Genesis 29:15-28
Proper 12 (17) – Year A
With a passage like this we could go riding off in all directions. There is no prioritizing of one theme over another. While appreciating a trickster getting tricked, I am more interested in a review of what it means to be “wifed”. How do you read these NRSV verses?
(21) Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife ....”
(28) … then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.
To be wifed is more than to have been “gone into”. Leah had been gone into without being acknowledged as a wife. Child bearer, yes; wife for Jacob, no.
To reduce a relationship to the genitals, as The United Methodist Church has done to define away a gay or lesbian relationship, is to reduce love for Rachel to sex with Leah or one of the maidservants. This is certainly not a story that translates well into our time and place. Nonetheless, it is helpful to aid us in not limiting our discriminatory inclinations to simply one style of culturally regulated sexuality.
“Wife”, in a relationship of any orientation, is a word loaded with tons of overtones. It is not a subordinate role or a directorship. Consider the many ways you have been wifed or you have wifed another—this is not a sex term—it is a relationship beyond gender or role.
Rachel was Jacob’s wife more than 14 years before he went into her. For more years than either anticipated, there were no children. Neither a ceremony, nor sexual partnering, nor children make a wife. Rejoice and make a parable out of this story—How would Jesus retell this story to make it come alive again? And you?
- - - - - - -
before prayer
a sigh
before knowing
a call
before covenant
a thanks
before serving
a love
before presence
a parable
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
The power of the culture booms through. A private agreement between Laban and Jacob comes crashing down with those famous words, “This is not done in our country.” The old-story of primogeniture rings out - “First shall remain first.”
Jacob’s experience was that the younger will serve the older. He had the leverage to trick his brother and his father into this new reality. Here he does not have leverage and must work a double-share, balancing the birthright double-share he previously had come by so easily.
Where else are variations of primogeniture showing themselves? What factor does this play in a strict constructionist view of capitalism that we call by the shorthand of Enron/WorldCom/Bear Sterns? Where does it raise its head in terms of the continuing bane of racism? Is it not closely related to a sense of majority-ism, so heterosexual is automatically good and homosexual is automatically evil? How do you see the presumption of “We've never done it that way,” cropping up in your life and the life of the world?
Unfortunately, Jacob, a second-born become first, will carry this sin of primogeniture on in his own way with the Joseph story to come. Jesus, a first born, come to serve and not to be served, breaks the power of primogeniture through his claim that the last will become first, that those who come after him will do even greater things than he did (and he will aid them in that “more”). Can we see greatness as what G*D has joined us in living, regardless of our status, or do we have the mentality of a cowed (rather than liberated) slave who will always be second?
May this blessing of eventually being one (mutual greatness, if you will) and a living G*D doing new things - more than balance - the old blessing that keeps alive the hierarchy of primogeniture and “this is not done in our country.”
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/july2002.html
Life happens! The weakness of “unfair” crops up all around. For Jacob the trickster it is unfair to be tricked. If we pay attention to the situations in which we claim an unfairness has happened to us we may get an insight into both our understanding of G*D/Life/The Universe and Everything as well as into our own particular weakness that we inflict, without awareness, upon others.
A question that gets raised here is that of our response to being tricked. Do we have a larger picture than that which we have unfairly received? Will we escalate trickiness, leading to a further escalation of being tricked and our tricking back? Where does this end? With Frost's standoff? --
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.
Even as I hope to get past being trickier than I need to be, I still hope there are tricks to be played. One trick I anticipate is seeing Justice Roberts turn into the Chief Justice Warren of our day - the appointing president’s self-identified “worst decision”. This is in keeping with the great joke of the last coming first and the first going last.
Don’t forget to hoot a bit as you catch the tricks played on you (“That was a good one, it helps me see what is important.”) and don’t forget to moan a bit as you catch the tricks you play on others (“Sorry, that didn’t help us move toward a better future, did it?”).
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
With what intentionality does G*D create or foreknow? One camp says absolute intentionality – there is plan, purpose, malice aforethought with every thought/action of G*D. Another camp says no intentionality, only potential.
Of the two, we side with the potential that accords with spending time following the twists and turns of love and understanding. Mindful of a covenant of mutuality that thinks and acts for the sake of others/creation, we experience a love and understanding that continually, weightedly, pulls us toward one another.
There are many ways to express this unity of mutuality. Mustard seeds, yeast, treasure, pearls, and fish but scrape the surface of the presence of G*D.
- - - - - - -
before prayer
a sigh
before knowing
a call
before covenant
a thanks
before serving
a love
before presence
parable
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Parables of G*D’s Presence are all around us, all the time. What is not present is our presentness to G*D’s Presence. Lack of anticipation of it degrades our ability to be aware of it at all.
G*D’s Presence is like Laban asking Jacob, “What might I give you?”
Desires are expressed and frustrated and met in the context of reward for the past and investment in a future. Tricksters are tricked. Tricksters of tricksters are tricked. The unloved are opened to new life, the loved are opened to new life.
And, in turn, we are asked, “What might I give you?” We are bold to ask for the unconventional and willing to take the conventional. We are bold to keep asking for the road less traveled.
G*D’s Presence is as slow and quick as “7 years”. As you look back over the last seven years, having received more than you expected, how will you reinvest in the next seven years? In thanksgiving for the past, may you rejoice that this day will move you and yours into a larger future. In anticipation of the future, may you rejoice that this day deepens a fulfillment of the past. Whether you mostly live in thanksgiving or anticipation, may you feast well this day.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
With a passage like this we could go riding off in all directions. There is no prioritizing of one theme over another. While appreciating a trickster getting tricked, this year I am more interested in a review of what it means to be "wifed".
(21) Then Jacob said to Laban, "Give me my wife . . ."
(27) then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.
To be wifed is more than to have been "gone into". Leah had been gone into without being acknowledged as a wife. Child bearer, yes; wife for Jacob, no.
To reduce a relationship to the genitals, as the United Methodist Church as done to define away a gay or lesbian relationship, is to reduce love for Rachel to sex with Leah or one of the maidservants. This is certainly not a story that translates well into our time and place. None-the-less, it is helpful to aid us in not limiting our discriminatory inclinations to simply one style of culturally regulated sexuality.
"Wife", in a relationship of any orientation, is a word loaded with tons of over-tones. It is not a subordinate role or a director-ship. Consider the many ways you have been wifed or you have wifed another - this is not a sex term - it is a relationship beyond gender or role.
Rachel was Jacob's wife more than 14 years before he went into her. For more years than either anticipated, there were no children. Neither a ceremony, nor sexual partnering, nor children make a wife. Rejoice and make a parable out of this story - How would Jesus retell this story to make it come alive again? And you?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/genesis-2915-28.html
Jacob’s life is like Leah that Laban sowed in Jacob’s life.
The Presence of G*D is like expectation that rises whenever Rachel is thought of. Her grace and beauty leavens all of Jacob’s life.
Tomorrow’s Promise is found and hidden in Today, in Rachel. Jacob invests twice to be with his treasure. He would have done it a third time had that been necessary.
Our Goal is worth the circuitous search for it. When our “Rachel” is found, we gladly sell any time we have to have a moment.
Eventually every Leah and Rachel enters our life. In their presence we recognize that both are part of our story and we cannot consign any part to a fiery dust-heap of a sanitized history. Everything will be made whole or well again.
Jacob and you and I are in training for Tomorrow. Our gift box of treasures is quite varied. Sometimes we pull out a cautionary tale and sometime one of great unimagined surprise.
Jacob’s life of new and old, tricks that push forward and hold back, rascal children and thoughtful, rolls on in his time and continues to invite us into the kind of intentional and happenstance experiences that make up a life.
Now, how would you identify a key moment in your life and have that be an example or parable of the Presence or Freedom of G*D?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/07/year-pentecost-7-or-community-practice.html