Genesis 29:15-28
So the story of Jacob continues. After
his night in Bethel where he saw the ladder of angels climbing between heaven
and earth, and heard the voice of God reaffirming the promise of a future,
Jacob arrives at the home of his uncle Laban – his mother’s brother. Here he is
welcomed … here he meets a beautiful girl … it looks like Jacob has landed on
his feet.
But what’s that thing they say about karma?
Karma is a you-know-what, right? After seven years of hard work impressing his
future father-in-law, Jacob the trickster gets tricked. Bigly. And
surprisingly, Jacob doesn’t even complain. Maybe he’s been waiting for this,
the proverbial other shoe, to drop. So he sighs, nods in acceptance, then puts
his head down and continues working off his sentence – seven more years for
Uncle Laban. And we, the readers, sit back and say, WOW.
You have to appreciate the irony – it
is thick in this story, isn’t it? The young man who passes himself off as his
older brother to get the inheritance – and gets away with it – becomes the
victim of an almost identical crime. Leah is passed off as her younger sister
to get the husband. It is the revenge of the older sibling.
But look deeper and see that in each
case the trick was orchestrated by a parent. Jacob was disguised to look like
his brother Esau by his mother, who
was acting to defeat the tradition of the first-born privilege. And then Leah
was disguised by her father, who was
acting to defend that same tradition. This is a huge showdown: It’s Rebekah
versus Isaac, Esau verses Jacob, Rachel verses Leah, Laban versus Jacob. This
is a big, fat, complicated family affair.
You start looking for where to pin the
blame, but then it becomes hard to figure out just where to put it. Jacob is
blamed in the family for tricking Esau, but what if Jacob didn’t even want to
do it? It was all his mother’s idea; maybe Jacob was a victim too.
But Rebekah, remember, had a vision
when she was pregnant, telling her that the younger was destined to rule over
the older. And maybe Rebekah had been carrying that burden for all these years,
until she finally saw where she could lay it down.
Laban … well, nobody really likes
Laban, so I won’t say anymore about him. But Leah – sure she got the husband Rachel was
counting on, but did she even want any part in this deception? It could be that
Leah was just miserable about the whole thing. Who’s to say?
It is impossible to say why people do
all these kinds of crazy things to hurt one another. You might look for some
kind of cosmic order in all of it – it’s human nature to want to find order in
all of it – and maybe you will find answers that seem sufficient.
Maybe it is enough to say that Jacob
sinned in cheating Esau, and now he gets his punishment.
Maybe it is enough to say that Rebekah
heard the voice of God tell her that Jacob would be the chosen one and her
scheme was simply an act of obedience to God.
Maybe it is enough to say that Laban,
as the head of the household, had an obligation to hold up the traditions they
held dear – by whatever means necessary. It might be enough, but if it’s not
then –
Maybe we should add that, in this
experience with Laban, Jacob received an opportunity to grow in maturity,
compassion, and wisdom. I think he did.
Maybe we should add that Jacob, who
still had much to learn about life, now would have the time to learn it. I
think he did.
And, we should also add that the story
is not over yet; there are more twists and tricks and confrontations to come.
A good story is like a multifaceted
gem, you can turn it and turn it and always see something else sparkle in it.
And the more you turn it, the better you understand that each one of us in this
world has something of both darkness and light in us. The more you turn it, the
better you see how little we really understand of ourselves and others. The
more you turn it, the better you see that there are no white hats and black
hats – but just a bunch of hurting, broken people, sinners all.
And then there’s grace.
And that grace is truly the good news
of the day. In these words from Paul’s letter to the Romans, we
are told how profound is God’s grace. We can take Paul’s words and lay them
over the story from Genesis, and know that God took this young man Jacob with
all his flaws, and conformed him to a different image, the firstborn within a
large family.
In the story, as in life, things keep
going around and coming around, and sometimes people learn something – by the
grace of God. Because, as Paul said (and even when it doesn’t look like it),
things are working together for good for those who love God and are called
according to God’s purposes.
In the end, grace wins. In the end,
love wins.
Photo: By SitharaAriyarathna - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90824084
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