The Trickster is Tricked (Genesis 29:15-30)

      OK, so here's the deal: our hero Jacob – or is it anti-hero Jacob? – has arrived in Haran, after fleeing his father's place in South Palestine.  You'll remember why he had to leave: his brother Esau was plotting his death in a murderous rage.  Why?  Because Jacob had tricked his blind, mentally infirm father Isaac into giving him his blessing, when it by rights belonged to Esau.  So, you might ask, what's the big deal?  Why doesn't Isaac just give his blessing to Esau as well?  I mean, we give our blessing every time somebody sneezes, for goodness sake . . . Aaa- choo! someone goes, and we say "bless you."  And who can forget all the "God bless the U.S.A." slogans that appeared on cars and country music lyric sheets, asking – rather selfishly, don't you think? – for God to bless ourselves, to give a great big old theological "bless you" to ourselves,. as if we – who've corralled a twenty-five percent of the earth's wealth for our measly four-point-three percent of the world's population – as if we really need any more of God's blessing . . . A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that I think says it all . . . God bless the whole world, no exceptions . . .

      But I digress.  The point is, we see blessing these days as something pretty trivial . . . we see it as just words, as just a slogan or something polite to say after somebody sneezes.  But that's not the way the Old Testament sees it . . . there, it's a deadly serious proposition.  In the Old Testament, words of blessing were not empty . . . they had potency in and of themselves.  Just the saying of them imparted energy and power . . . when God blessed Isaac, he became a wealthy man . . . and that blessing was irreversibly transferred to Jacob when – disguised as Esau – he served up some game that Rebekah had cooked.  And as soon as Isaac figured out who he'd really blessed, he knew what he'd done . . . Esau cried out "Have you not reserved a blessing for me?"  And Isaac just said "Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing. I have blessed him, and blessed he shall be."

      And now, Jacob the blessed one—blessed in spite of being a cheat and a liar, blessed in spite of what he's done, the same Jacob to whom God  has just passed the promise saying "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed"—that Jacob has just gotten to his uncle Laban's place in Haran, and he's greeted him as a kinsman, and then worked a month for him – apparently without any problems – and now, here, all of a sudden Laban brings up the question of wages . . . he says "Just because you're my kinsman, should you serve me for nothing?"  And on the surface it looks like he's being kind here, being generous, but do we detect an undercurrent of deceit already?  "Tell me," Laban says "what shall your wages be?"  Now, Jacob's already met the beautiful Rachel watering her father's sheep at the well, and we all know that things . . . happen at biblical wells, and so he may have fallen in love with her right there, love at first sight, like in a Harlequin Romance – and so when Laban asks what his wages shall be, he asks for her: "I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel."  Of course, he knows about the older daughter Leah, whose eyes were lovely, according to our translation, or weak, as the New International Version has it, and who else in Jacob's life had weak eyes?

      So Jacob serves Laban for seven years but they seem but a few days because of the love he has for Rachel – the orchestra swells romantically, heavy on the strings, love is indeed a many splendored thing – and he says to Laban "Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed," the romantic old devil, and so Laban orders up a wedding feast, and they feast all day – feast, feast, feast – and Hebrew weddings being what they are, drink all day – drink, drink, drink – and in the evening, when I personally am surprised that Jacob could even stand up – Laban brings his daughter into the tent.  And when the morning comes, Behold! it's Leah!  and can you imagine the chagrin, and maybe even the embarrassment . . . Jacob's slept all night with the wrong woman . . . talk about weak eyes!  Hilarity ensues!

      Now obviously, this is meant to be funny . . . and it is, in a bawdy way . . . and I want you to notice the earthiness of the scene, the physicality of it . . . the ancient Hebrews were down-to-earth people, and if you think about it, it makes sense . . . sheep-and-cattle herders tend to be matter-of-fact about . . . biological functions, shall we say . . . and here the humor revolves around Jacob being so drunk or stupid or something that he sleeps with the wrong woman or, as the scripture itself puts it bluntly, he goes into the wrong daughter.  But of course there's something else at work here, isn't there?  The trickster Jacob, who is so good – and so not-repentant – at deceiving others, is himself tricked, bunko-ed, taken advantage of.  He's met his match in Laban,

      And oh how sweet the irony: he beds the woman whose ambiguous eyes – depending on the translation, they are weak or lovely – recall Jacob's poor old blind father, and the way Jacob is tricked is that he's made blind  – again like Isaac – by the dark and the drink . . . and perhaps his love.  And the sense of what goes around comes around is made all the more acute by the delicious ironies at work here.  And the folks who listen to this story told and retold around the campfire, and those who later hear it proclaimed from the scroll in the temple, nod their heads in satisfaction, because what goes around does come around, and Jacob is only getting what he deserves.

      And so folks who were scandalized when Jacob the deceiver got the goods in spite of his deceit get a measure of gratification in this story, and that's why these stories can't be isolated from one another, they are all of one piece in the end . . . the story of Jacob's conflict with his brother and father is incomplete without this tale of his comeuppance.

      But . . . what about the women?  What about what Rachel and Leah wanted in all of this?  What about their preferences here, don't they matter?  In a word, no.  Lamentably, in those days, women were possessions of the men . . . daughters of their fathers, wives of their husbands . . . they had little formal rights in and of themselves . . . that's not to say, of course, that they didn't have any power . . . see the machinations of Sarah and Rebekah if you think that they didn't . . . but they didn't have any rights, and men could – and frequently did – do with them whatever they want.

      To illustrate this, look at the language used here . . . we're told that in the evening, Laban took his daughter and brought her to Jacob and he went into her . . . and this language of taking and bringing and going into the woman is common . . . the woman is passive in this thing, all the verbs – taking and bringing and going-into – belong to the males.  And the verb "take" is a commonly-used word for "marriage" as in "he took her as his wife."  Men were the takers and women were the . . . tak-ees.

      And of course this hierarchical, male-centric notion of human relations in scripture has been used to solidify male strangle-holds on power in many places – not least of all the church – for centuries.   And our passage takes it all as a matter of course . . . Leah has no say in what has happened, any more than does Rachel . . . and when Jacob complains about being tricked out of his one, true love, Laban shrugs it off – we don't give the youngest before the firstborn in this country – and the final ironic nail in Jacob's coffin becomes apparent.  Here he is, running away after successfully subverting primogeniture, after successfully overturning the ancient rule that the first-born gets the lion's share, and now he's hoisted by that same petard.  His idyllic dream of life with the ravishing Rachel is dashed by Laban who says oops, I forgot to tell you . . . our laws say that the first-born comes . . . first.

      Well.  That crafty old Laban manages to bind Jacob to him for another seven years – fourteen in all – in order to get both his daughters married off, and Jacob promises to work another seven years, and he takes Rachel and goes into her, and our passage ends on an ominous note . . . Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, and it's eerily reminiscent of his own parents' dysfunctional marriage – Isaac loved Esau because he was fond of game, but Rebekah loved Jacob most of all.  What goes around does indeed come around.

      And we might well expect trouble to come out of it, and that's just what happens . . . Rachel is barren but Leah is incredibly fertile, and she gives Jacob four sons, one right after another – Reuben and Levi and Simeon and Judah – and she thought surely Jacob would love her after that . . . but Rachel gives him her maid to bear children in her stead, and she does – Dan and Naphtali . . . but then Leah gives Jacob her maid and she bears him Gad and Asher . . . and then she herself bears two more sons, Issacher and Zebulun . . . and conflict between the sisters, rivalry for Jacob's love – certainly of dubious worth – becomes a way of life for Jacob's family there in Haran . . . and in fact, conflict has surrounded Jacob all his life . . . with his brother, beginning in the womb, for Abraham's sake, and with his father Isaac and father-in-law Laban, and now conflict he cannot control swirls around him once again . . .

      And some of you out there might be wanting to ask a simple question: where is God in all of this?  Where is the God we know – the God of Abraham and Moses, of Jeremiah and Jesus – where is God in this story of a dysfunctional and deeply conflicted family?  Well, I'm glad you asked . . . I have to say that . . . God is right there, in the struggle . . . because out of that conflict comes a people, the people of Israel . . . the sons born to Jacob through Leah and the maids are the patriarchs of the Hebrew nation, the heads of the first ten of the twelve tribes . . . and finally, Rachel conceives and bears a son – Joseph – and Joseph would eventually save them all . . .

      God is in the conflict, right square in the middle of it . . . and out of that struggle, out of that crucible of fire and brimstone, God forms a people.  God uses this tremendously dysfunctional family, with its huge, gaping flaws, who fight like cats and dogs, and takes them and somehow her will is worked.  Out of all the conflict and pain comes . . . life, comes the Israelite people, comes hope.  And as a Christian people, we too were forged in conflict, we too were forged in pain, we too were forged in the struggle between one man and the powers that be, the powers that rule the earth, as personified by the Roman empire and their religious-authority toadies . . . and we confess that God – in the person of Jesus Christ – was quite literally right there in the middle of that conflict, and in fact suffered its ultimate expression on the cross.

      And I don't know about you, but I’m comforted by the thought of God right there beside us in the struggle, right there with us . . . because it seems like – sometimes at least – that our own lives, no less than Jacob's, are all about conflict. . . families that are less than . . . loving, people that seem bent on our destruction, who seem to be out to get us, all the time . . . when the conflict over survival, the fight just to make it with our health and sanity and life threatens to overwhelm us and just sink us like an overloaded ferry, God is there with us and is working God’s mysterious ways.  And just like with Jacob’s unruly life and times, just like in its ups and downs and ins and outs and skittering sideways moves, God will triumph in the end, life will emerge, and God’s blessings will be showered on us all . . . no exceptions.  Amen.

Seedy Yeast (Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52)

Jesus parables could be difficult, even for people of the time in which he was teaching them.  Their point is not told straight out, and although in the Gospels, Jesus is pictured as interpreting them, the interpretations are for his disciples only.  Regarding this, Jesus says in Mark  "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’” And on behalf of those outside, I say "ouch!"  What good to "those outside"--whoever they may be--are stories they don't get?

And certain groups of Christians--collectively labelled "Gnostic"-- would say "none."  Outsiders, those not *inside,* not initiated into the group cult, aren't supposed to learn from Jesus' parables.  And there are just enough hints in the gospels and letters of Paul to keep some scholars arguing that there was a gnostic component to Jesus’ teaching, even though it doesn't matter much these days, because Gnosticism as a viable proposition didn't last much longer than the 4th century CE and one of the reasons non-gnostic Christianity prevailed is it's openness ... There is no "secret teaching" in orthodox Christianity, no secret ladder of initiation, that you climb in order to open up new secret knowledge.  All Christian teaching--at least in Christian scripture--is open to everyone, Jesus' saying in Mark notwithstanding.

In other words, we're supposed to understand today's parables, but though it may not have been so may have been like falling off a log back in the day, it can be much more difficult a task today, and the main reason is that it is today.  It's near on 2000 years since Jesus told them, and things have changed.  Cultural references that Jesus' disciples would get right away don't mean the same to you and me.  Take the mustard seed in the first parable:  these days, we think of mustard as something that comes in little those ubiquitous, yellow bottles . . . today, it’s is a an important spice in many regional cuisines, and ball-parks around the country, and grows well in temperate regions, such as Canada, India and e United States.

But in the ancient Middle East, it was a noxious weed.  It would get into a container of good seed, and it was so small that nobody noticed it, and when the good seed was planted, there would come these shrubby mustard plants, competing with the good crop for sunlight—which there certainly was a lot of—as well as water, which in those parts, there wasn’t.  So to the farmer, the mustard plant was at best a major pest, and it could be a real problem, reducing yield, and helping drive the farmers' family into further and further debt to the powers that be.

What would an image be that would have a similar impact on us, the modern readers?  Well, what if we replaced mustard with another plant, say . . . dandelion?  Or I know . . . thistles, which Pam and I cleaned a boat load of from our garden is spring . . . Let's see what that sounds like: “The kingdom of heaven is like a thistle that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."  Well, perhaps that doesn't quite cut the . . . thistle . . . because though thistles are annoying to us gardeners, they hardly threaten our livelihood . . . but maybe that’s something we can work with:  the kingdom of heaven is like an annoyance, like that neighbor who lets his dog bark all night, or those darned kids, skateboarding all over the sidewalk . . . these aren’t bad, but let’s try something a bit stronger . . . The kingdom of God is like the neighbor who lets his pit bull run around the place off-leash, and there are little kids playing.  Is that better?

Ok . . . Let's take a look at the second parable.  Jesus compares the kingdom of God to yeast, or leaven: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”  And once again, our understanding is hampered by our time and place, by our conception of yeast as something that comes in tidy little packets, with things like “Fleischmann's” and “rapid rise” written on them.  But in the first century, leaven was almost universally regarded as a symbol of corruption, of impurity.  After all, it was what made corpses rot and food spoil.  Jewish women would clean it out of their houses for Passover . . . Leaven was made by setting aside a portion of bread to spoil, and that could be a tricky thing.  If it didn't spoil enough, it was worthless as leaven; let it spoil too much, and it became poisonous, even fatal.  And here Jesus is, comparing the kingdom of Heaven, the reign of God, to something that rots, something that contaminates, something that corrupts.  Oy vey!

So these weren’t just mildly befuddling word-puzzles to first-century Jews  . . . they were disturbing, subversive even . . . when I read these parables I think of legions of good, first-century Jews suffering strokes . . . and they’re told together, they’re like a one-two punch, and with that in mind, let's step back and consider them together.  Jesus often paired similar stories so that one illuminates the other, so that one commented upon the other.  What do they have in common?  Well, they're both absolutely unexpected, they overturn the conventions of the day . . .  both compare the kingdom of God to things that aren't well-regarded in first century society: a weeds and leaven.  In addition, both act in the same way, both make things impure, corrupt: the mustard seed renders a bag of seed impure, and when left unchecked, whatever crop it has infested.  The leaven, when placed in an unleavened loaf, renders it impure as well.  Finally, and perhaps most critically, both operate from the inside: the yeast inside the bag of seed or crop in the field, the leaven within the loaf or whatever else it is spoiling.

Now.  Let's take it a step further:  we’ve seen what the parables compare the kingdom of heaven to, now let’s look at the *result* of this contamination?  What does it do in the parable, and what does that mean for the world?  According to the first one, of the mustard seed, the reign of God is like a mustard seed that grows into a shrub, and it’s is not only the greatest of shrubs, but it becomes a tree, and it provides shelter for all the birds of the air.  So the corruption that the mustard seed represents turns out to be wonderful for the birds of air, which symbolize God’s good creation.

The result of the leavening is a bit harder to fathom . . . it doesn't say outright that anything good comes from the kingdom's corruption, but we can infer from what it says.  The three measures if flour, properly leavened, is a tremendous amount, enough to feed a wedding banquet which, as we all know, went on for days in Jewish culture.  And a very small amount of leaven would be required to do this, so in both parables, a little dab of the kingdom will do ya’ . . . a small amount of a this corrupting influence produces an abundance of good . . . luxuriant, overwhelming living space for God's good creation, and a bounty of food for the people of God who, not coincidentally, are often likened to guests at a wedding banquet.

So.  We've seen that the kingdom of Heaven--or the kingdom of God, or the reign of God, they’re all the same thing—is both surprising—things we think are bad produce good—and life-giving, but we haven't talked about the common, some would say central, metaphor of corruption.  The mustard seed hides in the jar of seeds, corrupting its purity, and the leaven "hides" in the bread, changing it from the inside.  So let's consider:  normally, corruption makes a good thing bad . . . Corrupt politicians make governments, created for the public good, bad.  Rust corrupts good, strong steel by weakening it, making it unfit to use in building a bridge, say.  Corruption, in normal usage, turns something good . . . bad.

But here, the kingdom of Heaven corrupts, and the outcome is good—creation is cared for and the people of God are fed.  Like a lot of things in God’s reign, the effects of God's corruption are the opposite of what they are in the mundane world.  The Apostle Paul understood something of this when he wrote that wisdom of God is foolishness to the world, and the world’s weakness is the strength of God.  The ways of the kingdom are often fundamentally opposed to those of society.

And there's another consequence of our metaphor:  corruption changes, but does not destroy.  Mustard seeds don’t destroy a crop, they make it less effective.  Leaven doesn't destroy the bread, it just changes it, makes it tastier (if you're a beetle) or yuckier (if you're a person).  Similarly, the kingdom of God seeks not to destroy a fallen world, but change it, no matter how many wrong-headed interpretations of Revelations you might have heard.  The kingdom of Heaven is on earth, and what's more, it's on this earth, the very earth upon which we now stand.  It is working not destroy the earth, not to condemn the earth, but that through it the earth might be transformed, rehabilitated, redeemed, and renewed.

These parables tell us that God's kingdom works from the inside, and it works by changing the form of what it is working on.  And if God’s corruption transforms society for the better, if it makes redeems it, renews it, then the society must have started out in need of that redemption, that renewal.  And in fact that was true: Ancient Palestine was part of the Roman Empire, and injustice was rampant.  The distance between the rich and the poor gaped like the mouth of Sheol, and the dominant narrative, the story that ordered Roman lives, was the myth of redemptive violence, taught that in the end, violence is redemptive, that in the end, violence saves, that it's the answer to every problem.

These parables were told in a setting where there was a yawning gap between the richest and poorest and where violence was as thick, and pervasive, as the air they all breathed.  That was the Roman empire, with radical inequality and violence at its core.  And don't get me wrong, I realize that there are great differences between us and the Roman Empire and all, but doesn't that describe the United States, at least to a certain extent?  I mean, statistics are pretty overwhelming that the middle class is going away, has been since the eighties, and the gap between the richest and the poorest has widened considerably over the past thirty years, and there is more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.  And violence is becoming increasingly pervasive as well—as we saw in a recent Sunday School class, theologian Walter Wink has shown that the dominant story of our culture, like that of the Roman Empire, is the myth that violence is redemptive, that it saves, and that in the end, it is the answer to everything.

So even though we’re not the Roman Empire, we're not the kingdom of Heaven either, and in fact, the case can be made that we're a lot closer to the Emperor that we are to God.  So I think there's plenty of room for Godly corruption around here, plenty of room for that surprising, holy rot, as the kingdom bursts out here and there, with little bits of corruption, little tiny spots, like a mustard seed or microscopic bacteria, and spreads, transforming our society with celestial corruption and heavenly blight.   Look for it, find it, and nurture it in our daily lives, and we will be co-conspirators, co-corruptors with God, hastening the coming of the Kingdom on Earth.  Amen.