NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
(17th July) 2005
Rom 8.1-25
Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43
A week ago we heard the story of Esau,
the hairy man, being cheated of his birthright by the wily younger brother
Jacob. Esau, you may recall, was famished, and surrenders his right to
inheritance for the immediate gratification of a plate of pottage.
There are a number of ways we might water down that story, one that
has always struck me as a study in the ways in which slimy cunning over common
sense. There is a sense in which Esau deserved to lose that which was his by
right – he was hardly likely to have been at death’s door if he was able to hold
a conversation with his wily brother, and so it seems he was is a sense simply
irresponsible in giving away that which should by rights have been his.
Perhaps indeed he was no more than a paradigm of the twenty first
century – for surely more than any other at least in the last twenty ours is
the era of instant gratification. “Hello, I love you won’t you tell me your
name” wrote tragic icon Jim Morrison in the era of hippiedom. In his day the
words were shocking and provocative, risqué and daring. Today they are passé.
Almost any movie or tv programme works from the common assumption that if you
find someone cute you sleep with tem and then find out later if you have
anything remotely in common: “will you still love me tomorrow?” was Carole
King’s more honest and timeless cry from the heart. Esau was interested in the
tonight – Jacob, however slimy he was, was interested in tomorrow.
In that alone there is a message for us as the people of God. We are
called not to live as a people with no tomorrow but as a people who believe
that tomorrow is God’s tomorrow. W are called to live as a people who believe
in the judgement of God. Many of the parables of Jesus are parables of
judgement- and this is especially and disproportionately the case in the
Matthew account of the Jesus story. Will you still love me tomorrow? The
gospel, particularly in Paul’s hands, is clear that we cannot earn the love of
God, yet there are strong hints that we should at the very least live and act
as though we had to. Therein lies a paradox at the heart of Christianity: we
cannot earn our ouvre to God, yet
we should live as though we are desperate to please our God and our judge, for
he sees us as if though the eyes of our neighbour.
Jacob though stands for something else. What Jacob does in tricking
the not-very-bright Esau is far from a model of how we are to behave in the
service of God. Yet God has revealed the divine name as not being a name,
controlled and neatly tucked into a box by the speaker, but an action. “What is
your name?” asks Moses, and God, who will not be backed into a corner replies
with the indefinable sentence “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will be.”
God demonstrated this in the lives of the Fathers, Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, long before Moses encounters the divine presence at the burning
bush. Esau may be not very bright, and Jacob may be a slime-ball, but God turns
their rivalry into one of the great tales of faith. For Jacob, over the next
several weeks of our readings, grows into the great father of faith that he
tricks Esau into letting him become.
God’s will is done, and is done despite our human foibles. This
willing of God is in our story today ratified by a promise: “Know that I am with you and will
keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not
leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” As was the case with the
promise given to Jacob’s grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, God is faithful to
his word. God’s word is action. As we
shall see in weeks to come, the people of God are born of this determination of
God. This is the promise in which we too stand: “Know that I am with you and
will keep you wherever you go…”
TLBWY
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