Pentecost 7a
July 27, 2014
Genesis 29:15-29
I have said it before, but every time I do, I turn out to be wrong.
I am going to say it again though, this
is one of the most difficult texts I’ve ever attempted to preach on. If we take it just on its own merits, what is
there to say? There is no mention of
God. There is no mention of God’s
promises. There is no mention of the
fulfillment of God’s promises. It’s a
continuation of an ongoing soap opera of people deceiving each other and making
messes out of human relationships. Where is the good news to be found when a
man wakes up one morning and discovers that the woman that he thought he
married was the wrong woman? What
connection can we make to God’s promises when a man negotiates a business
contract using women as his wages? Why
did the people who assigned the readings for this year even think that this was
remotely preachable? Because it is not.
Not on its own anyways.
It seems we have approached a moment in the lectionary where a text
without context can become dangerous.
There are many, many, texts throughout scripture that, without context,
are dangerous because without context we can do with them what they wish, no
matter how badly we mangle what is actually meant by the passage as a
whole.
For example – In 1st Corinthians 10:13, Paul writes “God is faithful, and he will not let you
be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the
way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Which is a wonderful, hopeful
text…unless you are flailing in the waters of grief and suffering, about to
drown because, on your own, you can’t do it no matter how much faith you
have. I’ve heard this text preached in a
manner that individuals are encouraged to endure the awful things that life has
handed them because God will give them a way to endure it. But what about the woman in the abusive relationship?
What about the employee who is asked to do too much and paid too little but is
afraid to speak to his boss out of fear of retribution? What about the person
who has been so overcome by depression that death is starting to look like a
good way out? If you take a look at the context around it, however, Paul is
speaking to an entire community, so when he says you, he actually means
“y’all.” So, as a community, you will be able to endure when you lean on each
other in times of grief and temptation…and that brings a whole lot more hope
when we feel isolated. Lean in on your
community and together you will endure this.
So it can be with this text…one lesson
that we can take from this is - if you are willing to work really hard for what
you want, you will achieve it and maybe even wind up with more than you
expected. Now, on the surface, there
isn’t much wrong with the concept of hard work.
The most rewarding things in life are things that we work hard for, the
car we saved up for, the house we built with our own two hands, the first quilt
we finished sewing after months or even years of lessons and frustrations. But then we look around and we see the
families with parents working multiple minimum wage jobs just so they can pay
their bills. We see the kids who come to
school hungry because the car that his single dad needs to get to work got a
flat tire and what money they had left for food was cut significantly so that
dad didn’t risk losing his job. There
are lots of people in our country who are working really hard to stay afloat
for whom being told that if they just work hard enough, they will get what they
want, is a slap across the face.
Or, one could make an argument based
solely off of this passage that using women as a salary option is acceptable…when
really, we know that while it was an accepted practice at the time, now…not so
much. I’m pretty sure that you fathers
in this room would have a pretty negative reaction if a man doing work for you
asked for your daughter as his wages.
If we look at the context, though, we
can find so much more…in fact, we have no other choice but to find what else
there is to this passage if we are going to talk about God or God’s promises,
or even make sense of Jacob’s marrying Leah and Rachel this week and Jacob’s
wrestling with God next week. Two weeks
ago, we hear God’s words to Rebekah that her twins would come to be two
nations…two nations that would be continually struggling against one
another…and that the older would serve the younger. That is, the promise that God made to Abraham
would be fulfilled through Jacob, not through Esau. And though it happened through Jacob and
Rebekah’s deception or Esau and Isaac, Jacob did become the one to whom the
birthright and the blessing were given.
Then last week, we heard God’s words
to Jacob that God would be with him until his promise to him was
fulfilled. That God would not leave
Jacob’s side. Though we don’t see it
directly in the text that we are presented with this morning, I invite you, in
this week, to read the passages that follow what we read this morning. For we will see in the verses and chapters to
come after Jacob’s being tricked into marrying both Leah and Rachel was the
beginning of a very visible fleshing out of the promise that God had made to
Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob himself.
To make them the ancestors of many nations, the ones who would have
descendants as many as the stars in the sky, the grains of sand in the desert,
the specks of dirt on the earth. For it
was through Leah and Rachel, and their two maids, that Jacob would become the
father of not one or two children…but of 13 children. 12 sons and 1
daughter. These sons would become the
twelve tribes of Israel.
And as the history of God’s people
continues, we will continue to see the dysfunction and the sin that will plague
God’s people. How, Jacob will deceive Laban,
just as Laban had deceived him before.
How Leah and Rachel will struggle against one another out of jealousy
that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah on Leah’s part, and jealousy that Leah
was able to bear more children that Rachel on Rachel’s part. We will see brothers avenge their sister
after she is sexually assaulted and then turn and sell their brother out of
jealousy. And we will see forgiveness
and compassion as Jacob and Esau reunite.
As Joseph and his brothers reunite.
And above all, we will see God at
work, fulfilling his promises even in the midst of the messes that we humans
make out of relationships.
The God we know and love and serve is
a God who never gives up on his people.
When Adam and Eve sinned, he forgave them and provided for them. When Cain killed Abel, God protected him from
retribution. When sin survived the flood
and God promised to never flood the earth again, God has tried again and again
to find ways to get through to us a positive way to make his plans for us come
to fruition. And yet, time and again we
deceive ourselves and one another into
thinking that we are doing good enough…but are we?
A man in Minnesota shot a woman the
other night for asking him to not ride his lawn mower on her front lawn. The shootings in Chicago continue to make
national news headlines every week. As
long as there is violence and hatred instead of love and peace and justice, we
are not living up to the plan that God has for us. And yet that doesn’t keep God from
working. In those pockets of the world
where darkness seems to reign, there is always a light shining somewhere. In those places that we think are lost
causes, somewhere there is hope. In
those locations where violence is seemingly never ending, somewhere there is
peace. Because God hasn’t abandoned
them. Just like God won’t abandon us…
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