"Jacob, Justice, and Jesus"

First Presbyterian Church

Peter S. Buehler

July 27, 2008

Genesis 29:15-28

Laban said, 'This is not done in our country --

giving the younger before the firstborn.'

One of author Wendell Berry's delightful short stories is titled "The Lost Bet."

Set in the late 1920s, the story is about a farmer named Ptolemy Proudfoot, nicknamed Tol, a person everyone loved and many underestimated. His appearance had something to do with it. For while he kept his farm in perfect order -- as immaculate, we're told, as his wife's kitchen -- he gave no mind whatever to the way he looked, to the way he dressed. As one person put it, Tol "wore clothes… the way a hog wears mud."

For his trips to the city to sell his cattle, Tol's wife, Miss Minnie, would send him out the door, the author tells us, "washed and shaved and combed, dressed in his best everyday clothes, which would be spotless, as stiff with starch as if made of tin. But, we hear, "by the time the stock were loaded, all the creases would be criss-crossed with wrinkles; there would be mud and manure on his shoes and britches and maybe on his shirt; he would have a loose cuff or suspender; after much head scratching, his cap or hat would be on crooked and some stray swatch of hair would be hanging in his eyes or sticking out over one ear."

Which is how he appeared when he and his nephew entered a grocery store in Louisville, Kentucky in search of a two-bushel bag of navy beans -- one of the few products he and Miss Minnie didn't produce or raise themselves. He was in that particular grocery store, something of an upscale market, because his usual feed merchants were out of stock of navy beans. Immediately, it seems, the proprietor, a city person, looked Tol over, sized him up, and, grinning, began making sideways glances to his well-dressed friends standing around an iron stove in the back of the store. Each time he spoke to Tol he would call him by a different clever made-up name, all the while believing that his mocking words and tone were registering only with his chuckling friends.

Tol, of course, from the start, decided to play along. So after making his purchase, he asked the proprietor if he would like to see a little magic trick, for, Tol said, he could make a quarter disappear. The man agreed, and Tol, jerking his hand, made the quarter fly out of his hand and land behind baskets of produce, so that Tol would have to get down on his hands and knees -- a very large man looking very silly -- in order to fetch his coin back, all the while causing the store owner and his friends to burst out laughing. He did it once again, looked incredibly foolish again; more guffaws. What a bumpkin, they thought.

Then, smiling sheepishly, Tol bet the proprietor that he could jump into the large basket of eggs there for sale in front of the counter and not break a single one.

"Well, Spud, old boy," the man said, playing along, "I'll just bet you can't."

Before he could change his mind, before he realized what the sparkle in Tol's eyes meant, that look that had been there all along -- too late: Tol "leapt into the air as light as a fox and came down with both feet in the basket of eggs."

So Tol lost his bet!

There is something so satisfying about someone who gets what's coming to him.

Someone who delights in making fun of other people is made to look foolish by the very person he ridiculed. How great is that!

It doesn't happen often enough. Whether it's poetic justice or true justice, it is a rare commodity in our world; people get away with a lot. It happens all the time: cars go racing by us on the freeway, twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, and nothing happens. Students cheat on tests and get away with it; adults cheat on their income taxes and aren't caught. Shady financial companies knowingly offer bad loans, causing innocent families to lose their homes, their dreams, their life savings, and they get away with it.

So when we read about people who get what they deserve, it feels good.

And if anyone ever deserves what he gets, it's this character named Jacob we read about in the Book of Genesis. Of all people to get deceived by a wily uncle, Jacob had it coming. The one who, on two separate occasions, tricked his elder brother, Esau, first out of his birthright, then out of his father's blessing -- if anyone deserves justice it is Jacob.

We see it coming. Right from the start, when Jacob is head-over-heels in love with his uncle's younger daughter and asks that after seven years of service Laban give her to him as his wife, right then we notice that Laban doesn't really say Yes, he just sounds like he's saying Yes -- only Jacob is too smitten to know it.

And just as his own mostly blind father couldn't see the deception when Jacob pretended to be his brother, so Jacob could not see whom he was spending his wedding night with. The bride was heavily veiled throughout the wedding day and night, as was the custom, and, after seven years of waiting, Jacob, it seems, wasn't asking a lot of questions.

Except the next morning when he was bursting with questions! Realizing he'd been had, he shot questions at his uncle rapid-fire: "What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?"

Laban's reply is dripping with sarcasm. Unlike where Jacob is from, unlike Jacob's country where younger brothers swindle older brothers out of what is rightfully theirs, Laban says, "This is not done in our country -- giving the younger before the firstborn." Go through the week-long wedding ceremony with Leah -- smile, do what you need to do to look like a proper husband, and, Oh, by the way, promise to work for me for another seven years -- and my wife and I will gladly give you Rachel as a second wife.

That Jacob is silent shows he got the point. He didn't like it, but the deception he had suffered was the justice he had coming.

End of story. Or is it? What do we take away from this fourteen-year saga between Jacob and his uncle Laban? Is it simply an entertaining Old Testament story of a trickster meeting his match, a clever man out-witted by someone more clever? Is it a moral lesson: that people who deceive will themselves be deceived, so do not be like them?

Does our story in the Bible end here? I wonder if a lot of people wish it would, maybe we ourselves sometimes. Certainly justice is key in society as it is in the scriptures, justice defined as all people enjoying the privileges and blessings of life; justice as all God's people having access to society's benefits: quality education and health care, meaningful work, equal protection under the law.

In this country, the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" paint a picture of a just society, a vision we cherish and strive to accomplish.

We hear the great Old Testament prophet speaking to us still, recognizing that the point about justice is not that others get what they deserve, but that people of faith tirelessly take initiative. In his words, He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Though I've always found "require" to be a heavy word. Maybe I don't want to see religious faith being about "requirements." Requirements apply to other aspects of life, to the world "out there," but not to Christian faith -- not to Jesus.

How often I prefer to see faith in Jesus Christ as a source of comfort and strength, of hope and love and forgiveness. Especially forgiveness. Lord, forgive me for what I have done, and for what I am about to do, and for what I intend to keep on doing. Love me no matter what, Lord!

Yet Jesus is not above requiring things, even forgiveness! He makes God's forgiveness contingent; forgiveness, he says, is available to us, given to us, only as we ourselves are willing to forgive. "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive the sins of others."

So as satisfying as seeing justice happen, the Lord tells us, far more satisfying is seeing mercy happen -- showing mercy is what satisfies! Yes, people who deceive others will likely suffer the same fate; yes, there are consequences to holding onto hateful attitudes and clinging to destructive behaviors. The only thing is, how many of us have had those same attitudes and, at one time or another, engaged in those same behaviors?

For some of us, the reason we love Jesus is because we have most definitely not deserved the grace we have received, and we have most surprisingly not received the judgment or the consequences we have deserved. That he has taken our sins upon himself, that he went to the cross for our benefit -- for our freedom, for our salvation, for our transformation -- that is the very height of mercy, such that we cannot even think of the word mercy without seeing his face.

Jesus is the One in whom we see with our own eyes God's justice, kindness, and humility. It startles us every time. He only requires of us what he makes possible in us: our righteousness is possible because of his mercy; our love is possible because of his grace.

Thanks be to God! How incredible it is to be able to live a life where each day not only are we blessed but we can be a blessing, even to the Jacobs of the world, those we would otherwise love to see suffer their just desserts.

Yet Jesus says, "Judge not." He says, "Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned." He says, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

If you take one thing from this sermon, I hope it is this verse from the Gospel.

Because if we have mercy in our minds and in our hearts, we will show it in our lives. And this is important, more than we can imagine. Dan Kimball is a pastor in Santa Cruz and the author of a book about the emerging church, churches that are trying to minister creatively to generations unfamiliar with Christian teaching and practice. What Kimball makes us aware of, if we're not already, is how many young people have negative impressions of Christians.

In his book he tells about interviews he filmed on the campus of UC Santa Cruz where he asked interviewees two questions: First, What comes to mind when you hear the name Jesus? And second, What comes to mind when you hear the word Christian? To the first question, Kimball reports, students' faces lit up in smiles. Responses were: "Jesus (is) beautiful," "I want to be like Jesus," "Jesus was a liberator of women," and "I'm all about Jesus." Responses to the second question, however, were different. In the words of one young person: "Christians are dogmatic and closed-minded." In the words of another: "I would want to be a Christian, but I have never met one" (The Emerging Church, p. 79).

Ouch. Yet there is good news here: not only that young people are so taken with Jesus, but also that each of us has the ability by the grace of God to change minds, to change even one person's mind. By not judging any person, no matter how tempting. And by showing mercy to every person, as we ourselves have been shown mercy by our heavenly Father.

Which brings us back to our friend Jacob, the deceiver who gets deceived. It's a great story. Only it doesn't end there. The rest of Genesis chapter 29 is interesting. It mentions that Leah, Jacob's first wife, was the first to have children with her husband -- a total of six sons and one daughter. It lists sons numbers three and four as Levi and Judah. Levi and Judah are especially significant, because Levi's direct descendent, we learn in the book of Exodus, was none other than Moses, who led the people of Israel to freedom. And Judah's direct descendent, we learn in 1 Samuel, is David, Israel's greatest king.

And David's descendent, we learn in the New Testament, is Jesus of Nazareth, the One who shows the world God's justice, mercy, and love.

So while Jacob may have been a trickster, and his uncle an even wilier one, look how the story turned out: Laban, Jacob, Leah, Judah, David, Jesus! This is a story of surprises, a story of grace and mercy beyond imagining. And it isn't over.

We're writing the next chapter ourselves.