Brawling Brothers

Esau selling his Birthright

copy after Paulus Moreelse, after 1609

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/Esau-selling-his-Birthright--488ef52e35ee1f3dd4365e1a4f7a09c9

Centuries after the time of Abraham and Sarah, and even centuries after the time of Moses and Miriam, Hannah went to the Lord to pray. She was barren, unlike her rival wife Peninnah, and wanted a child. She prayed silently, moving her lips, and the priest Eli, at first confronting her for this strange behavior, heard her plea and assured her of God’s mercy. Indeed, in due course, a child was on its way. 

She, following a vow she had made, presented her child to Eli to be raised as his helper – and as it turned out, his successor. 

Here is part of what she prayed as she rejoiced in her expectancy:

And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.

There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.

Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.

He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.

1 Samuel 2:1-3, 7, 9 (King James Version)  

Sound familiar? In her praise and exultation, Hannah hearkened back to the joy of childless women made fertile in the past: from Sarah and Rebekah to Rachel, and echoes on through time, from Miriam to Hannah, to Elizabeth, cousin of the Virgin Mary. (And the song Mary sang after visiting Elizabeth.)

And the prayer of Hannah echoed the song of Miriam, sister of Moses, at the Red Sea:

Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.  And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

Exodus 15:20-21

All these women, from Sarah to Elizabeth, form a sisterhood that is powerful. God over and over again overturns human expectation. The younger is preferred to the older; and the weak to the strong. It is all in fulfillment not of human purpose but that of God.

So you see there is more to the story of Isaac and Rebekah than just a sandwich generation, between their parents and their sons. Isaac had prayed, Rebekah had inquired of the Lord, and God answered them.

Because of them, of their pursuance of God’s fruitfulness, the promise and the covenant continued. God would make of their descendants a mighty nation, a nation of priests to serve their God, and all nations would be blessed in them. Them too. 

And then there are their sons. Their vexatious children, contending from inside the womb and on into adulthood. Our Scripture portion for this morning only goes so far, in what it gives of their story. Later, spoiler alert! Esau in his anger vowing to kill his brother, is overheard by their mother, and Rebekah persuades Isaac to go away for a while. He goes east of Canaan, east of Edom, and back to ancestral Harran. 

God has a purpose in this exile – as in so many other occasions. When he brings back Jacob with his newly acquired household, it is to meet Esau in reconciliation. The brothers embrace when they meet.

That is long after the story of ‘that red stuff’ and the birthright scorn. 

Today we see the consequences emerging of his impulsive, brash, brusque, rude as rude can be, disregard of his heritage - and duty.

Esau will not be the one to bear the promise and the mission. It was Abraham and not Lot, Isaac and not Ishmael, so it will be Jacob and not Esau, that God chooses - not of their virtue but of his will. 

What will happen when these boys grow up? Will the two nations continue to strive, one east, one west, of the Jordan River? And what in our own day will come of contending nations, and brash brothers?

Will we do better than these, God’s chosen ones, who in their folly, jealousy, pride and humanness, end up furthering his mysterious purpose?

The triumph of Rebekah was a strange joy, unearthly in its origin, and whether or not she saw the fulfillment of her own hopes is an open question. We see, from this distance, hope in the story, but wonder: 

Do the people in the midst of the story have hope in the promise, or are they despairing in the desert? Only faith can make the difference.

And the providence of God – sometimes shown by human hand. In our own day, there are people wandering in the desert, or across seas, seeking a future with hope, in a land that God may show them. 

*****

But wait, there’s more:  after today’s reading, there is a whole chapter, a big chapter. It is between this week’s scripture portion, and next week’s. Chapter 27 of Genesis relates the astonishing story of how Esau, who had already bargained away his birthright for “some of that red stuff” loses the blessing of his father as well. 

And when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim (so that he could not see) he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son. And he answered him, I am here. Then he said, Behold, I am now old, and know not the day of my death. Wherefore now, I pray thee take thine instruments, thy quiver and thy bow, and get thee to the field, that thou mayest take me some venison. Then make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it me that I may eat, and that my soul may bless thee, before I die.

Genesis 27:1-4 (Geneva Bible, 1599)

But Rebecca, who had favored her younger son since before he was born, now intervenes. She bids Isaac to forestall his older brother by getting two kids from the goat herd and preparing a stew, and then disguising himself as the red and hairy older brother. In this way, he will receive the elder brother’s blessing instead of Esau.

At this Esau finally wakes up enough to realize there is a problem and becomes very angry, but Rebecca has a solution for that too. She sends her favored son off to the land of his ancestors to find a wife. 

As she explains to her husband, she’s tired of these Hittite women (Esau married two) and wants her son to marry from among his own kin from back home.

While she had been found for Isaac by Abraham’s servant, her son will discover for himself his bride. 

It is on the outward journey that Jacob stops and dreams the dream of the ladder that we will hear about next Sunday.

Eventually, after long years of labor in the service of his bride's brother, he will return, unsure how he will be received by his own brother. He will encounter him by a brook on his way home. 

JRL+

Sundays and Seasons [https://members.sundaysandseasons.com/Home/DayResources] offers some resources on the readings of the day, including this comment on Genesis 25:19-34

The lectionary now cites four episodes in the story of Jacob-Israel. Again, the Lord intervened in nature so that the barren Rebekah conceived and bore Isaac twin sons. Although Esau was first born, the younger son Jacob inherited God’s blessing, and thus once again the cultural expectation of primogeniture was thwarted with the Lord’s blessing. This legend was important for the eighth-century Israelites, whose very survival was threatened by enemy conquest. Christians have enjoyed the details of these folk tales and have seen in them illustrations that God’s promises are kept.

And on the Response (Psalm 119:105-112):

As if we are Rebekah, struggling through childbirth; as if we are Esau, close to starvation; as if we are Jacob, leaping over the law: we sing Psalm 119:105-112. We are severely afflicted, but God gives us life. We join with Jacob to follow the law of the Lord.

Sunday 12 July 2026
Seventh Sunday after PentecostProper 10Track 1 Genesis 25:19-34Psalm 119:105-112Romans 8:1-11Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

Thanks for insights from text study colleagues Robert S. Jones, Steward McDonald and Stephen Springer.

Kathryn Z. Johnston. In the Lectionary: July 12, Ordinary15a. (Genesis 25:19-34). The Christian Century. July 2026. 25.

Esau sells his birthright to Jacob attributed to Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, 1549 Esau, dressed as a hunter, has sold his birthright to Jacob for a plate of lentils. He feasts on the lentils. Jacob sits opposite him. The print is part of a series about the history of Jacob.

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/Esau-verkoopt-zijn-eerstgeboorterecht-aan-Jakob--9a8120fe9b98a6f2bdbfd3c8c014bf4d

Esau verkoopt zijn eerstgeboorterecht

(Esau sells his birthright)

Crispijn van de Passe (I), 1700 - 1750

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/Esau-verkoopt-zijn-eerstgeboorterecht--f0c6708ecd8466c91a60555d66739e0a

The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold

 

Icon of the Deesis - St. Catherine's Monastery Sinai, 12th century

Our God reigns. Where does he reign? First of all, in the human heart. But it does not end there. It is more than that. Much more: The personal stories of the holy families of Old Testament and New begin personally, with old couples, young women, widows, children, but the implications are divine. 

Imagine Abraham and Sarah, wandering from Iraq across Syria into Palestine and down into Egypt then back into Palestine, all the time hoping the promise would be fulfilled, keeping the faith that someday she would have a child of her own, and they would settle down in the land of promise. 

Imagine their daughter-in-law Rebecca wanting a son, waiting for a child, hoping for that vindication after years of barrenness. And her daughter-in-law Rachel, in turn, in hopes of waiting. 

They each had hope fulfilled, holy promise kept. Isaac was born to Sarah, Jacob was born to Rebecca, and Rachel had her two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. They were not the last. 

Naomi returned from across the Jordan to her native village and her daughter-in-law bore a son so precious to her that people said, “Naomi had a son.” It was Jesse, whose descendant was David. (And from the house of David was to come the Messiah.)

Elkanah, a pious man, went to the temple to pray every year, and his wife Hannah went with him. But into her old age she too wanted and wept for lack of a son. In the temple she prayed and the priest discovered her. And God fulfilled her wish - her son was Samuel who became the prophet who anointed David. 

And then here at last, at the end of the old story and the beginning of the new, an elderly, pious, childless couple, faithful to the Lord, are blessed with a child. Like Hannah, Elizabeth feels vindicated: a weight has lifted. And her joy is more than personal: it is as if Israel had awaited vindication, a new hope, a promise of ages come true. 

The old stories, the old songs, the old promises: all these are brought into a new era.

They were scary times. The nation was divided into hostile camps. Compromisers, survivalists, puritanical rule-keepers, insurrectionists. Contention. Mistrust. Fear.

Sadducees were accommodationists, who cut a deal with Herod the Great, awarded rule of Palestine by Caesar Augustus the emperor across the sea. Essenes were separatists, who withdrew from society to keep themselves perfect and safe. Pharisees sought to redeem themselves through piety and purity, keeping the letter of the law and sometimes its spirit. Zealots were all for combat; they brought down the wrath of Rome on everybody’s head. 

And then there were those odd birds, the followers of -- hope. 

Hope. Built on an ancient promise. A series of minor miracles. Long stories long told. Of people who kept faith through dark times, who spoke gratitude when things changed. Whose children grew up with the knowledge of God, and found their way to faith in turn.

It was the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise of ages. It was not yet the new thing. It was at once both the last of the old and the first of the new. But it was not yet fully time. The new would come. And here was the son, and here the promise, here the proclamation. And hear the good news!

***

So we see that Zechariah and Elizabeth and John, like Abraham and Sarah and Isaac, like Rebecca and Isaac and Jacob, like Hannah and Elkanah and Samuel, saw the fulfillment of long held hopes and ancient expectations. And so the traditions and practices of Israel continued into their time. Of course there was a complication. The Romans.

Greg Woolf, historian of ancient Rome, refers to emperors as ‘embodied symbols’. Where the emperor was, the empire was too. But emperors could not be everywhere imperial presence was needed. In their stead, as Laura Hollengreen has taught me, the Romans put up, in their law courts, statues of empires, to represent the living symbol that was (as the saying goes) just a man. Statues then represented the presence of the emperor and the empire. 

We certainly did not want to see one in the Holy of Holies, or even in the sacred city. But they were there, in proxy, in the emperor’s good friend Herod, at the time of John’s birth.

The last of the prophets, the greatest of them, would herald not only the fulfillment of old promises, but the advent of a new era. And in this era the titles and claims of Messiah and of Son of David would come into clashing conflict with the “king of kings” and ‘son of God’ that the emperor styled himself to be.

We can learn from this as we reflect on our own times, when divided nations have factions that variously choose to accommodate or combat or influence or withdraw from the mixing of peoples and ideas and values that comes with a cosmopolitan society. We do not have the embodied presence of an emperor, or statues in his stead. What then do we have? What is the imperial hegemony, the dominant power structure, we swim in, like goldfish in a bowl?

Like the old fish in the joke, you may encounter young fish who do not even know they are swimming. 

But it’s there. Walter Wink wrote about the powers that be, the ‘principalities and powers’ of our time that William Stringfellow and James Wm. McClendon also warned against, who now inhabit our lives. 

We struggle against the unseen - or the unnamed - just as much as the Jews, Sadducees and Pharisees and Essenes and Zealots, did against the visible imperial foe of their time.

So John the Baptist when he came had a lot to do. He was the herald, the precursor. Prepare ye the way of the Lord! he cried. As the way through the desert welcomed their ancestors home from exile, as the dry land cleared the way on the exodus from Egypt, so now John would be the one to clear the way for the arrival of the long expected savior.

He would do it, as we know, through a symbol of his own: a cleansing immersion in the Jordan, the river that the people had crossed centuries before to reach the promised land.

Come out from the cities, into the wild country, come home to the places where God reigns. Not a threat or terror, but the place where God had led them before: as our service sometimes says, through the desert, past the parted waters, led day and night, to home.

That is what the herald of Messiah was calling them to do; he was calling the people again to be the people of God, and to get ready: the day was coming.

It will be a day of fear, of terror, and of obedience. But first and last it will be a day of joy.

The presence of the Lord! He is on the way: get ready. 

Prepare your hearts and make him room.

JRL+

The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold : Luke 1.5-25

Responsorial Canticle: Isaiah 40:1-5, 40:9; 60:1-3 (KJV)

Jeremiah 33:14-16

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Lutheran Church of the Foothills, Tucson. https://youtu.be/gF4Yeo-DFpQ

A blessed event, announced in the middle of Lent ...

Back on the feast of Epiphany we remembered the visit of the magi to the Holy Family, and the gifts they bring: Gold for the king, Frankincense for the priest, Myrrh for the sacrifice. There is, I submit, one more gift - for us to offer: Praise for the Living One.

Right in the middle of Lent we encounter a part of the Nativity story, nine months before Christmas Day. Raymond Brown, the Roman Catholic biblical scholar, taught that the gospels actually were written beginning with the passion narrative - proceeding through Holy Week, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and then on around to the Birth narratives.

The birth narratives begin with the visit of the angel to Zechariah, announcing the coming birth of John. Then the focus shifts to a younger woman, cousin of Elizabeth. It is Mary. The angel comes to Mary – and hails her as full of grace: she is to bear a son, who is to be the Messiah.

Mary accepts the burden of birth and the destiny of motherhood to the Messiah, Conception to Assumption, somehow knowing that she must not count her child as hers to keep, but must let go of him, dedicate him to the Lord, as Samuel's mother Hannah dedicated him, knowing he will go from her.

Mary, mother of Jesus, takes this task on herself, knowingly, as God's servant, because she knew that he, her child to be, was sent to set the people free: that at last God's promise to redeem Israel would bear fruit in the fullness of time, and that that fulfillment was coming very soon, and was beginning to happen, quickening even now in her.

The Word would indeed ripen in her own womb. She would bear forth upon the world he who would himself bear the pain of the world.

Like Hannah's son Samuel, Jesus the Son of Mary is one consecrated, set apart for service to the Lord, as a thanksgiving offering to the Lord. Samuel is the prophet who brought justice to Israel, and yet he points beyond himself - to Saul, first, then to David, to David's son Solomon, and ultimately to Jesus.

In the birth story of Samuel, Hannah his mother rejoices that God has remembered the forgotten, and will bring relief to the poor. “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God,” she sings (1 Samuel 2:1-10).

In the birth story of Jesus, Mary his mother rejoices that God remembers the forgotten and brings relief to the poor. (Luke 1:46-55) And in our prayers, even daily, we join in her song, the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, Canticle 15 in the Book of Common Prayer: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...”

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Anunciation 2012 (March 25)

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