Genesis 25.21-34, Matthew 13.10-17
The stand out thing about Jacob is his ambition. He was born grasping his older brother's heel, because they were twins. For identical twins to be born holding onto one another is extremely unusual but for non-identical twins it's even more unusual, so it was remarked upon at the time and was remembered. And Jacob got the name, perhaps it was a nickname, ‘The Supplanter’ - literally one who grasps another person by the heel’.
We know the brothers weren't identical twins because one was born covered in fine hair and the other was born smooth; one had red hair, or a ruddy complexion, the other did not; one was an outdoor type, the other liked to stay close to home; one was impetuous and reckless, the other was cool and calculating; one had a sense of humour, the other did not.
The story of how Esau sold his birthright, the right to receive his father's blessing, for a bread and lentil stew, might have been funny if its consequences weren't so serious. Esau accepted Jacob's one-sided deal because at the time he felt as though he were dying of hunger. But was he serious? Did he really feel all that hungry, or was he hoping it was just a joke between brothers?
An Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Harold Godwinson, also gave up his birthright in similar circumstances. In this case he was reassigning the right to become the next king of England, and like Esau he did so because he was going through a rough patch. He'd been shipwrecked in a storm and taken hostage by the Duke of Normandy. Duke William made Harold very welcome and treated him like an honoured guest, but he wouldn't let him go home.
Unaware at the time that he was holding some sacred relics, Harold made a promise to let Duke William become the next king of England in return for his freedom. But afterwards he claimed variously that he’d been tricked or that he’d expected William to treat his promise as a joke.
Unfortunately, like Jacob, William didn't have a sense of humour. He got the Pope to declare a pilgrimage against Harold for breaking his promise and recruited an army of volunteers and freebooters to help him seize the throne at the Battle of Hastings.
Pretty much the same thing happened to Esau. He dismissed the birthright thing as a bit of tomfoolery, but years later when his father lay blind and fatally ill on his deathbed - and asked Esau to kill some game and make a lovely savoury stew for a last meal before he died - Jacob hurried in while Esau was out hunting, brought his father a lamb takeaway to eat instead, slipped on Esau’s old hunting jacket and made sure he received his father's blessing.
And this blessing wasn't mere window-dressing. It conferred the promised birthright on Jacob, making him the head of the family and the inheritor of all his father’s wealth. It was like changing Isaac's will.
That's why Jacob was called ‘The Supplanter' or ‘The Grasper’, although actually his carefully laid plan didn't work out as Jacob intended. Esau was bigger than he was and threatened to kill him.
Jacob didn’t have the Pope on his side or an army at his command, so he took refuge with his Uncle Laban, who turned out to be an even bigger schemer than Jacob. Eventually Jacob made his fortune another way and was reconciled to his brother, but the lesson we can draw from his example is that trying to realise your ambitions at someone else's expense always causes trouble, and sometimes a lot of trouble.
We all know people who are like the young Jacob - ruthless, self-serving, out for themselves at the expense of everyone else. Sometimes they are openly ambitious. Sometimes their ambition is cloaked in false modesty and feigned concern for family, friends and colleagues. But once we see through the veneer we find they're not likeable people and they don't inspire much loyalty, except from their mothers. They are not a good example of how to be.
Fast forward to a very different example, one of Jacob's descendants - Jesus of Nazareth. ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,’ Paul tells the Christians at Philippi, ‘Who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.’
This is our example, the person we should strive to resemble, not the wily fixer but the self-effacing servant of all.
And so finally to our Gospel reading. This is not actually part of the lectionary reading for today because the lectionary reading is a sandwich. It starts with the Parable of the Sower and ends with Matthew's version of what Jesus says it means. The bit in the middle has been omitted from the lectionary, but I'm always suspicious when that happens. I find myself wondering why. Was it because this middle section seems too difficult even for the people who drew up the lectionary to understand, or because they think we might be puzzled by it?
Jesus’ words certainly are puzzling. He seems to be saying that he’s using parables to deliberately hide his meaning, whereas we tend to assume that he was to making it easier for people to see what his teaching means by using examples from their daily life - sowing and reaping, making bread, storing flour, hunting for lost valuables, and so on.
My personal take on this passage is that Jesus uses parables to make us work things out for ourselves. He doesn't spoon fed us. Instead, he challenges us to interpret what Bible stories mean for our own situation. And that applies to Old Testament stories as well as to Gospel parables.
The important thing about the ancient story of Jacob and Esau is not what they learnt from it, but what we can learn, and how that learning affects the way we behave towards one another.
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