English Language Sermon – July 27, 2008

“Finding God’s Story in Your Story” (Genesis 29:15-30)

July 27, 2008

Rev. Carol McVetty, English Language Pastor

In a well-remembered bit of narration from the movie “Forrest Gump”, the hero says: “My mother always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. Because you never know what you’re gonna get.’” Forrest goes on to stumble through a life of seemingly random encounters with many of the chaotic world events of the late 20^th Century. There is no purposefulness to his life, no growth, no character development. He just wanders along through history a sort of present day court jester, an innocent fool.

In the book we have been studying together on Wednesday nights this summer, Scott Bader-Saye’s “Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear”, Bader-Saye suggests that one of our deepest fears is that life is like a box of chocolates, but for a different reason. “…because a box of chocolates is consumed, piece by random piece, in no particular order.”

Are our lives a series of random events, our days simply consumed until nothing remains? Or is there a story to our lives; a beginning, a middle, an end? Do our days move in a coherent direction that makes sense? Or do we stumble along like Forrest Gump from one event to another, searching in vain for the connecting thread? These are haunting questions for many.

In our scripture lesson today we met Jacob. Now Jacob in not nearly as appealing a character as Forrest Gump. In fact at times he is downright despicable. Nonetheless, for the next several weeks, we will follow the exploits of Jacob and his son Joseph in our scripture lessons and sermons. (I encourage you to read the whole story on your own. Move back a few chapters, perhaps to chapter 25, and read on through the end of Genesis to get the entire cycle of stories in context.)

Jacob was born hanging onto his twin brother’s heel. He spent much of his youth rebelling against “the system”, which in his day dictated that the first born of a family inherited all of the father’s wealth. You haven’t seen sibling rivalry until you have seen Jacob manipulate his older twin, Esau, into giving up his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup. You know nothing about dysfunctional families until you read how the parents in this one choose up sides: father Isaac backing Esau, and Rebekah, the mom, favoring Jacob. Rebekah even helps Jacob trick his dying dad into giving him the blessing which is due the elder son.

Having stooped so low and connived so skillfully to get the family farm, Jacob then had to run for his life because his brother was out to kill him. Surely on the long, dusty trip to Haran Jacob wondered “How is this going to turn out? Where is my life headed?” Today’s episode opens as Jacob has arrived in Haran on the doorstep of an uncle he had never met. He is a refugee, a fugitive, with only the clothes on his back and a price on his head.

Now Jacob has met his match! His uncle, Laban, is surely the Wiley-Coyote of the Old Testament. “You love my daughter Rachel? She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Sure, seven years labor sounds like a good bride-price.” So they shook hands on the deal. But seven long years of sheep-tending later Jacob had to remind his uncle of the deal. So a wedding banquet was thrown. What happened next is one of the most eye-popping tales in the Hebrew Scriptures. It actually believable if you factor in 1) all the women being veiled, 2) that it is really, really dark inside a Bedoin tent, and 3) a huge lots of wine having flowed throughout the wedding festivities. It wasn’t until the morning after, in the sober light of dawn (or noon perhaps), that Jacob realized he’d been had! He had married Leah, the older, not Rachel, the beautiful, whom he loved. And Uncle Laban, confronted with his treachery shows no shame. “Oops, not to worry. I had this older daughter I had to get off my hands. But you can have Rachel, too. That’ll be seven more years labor, thank you very much!”

What are we to make of this wild and crazy story? I have searched it, and as it stands on its own, I can’t find any moral. I have no uplifting lesson you can carry home with you today from this particular story. Reading today’s text is like pulling over to the side of the road to stare at a train wreck. We are left with Jacob—exiled from home, still no property or security, having invested seven years, seven hard years, for the love of his life, only to shafted and manipulated into working another seven years for no pay. This is the point where I imagine he went out and plastered the bumper sticker on the back of his donkey cart, the one that says “Sh-t happens.”

And we see Leah and Rachel—two women, two sisters, voiceless and unheard. Their hopes or desires were never consulted. Their lives had been arranged for them. Now they had been setup for a life-long, bitter competition for the attention of one man.

Then there is Laban—who comes off like a character in a Dilbert cartoon, gleeful, almost sadistic in his scheming, leaving chaos in his wake.

What are we to make of this messy, ambiguous story? What are we to make of our own messy, ambiguous lives….when our best efforts still leave us empty-handed…when our future is manipulated by others…when we tumble from one mess to another, or wander through our days, not knowing where they are headed? Is life just one darn thing after another? Is it really like a box of chocolates after all, consumed piece by piece, randomly, till it’s all gone?

Some years ago I heard a woman, a totally secular, non-church-going mom, explain why she brought her children to Vacation Bible School. She said “On the way home in the car, my kids sing the songs they’ve learned. They repeat the stories that have been told. This is the only place they’ve heard a story like this. You are the only ones who really have a story.” Sisters and brothers, that is the good news. The Gospel says that God has given the world a story, and it’s a story of redeeming love. The Good News of the Bible is that God has given the world a story, and has called each of us to participate in it, to play our part.

The book “Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear” has introduced us to a way of understanding that story that helps us see ourselves as part of it. God’s story is a drama in five acts. Act 1 is God’s creation of the world. Act 2 is God’s calling of Israel. Act 3 is God’s incarnation in Christ. Act 4 is the calling and sending of the Church, and Act 5 is the culmination of the story in God’s reign of Shalom. We live in Act 4. We are the ones called and sent by God to live out his love in the world. Jacob lived in Act 2, God’s calling of a particular people, Israel. In fact, it is just this big picture that the narrator had in mind when recording Jacob’s story.

The Hebrew people told these earthy, colorful, clearly entertaining stories about their ancestor Jacob for generations around the campfire. The stories may have seemed to them as random and ambiguous as they are to us. But the narrator who put this series of stories in writing was able to read these events in light of God’s story. He could detect the thread of purpose that runs through them all. Our faithful narrator arranged the stories to show us the point. The whole Jacob cycle is arranged as a series of frames, or matching bookends to surround and draw attention to the central point. In the series of stories, the first is conflict with Esau, matched with reconciliation with Esau at the end. Next, is an encounter with God at Bethel, matched with an encounter with God at Peniel. Inside of those two frames is the conflict with Laban, balanced by a truce with Laban. Right in the middle of all these stories is the birth of Jacob’s children. That is the key, the central point of the whole Jacob saga. While in Haran, he had eleven sons, and one daughter. On his return to Canaan he had one more son. Those twelve sons became the fathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The narrator looked at Jacob’s messy, chaotic life full of conflict and trouble, deception and lies. He looked at all that and still could see God’s story being played out. He saw that ancient promise to Abraham, of more descendants than there are stars in the sky, coming to fruition in Jacob. That is not to say that God caused each event. To say that we would have to conclude that God is as mean and manipulative as Laban, that God is a trickster like Jacob. God’s way in the world is much more mysterious than cause and effect. Somehow God is at work. In ways beyond our understanding, God weaves even the darkest turns in life towards God’s good ends. We set aside explanation to tell a story of God’s purpose having it’s way, even in the midst of our messes and screw ups.

As Christians, our job is to learn to do what the Genesis narrator did. Our task is to read the jumbled, random events of our lives in light of God’s story. You can learn to recognize your bit part is God’s vast drama and thus pick up the thread of meaning and purpose running through your days.

Through my high school and college education I invested eight years in studying science…eight years dedicated to the dream of becoming a doctor. Near the end of college that all fell apart, and I went home not knowing what I was going to do. What if I had been able to see that time experience in the light of the story of the fishermen who left their nets and their whole lives behind and walked away to follow Jesus with no idea of what came next? If I could have seen my story in the light of that part of God’s story, then perhaps I would have been spared some of the sense of failure and shame that I felt at the time.

I have heard Karen folks in the refugee camps in Thailand, having fled the horror that is Burma, say: “We are like the Hebrew children wandering in the wilderness. We have no country, no home, but God is providing us with daily manna. And I know many of those who have resettled in our midst see the US as their Promised Land.

When Judge Lefkow’s husband and mother were brutally murdered just down the street, the first thing their pastor did was to tell the family the story of Job. She told them how his life was trashed, and yet he clung to God; and how Job eventually discovered that God was hanging on to him.

To learn to see our story in the light of the Great Gospel story of God’s redeeming love…

That is our task. For life is, after all, not like a box chocolates. Life is not a random series of events that lead nowhere. Our lives are lived out within the great drama of God’s loving purpose….

And within that story, your story moves toward a good end.

Amen.