Genesis 27:5-13
5 Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. When Esau went out to the field to hunt game to bring back, 6 Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I just heard your father saying to your brother Esau, 7 ‘Bring me some game and make me some delicious food so I can eat, and I will bless you in the LORD’s presence before I die.’ 8 Now, my son, listen to me, to what I’m telling you to do. 9 Go to the flock and get me two healthy young goats so I can prepare them as the delicious food your father loves. 10 You can bring it to your father, he will eat, and then he will bless you before he dies.”
11 Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, “My brother Esau is a hairy man, but I have smooth skin. 12 What if my father touches me and thinks I’m making fun of him? I will be cursed instead of blessed.”
13 His mother said to him, “Your curse will be on me, my son. Just listen to me: go and get them for me.” (CEB)
“Tales of Five People You Meet in (the) Heaven(s): Stories of Fellow Travelers,” Week One
(Author’s note: To protect the confidential nature of many of these conversations, I have refrained from using names, and in some cases, destinations and airlines mentioned in this sermon series have been changed. –E.A.)
A Southwest flight from Kansas City to Oakland, January 2009. I had just completed my first semester of seminary, had come home to Kansas for the holidays, and was on my way back to the San Francisco Bay Area to begin the spring semester of coursework. On my flight were a pair of mothers accompanying their teenage daughters, and as I was sitting down towards the back of the plane, I could hear their conversation in the aisle about how it turned out that both of their daughters would be starting college that semester. The flight was already packed to the gills, and seeing no other seats available, I could see the mothers glance at 23-year-old me, then glance at each other, and with knowing looks, slid into the two seats next to me so that their daughters would then sit elsewhere—away from the fellow who is clearly very sketchy at first glance! Their daughters safely secured from having to sit next to the obviously ill-intentioned me, the mothers continued their conversation, comparing notes about schools and how each would cope with Empty Nest Syndrome, even though this meant that they were giving up the chance to share this flight with their respective daughters. And me? I could only smile.
This Sunday marks the start of a brand new sermon series that we will be exploring together during this church season of Lent, which is traditionally meant to be a time of repentance, prayer, and confession for Christians the world over. It is, then, a journey of inner discovery, and of understanding anew the amazing power of God’s grace. But unlike Christ in the wilderness, it is not a journey of discovery that we are required to make alone. Indeed, many of us thrive on journeys only when we have a companion to travel with—and so I’ve created this sermon series, “Tales of Five People You Meet in (the) Heaven(s),” a play on the title of Mitch Albom’s 2003 book “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.” Based on my own experiences of travel when the person sitting next to me suddenly learns that I am a Christian cleric, we nonetheless begin the series with this moment, on the flight from Kansas City to Oakland, when my vocation was not revealed, as a baseline to compare my future stories to.
I use this seemingly minor anecdote for another reason, too—one that I just mentioned. That we are not alone in the wilderness. One of the most frequent images we evoke of God is that of parent. Tradition always referred to God as “God the Father.” The Lord’s Prayer, in the Roman Catholic tradition, is called the Our Father for how the prayer begins. And that sort of a theology of a God-Parent is entirely Scriptural. But it is Scriptural not simply for the masculine sense, of God as Father—no, it is Scriptural because God acts also as mother in these texts. In Isaiah 66, the final chapter of Isaiah, the city of Jerusalem is referred to in the feminine—Jerusalem is a “her,” a “she.” But something remarkable happens at verse 13—the voice shifts, and it says, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” In Proverbs, wisdom itself, divine in origin and thus a part of God, is described as “Lady Wisdom.” And this is to say nothing of the many, many women in Scripture through whom God works all manner of miracles and ministries—Ruth and Naomi. Rahab. Deborah. Esther. And, here in Genesis, Rebekah.
The common denominator with these characters is their ability to protect their people from the unknown. Rahab harbors Israelite spies in a foreign city. Esther preserves her people from a genocidal plot that had not yet begun, but was in the works. Deborah rises up as a judge to lead the Israelites after Joshua’s conquest, at a time when Israel did not yet know if they would ever have a king! And Rebekah, in this story, is protecting her favorite son, Jacob, the younger twin of Esau, from the unknowns and punishments of having to go without the blessing of his dying father, Isaac, going so far as to promise to take upon herself any repercussions on his behalf. She’s taking the role of the God figure here—trust me, obey me, and I’ll protect you.
And that is a very mother-like thing to do—to promise to try to protect your child from any calamities coming their way. It is, I am guessing, why these dear mums on the airplane were quick to run interference for their daughters, even when I plainly was more interested in my ipod. But it is also a very God-like thing to do, but it is something that many churches these days are declining to do for their members, choosing instead to shun them in the name of, and I am not making this up, masculine ministry where godliness is next to not cleanliness, but manliness.
It’s a thing for a lot of churches. See, many churches, including ours, are largely constituted of women. Men have been leaving church in droves, though at the same time most pastors are still men, or in some denominations, are entirely men. To try to stem this tide, and in some cases, tsunami, of exoduses from the church, many congregations create specific men’s ministries—men’s groups, men’s breakfasts, men’s Bible studies, men’s retreats, you name it. Which is great, because it lets me toy with the image of you know, as a little kid, having a tree house and not letting the opposite sex in because they had cooties? So I imagine these fellows meeting over Twinkies in a tree house with a fingerpainted sign on the door that says “No Girls Allowed,” with at least one of those words misspelled.
But the gender gap in churches is, in the end, far from comical—especially when some of the most popular new churches today—churches like Mars Hill in our neighbor to the north, Seattle—continue to preach on women as the “weaker vessels” in the battle of the sexes. And it pushes people away from the church, away from the most important vessel of the love of Christ in this world. More than that, it is not Scriptural. This story in Genesis ends with Jacob—not Rebekah—running away from home to avoid the wrath of Esau. This is a story not simply about a parent’s relationship with their child, it is a story about the bravery that is required to even become a good parent, a devoted parent, in the first place.
Which may seem like an odd topic for me to use in a story about two women who I barely even spoke to, whose paths barely crossed mine—bravery. But, ever since 9/11, how many of us, those of us with cell phones, immediately call or text somebody as soon as the plane’s wheels are on the ground? Or, how about the bravery of actually being authentic in a conversation you’re having with a complete stranger who you are forced to spend the next five hours with? Or…the bravery of actually calling yourself a Christian, of coming to church during Lent, of all times of the year, to hear messages about your sinfulness, about your need to repent and turn to God in this season of confession as we prepare for Resurrection Sunday? It would be easier to just stay home on Sunday, or to worship at what I like to call “The Church of Brunch.”
My point is this—bravery, Biblical bravery, is not just what the movies, the tales of heroes, or the news stories of dramatic life-and-death would have us believe, because many of us may never actually find ourselves in such a circumstance, yet still be called upon to exhibit courage. Bravery encompasses those stories, yes, but includes many, many more. If you have ever felt, as Jesus did during the 40 days in the wilderness, cut off and forsaken from God, and yet still you prayed, and yet still you came to church each Sunday, that is an act of bravery as well as an act of faith. And even if the heroic bravery of conquest and combat is something that traditionally has been associated with the male gender, if you want stories of bravery in everyday life from Scripture, for my money, you cannot beat this story about a mother named Rebekah.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
February 26, 2012
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