Being Blessed

 

Genesis 27:1-4, 15-23; 28:10-17

Mark 9:38-50

John 1:50-51

               Today we hear a story about Jacob stealing his brother Jacob’s blessing from his father.  This follows after Jacob has stolen Esau’s birthright, too.  Jacob is a trickster, he is a con.  He lies, is disrespectful to his father, cheats his brother, schemes and steals and in every way is NOT the hero we would expect to be the patriarch of Israel, but in fact he is exactly that: the patriarch of Israel.  It is later in Genesis that Jacob’s name is changed, in fact, TO Israel. 

The truth is this whole story may seem very strange to us.  It may seem strange to us at many, many levels.  First of all, why can’t Isaac bless BOTH sons?  After all, they are twins.  Esau was born only minutes before Jacob.  What is this blessing that is so important but also so limited in who is to receive it and who can receive it?  And if it is created simply by a word, why can’t Isaac take back those words, change those words, amend those words?  If he was tricked by lies, why can’t he reciprocate and say the words spoken in response to a falsehood are therefore themselves false?  And then, why is it that God seems to bless Jacob, this trickster, to choose him to become Israel, to BE Israel and to lead the people forward?

These are all legitimate questions.  Real questions.  Some of which can be answered by saying that these ideas of blessings rested on social conventions which were difficult to challenge.  That the blessing was a promise of inheritance, in this case land and power.  That once those promises were made, the only thing that Isaac could then do would be to offer mitigating promises in addition. 

In terms of God’s response, Lewis Hyde stated, “Tricksters always appear where cultures are trying to guard their eternal truths, their sacred cows. New cultures spring up whenever some trickster gets past the guard dogs and steals those cows.”  And this is what Jacob does — He breaks the rules, creates a new pathway and therefore opens up possibilities.  The implication here, then, is that God uses tricksters to break us out of our cultural ruts, to challenge the paths we have gotten stuck on and to encourage us to see life and rules and even conventions from a new vantage point, one that is willing to alter, change and amend things.  In this case, Jacob actually challenges the idea that it is always the first son who gets everything.  In this case, Jacob and Esau were twins, born moments apart, so the idea that one son gets it all and the other nothing appears especially ridiculous.

But I think the bigger question for us today is what does it really mean to be blessed, in the first place?  I don’t mean what was this blessing that Jacob stole.  I mean, we all seek blessings, God’s blessings.  We want them.  We invoke them for others, “Bless you” we say when someone sneezes, which was supposed to be a way to ward off death.  But we also use it in other ways. “God bless you!” we say when we are leaving or sending someone off.  “Blessings,” we may say to sign our names at the end of correspondence.   We also use it in sentences such as “bless his heart” by which we often mean, “That person can’t change, won’t change, so the best we can do is bless him and send him on his way.”  

But again, what do we really mean by that?  And what really is a blessing?  We experience God’s blessing in places that we don’t expect, in places that don’t look familiar to us.  We also experience God’s blessings in ways that we don’t usually call blessings.  Jacob, though he stole the “blessing” from his brother, ended up out in the wilderness: running away from his family out of fear that Esau, out of anger, will hurt him.  He struggles, he does not have an easy life.  The “blessing” that he stole cost him everything that he valued, at least for a time.  And we know this often plays out for us as well: that which we strive for, work for the most, sometimes ends up costing us a great deal, costing us everything we thought we valued most. 

I remember reading this wondering article by Scott Dannemiller entitled, “The one thing Christian’s should stop saying” (click to read article):

Whew.  And Amen!

But it is also important to note that “blessing” does not mean ease of Life.  Jacob’s life after this is not easy.  Just as he tricked, so too will he be tricked.  He will be tricked by his uncle in trying to marry Rachel.  He will wrestle with God and be forever limping afterwards.  He will be tricked by his own sons who will try to kill his favorite, Joseph, and sell him into slavery instead, telling their father only that he has died.   

But still, is he blessed? 

Yes.  And not only by his father.  He is blessed by God’s presence with him, and that takes many forms.  Sometimes it is God’s presence in the struggles.  Sometimes it is God’s presence in the good times.  The blessing is the ability to experience God in those times, to hear God, to see God and to choose healing and growing that God offers.  The alternative is to become bitter, cynical, angry, cranky.

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”  Well, isn’t that an incredible blessing?

 

I think the bottom line is that when we say “blessing” what we mean is “gift”.  But our ideas of what are gifts, what comes to us through grace and not just LIFE, has to grow, has to expand a bit.  And the lesson for us today in this is that we should not miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way that we expect.

I’m reminded of a lovely poem by an unknown confederate soldier:

I asked God for strength that I might achieve.

I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things.

I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy.

I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.

I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.

I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

 

I want to end with a poem by Jan Richardson called

 

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you

who bear the light

in unbearable times,

who testify

to its endurance

amid the unendurable,

who bear witness

to its persistence

when everything seems

in shadow

and grief.

 

Blessed are you

in whom

the light lives,

in whom

the brightness blazes --

your heart

a chapel,

an altar where

in the deepest night

can be seen

the fire that

shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith,

in stubborn hope,

in love that illumines

every broken thing

it finds.

 

- Jan Richardson

 

The thing is, we are most richly blessed when we are giving and caring and loving others.  That is when we are most richly and most meaningfully blessed.  And that is a blessing we bring to and on ourselves through our own choices and our own decisions to care for and offer care for others.  This is a blessing we can claim for ourselves, not through the trickery of Jacob, not through the anger of Esau, but through the decision to love.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.