Jacob the Rascal - Genesis 25:19-34

I get asked all the time, Hannah, why do you love the book of Genesis so much? Well I’ll tell you. My father’s parents died before I was born. But, he has four older sisters and an older brother, and when they all get together, the stories flow. Growing up, I loved hearing stories about my ancestors whom I never knew, especially my great uncle Thomas Morgan, whom we call “T.M.” According to Hooker family lore, Uncle T.M. was a rascal. 

He loved to have a cold beer or ten, he always needed you to spot him just five dollars, and he usually drew unwanted attention in public. My dad recalls that when he and his father went golfing, if Uncle T.M.’s car was in the lot, they’d take a lap around downtown before teeing off, just for a little extra cushion. As a child, these tales brought me endless joy and giggles.

Sadly, Uncle T.M. doesn’t have a headstone along with the rest of the family in the cemetery in Pine Bluff. But we know he was buried at the foot of his parents’ plot: ever the rascal, underfoot in death as in life. Now, you can imagine my delight this week when I opened one of my favorite commentaries about Genesis and the author begins the chapter on Jacob by calling him a rascal. I love Genesis because it is a book about families - their dysfunction, their conflict, their loyalty, their joy, and everything in between. What could be more relatable than this? 

Today we start our move out of the Isaac cycle and into the Jacob cycle of Genesis, where we will learn something new about God and about ourselves. While Abraham and Isaac wrestled with how to pass down the faith in the face of infertility, Jacob wrestles with just about everything, beginning from within his mother’s womb. He wrestles with his twin brother, Esau, his uncle, Laban, his wife, Rachel, his sons, and most memorably, with God. His life is riddled with and remember for conflict. It is part and parcel of his chosenness. 

I wonder if this sounds familiar to you; if, like mine, your spiritual journey has seen its fair share of wrestling. It feels almost inevitable that at some point, our faith is destined to cause strife within our family or another community to which we belong. If our faith in God and in Jesus Christ is meant to save us, why is it so complicated? Why does it slip through our fingers so easily? 

As much as I love them, Abraham and Isaac and their spiritual fortitude are not always comforting in times of conflict. In a spiritual wrestling match, I want Jacob by my side. It is Jacob who reminds me that being chosen by God, as we all are, means a life marked by holy conflict. Not because our God is antagonizing, or petulant, or vindictive, but because the grace and love and power of our God absolutely violates the order of life we create for ourselves and our society. 

Let’s see how this violation plays out in today’s passage. Rebekah comes to know of her sons’ conflict before they are even born. She can sense it with every fiber of her being and she prays to God for guidance. God tells her that this conflict within her is the beginning of something much bigger, something already ordained. And when these brothers enter the world, one comes early and easily and is immediately bestowed with privilege, and the other drags behind, combative and literally underfoot like the rascal he will become. 

The vignette shifts quickly to the brothers as young men. Esau is built physically powerful to match the power granted to him by his status as the firstborn male. Jacob is smaller, frail, and insecure in more ways than one. But Jacob is also clever and patient and chosen. He spots his brother’s moment of physical and spiritual weakness and he pounces, offering a quick fix in exchange for the privilege that Esau had always taken for granted. Jacob played the long game, and when Esau discovered his own shortsightedness, it was too late. God had already acted. 

We often think about Jacob in negative terms: sneaky, unfair, greedy, cunning, a rascal. But as the younger brother, Jacob had significantly fewer rights and resources than his twin. Their world was arranged such that the first born (male, of course) was granted power and strength in the community, and no one embodies this more than Esau. 

But from its very first book, our Holy Scripture reveals to us that the power and strength gifted to us by God looks nothing like that of our own making. In fact, it is in the inverse, and Jacob embodies God’s challenge to every single social arrangement of his day. He is scandalous, because his God is scandalous. 

So of course we bristle at Jacob’s success. Of course we pity Esau, who did everything right and still lost. When the world gives us something we enjoy, we are loath to let it go, especially if God’s alternative does not offer immediate satisfaction. Jacob is the son of the promise and a promise indicates that there is something good yet to come, even when we cannot see it. That is the foundation of our faith and Jacob’s. But Esau lacked this faith, and trusted only what was right in front of him. It was a brutal lesson to learn.

Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann explains that the Jacob narrative asks this question: Can God’s promise overpower the systems and standards we have created for ourselves, which privilege the few over the many? As Jacob and the rest of scripture will attest: the answer is yes. Because our God never abandons but instead walks alongside the younger siblings, the least of these, the underprivileged and undervalued, even to the point of death on a cross. 

When such a God as this calls us into covenant and offers us a promise, it behooves us to respond with our faith, even when we cannot yet see how the promise will be kept. But when our faith leads us to seek the strength and power of God, it may very well lead us into scandal and conflict with our world, with our communities, and perhaps even with our own families. The work of passing down the promise is complicated and messy and beautiful and holy. 

So, I hope we can cut our rascal Jacob a little slack as he goes about God’s scandalous work in the world, while also having some compassion for Esau as well. We embody both of their legacies. Sometimes we are the lowly with whom God walks and sometimes we take our privilege for granted and learn a brutal lesson about quick fixes and the promise of God. 

In spite of his more challenging characteristics, I know that my dad and his siblings loved their uncle T.M. deeply and remember him fondly. That’s the thing about rascals, they’re just so charming! It brings me great joy and comfort to imagine Uncle T.M. through the theological lens of the book of Genesis. It’s redemptive. The world may not have offered him privilege or ease, but God offered him a promise and keeps it even today. God offers us all a promise of life and love and salvation and it will surely turn the world as we know it upside down, making rascals of us all. Amen.