[Propertalk] Proper 10 a

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Well, a little closer to the wire than I might ordinarily wish, but 
there's still editing time!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY 
THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
GENESIS 25:19-34							              PROPER  10 (A)
ROMANS 8:1-11					 
13th JULY, 2014	
MATTHEW 13:1-9, 18-23				 
PSALM 119:105-112

	Families are interesting constructs. They make me wonder how they 
evolved, what the first families looked like. I can imagine that people 
would have started to group together for protection, for a sense of 
comfort in avoiding loneliness. As long as they were simply gathering 
vegetables and leaves, it would have been possible to eat whatever one 
found near where one slept. But as soon as these people had to roam 
farther away to gather fruit, cereals, legumes, and so on, and, 
especially, as soon as people needed to hunt, then forming some sort of 
loose bond in community would have registered as an advantage. Beside, 
living with one or two others would have allowed them to grunt at one 
another when the cable and cell phone service was down and there was 
nothing better to do. Pretty soon, attractions would have developed, and 
different people would have been identified with having special skills – 
in hunting game, in setting fires, in socialising children and the 
elderly, and the like. So the earliest glimmering of the idea of a 
family as we might define it began to take shape.

	From a religious perspective, also, we see how families may have been 
identified and validated. Two thousand years before Jesus’ birth and far 
farther back that then, certain norms must have been set up and 
codified, however loosely, so that those in a certain area might have an 
idea whose tree or cave was whose, which children belonged to whom, or 
how to deal with the older man who kept sitting out in the field, 
staring somewhat vacantly without much of a sense of purpose.

	It seems that the idea of responsibility, of relationship, of bonding 
must have developed reasonably early too when people discovered that 
communities had common goals and needs and that there ought to be a way 
to discover what was productive. Just when moral values developed, I 
don’t know. No doubt some cultural anthropologist would have some 
guesses.

	Whenever these began to be formulated, when we reach about two thousand 
years before Jesus’ birth, when we come to the time of Sarah and 
Abraham, we find that there are certain standards. Not the ten 
commandments, or anything as fancy as that. They didn’t come along for 
another seven or eight hundred years. Yet something governed how Sarah 
and Abraham and their neighbours made decisions.

	On the face of it, the first reading may have seemed as so much fluff, 
perhaps not really interesting, with little relevance, especially four 
thousand years after the fact. Yet within these verses we find a need to 
talk about organisation and, above all, about relationships. While 
people sat around their fires at night and, eventually, when their 
stories began to be written down, it became important to show the 
connectedness they shared with their ancestors, especially with the 
blessing God offers.

	We’re dealing with the sad story of Esau and Jacob – possibly the first 
written reference to a sharp, very underhanded, business deal. But the 
writer has to make sure that we understand where all this is coming from 
and why fraternal swindling has much significance. The twins were the 
grandsons of Sarah and Abraham – the second generation of that promised 
endless line of God’s blessing, not merely on that old couple but on all 
of history.

	It probably doesn’t always register – I know it took me a while before 
the familiar phrase finally clicked – but think back to the story of 
Mary rushing off to see her cousin right after Gabriel had asked for her 
cooperation with God in bringing to fruition the promised salvation for 
all people.

	Mary reached Elisabeth’s home and, in excited ecstasy, she sings her 
famous song, which connect Jesus’ impending birth with Sarah, Abraham, 
Rebekah, Isaac, Esau and Jacob. “He,” sang Mary, referring to God, “He 
remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, as he promised to 
our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.” 1

	I’d forgotten the way that the canticle is so explicit – as Mary 
herself must have been. God called Sarah and Abraham for a specific 
mission. God promised marvelous things; renown not so much because of 
what they themselves did, as significant as that was, but renown because 
of the relationship thread that was being spun even as Sarah and Abraham 
waited impatiently for their child to be conceived and born.

	We’re reminded of the struggle of Sarah and Abraham’s faith, and of the 
eventual birth of Isaac, followed by the tragic jealousy of Sarah and 
the making of Abraham’s first child, Ishmael, and his mother, Hagar, 
into despised refugees who had to flee for their safety, crossing 
borders, risking starvation, lack of shelter, dangerous tribal violence. 
So we hear of Isaac, and we’re reminded of how the joy of the old couple 
was eternally bound up with their lack of compassion and the 
undocumented status of Abraham’s first child.
	Family life can be intensely complicated. We should never take 
relationships for granted. We should always be on our guard to nurture, 
especially when things grow tense and difficult, when we think we may 
have reached the limits of our generosity and our patience.

	Then we watch and listen as we rediscover the pickiness and the 
difficulty of his engagement and marriage. Born in struggle, the 
unwitting source of conflict, Isaac and Rebekah married and prayed that 
they too would be blessed – as God’s promise intended – with a child. 
And so it is: a double blessing, twins who wrestled with one another 
from conception, each trying to outdo one another to find favour.

	Once again, the seed is sown and another decision has to be faced. 
Esau, to whom hunting and animal care came so naturally, who appealed to 
his father’s adventurous instincts – you might, today, almost get away 
with calling him a man’s man – suited to the rough and tumble of 
everything that life could throw at him. He was probably used to getting 
his own way. He’d have been used to bringing home the meal for the 
dinner table.

Then his brother Jacob, who stuck closer to home, watched the internal 
workings of family and relationships, probably saw the way his mother 
and father interacted, Did he learn his manipulative skills from them? 
Was this “family” as we’d like it to be or as we have to acknowledge 
that it becomes?

He recognized that he could twist his elder brother’s weakness – his 
hunger, his frustration, his vulnerability – and while he played on 
that, Esau gave way.

	What seed had been planted there? How was it growing? What does this 
say of the family of all God’s people?

	Each of us has a birthright. God loves every one of us and within us 
lies the gift of incredible potential in who knows how many different 
ways. The question of our life in and with God, then, revolves around 
how we search for our gifts, how we use them and, perhaps most 
important, how we help others to discover their own gifts, no matter how 
different they may seem from our own, because every seed is, of itself, 
a gift from God for the benefit of all.

	Of course, it takes will-power to be able to keep working on the search 
for and the application of our gifts. For some, this search can go on 
for decades before who we are, who we can be, who can help us on our 
pilgrimage, becomes apparent. But I believe that it’s not only possible, 
it’s likely, that at every step of our lives, nourishment is given to 
the seeds that have been planted, from Abraham’s time onwards, so that 
we will all flourish and bear fruit. It’s simply a matter of learning to 
deal with what may be frustration – hardness, rocks, thorns, shallow 
ground, call it what you will – sometimes it takes a great deal of 
will-power, and godly intuition, and, yes, a good deal of courage, to 
offer the right circumstances in which the gifts of God can blossom. 
And, sometimes, this can put us into places where we run into 
misunderstanding, and resentment, and even violent reactions.

	The late Henri Nouwen wrote, “Courage is connected with taking risks. 
Jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorbike, coming over Niagara Falls in a 
barrel, or crossing the ocean in a rowboat are called courageous acts 
because people risk their lives by doing these things. But none of these 
daredevil acts comes from the centre of our being. They all come from 
the desire to test our physical limits and to become famous and popular.

	“Spiritual courage ( – learning to grow into God and to allow God to 
grow within us – ) is something completely different. It is following 
the deepest desires of our hearts at the risk of losing fame and 
popularity. It asks of us the willingness to lose our temporal lives in 
order to gain eternal life.” 2

	And this, I think, lies at the heart of seeing how we are the seed of 
Abraham, how we ourselves, in addition to our gifts within, have been 
scattered by God to produce the fruits of the Spirit in the world: love, 
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and 
self-control. 3 This is how we are to be germinators of others’ seeds, 
the nursery of their faith and life, so that others may find their lives 
enriched and enhanced – not manipulated, not besmirched, not frustrated, 
not destroyed. I wonder sometimes whether Jesus hinted that we ourselves 
may harden the soil in which seeds can grow, that we drag boulders into 
other people’s paths, that we introduce weeds and invasive species where 
they don’t belong, simply in order to play Jacob to others’ Esau.

	Not that Esau was an angel, but remember how manipulative his younger 
brother was – and how manipulative we can be, given half a chance.

	Last week, a rabbi wrote, “Two of our worst fears have been realized in 
the same week.

      “Three Israeli teenagers were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, 
and three Israelis have confessed to murdering a Palestinian teenager in 
a despicable act of revenge.

      “We burn with sadness, anger and shame.
	
	 “There will be no silver linings here.

       “We can, however, show our true values in this time of tragedy:”

        Firstly, we have to make sure that justice is administered 
absolutely equally and, at the same time, that our hearts and minds are 
infused with merciful compassion and understanding.
	
	  “2. Proceed deliberately. Mobs rush to justice. We built our legal 
system in a less pressure-packed time so that we can use it now.

        “3. Extend compassion. (The rabbi wrote) I was very moved by 
Rabbi Yakov Nagen's FB post (in which he said,)

        “‘A short time after they found the bodies of the three boys, my 
friend Ibrahim from East Jerusalem called me to express his deep sorrow 
over the killings, and to convey that his heart is with the boys’ 
families.

        “‘I never imagined that a few days later, I would have to call 
him to express my deep sorrow for the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir from 
East Jerusalem, and to convey that my heart is with the boy’s family.

        “‘May their memories be a blessing.’

         “Amen, Rabbi Nagen.” concluded Salvador Litvak, the other 
rabbi. 4

         God has promised the seed. What we have to live with, to 
wrestle with, is sowing the seed – and nurturing it – with whatever it 
takes, no matter what it may appear to cost us.

NOTES:

1 	“Magnificat”, Canticle 3 in the “Book of Common Prayer”, page 50.

2	Henri Nouwen, quoted on Facebook, et al, e.g. 
http://www.itinerantpreacher.org/tag/henri-nouwen-society/  See also the 
blog at http://henrinouwen.org/daily_meditation_blog/

3	Galatians 5:22-23 New Jerusalem Bible translation

4	Accidental Talmudist 7th July 
https://www.facebook.com/accidentaltalmudist?fref=nf


Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)
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