversation, I wondered aloud whether Esau was prone to hyperbole or was literally starving, given the writer made a point of saying he was “a man of the land” and an accomplished hunter. The person across from me piped up, saying that in fact he could have meant it literally, given that someone in our society could have four degrees and still be making $18 an hour. That may sound like a lot until you know that White Castle starts its employees at $15 and probably also provides some free food. I also realized the one telling me this speaks from experience, and then felt like the largely random circumstances of my own relative financial comfort might have made me read this story through the lens of my own privilege.
As you may have guessed, all of this took place at the church-wide revival meeting called It’s All About Love, which JoAnn, Joan, Marsha, and I attended in Baltimore earlier this week. With a threefold focus on racial reconciliation, creation care, and evangelism, the event was intended to help reawaken our sense of mission and explore what we might do with the gifts we have, both as a parish and within the wider church.I know it’s a cliche, but I wished I could bottle up the energy in that room and save it for the times when we could use a boost. The preaching, the music, and the wisdom that was shared with us was intended for us to bring back to you, and over the coming months we will look for opportunities to do that. Besides our very charismatic presiding bishop the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, we heard from the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, the first out gay person elected a bishop in our church; Julia Ayala-Harris, the first Latina president of the House of Deputies; The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, whose brainchild the event was; and others, some of whom I will mention shortly
But for today, I want to ask you, what aspects of our own birthright are we willing to “despise” for the sake of the Gospel?
In the beginning of the Sacred Ground curriculum, which Canon Spellers also spearheaded, she talks about the Episcopal Church’s legacy as the church of America’s aristocracy and what that has meant in its relationships with black and brown people. As we admire the grand structures of our cathedrals and universities, many of them funded by the philanthropy of the titans of commerce and industry that once graced our pews, can we do so mindful of the cost in terms of labor, much of it unpaid, that made those generous gifts possible? Sarah Augustine, whose roots are in the Pueblo (Tewa) nation, has spent her life working to undo the impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery, a papal decree which emboldened Europeans to colonize and subjugate much of the indigenous population of the world. She challenged us to learn about how our investments are still being used in ways that harm vulnerable populations and find ways to reduce that impact.
Brian McLaran’s book Do I Stay Christian? explores the many very valid reasons so many people, including many of our own kids, are doing just the opposite. These include the very public downfall of religious leaders and the bald institutional hypocrisy that is so easy to point out. As we recall our baptismal covenant and strive to live into its mandate of welcome and inclusion, can we do so without smugness when it seems that so many of our fellow Christians seem to have lost the plot?
Theologian Dr. Kwok Pui-Lan shared some sobering reminders from recent news about the urgent warning signs our Earth has sent us about the state of her climate. Even this morning a tornado alert was issued in Morris County. Are we willing to inconvenience ourselves or change the way we do things if it means even an incremental reduction in the harm our activities do to the planet?
And overarching all of this, Bishop Curry exhorted us to remember that--as the title of the conference suggests--love for God and our neighbor should be at the core of everything we do. He quoted Jimi Hendrix as saying,
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will know peace.”
I marked 20 years since my first visit to St. Mark’s last month. I am happy to the point of tears more Sundays than not for the love and community that we share in this place. There is a new sense of energy and purpose and we have some new faces, for which we are so, so very grateful. But we still have a lot of room. I am not suggesting we should be as careless with the nearly one hundred years’ investment of time, talent and treasure that is St. Mark’s as Esau was with his inheritance, but are we as a faith community willing to--in the words of William Sloane Coffin quoted by Bishop Beckwith in his dismissal blessing--“willing to risk something big for something good,” if it means that those who do not yet feel welcome or invited or even SAFE inside these walls come to know that love as a result?
I challenge you to ponder these questions in your heart, as those of us who attended have been doing. Think about them and share your ideas with your vestry, the guilds and committees, and ask questions about the groups you don’t know much about, and maybe take a leap of faith and sign up for something new. Or just start a conversation at coffee hour with a person you haven’t met yet.
As I said, there will be opportunities to learn more about this program and discuss its implications in the days ahead. I hope you will join us and feel some of the joy and new purpose we experienced. We have so many gifts here at St. Mark’s and the latitude to reach out in many ways to the community around us, through our music, our outreach and--most importantly--the opportunities to worship God in ways that help heal the friction between races and cultures and respect our fragile earth.
As JoAnn pointed out on our trip home, these efforts may be like the seeds the sower was scattering in various places in today’s Gospel, in that some of them may yield fruit and some may not. May we together develop a spiritual green thumb and thus yield an abundant harvest of Christ’s love for one-another and all those we encounter.
Will you pray with me?
O God of wondrous power and still more wondrous love, you who have borne us from chaos to creation, from dry bones to dancing flesh, from death to life: Renew and revive your Episcopal Church, especially as we gather this summer for worship, fellowship, learning, and action. Send your Spirit to set us, our ministries, and our communities ablaze, so that the world might come to see and know us as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement – bold, open-hearted bearers of Good News, repairers of the breach, and stewards of creation who truly look, live, and love like Jesus. We make our prayer to him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. Amen.