"Treasuring, Confessing, Reconciling" Thanksgiving 2014

Sermon November 23, 2014

Deuteronomy 8:7–18 

Psalm 65 

2 Corinthians 9:6–15 

Luke 17:11–19

“Treasuring, Confessing, Reconciling”

God, who brings slaves into freedom, water to dry lands, bounty to scarcity, blessing to the poor, generosity to the needy, food for the hungry, and health to the ailing, we approach you in humility and gratitude in this season of harvest. Though we may not be as close to the fields as we once were, we celebrate all you give and all we already have. May our fullness be shared abundantly with those in lean times, may our hearts be opened to all. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Through an exploration of his own family’s history my husband, Carl, has discovered that his great-grandmother was Otoe with tribal roots in what is now western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. She gave up that identity to become a part of the dominant culture. Her identity, as often happens, was covered up because of the shame attached to being Indian by white Americans.  In our dialogue, his voice represents the indigenous voice. Mine represents most of our voices, the voice of the immigrant. 

One:         (immigrants) This is the promised land. What are you doing here?
Two:  (indigenous) This is the good land, our sacred home.
One:  You are but Canaanites in the land.
Two:  We are custodians of the land.
One:         You are uncivilized natives.
Two: We are the indigenous owners.
One: God promised us this land.
Two: God entrusted this land to us.
One: You have not developed this land. You don’t deserve it.
Two: We have sustained this land, its life and its soul. 
One: What do you know of soul?
Two: We know the spirit of this land; do you?
One: We know the Creator who promised us this land.
Two: We know the Creator’s spirit deep within this land.
One: Anyway, we claim the right to remove you from this land.
Two: A right to poison our land, our water, and our children?
One: You are in the way of progress for a superior people.
Two: We have a close kinship with the land and its animal life.
One: You are living here wild anyway.
Two: That’s the kind of racism that poisoned our lives – and yours.
One: This is the promised land; it’s ours now.
Two: This is a sacred land; we are still its custodians. (Seasons of the Spirit, Thanksgiving Service 2014)

We come together this morning in worship carrying within us the conflicts of history. We come bringing with us the varying cultures and traditions of our celebrations, rituals, and worship. Even within Christianity, we bring various hopes and dreams, different memories, and diverse backgrounds. These differences reveal within us the need we have as people of faith to be thankful everyday, to confess not only our participation in systemic racism and violence, but our continuing benefits from it, and how we are going to walk the road that leads to reconciliation and reparation. 

Many, if not most, cultures in history have celebrated some kind of harvest festival where they lifted up with joy, the time of gathering in the fruits, grains, and other produce when they were ready. Of course this kind of gathering and appreciating shifts season as geography shifts, but most of the time the harvest celebrations began as some kind of dormancy, like winter, a dry season, or a very wet season, like monsoon,  were about to begin. 

People celebrate the gathering up and storing of abundance, giving thanks to God—sharing through parties and other festivities. And in this nation, because we are a society with many cultures, there are lots of stories about how, when, and who started our celebration, but all of the stories are about giving thanks for what we have. 

Our stories and traditions are about seeing the wealth we have for what it is, as well as seeing it for what it can do. Unless we appreciate that the resources we have are from God, they will rust and fade, rot and corrupt, they will, unless they are shared out to those who need to be nurtured and encouraged. Because in the end, nothing we have is our own. All that we have belongs to God, the source of all, the source of our very lives. 

And yet, it often seems as if we have often forgotten whose creation it is and whose people we are. We may have spoken the right words and talked a good game, but have often behaved without regard to the God who made us, the God who made everything. 

In our text from Deuteronomy we heard the promises God made through Moses, the promises God made about the Promised Land. When we pray with thanksgiving, we remember God and all that God has made and all that God has done. We remember the land beneath our feet. The soil itself and all that it provides through its particular fertility. We remember the water we must drink to stay alive, as it flows from below the ground and rains down from above, watering us and the food sources we need. We remember the precious, at least costly, minerals buried in the ground that we mine to create material comforts and possessions. And we remember the ingredients of the food we rely on for nourishment. We are to remember in all of these components of our lives that God is the source—that it is God who has provided, not the power of our own hands—but it is God. 

When we idolize economic independence in our culture, we disregard God and say, “I own my house because I worked hard to earn it.” But any claim about attaining what we possess exclusively through our own efforts is a God-denying act that forgets about God. 

While we are certainly created to work for what we need, what we do to satisfy our material desires call us to confess the effects our actions have had upon many of God’s children in this world. When we thank God for all that we have, we cannot forget that much of what we have was gained less expensively by us through unjust labor and inhumane work environments. The land itself that we live on was acquired by the deaths by war and disease of the peoples, tribes, and nations who lived here before most of our ancestors came and claimed to have discovered it. 

When we give thanks to God for what we have and how we live, we can’t forget those who work to provide it and those who have lived in these lands, enjoying its riches for thousands of years before most of our ancestors left their native lands. 

We are called upon to confess, to repentantly name the heinous acts that have often followed when we take possession of the natural resources we thank God for. We have to remember that the destruction of a lands or a people are not acts of gratitude, but fly in the face of the God we worship. Everything we have comes with a price, not just the labor of our hands, but the labor and sometimes the lives of others. 

On Thanksgiving Day we do celebrate all that we have and the creation that God made. We celebrate with gratitude, and yet we are also called to realize that much of what we have was taken from others. As the immigrants to this land moved west, people were forced from their homes and villages by force of arms and by misunderstood or deceptive sale or trade. Many people disappeared through diseases for which the first residents had no immunity. 

So we stand in this place in history, expressing gratitude for what we have while realizing that much of what we have was gained at many points in history by false, violent, or apathetic actions. In other words, people lied and cheated, killed and tortured, and usually didn’t really care that the other human beings who had lived and thrived here before. 

Here, in these lands, the peoples who lived here went by many names. Some of those names are Weas and Piankashaws, Kickapoos, Mascoutens, Miami, Wiandot, Kaskaskia, the Cahokia, the Peoria, the Tamaroa, Moingwena . . . and so many others. Some finally took a stand here at the Wabash because they were tired of forced removal, losing family and identity again and again. The violence escalated until some tribes disappeared and others turned into residents of reservation lands in what would become Oklahoma. That land was also taken as when immigrant people moved into it in the land-runs of 1889 and 1893.

We can be grateful for all that God has created, but not without confessing and once we have confessed, we have to act on our contrition. 

Apologies would be a good first start. Christianity carries with it the shame of conquest as well. Though our faith and the work of Jesus arose from a movement against the empire of Rome, Christianity has become the faith of those in power. We have to acknowledge our part and our subsequent benefit. 

Christianity—through Rome and into the European kingdoms and empires, flowing right into the growth of the United States as a world power—was distorted into the religion of conquest. There are lots of historical events that show us this shift from what Jesus taught to how we live, and we need to know those events. So we need to apologize, to God, to the people who were tortured and killed by our ancestors and to the people who continue to suffer because of those actions. 

And then we need to do something about it. We need to do something for children in the Little Singer Community School near Winslow, Arizona who attend school in buildings built during the depression. They have less than a 25% proficiency in reading and math. In addition to 81 students, Little Singer Community School is also home to asbestos, mold and scores of mice. Students have to carry their seats from class to class, presumably because the school can't afford chairs for each classroom. 

We need to address why and how 1 in 4 Native Americans live in poverty and continually face double-digit unemployment rates. They also lack access to healthcare and have a lower life expectancy than average. 

We need a systemic way of addressing this racism with regard to native peoples all over our country and around the world. We need to begin by righting our attitude toward the land we have gained, doing more than using it up as if it were not sacred by virtue of its Creator. We need to remember God and be grateful. We can look at the people who were entrusted with this land before and realize that our subsequent ownership and use has been greedy and wasteful. 

We need our consciences raised, building relationships, and begin a process of reconciliation the victims past actions. We need to hear what the other has to say. 

One:         Let us talk.
Two:  Let us talk.
One:   Let us listen to each other.
Two:  Let us listen to each other. 
Both:      And let us find ways to share. (Seasons of the Spirit, Thanksgiving Service 2014)

To the glory of God. Amen.

"Take Action" Sermon August 24, 2014

Sermon August 24 2014

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Psalm 124

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

“Take Action”

O God of liberation, you call us to take action, and to live in the world – a world of brokenness and pain. We thank you for all those who act on behalf of others; we thank you for those who use the gifts you have given to do your will. May they inspire us to live into your call to take action. May the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts,  the work of our hands, feet, minds, and hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeember. Amen.

She shook with fear, wondering what terror the day would bring. Yesterday, she had heard the cries of the mother next door as she found out her son had been killed by those in power. Her own son was blessedly alive, but every day the fear was worse. Every day she wondered if this would be the day he was killed. Her people had come to this place of fear, this place and time when they wondered if they would survive—at all. They wondered if the people in power would kill all of their sons, letting them die out slowly, or even begin to kill all of them like they were killing their sons.

This mother was like other mothers, mothers who fear for the lives of their sons at the hands of power and violence. She was like mothers who wondered what his life would be like if he did survive. She wondered if he would grow up in anger or if her love would protect him. She wondered if there was anything she could do to make his life a good one, anything.

* * *

The story really began a generation or two earlier, when one young man was sold into slavery. A couple of weeks ago, we read the story of Joseph and his brothers who sold him because of their jealousy. And by doing so, they put him in exactly the right situation for them to be ruled by him because in slavery he was favored by the Pharaoh of his day and ruled for that king.

And as our text today says, that Pharaoh had died and at least one more had taken his place—this one had no connection to Joseph or at least had no concern for Israel’s descendants. He saw an opportunity for free labor. They had been rescued by Egypt, but now they would work. They had been guests; now they were slaves. Slaves, then and now, have no voice. Slaves, in all times and places, work for the sake of work receiving almost nothing for their effort. Slaves, especially those enslaved because of their ethnic background, are stripped of their dignity and kept enslaved because those in power teach them they have no value as human beings. But that never lasts, humanity rises above that falsehood—humanity and the image of God within produces people who will not bear that weight for long.

People who are taken advantage of will not stand forever under that kind of abuse—the kinds of systems that strip people of their humanity push people to the extreme. The kinds of systems that use wealth and poverty, race, gender and gender identity, and sexual orientation to categorize and value us according to those categories strip us all of our true selves. The energy we spend, alone, trying to make sure that justice never truly happens saps us of potential and always has.

But when we watch, when we listen, when we pay attention to the best of us, we know that there are those who will not stand for the terror and the violence of oppression. There are those who will risk the wrath of the powerful to take a stand. In our scripture today, two women named Shiphrah and Puah are those people, the people who stand against power—and they lie to the face of power, too.

I chose two pictures today for the front of the bulletin, one of two women, one is holding a baby, called Shiphrah and Puah defy Pharaoh. The other is an icon called Perpetual Felicity, which refers to two women martyred in Carthage in 202 A.D. because they identified themselves as Christians and refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman Emperor. They were two women who stood up to the power of Rome as Shiphrah and Puah stood up to the Pharaoh of Egypt. They did it because of Pharaoh’s fear of the men the boys would grow into. He was more afraid of them than he was greedy to use their labor to build his cities. 

Certainly the story of the midwives and the mother who protected her son from the Egyptian murders was told to reveal who Moses was and where he came from, but in the telling we receive a teaching about what we can do in the face of injustice. Shiphrah and Puah were Hebrew women, Hebrews and Israelites seem to be equated here and into the next chapters of Israel’s history. When they were told to kill the male babies of the Hebrew women, they chose instead to lie to the king about the births they attended. And because they lied, the Pharaoh saw he’d have to be more direct. But they saved many boys, like it seems they saved the one born to the man and woman from the house of Levi. The Levite woman was the woman who shook with fear at what could happen to her boy.

The mother who feared for the life of her child could be many mothers—then and now. She could be the mother of a black or Hispanic male child in America today wondering, like my friend who lives just outside of Chicago, about her two young boys who are smart and beautiful and funny and African American. Statistically they are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than white children.[1] The mother in Exodus could be the mother of a young person of color who is more likely than a white child to be shot before he or she turns 18.[2] The Children’s Defense Fund reports that in 2008 and 2009, Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths, but were only 15 percent of the total child population. Her story was similar; she was a member of an oppressed population of Israelites or Hebrews in a land ruled by the Pharaoh, a man afraid of her infant son—and all of the other sons of her fellow Hebrew mothers.

This particular mother hit on a plan to trick the powerful people into saving her son’s life by appealing to their sense of decency, or at least the maternal instinct of the daughter of the Pharaoh. The midwives had shown bravery, she knew that. Her son had survived his birth. But soon he would be three months old, so she made a basket of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with pitch. She floated it in the Nile as a last ditch effort to save her son—if he could live, she had hope. If he could live, if any of those boys could live, then her people had hope.

But you know and she knew that her son was never really out of danger—he was a Hebrew male child in the land of the Egyptians, the land of the Pharaoh who feared what he and his people could do with their rising numbers and growing strength.

In this particular scripture, the women in the story were the ones with the opportunity to subvert the power of the established governmental authority and save lives. Each one did her part, each one knew that God was behind their action, that their faith in the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah (the mothers of the twelve tribes) was meant to instruct and inform the decisions they made for the sake of their people and for the sake of humanity.

It is often difficult to imagine how we are to respond to the powers of destruction—we may even imagine that the power of the oppressed is the power that threatens us. We may, as white, relatively affluent people think with the mind of Pharaoh and fear people who threaten the lives we enjoy living. Many of us stand in positions of relative power and feel the need to control and direct the lives of others. On the other hand, by virtue of a broader vision, we may see the world differently and make choices on behalf of the oppressed or the less powerful. We may not think we have a choice, but to follow orders or expectations, but we do have choices, like Shiphrah and Puah choose to defy Pharaoh and instead of exercising power as control, they used power as compassion.

We aren't going to receive orders to kill Hebrew babies, but we are given choices to collaborate as we vote to cut funding to educate the youngest members of our society or when young people find it easier to sell drugs than to find jobs. We have choices about control and compassion when we respond to need in our town, county, state, nation, and in our world. We can ignore—which is a choice—we can choose to exert control and support those who do. We can choose to have compassion on others—even if and when others do not do the same. We can choose to speak up and act up in the face of controlling, abusive power.

Shiphrah and Puah acted, what will we do?

---

[1] https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/what-school-prison-pipeline

[2] http://raniakhalek.com/2012/12/21/missing-from-the-gun-control-debate-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-of-color/

Sermon August 3 2014 Deepened Relationships

Sermon August 3 2014 

Genesis 32:22-31  

Psalm 17:1-7, 15 

Romans 9:1-5 

Matthew 14:13-21 

“Deepened Relationship” 

Life is a struggle. I don’t think there’s any real doubt about that. The chances of being conceived and the processes by which we are formed from a few cells into the complex, living beings we become are difficult and all but impossible. There are a number of things that can go wrong every step of the way from those few cells to our birth. Once we are born, life is no less a struggle. It’s just different. We depend upon adults to feed, clothe, and shelter us for years before we are capable of taking care of ourselves. And throughout our lives, we struggle to eat, learn, love, work, stay healthy or get healthy after illness, stay fit or get fit. We struggle to support ourselves and our families. We may struggle to find someone to love or to love someone with whom we struggle to stay in relationship. We desperately need one another, those closest to us and those far away, and yet those relationships cause us to struggle even more, I would say.  

God knows that life is a struggle—that life is busy, messy, and full of difficult times and difficult people—the ones we love and the ones we are still learning to love. God’s actions in history are always moving toward the greater good of humanity and the greater good of all creation. And sometimes God’s actions are difficult to understand, especially in the stories told to us from thousands of years of history and cultural change.  

The story of Jacob in today’s First Testament reading continues our exposure to those stories that happened so long ago and so far away. We’ve been reading the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah and with Abraham’s and Sarah’s descendants one event at a time for several weeks. This morning we read about another big event in Jacob’s life as God’s agent for his generation’s presence in that covenant. It was just in last week scripture that Jacob married Leah and Rachel. He lived in Haran with Laban for decades—he was given a chance to build his own flocks while he was there. With clever breeding methods, he increased his flocks at the expense of Laban. And over years of struggling with infertility and conflict between the women who were his four wives, his family has grown to include eleven of the thirteen children I mentioned last week.  

With God’s prompting, it seems, Jacob has decided to return to the land God promised him among the Canaanites. The land where he dreamed and God’s covenant became his. He was going back to the place he had named Bethel, the city of God.  

On the way back to Bethel, he has to reenter the land where Esau lived. Esau, the brother he tricked out of Isaac's blessing and his inheritance. So he was afraid and sent gifts ahead of him to appease his brother's anger. Then, as the text said, he sent his wives and children ahead so he could be alone, alone with God or alone with his own thoughts.  

Jacob had a lot to think about; he had had many years of experiences that he was bringing back to the land he had called home as a child. What do you suppose he was thinking about as he sat alone that night waiting to meet his brother again? And as he waited to take up his new life in the land God promised?  Nighttime was a dangerous time in that age and place. It was a time of wild animals, utter darkness, and when people then and sometimes now believed that spirits were free to interact with people. Nighttime was often seen as a time of chaos, like the great seas were a place of chaos, as well.  And then that night someone began to wrestle with him. Did he wrestle with chaos? Did he wrestle with justice? Did he wrestle with God? Whoever and whatever it was that someone wrestled with him until the sun began to come up.  

The struggles we experience in the most difficult times in our lives are often the events that are the most significant in shaping us. When I say most difficult, I don't necessarily mean just the worst things—the deaths of loved ones or another great catastrophe—I also mean times like the one Jacob was experiencing. He had come to a time of great transformation for his life. His had been a life of dependence, in many ways, up until this point. He was the younger son, the favorite son, the fugitive, the poor relation, the subservient son-in-law. Though he had been a father for years, but things were changing because when he crossed the Jabbok, he would become the founder of a nation and the ancestor of twelve tribes.  

The struggles we experience make us who we are. When we struggle to learn some skill or another, we either prevail and learn that skill or lose hope for the accomplishment behind. Either one shapes us. When we stand at a crossroads of decision: am I going to college right now?  Am I taking a job? Will I do both? Do you pursue a relationship with someone you have found you like? Will you or I seek out new friends or build and strengthen current relationships? Will you or I reach out, broaden our hearts to include those that others exclude?  

All the decisions we make have the potential to transform us as Jacob's decision to return to Bethel would change him. Oh, not in exactly the same way—but he decided to claim God's promise to him--the covenant of a nation, the covenant of a home and a family. And more significantly, God promised that God would never leave him. God accompanied him through all of the changes that Jacob experienced, the painful and the pleasant, those full of sorrow or betrayal, suspicion and accusation and those that were joyful and welcome.  

Think of a time when you have been aware of the presence of God in your life—or think of a time when you moved from a time of seeming alone, full of sorrow, or unsure of tomorrow and with time—perhaps suddenly, maybe gradually, you were assured, aware of God and had a certainty within. Sometimes these experiences are like a bolt of lightning—or like a night of wrestling when you are suddenly granted a new purpose, like the name that Jacob received. Sometimes we experience transformation over time—and we look back over our lives and recognize a moment when our lives began to turn in a new direction, toward God or God's purpose.  

Those moments may not mean moving from one land to another like it did for Jacob. The transformation that God brings in the difficult times, may be internal--that is, after all, the big change for Jacob as well. During the long time of wrestling with this strange man, Jacob persevered, and as the dawn begin to break Jacob asked for a blessing and the man gave him a new name. He became, overnight, the nation of Israel, in a way. God's promise was fulfilled. Jacob, the supplanter—a sort of substitute or cheater—became Israel—the one who struggles with God. He was Jacob, who tried to slip into the place where another was—like his brother, Esau. Now he was Israel, who would contend with God face to face, as in this night of wrestling. And, like us, his struggle that night (and the struggles he experienced before and after) were all part of who he had become.  

It could be argued that Israel had a born again or baptism experience in Jabbok. People who are baptized as adults often see the experience as a threshold moment where the shedding of their old self leads into something new. In many traditions it is customary to wear new clothes after baptism to symbolize newness in Christ. In the moment of baptism the hope is that the baptized will start the process of loving and accepting themselves as God loves and accepts us all. In baptism, we embrace and are embraced by the identity that God gives us as children of God, heirs with Jesus, the Son of God.  

In this week’s scripture readings, evening and night are portrayed as sacred times for building relationships, and receiving blessings from God. It is during the night that Jacob finds himself “alone in his thoughts,” wrestling with the memories of his past and current deceptions, wondering if he will be able to make amends. Jacob survived an identity-changing transformation and, when the sun rose, a blessed Jacob declared that he had “seen God face to face.” The psalmist cries out to God through the night and concludes by stating: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.” Jesus feed a multitude with the five loaves and two fishes late in the evening. Night is portrayed as a sacred space of both hardship and joy in the scriptures.  

Perhaps we won't always have the fortitude to revel in difficulty—and we certainly aren't called upon to celebrate suffering—but we can know that God accompanies us, striving with us, perhaps wrestling with us, but never leaving us until we reenter life at the dawn of a new day.  

To the glory of God of transformation, bringing us to hope for all that tomorrow can be. Amen. 

“Hard Promises” Sermon July 27 2014 Genesis 29:15-28

Sermon July 27 2014 

Genesis 29:15-28 

Psalm 105:1-11, 45b 

Romans 8:26-39 

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 

God of the covenant, we live in a world where promises are broken, and where we are not always completely honest with one another. Help us to continue to trust in the promises you have made with us, and help us to create a trusting, covenantal community with all of your creation. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen. 

What does it mean when we say that we trust someone? Do we mean that we always know that the person we trust will do exactly as we want or exactly what they say? What does it mean to you when someone makes a promise to you?  

I struggle with trusting another human being completely because I know who very fallible we all are. And when I say I know how fallible we are, I mean I am very aware of how fallible I am—and I figure I’m not all that different in regard to weaknesses and imperfections than other people.  

I don't think people are out to get me, not really. There are the times when people like you and I live according to our own individual interests instead of considering the interests of family, community, state, nation, or world. We get stuck on the very local and don’t necessarily look very far for answers, for the effect our actions have. And some of us, in that situation, might not be completely honest because we see some good for ourselves or for our kind of people in the dishonesty.  

The story of God’s people continues and Jacob, as I said last Sunday, has now met his match. Last week, Jacob received God’s promise of land, of children, of a nation from his descendants. Now he’s arrived in Haran where he found a well and waited for his wife to arrive, sort of . . .  

When he got to Haran he did find a well where he also found shepherds waiting to water their flocks. They waited until all the flocks arrived and only moved the stone from the well then—and they did it together. Jacob asked about Laban, his mother’s brother, and as the shepherds began to talk to him, they noticed Rachel arriving at the well to water Laban’s flocks. Immediately, Jacob jumped up to move the heavy stone so that she could water the flocks immediately. Unsurprisingly, in the language of love stories, the bible says, “Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud.” Having declared himself by his actions, Rachel ran home to tell Laban who she’d met. And Laban invited Jacob to stay with them. 

Jacob’s place at Laban’s home was a kind of in-between place. He was a kinsmen—a relative with no visible means of support. So Laban knew he’d have to work, but in today’s text, we hear that Laban didn’t want him to think he was a servant. He was going to pay him. “What shall your wages be?” Jacob, who seems very much into Rachel, said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.” 

They agreed to the bride price—and after seven years, the wedding feast was planned and the party was underway. After the party, after lots of food and wine, when things were a little fuzzy, Jacob went to the tent where his bride was waiting for him. And the next morning, instead of seeing Rachel by the light of the dawn, he saw her sister Leah.  

Jacob, the trickster has been tricked! Laban received 7 years of labor with his flocks as a price for his daughter Leah—and Jacob promised another 7 years when he found out that Rachel was not yet his wife. So, even though they married at the end of a week, he worked for another 7 years for no pay, only his marriage to Rachel.  

Now I’m sure that marriage to the one you love is worth even more than seven years of hard labor. Just nod your heads. But what is the price of deceit, dishonesty? Nobody likes to be lied to and Jacob has met his match.  

Furthermore, he was married to two sisters who were now in competition for his time, affection, and for his children.  

But imagine, before we move onto the rest of the story, just these days when Leah was forced to marry a man who didn’t choose to marry her. Not only did she not have much choice, but now I can imagine that he was angry. Whether or not he like or dislike Leah, she was not his choice. And whether or not Leah like Jacob, she really had no choice either. In no part of our text today do we hear the voices of the women who married Jacob. Eventually, we hear their conversations, but as their marriages to Jacob begin, we don’t hear a word.  

Jewish law throughout the bible allowed men to marry more than one wife and insisted on absolute fairness. Different wives could not be treated differently, equal food, clothing, love, and intimate attention were required. According to one source, this discouraged polygamy because it was expensive—but it was just. Leah couldn’t be treated worse in the tangible ways. But it had to have been difficult. Rachel, as the story continues, has trouble conceiving and must wait years before having a baby, so her story is painful as well.  

The time, the place, the culture, really, the whole world they lived in was very different than our own—yet we can relate to the very human emotions in this story.  

We can relate to Jacob when he felt betrayed by his family. His Uncle Laban lied to him when he told him that seven years labor would be the price for Rachel. And the pain wouldn’t have been any better for his own history of deceit. It might have made it hurt more, realizing the pain he’d caused his parents and his brother. That mind of realization isn’t easy. But I think it might make us better at who we are trying to be. This kind of experience, no matter how we’d like to avoid it, might make us more empathetic. In time and with experience, we might better know how our own actions reverberate in other people’s lives. I by no means wish for betrayal, yet we all have the capacity to do it and this is how it feels.  

Leah was a silent conspirator with Laban—she went to Jacob’s tent, became his wife, but she had little choice. In that day and culture, Laban had ultimate power over her life so he traded her for seven years of labor to a man who hadn’t chosen her. Laban’s lies about her being the older sister may not have been real tradition, but her life may have depended on marriage to some man. She was Laban’s property and responsibility, as his daughter and needed to marry in that time and place for the sake of her own life.  

Rachel is silent in this part of the story alongside her sister. In Genesis 29 and 30, we can read about the marriages of Rachel and Leah and about the birth of their children. The struggle between them continued every day. Think how threatening our siblings can be to us, how strong our desire is to know that we are a favorite child, how hurt we are when parents are unfair or seem that way, think how important it is to be successful as we relate to our siblings. They may be our first real friends—and our first rivals. Rachel is silent here, but if she did love and want to marry Jacob imagine her broken heart at Laban’s scheming and Leah’s cooperation.  

Initially, when Laban entered the story he seemed genuinely pleased that Jacob had come to live with him and even that he wanted to marry his daughter Rachel. Yet he is presented as someone bent on his own self-interest. We may know people like him—we may have had times in our lives when we resemble him ourselves. Selfishness and greed live within all of us at times.  

We know all these people, I think, and some of them we know very well. And people like them live all around the world and right next door to us in our homes and in neighborhoods all over the county.  

There is one trustworthy character standing in the background of all that is going on. And it’s a good thing that God has generations for God’s promises to work out because with people carrying them out, these things take a little time.  

Jacob’s deceit led him to exile with Laban who tricked him into marrying two of his daughters—and kept him in servitude for 14 years. In that time, lots of babies were born to Leah and Rachel and to their slave women Zilpah and Bilhah—at least twelve boys it turns out and one girl. This generation of God’s covenantal family puts them a whole lot closer to God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah of a multitude of offspring, like stars in the sky and God’s reaffirmed promise to Jacob of descendants like the dust on the ground.  

The covenant that God made with Abraham and Sarah to be father and mother of many nations, focused on children and childbirth being a blessing; through children, God showed God’s faithfulness. At the time, children were a particular blessing from God. In today’s context, however, God’s blessings take other forms.  

God’s blessing is evident when we learn to keep our word and our promises to people, especially the important promises that are truly valuable. The values and lessons we learn in relationship to people who are not family bring blessings into our lives. We might learn and grow as people and even within our faith as we come to know people who have different traditions and origins. Jacob certainly learned about the habits, if not the traditions, of his mother’s family in Haran.  

Our awareness of how God works in our lives can grow as we reach out to people with the compassion Jesus taught his disciples when he told them stories and sayings about the realm or kingdom that God was and is building. The kingdom of God wasn’t exactly like they imagined—it was like the mustard weed, really? It was like yeast, often used as a symbol of impurity or even rotten death? The kingdom of God was like the man who hid a treasure so its value wouldn’t raise the price on a field he wanted to buy. Huh?  

God’s blessings are to be found, I think we can say with assurance, anywhere we are really looking for them. Pleasant experiences, monetary reward, wealth, material gain or emotional and physical pleasure aren’t signs of God’s blessing. God’s blessing is found in stories like this one in Genesis. Rabbi Rachel Montagu writes that Leah and Rachel’s daily struggle to maintain the equilibrium of their household is a more useful example of creative struggle with God and other human beings that the story of Jacob’s single night of wrestling God in next week’s text. Though that’s a great story and we’ll get there.  

Leah and Rachel’s daily struggle exemplifies our own daily struggles and daily interactions with family members, friends, coworkers, roommates, classmates, or teammates. Each day we struggle in our attempt to maintain self-respect and keep our love for others in this messiness of the promises we make and break to one another. 

That’s the place of God’s blessing, the blessing is in the struggle—not the violence, not the death, not the hatred, or the horror of betrayal and deceit—but in the struggle and in the attainment of the promise that God has made. God has promised us abundant life, in this life and in the next. God has promised us love, love to give, love to receive, love to sustain, love to care—all kinds of love. God has promised us a kingdom, full of struggle, full of this thing we call life.  

To the glory of God, God of promise, God of life. Amen.