Well I don’t know about you but, so far, I didn’t like Jacob very much. It’s interesting isn’t it how often in the Bible we meet some characters that aren’t that likable, and not only the villains but also those who are supposed to be the good guys. Jacob later renamed “Israel”, father of twelve sons who will give their names to the twelve tribes of God’s people, this Jacob should be a hero. Yet, in the book of Genesis, we encounter a young man who, if he is described as sensitive and smart with an acute sense of the value of Abraham’s inheritance, this young man is mostly deceiving and self-centered: He tricked his older brother into renouncing his birthright, and then he tricked his dying father into giving him the blessing that was meant for Esau, and then Jacob ran away from his home like a coward to escape his brother’s and father’s righteous anger! Last week, we have heard how Jacob met on the way many angels coming up and down the stairway to heaven in a dream, but it didn’t seem that this vision changed him fundamentally. He then makes a deal with God, he agrees to make God his God but he requires in exchange God’s protection: Jacob asks for shelter, food, clothing and peace with his family (see Genesis 28). Again, Jacob is no fool and he makes sure he has all his basis covered. That’s smart, but not really likable. Not really the kind of faith or generosity his grand-father Abraham displayed.
Luckily, or rather by God’s providence, something happens in chapter 29 that will be a game changer. Not really a character changer (as we’ll see later), but still Jacob will be stopped in his tracks and is going to have to rethink his whole way of being in the world and treating people around him. And what happens is a very simple thing: He falls in love. Although the terms used are very sober in the way it describes this love (“Jacob loved Rachel” v18), it’s the first kind of romantic love we find in the Bible and indeed it’s going to be a game changer for Jacob. The deceiving and self-centered young man is going to grow in a much more mature man, willing to serve and willing to wait, willing to take patience and even overlooking and forgiving the fact of being tricked as he used to trick others: The story tells us that Jacob was willing to work for Laban seven years to be able to marry Rachel, and when Laban gives him Leah instead, Jacob isn’t discouraged and is willing to work seven more years. I read a commentary saying that, you know: “What goes around comes around” (not false!) and that“if Jacob used Esau’s urges to manipulate him““(…) driven by his own urges, Jacob is now(the one being) tricked” (Peter Enns). The thing is, I am not sure that when you are willing to wait seven years for your “urges” to be met, you can still call them “urges” anymore. All points out to the fact that Jacob had a real, authentic, love for Rachel, it was her he wanted and nobody else could do, and he was willing to pay the price: “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her“. I remember one day I was teaching Sunday school and I asked the kids how do we know when somebody loves us / how did they know they parents loved them. And they replied: They do everything for us. Well, I think it’s a great definition of love isn’t it? When you love somebody, you do everything for them, and that’s certainly what Jacob did.
….which leads us straight to our Gospel lesson, or at least to one of those “snapshots”of the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus pictures for us today using several short parables. We can only imagine Jacob as this merchant searching for fine pearls to make money, suddenly finding his Rachel, a pearl so pure, beautiful and priceless, he will renounce all he has, and even more all that he is, his selfishness and his greed, and will let himself be tricked and be possessed in the worst way. Or maybe Jacob is the tenant farmer working for Laban, willing to buy the whole field to get the landlord’s treasure, the landlord’s second daughter. And so on.
If you remember from last time, we talked about the fact that in Jesus’s parables, Jesus often describes the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven, a value that does not compare to anything else in the world, and we saw how Jesus’s stories are supposed to stir our desire to search for the Kingdom. Well, you have it. Searching for the Kingdom is like falling in love, or rather, maybe, it is what really love is. Once you find it, nothing else really matter anymore. God’s love and God’s promise of eternal life with God being the best kind of romantic story and the best kind of marriage you can think about. 70 years of hard work on earth will seem like a few days, indeed. I am not making that up, we will see that, very often, Jesus uses in the parables the image of the wedding banquet, presenting himself as the bridegroom.
Now it’s lovely and comforting I guess, but what are we supposed to do about it?
Well, we talked about the parables as a way that Jesus used to lead people to change and so, as I was reading those parables, I was really questioning the way God may ask us to change here at All Souls. I was thinking and praying even more about how we needed to grow as I was considering a new study for after my vacations: What are we supposed to learn here at All Souls, how are we supposed to be transformed? In my mind, there is no doubt that we have love, love for each other and love for God and if there was any kind of doubt, I think that these past weeks have proven to us how much we care for each other, and in this way I am pretty sure the kingdom of God is already among us. But hear what Jesus says: the kingdom of God is present but it also remains hidden, when it longs to be manifested and shared with all. The pearl enclosed in the oyster and the chest buried in the field are meant to be found and enjoyed by the treasure hunter, but also the leaven slipped in the dough is meant to produce bread for all the village (three measures of flour is actually 60 pounds!), and the seed thrown in the ground is made to grow into a tree where all creatures will find shelter, and the net in the ocean has to be dragged on the beach to reveal its catch.
In short, the kingdom of God is present among us as surely as the pearl is in the oyster and as the chest is in the field, but it’s our job to make it manifest. I think that’s maybe what we can learn today from the parables. We won’t make the kingdom happen, this is Jesus’s job, but it’s our job, it’s the church job, to be a sign for all of this reality. Or as Mark Mittleberg puts it in his book on evangelism “Contagious faith”: “Why if instead of quietly clinging to our relationship with Christ and succumbing to the societal sentiment that faith should be private, we realized that faith is for sharing?“. We need to share our faith in this world that is losing hope in any kind of story that has a happy ending. And that’s why I chose for us Mittleberg’s study on evangelism, a notion we struggle with for two main reasons I think.
– The first question is: Why would we do evangelism?
We need to understand that it’s not about persuading, convincing, enrolling people, to trick them into doing our thing,it’s about letting them know that there is still a good news to be heard in this world. To me this is the essence of Jesus’s message in these parables: there is something out there that is priceless and you can find it if you know where to look. The story of this life does not have to end badly, there actually might be a very good surprise in the end that will overturn all the hardships and all the suffering. We still have the choice to accept God’s reconciliation and to live a life of love and meaning in spite of all the obstacles. If there is one thing we see in the world today is that although faith is lacking, people are craving hope, purpose and friendship more than ever, so it’s our responsibility to put out there what we share in our community.
– Now, and that’s the second question: How do we do evangelism?
We have to acknowledge that we feel so ill equipped to share our faith, even if we have attended church all our lives, and that’s legitimate, that could even be a good sign. We don’t want to be insensitive or pushy or know-it-all, or maybe we just don’t have the words to explain our faith. And that’s okay, and in this scenario it’s difficult to get started. You don’t put the worker on the construction site with no tools. Even if they are the most gifted workers, they cannot get anything done without tools and tools they know how to use. So that’s why this study could be very helpful as it describes what we can do based on the type of people we are. In essence, the author tells us that we don’t have to change to share our faith, we can continue to be exactly who we are, we just need to learn how to orient everything we already do towards people outside our church. So I invite you to read the book while I am on vacations (I promise I will do it!) and let’s see where it leads us to in the coming months. I am excited.
We are really interested in what book says. What is the title?
You and Xavior have a great vacation.
It’s called “Contagious faith” 🙂