Rachel and the gods

It’s perhaps easy to forget that, although everyone in Jacob’s camp feels the injury of Laban’s dealings with Jacob, none feel it more acutely than Rachel. The beloved of Jacob was forced into a bitter competition with her sister for both the affection of her husband and for the making of children. She had not fared well. It was Laban’s doing.

The allure of the household gods is unclear. Perhaps they had market value or perhaps they were dear to Laban, or to Rachel. Whatever the case, it wasn’t enough to take what was actually due. Rachel somehow felt justified in the theft.

How often human grabbing binds itself to the revealed will of God.

Save me Lord, from self-deceit.

Joseph is Born. Jacob Negotiates

Asynchronicity – how we can be out of time with even our closest beloved?

After all this contention and strife, Joseph is born. Rachel is vindicated. It’s two sentences in the story.

The action moves immediately to Jacob negotiating his wages. Did I miss something?

It’s curious how the satisfaction of this life altering desire for Rachel only seems to provoke Jacob to awareness that he hasn’t really prepared a legacy – that he doesn’t have anything of his own. He seems to feel the need to get to work and start building up his own house.

The ordinary pressures of life have a way of forcing the awareness of what is important. If I can avoid anxiety, this provokes me to enter more fully into the possibility of my life.

Competition and Proliferation

Reuben – “because the Lord has seen my affliction”. Simeon – “because the Lord has heard I am unloved”. Levi – “now my husband will be attached to me”. Judah – “Praise!” Dan – “God has vindicated me”. Naphtali – “I have indeed prevailed”. Gad – “how fortunate”. Asher – “happy am I”. Issachar – “God has given me my wages”.  Zebulun – “now my husband will dwell with me”.

This is the competition for meaning by the things that we do or the things that we have. Of course this competition is about children whom we never really have – they have minds and stories of their own.

Yet competition drove proliferation. Rebekah was content with one child. God wanted children for Isaac more numerous than the stars in the sky.

God’s will being done even in competition.

May I come to the place of praise and let my only competition be the fierce determination to not waste the potential of this moment.

Competition and Meaning

Leah is unloved but productive. She learns to praise.

Rachel is beloved but barren – purposeless.

The human need for meaning and contribution – that’s how deep it goes. No amount of affection, security or even luxury satisfies like the sense of purpose.

He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.  You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Bait and Switch

Jacob loved Rachel and so seven years of work seemed like only a few days.

It’s interesting that Rebekah, with Isaac’s approval, sent Jacob to get a wife from among Laban’s daughters with nothing in hand. Abraham sent his servant with loads of goods to demonstrate his wealth and to offer dowry. Jacob shows up empty handed but with a promise from God and a mind for process.

Laban saw the situation for how it suited him. The irony of his unwillingness to abuse his first born daughter Leah is in utter contrast to Jacob, who abused Esau. Even though he perpetrated a despicable “bait and switch”, Laban had the moral high ground in protecting Leah.

Jacob from the community of covenant. Laban from the social contract. It will take the sharpness of both of these to bring into being a community of faith; Israel – the sons of Jacob.

Once again, in the world but not of it.

 

 

 

Jacob in Haran

If you do all the things I’ve heard in this dream, then you will be my God and I will tithe one-tenth of all my increase to you.

Jacob in perhaps his first full flash of genius. He makes a deal with God, walks for days, weeks, perhaps even months, then observes Laban’s daughter Rachel approaching – the ostensive purpose for his journey – so what does he do? He comments to the waiting shepherds how their practice of waiting at the well prevents them from enjoying the full benefit of the days’ pasturing.

There is here an interesting interplay between value creation and personal desire. Like a modern process engineer, Jacob could see plainly that the shepherds tradition was preventing them from creating the value that their work actually should be producing. Thus waste. He intuitively hated waste. He had a disdain for lost potential.

The freedom to act is the power to order circumstances in a way that optimizes value. There is no righteousness without action.

Jacob’s Ladder

A dream. A promise. A stone of remembrance.

The One-on-one God. He shows up in a dream or whisper. Drops a promise on Jacob, like he did to Isaac, like he did to Abraham, like he did to Noah. He never chit-chats. Whenever He has something to say, it always changes everything. His words are never empty. They always seem to affect their target. Lives are never really the same.

In the daylight, I wonder why I don’t hear Him in this way. Where is my promise – my special locution? In the night, I am so glad that I haven’t. Not only for fear of the encounter – but the awareness of what He would ask me to do.

I wouldn’t begrudge Him. I’m just aware that He sees me in my possibility and too often, I’m content with my circumstantial reality. He intends that I actualize in this moment. The only Spanish word I know is manana. There is a reason.

So Jacob makes a vow – a deal. The God of heaven is at the top of the stairway. He seems to accept the offer.

Will I be this bold today? Should I start with a stone of remembrance? Maybe it would help.

Injustice and Escape

Brothers and fathers, mothers and sons – family dysfunction is an early theme.

For some reason, even though his own mother had been sought out from Haran because Abraham did not want a wife for Isaac from the Canaanites, Esau doesn’t get it. He marries not one but two women from the Canaanites.

On the other hand, Rebekah seems to believe that Esau won’t react to Jacob’s deception – that he won’t care.  Of course, foolishly selling your own stuff is one thing, but having it stolen is another.  She doesn’t get it.

Yet out of this dysfunction comes what had to be anyway. The trajectory toward authentic community is an irresistible pressure built into the fabric of creation. Through a lack of awareness, Esau found himself working against that which must be. He suffered and it seemed unjust.

It is as though the ultimate injustice, which trumps even the necessity of equity between individuals, is indifference to the arc of God’s plan.

A fearful thing it is, to fall into the hands of an angry God.

Jacob and Esau

Jacob wanted the benefit of relationship with God. The evidence of the story suggest he wanted the benefit even more than the relationship. In stealing the irreversible blessing, he moved toward the thing that God alone could give.

Jacob didn’t want to become a second Ishmael.

In the indifference he showed to what was best for Esau, the hope he had for himself was firmly rooted in the belief that God was the source of all blessing. When he stole, what he stole was unmitigated access to this source.

The kingdom sufferers violence and the violent take it by force.

The Deception

Jacob convinces his father that he is Esau. He brings the evidence and although Isaac seems suspicious, in the end he is persuaded. He tastes the food, he feels the horry hands, he smells the fragrance of his beloved son.

The singularity and irreversibility of this moment is a little hard to relate to. Conferring by word and by touch some special office that, even though stolen, cannot be made right – cannot be restored to the intended beneficiary? This from a man who has forced his own wife to deceive the local population by disavowing their married relationship to protect him from suitors? What Isaac comprehends by this is novel and not obvious. Even Esau, with whom I share much, wondered why he couldn’t just have another blessing.

Jacob, with the guidance of Rebekah, recognized the unique value that was present in this blessing. He risked everything to obtain it. This was commendable. Curiously, the blessing was eventually stripped of its material value in flocks and herds and servants, as Jacob was forced to flee for his life. These were never returned or restored. They stayed with Esau.

Yet Jacob cherished the blessing for its own sake. The benevolence and relationship with God was the real essence of it. Wealth could come and go but the unique opportunity to relate to God as had Abraham was irreplaceable.