Reconciled

Genesis 25:19-34; 27:1-45; 33:1-11

Last week, I wisely decided to start a new sermon series wherein I would preach alongside the lessons of the Confirmation curriculum. Otherwise, I’m not sure what I would preach on this Sunday. Some of us celebrate the outcome of Tuesday’s election, while others are deeply troubled by it. In the words of Stephen Colbert, “I think we can agree that this has been an absolutely exhausting, bruising election for everyone. We all now feel the way Rudy Guliani looks.” It’s my personal practice to get my news analysis from late night comedians. I was impressed with what Colbert went on to say:

“By almost every metric, we are more divided than ever as a nation…According to the Pew Research center ‘More than 4 in 10 Democrats and Republicans say the other party’s policies are so misguided that they pose a threat to the nation.’ But you know what? Everybody feels that way. And not only that, ‘more than half (55%) of Democrats say that the Republican Party makes them ‘afraid,’ while 49% of Republicans say the same about the Democratic Party.’ So both sides are terrified of the other side. And I think that’s why the voting booth has a curtain: so you have some place to hide after the election’s over. So how did our politics get so poisonous? I think it’s cuz we overdosed, especially this year. We drank too much of the poison. You take a little bit of it so you can hate the other side; and it tastes kinda good; and you like how it feels; and there’s a gentle high to the condemnation. Right? And you know you’re right, right? You know you’re right. When I was a kid, we didn’t think about politics this much…and that left room in our lives for other things and for other people…. But now politics is everywhere and that takes up precious brain-space we could be using to remember all the things we actually have in common.” (1)

Sets up nicely for today’s text. A tale of two brothers, set against each other before birth. This election cycle has been much like the womb of Rachel in which “two nations” have been growing, or at least, two separate concepts of “nation.” “And the two peoples born of you shall be divided,” God tells Rachel. Though twins, Esau technically left the womb first, was considered older, and was therefore in line to receive a larger inheritance than Jacob was from their father, Isaac. This is what Jacob gets from Esau in exchange for a bowl of lentil stew. In a way, the stew is much like the poison of which Colbert speaks. It’s more than a simple stew, it's a symbol of the hatred which will eventually rend these brothers’ lives apart.

Esau merely receives one bowlful of this stew, the overdose of poison comes a few chapters later when Jacob steals Esau’s blessing. In this culture, blessing was an honor, and losing your blessing was basically seen as a curse. Jacob takes Esau’s blessing by taking advantage of his father’s old age and poor eyesight, and his brother’s incredibly hairy body—I mean, Jacob wore goat hide over his neck to convincingly trick his father in to thinking he was touching Esau…that’s one hairy dude, but that’s really not important to the plot. The story says that “Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him.” Esau makes up his mind to kill Jacob, but Jacob catches word of this and flees.

We can relate to division, we can relate to hatred, we can relate to feeling as though we’ve been duped out of our rightful inheritance. What Jacob received as a blessing, Esau received as a curse. Perhaps some of us feel as though our forefather’s blessing has been given to the wrong guy, a trickster. Like Jacob, some folks are even tempted by hatred to flee; unlike Jacob, some folks fear that they might be forcibly kicked out of their homes, separated from their families. The story is not a perfect parallel to our current situation, and therefore we shouldn’t try to force the metaphor too much. But I do want us to be able to identify with the story of Jacob and Esau, and recognize the hatred that is bitter and caustic and divisive. The unfortunate truth is this: as U.S. Americans, we know what it feels like to hate and despise and we know what it feels like to be hated and despised.

But that’s not why we’re here. At least I hope that’s not why we’re here. We don’t come to church to justify our hatred, but to be freed from it. We come to church in order to know what it feels like to be loved and forgiven. And we’re sent from this place charged to share that feeling with others. And so I think it’s important to remember that the story of Jacob and Esau does not end with division, with hatred, with murder. After fleeing his home for fear of his brother’s wrath, Jacob settles with a man named Laban, marries his daughters, and becomes very wealthy off of Laban’s land and flocks, long story short Jacob and Laban come to a parting of ways and Jacob seeks to return back to his homeland. He sends a messenger ahead to his brother who returns with this message, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” Vayira Yacob mad vayetzer lo. It’s been a while since I’ve translated Hebrew, but I’m pretty sure this means: “and Jacob needed a clean pair of underpants.” The NRSV translates it as: “Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.”

So Jacob prays to God, “Deliver me,” he cries, “deliver me from the hand of my brother from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children.” How many of us prayed similar prayers to be “delivered” from the hand of the Donald or from Hillary? We know what great fear and distress feels like. I’m going to skip ahead in the story to the next day, when Jacob and Esau meet after years apart.

Jacob runs ahead and bows down before Esau, who runs up to his brother and falls upon his neck—not with a headlock, not with a body slam, like we might expect, or perhaps like Jacob expected, but with a loving embrace—and kisses him, and together they wept. I think it’s important that we look at this part of the story and ask ourselves, urgently, “Where does that kind of reconciliation come from? And how can we get ourselves some of that?” If Jacob and Esau could be reconciled, then surely it’s possible for us. Right?

Well, speaking of brothers, I want to share a few words my brother wrote the day after the election, sickened, as he puts it, by how low the bar has been set by the “status quo for kindness.” This is coming from his hip-hop alter ego, J-Diz, and his track “Can We Reconcile?”

I just really want to know:

Can we reconcile, can we get through

Discord in everything we do?

But it’s normal.

Can we skip the [obscenities]

And get to the formal?

So cold, all the arguments getting warmer.

Unraveled at the fringe of the sweater neck

Til you forget to seek knowledge over self-respect.

To move on to better or to stagnate, in our way set.

Would you rather know the truth or rather be correct?

And there’s a difference….

Being right doesn’t help us, it helps me.

Don’t you see? Our system won’t be fixed with an R or a D.

Our lives aren’t getting better as a “they” and a “we.”

…Can we reconcile? (2)

It’s no coincidence that the Presbyterian Confession of 1967 is built upon three sections titled: God’s Work of Reconciliation; The Ministry of Reconciliation; and The Fulfillment of Reconciliation. We believe, as the Presbyterian Church, that “in Jesus Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,” and that this reconciliation becomes the mission of the Church, led by the Holy Spirit. We are, first and foremost, a reconciling community.

We need this. Our community needs this. Our nation needs this. Our world needs this. That this election feels like a blessing to some and a curse to others; that it feels like a sham to some but like a rightful reclamation of leadership to others; this is proof of how much we’ve overdosed on the poison of hatred. We’re sinking in a sea of spite, suffocating on the toxic fumes of pride. The only antidote is grace, and reconciliation is grace in action.

So back to the question, “Where does reconciliation come from? And how can we get ourselves some of that.” Reconciliation comes from grace. Hopefully we know a bit more about where grace comes from now, and how we can receive it: through honest, humble confession, and through trust in God—the God who created us, not any of the little ‘g’ gods whom we have created.

When Jacob prayed to God to be “delivered” from his brother-turned-enemy do you think he had reconciliation in mind as the answer to that prayer? Probably not. But God did. God always does. Reconciliation, like grace, comes first and foremost from God. If the answer to our prayers for deliverance from our enemies comes in any form other than the challenge to love our enemies, the command to reconcile, the call to put grace in action—then we’re probably praying to the wrong God.

There’s one more important part of the story of Jacob and Esau that I skipped over to get to the scene of reconciliation. Jacob prays to God to be delivered from his brother and the next day he, instead, is reconciled to his brother. But in between those two events, from sundown to sun-up Jacob spends the night wrestling with a “man.” Some say this is an angel, some say it is God; the identity of the stranger is not so important as the fact that Jacob wrestles hard with something. He wrestles so hard that his hip is put out of socket. He goes to confront his brother with a limp, unable to flee anymore. Jacob wrestles with God, with the angel…but not with his brother. God can take our anger, our ugliness, our fear…but let’s not take it out on our brother, our neighbor, not even on our enemies. Before we are reconciled with one another, there might be a few things with which we need to wrestle.

There are many campaign promises that Trump made with which we cannot abide, with which we must wrestle. We must wrestle with the suggestion that we build a wall to keep others out. We must wrestle with the suggestion that we keep a wary and fearful eye on all of our Muslim brothers and sisters. We must not allow ourselves to overlook blatant misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia—we’ve got to wrestle hard with these things.

And don’t think I’m speaking out against Trump only, had Hillary been elected the need for reconciliation would be just as real, and people of faith would have just as much to wrestle with. But I cannot stand in this pulpit today after weeks of preaching on loving neighbor, loving enemy, and loving God and deny the cries of my neighbors: neighbors who are black, Muslim, Hispanic, gay, victims of physical and emotional abuse. I cannot reconcile with them without listening to them, in humility and respect. And I cannot listen to them if in my heart I call them cry-babies, sore losers. Nor am I able to reconcile with those who celebrate the election results if I harbor hatred toward them in my heart. No matter if you’re spray painting swastikas on black churches, or “Your vote was a hate-crime” on Civil War monuments, this hatred is not okay and must be wrestled with hard until it becomes dislocated from us.

Jacob refused to let go until the stranger blessed him. And the blessing comes in the form of a limp. But Jacob’s hip is not the only thing dislodged. Jacob is dislodged from his former identity as “trickster” and renamed “Israel.” Walter Bruggemann points out that the limp is beyond a physical attribute and also “refers to the mark left on [Israel’s] very manhood and future.” (3) Jacob’s wrestling match with God “did not [immediately] lead…to reconciliation, forgiveness, healing. It resulted in a crippling.” (3) Just so, being dislodged from our inner-hatred will cripple us…because we have become too reliant on hatred and fear, we lean on them too much, we welcome sin because it makes us feel secure. As Colbert puts it, “we drink the [poison] so we can hate; and it tastes kinda good.”

Anatomically speaking, the hip joint is the deepest, strongest joint of the body. Can you imagine the force required to dislocate your hip joint? Emotionally speaking, hatred is one of the deepest, strongest human emotions. Can you imagine the grace required to dislodge our hatred? In order to be reconciled with our neighbor we must wrestle hard with our hatred until it is dislodged from within us. I’d be willing to say that the journey toward reconciliation must always be walked with a limp. As Bruggemann puts it, “there will be no cheap reconciliations.” This echoes what we’ve heard from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that there can also be no cheap grace. Receiving grace might not be comfortable, but it is necessary. Whether we support Trump or Hillary or neither, whether we celebrate or mourn, whether we tremble with excitement or with fear, we’ve got some wrestling to do.

The easy response is to say, “yeah we sure do have some wrestling to do.” But when we say “we” what we really mean is “everyone else except me”. We draw the line and cast the blame away from us. “Those people with whom I disagree have some wrestling to do.” We are prone to respond to the call to love our neighbor in the same manner as the lawyer who, being told that “Loving God and loving neighbor” is the path to eternal life, has the audacity to ask, “But who is my neighbor?” Luke says he asks this to “justify himself,” I interpret this as a blatant reluctance to go all-in, to truly wrestle with this command until he is dislodged of his hatred. “Who is my neighbor?” is the type of question asked by one looking to draw the line somewhere, looking to claim that “this is where my loving is allowed to stop.”

Jesus responds to his question with a parable. Parables, I might point out, are Jesus’ version of a wrestling match with our preconceived notions of God, and good, and truth. Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in which the “neighbor” ends up being the character for whom Jesus’ audience would be least likely to want to love. When Jesus finishes the story and flips the lawyers question back on him, “So, who is the neighbor in this story?” you can almost hear his hip socket popping out of place.

The crucified and risen Christ is one who “knows fully about limping and blessing, about bowing down and forgiving.” (2) To follow Christ is to wrestle with grace until we receive its blessing, until our hatred is dislodged from within us and we are able to love God and neighbor, to reconcile with our brothers and sisters, to care for the poor, the outcast, the hungry, the sick, the captive, and the least of these. Friends, to truly follow Christ, is to follow him with a limp.

1. Colbert Stephen. From The Tonight Show. November 7, 2016.

2. Houghton, Jon. Can We Reconcile. Recorded on Nov 9, 2016. Copyright J-Diz, 2016.

3. Bruggemann, Walter. “Genesis” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.