Rev. Dr. M. Taylor Bach

Genesis 27:1-29 Matthew 21:28-32

Last week, I announced to you that I was beginning a series of sermons on the stories in the Bible. This morning, I would like you to consider two different kinds of Biblical stories. There are historical stories which are stories about things that actually happened but they are still in a story form in order to make their theological point and then there are fictional stories. The two readings that Tom just read would illustrate this. The reading about Jacob and Esau is an historical story. The parable of the two sons was simply a fictional story that Jesus made up to illustrate a point. So as we understand the kinds of literature that we are reading, what is called the literary forms, we will understand better what the message is.

I want to focus on the Jacob and Esau story this morning. The way the story goes is that Jacob and Esau were twins. Esau was born first and the Bible records that as he came out of his mother's womb, Jacob was grasping his heel. This may have been symbolic of the second son trying to catch up or overtake or pull back the first one, representing some kind of sibling rivalry competition between the two. Jacob, the youngest, in modern English might be considered a nerd. Esau was more a man's man, the hunter, warrior type. They were really quite different even though they were twins. Interestingly, the Bible records that there was favoritism by the parents. The father favored Esau and apparently loved Esau better and the mother, Rebekah, favored Jacob and apparently loved Jacob better. Rebekah and Jacob conspired against Isaac and Esau and since they, probably as nerds, were more gifted with the ability to think and deceive, they created some deceptions and lies in order for Jacob to get the birthright which is the inheritance of the father and the blessing of the father given to the first-born son. Now blessings in those days actually had far more value to people than we attribute to them. When I give you a blessing at the end of the service, I am not sure many of you register the force and the power that calling God's favor upon you represents. Certainly in the Old Testament days, they understood that and they realized that when God's power was called down to bring favor upon the individual, that meant it would happen and the favor would be there. It was important to receive the blessing of one's dad and it was important to be the first-born and get the major portion of inheritance. As the story goes, Jacob cheated Esau out of the inheritance by creating a delicious meal and when Esau came in exhausted from his hunting, as he was a young boy, he was willing to trade his inheritance for the meal not realizing what he was doing. So that was deception number 1  Jacob stole the major portion of the inheritance. Then the second deception was the one that Tom just read where in this case, Jacob stole the parental blessing of Isaac his father. He therefore was to receive the favor of the father and the favor of God because he received the major blessing.

The Bible records that after those two deceptions were done, Esau was filled with a murderous rage towards his brother. But rather than kill his brother, Esau was separated from his brother for years going ahead and creating his farms and using what he had received. He created quite a nice living for himself and his large family. Sometime later, Jacob began to have pangs of guilt and felt badly about what he had done, that he had cheated his brother. So he decided that he would try to make it right. How would he do this? Because he had inherited most of his father's wealth, he got together the best of his livestock (a good portion of it) and sent it out in front of him. Then he sent messengers with the message that he would like to meet with Esau. When Esau was looking for the coming of Jacob not knowing what to expect, he suddenly saw these herds of animals coming towards him and wondered& “What in the world is this all about?” When the animals got near him, the messengers said, “Your brother Jacob is sending you these as a gift. He is giving these to you because he is seeking your forgiveness and feels so badly for what he has done.” At the end of this great herd of animals was Jacob. When Jacob finally arrived, every so many steps he would bow down and prostrate himself in front of Esau. Esau grabbed him and pulled him up and said, “I forgive you. It is not a problem. It turned out that I amassed my own wealth. I created my own farmlands and have my own livestock. I don't even want your livestock, your gifts, because I have enough of my own.” The two embraced. The scripture records they got along well. So it was one of those Biblical stories with a happy ending. Do all sibling rivalry stories in the Bible have a happy ending? Most of them seem to. Is that how it is in real life? Not always.

Another Biblical story that you will remember is a story of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph was the youngest. His brothers were jealous of him because his father favored him. He gave Joseph a gorgeous multicolored coat and the other brothers didn't get that. Then Joseph committed a terrible mistake. He had a dream and rather than keeping his mouth shut, he told his brothers about the dream. The dream was that crops would grow up and the crops would represent the brothers and then a single crop would grow up and it would represent Joseph and then in the dream all the other crops would bow down to Joseph. You can just imagine what the brothers thought when they heard this dream& “You arrogant little rat.” What did they think? “We are not going to bow down to you. You are the youngest son. What do you mean, you think we are all going to bow down to you at some point. That is nuts.” They were highly jealous of their brother. So when they were out in the field one day, they had the opportunity in their anger to throw him down a well. Their first thought was to leave him there to die when off in the distance, they saw some merchants coming. They decided, “We will get some financial gain out of this,” so they sold their brother to the merchants as a slave. They then took his coat, covered it with animal blood, took it back to their father and said, “Hate to tell you this but your youngest son was killed by a wild animal.” They shared the wealth they gathered from selling the younger son. As that story goes, many many years later, Joseph ended up in Egypt where he interpreted dreams for the Pharaoh. He found great favor with the Pharaoh who put him in charge of all the food production. When a great famine came, Joseph's father and brothers were desperate for food. They heard that Egypt had plenty and they could go to the head of agriculture (not knowing it was Joseph) and perhaps with silver, purchase food. So they went and you probably know the rest of the story. Joseph ultimately forgave them. They were reunited. Joseph saw that they were given new land which was highly productive. He saw that they got all of their food and again it was one of those Biblical stories with a happy ending.

The two stories emphasize that the injured party was willing to forgive. In the first story, it was Esau willing to forgive Jacob. And the second story, it was Joseph willing to forgive his brothers for the injury that they had caused him. So that is a clue on how we are to handle sibling rivalry that doesn't work out well for us. We need to be willing to forgive those who have injured us. That is a theme that frequently goes along in the Bible. A disciple once asked Jesus, “Well, how much should we forgive someone who offends us?” And Jesus said, “Seven times seventy times,” which is an extremely high number. In Biblical terms, it symbolizes the perfect number. So there should be no end to our forgiveness. Jesus even told them, “To the degree that you forgive others, that is the degree that I will forgive you.” Forgiveness becomes the theme of these Bible stories.

Was there any sibling rivalry in Jesus' family? I grew up thinking that Jesus didn't have any family. I was taught that Mary was a virgin. But studying the Bible more closely, we see that Jesus had brothers and Mary was a virgin before Jesus was born but after Jesus was born, she was a homemaker and a wife like anyone else. So the Bible records that Jesus did have brothers and probably sisters. But as you know, they didn't count the women in those days so the women aren't mentioned in the Biblical narrative. We look to see, are there disciples of Jesus from His own family? Did His brothers and sisters become his disciples? Did they follow Him? Or was that too big of a stretch for them? How do you compete in a family with a son who is God? How do you do that? What kind of family dynamics must they had? Mary and Joseph surely had their hands full because Jesus was so extraordinary and the other brothers were ordinary. It looks like from the Biblical evidence that only one brother became a disciple of Jesus and accepted and proclaimed His divinity. That one even worshiped Him and admired Him. That is James who wrote one of the letters that is recorded in the Bible. So we have one of Jesus' siblings writing one of the most profound epistles of the Bible. Did Jesus maybe have to forgive His brothers? I would think so. So that theme of forgiveness appears again. Did James experience forgiveness perhaps for being a pain to Jesus as they were growing up? I suspect that's probably true, too. There are big gaps in the Biblical stories here so we have to use our imagination a little bit but it is not a stretch to think of the family dynamics. How many of you have brothers and sisters that you have had conflict with? How many of you have had family difficulties that perhaps show up at a Christmas party or something like that? Did the difficulties burst out with a great deal of discomfort as one person confronts the other or something of that nature? Virginia Satir was a psychiatrist who died fairly recently. I studied her research in my counseling training. She did an experiment called “Shaping”. She would have families come into her office and would ask the children, “Who do you think your parents love the most of the children in your family?” She had them line each other up in the order of who was loved most down to who was loved least. She said in about 80% of the cases, the children would always put themselves last and put another brother or sister first. By and large, they all perceived that their brother or sister or multiple brothers or sisters were loved more than they were. So this seems to almost be the human condition, that as we grow up, we tend to think that we weren't loved as much as someone else in the family. This provides the dynamic of some sibling rivalry.

How is that relevant to us this morning? This morning we are going to have our annual congregational meeting. I frequently say from the pulpit that we are a faith family. I overheard one member of our congregation once comment that she thought that my wife and I favored a particular family more than another family. I couldn't help but think, “Sibling rivalry in our own faith family is alive and well.” I want it to be known that I make an effort to not know what anybody gives financially so that I can treat you all the same. Zondervan's Study Bible says that parental favoritism can be poisonous and children's rivalry can bear poisonous fruit. Well, we don't want any of that in this congregation. We try to treat everyone equally but obviously, the people who volunteer the most, get the most attention. Why is that? Because they are here. That's all. It is not that we choose one group over another. Who gets attention are the ones who are present and make themselves known to us by their volunteer time. We try to treat people equally. We try to have the kind of family that perhaps we didn't have growing up. We try to eliminate any favoritism and sibling rivalry. I'm happy to say that in the almost eight years that we've been here, I don't experience tension or rivalry or conflict going on in our congregation. I view that as a tremendous gift of the Holy Spirit. We want to keep it that way. We'll have our congregational meeting today. In that meeting I will thank people and I want you to know that you are loved and cared for in this congregation.

As members of Pilgrim, we also want an on-going happy ending like the Biblical stories where people get along and get together and there is a unity of spirit. How do we do that? We do that by focusing on the life of Christ and making that life the center of our interrelationship with one another. Ultimately, it gets down to the one commandment that was given to us, that we love one another as He loves us and that we bear one another's burdens. Oh yes, and this often takes forgiveness of each other.