Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Love is... (pt 2)

Readings: Genesis 25:19-34, Psalm 119:105-112, Isaiah 55:10-13, Psalm 65:9-13, Romans 8:1-11, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23


Though he’s an ancestor of our faith and beloved to us by default, the barest truth regarding Jacob is that he was a bit of a rascal. Prone to sneaking his way to success, his story is peppered with instances of less than stellar ethical decisions, including the narrative we read this week.

Jacob and Esau were twins, though Esau, born (if by minutes) first, was culturally entitled to the birthrights of the eldest son. We’re told that Jacob resisted this even in the womb: he emerged into the world holding Esau’s heel, as if saying, “not so fast, brother!” (Genesis 25:26).

Jacob’s concern seemed to be what he would be denied; he displayed little linked, inherent appreciation for what he already had.

Jacob’s need to best Esau led to continual problems between the brothers. Our reading continues to a recounting of Jacob’s decision to trick Esau out of his birthright. Jacob waited for his exhausted brother to come in from the fields, hungry and weary, and then bribed him out of the first born position with the evening meal, a bowl of lentils (Genesis 25:34).

In effect, this left Jacob triumphant in his efforts. Practically, it also sullied his relationship with Esau, with whom he’d never enjoy perfect fraternal harmony again. In his fervor to come out on top in their family, Jacob ensured continual discord in it.

Jacob is not someone who we fully want to mimic. If we consider the results of his selfish, if wily, actions, we come to the realization that these are the inherited impulses of his which we have to resist.


We don’t really hear about what Esau feels, beyond his justifiable anger. In his shoes, how would we react?

He, the hard worker, the still less loved son, is continually bested by his mischievous younger brother; he repeatedly loses in their family, despite his certainly superior integrity. Indeed, he’s not even the focus in the biblical narrative which remembers him. Is his story the progenitor to our classic “good guys never win”?

My guess is that we’re not supposed to come up with an outlook so bleak. Perhaps we can read this tale as a cautionary one, particularly in regard to our personal values.

If, as the gospels suggest, we’re supposed to regard the human community as our family, and the parts of it as our brothers and sisters, then perhaps what we can take from Jacob and Esau is a degree of care when dealing with one another.

There’s nothing wrong with seeking the best conceivable life for ourselves. Jacob’s mistake was not that he wanted more; it was that he ultimately took more at the expense of his brother. He could not adopt the perspective that his own blessings were great; he had to, in order to feel secure about his own blessings, erode his brother’s blessings. This was Jacob’s great failing.

What would his family have been like had he not made such decisions? What sort of home would Leah and his children have been welcomed into had his methods not continually alienated others? Did not the costs outweigh the apparent “boons”?

It seems to me that Jacob’s shallow personal desires were akin to the seed sown among thorns (Matthew 13:22). His thirst was for a life that would be admired: for the best portion of his father’s house; for the prettiest partner; for the best portions of his father-in-law’s flock. At each turn, someone lost: Esau, Leah, Laban. And so the life he envisioned—happy, gilded, perfect—could never fully take root.

What if his desire had been guided by the full picture of what makes life good—by the understanding that our personal successes are always mitigated by the effects they have upon those around us?

Jacob’s pursuits echo rhetoric in our own time. Pursuit for wealth that does not consider those hurt in its pursuit; images of family which are only acceptable if they are better than other family images. Why do we need to justify our lives in accordance with our disapproval of the lives of others?

I think of the marriage debate; I think of the continual refrain, from some, that suggests that inclusive marriage—a redefinition in our laws which would make marital relationships accessible to all—corrupts the notion of marriage. As if family only has value if some are excluded from it. As if our margins, or the decision to leave some at the margins, makes the middle stronger, or better.

In our fervor to be worldly and to make our own relationships understood to be the best, we sometimes make these mistakes—and in so doing, in not electing to understand what is purest about those relationships, we toss our seeds among the thorns.

Marriage, like many voluntary relationships, is best because of its most gentle aspirations. Throughout the books of the Bible we read of the virtues of love: of selfless self-giving, of the care for another which, in turn, makes us internally richer, adds depth to our own lives, and to our relationships with the Holy.

We idealize marriage, when only one couple is our concern, as two becoming one; we think of married couples as new centers for the work of the Holy Spirit. Love transforms those beloved, and the glow spreads outward.

This is the dearest hope of the Bible when it speaks of love; and love is marriage’s best potential. It is, consequentially, confusing that any Christian would want to deny access to such relationships to anyone.

We, like Jacob and Esau, are born with certain predetermined blessings, amongst them our ability to grow into loving adults. The way this works in relation to gender varies, but most now understand gender preferences to be predetermined.

We love best as we are made to love, which makes inclusive marriage moves not only just, but essential. Our laws should enable the gifts of God to shine fully through us; and interpersonal relationships are an important facet of our potentialities.

Though New York state’s inclusive marriage laws will never have personal implications for me, I celebrate them. They opened a space for my brothers and sisters to pursue the fullest and best expressions of their hearts, regardless of orientation. I expect that the world will become a better place because of such measures—measures which struggle to understand, and take care with, the soil in which we plant our dearest ideas. I pray that other states will follow quickly behind.

We undermine ourselves if we seek to be too much like Jacob, if we forget that we are born with what we need to make our lives their own best possible versions. We get no further in the world by entering it holding fast to the heels of others—slowing one another down costs us as much as it costs those we cause to falter. We should, instead, enter it with our hands held high in gratitude, and should do all in our capacity to ensure that the path is cleared for others to celebrate their own blessings in the same measure.

Love is a gift which God left open to all; only we prevent its fullest expression.