The story of Jacob and Esau has always sounded quite disturbing to me. I remember thinking as a kid: Why would Esau do something that stupid? I imagine that at the time, if I could easily relate to the idea that my sister would try to exchange something I cherished for something of lesser value, the idea of swapping anything for a lentil stew didn’t make any sense at all. Esau was such an idiot: why would you give up something very special that your sibling can’t have, only to be able to eat a bowl of soup? Of course it makes me smile now when I think about my reaction as a child but, in a way, I still think that, beyond all the many explanations we may find to the story, being able to make this simple observation may be one of the most appropriate: Esau is an idiot, indeed, and this even if we have grown to enjoy lentil stew.
But let’s go back a little bit. We have spent several weeks talking about Abraham and the promise God made to Abraham: a land, an offspring and through this offspring, a blessing for all nations. Abraham saw the beginning of the promise unfolding with the birth against all odds of his son Isaac. Now we see that Rebekah is bearing two sons to Isaac. They too, through inheritance, will be the recipients of the promise, the two or them or at least the elder one, because of his birthright. It is Esau who is bound to continue the lineage of Abraham and Isaac. And so, because we have that in mind and because the author of the story “knows that we know“, it makes it much more dramatic when we see that Esau is willing to forgo his birthright. Because we know of the story, we realize that the inheritance is not only about camels and tents and a bit of cattle and maybe a few servants, renouncing the birthright would be renouncing God’s blessing, renouncing to receive a great name, to father a nation, and to bless all the nations of the world through them. This is huge. Esau’s inheritance is promised to be an inheritance like no one before that on earth. Which of course makes Esau very foolish for renouncing it. On the other side, we understand better Jacob’s tricks and his attempts to deceive his brother. He probably has done it before, and we know he will do it again, pretending to be his brother when Isaac dies to receive the blessing from his hand (Genesis 27). If Esau is very foolish, Jacob is smart and even cunning. We get it.
Now what can we learn (spiritually) from that? Well, before going any further I think the first thing we can notice is that, if we open the Bible to find simple directions on how to live our lives or if we are looking for moral lessons, we will certainly be disappointed. Actually, an immediate reaction we could have to the passage is to think that, if Jacob was a good man, instead of cheating his brother, he would have done the least he could do, that is to feed him for free! (And you’ll notice that Esau is hungry because actually he has been hunting, probably to bring meat to all the family so it would be only fair to feed him) But you see, this is not the point of the story. It’s not a moral lesson. No, I think what the author of the story wants us to realize is that Jacob is very smart because he has understood the value of Esau’s birthright (as his mother Rebekah does – see again Genesis 27) and Jacob will try anything to get the inheritance because he knows it’s the best thing one could ever wish for. If his brother does not see that, understands that, then maybe he just does not deserve it. The best thing you can wish for is God’s promise and if you don’t see the value of that, and if you don’t make it your absolute priority then you don’t deserve it, and maybe God will take it away from you, or at least let someone smarter take it away from you. This, to me, is really the point of the story.
“Jacob gave Esau bread and a bowl of stew, and he ate and drank and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright” sadly concludes the author of the story. Indeed, a child could understand that:Esau is an idiot if he cannot measure what he is about to lose. The story is about God’s invaluable promise.
Now why are we spending time on this? Well, maybe understanding that, how the stories are told in the Old testament and what they are really about, this will really help us to understand Jesus’s stories as well. We are at this turning point in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus will start teaching more and more with using parables, stories that are like long metaphors and whose meaning is generally not obvious. And the parable we hear today is actually the first parable Jesus ever tells – it is true of all three gospels, Mark, Luke and Matthew. Jesus tells this parable before all others, because this parable also gives us a key on how to understand parables in general.
Let me explain a little bit:
– First of all, as mentioned before, parables aren’t obvious. We may have grown familiar with what we have come to call the Parable of the sower, but we see that Jesus will need to explain it for the disciples. I won’t go into many details because actually Jesus explains quite plainly the meaning of the parable, but what I think is important for us to notice is that parables are always about the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven as Matthew generally calls it (but that’s the same thing).
– Now that we know that, we understand that we will be disappointed if, as we can be tempted to do when we read the rest of the Bible, we are looking only for comforting words, good advice about life or moral lessons. There is some of that in the Bible and in Jesus’s stories but it isn’t the main theme. The parables are not primarily about guidance, comfort or even ethics. Like the story of Esau and Jacob is about God’s promise, the parables are about God’s kingdom and they teach the unique value of the God’s kingdom and how foolish we would be to be blind to it, to renounce Israel’s inheritance for lesser goods. And to me, this is what gives us guidance or teach us moral lessons. Only when we have grasped what life in God and for God is about can we let go of all the rest and order our lives as we should.
– In this sense, Jesus mentions how often it is that people won’t receive the word of God. Sometimes it does not depend on them (it’s the work of the devil), but most of the time, it’s because they lack depth or they are distracted. Like Esau, they let themselves be trapped for lesser goods. To eat and drink maybe, but sometimes it’s even all the anxieties we have about life that make us forget that it isn’t all about this life. What we value the most (=this life in the world) is not what we should prioritize (= our life in God). Esau is much more worried for his survival than for God’s promise. This is a great mystery even for holy people and I guess this is why the parables keep hammering the point in many different ways. Most of Matthew’s parables are called by the scholars “parables of judgment”, because they reveal the foolishness of the human heart when we choose a lesser good than the Kingdom of God.
– This is not all there is to it, though. Many commentators have also underscored the abundance of the harvest mentioned by Jesus (100, 60 or even 30 folds isn’t their typical harvest!). The sower keeps sowing no matter what. With Jesus, the kingdom of God is happening in the midst of us, and even with all the obstacles we put to it, the hostility of the Pharisees, our own lack of understanding or even our lack of interest, it is there and it will triumph. So it’s a story of hope about ultimate victory and we see that as well in all other parables. Closer to us, I think this is also a story of compassion. The sower is patient and treat all soils as equal. He assumes we can all bear fruit. We can all be rocky soils at times, we can all choke the word of God in the thorns of our hearts or let our preoccupations take over, but we can also become good soil and we will receive so much that it will still be plenty, even if we have lost a lot.
– Finally, Jesus shows us that it is all about listening to him. Not just with our ears, but with our hearts. Bearing fruit is not so much about doing and doing it all, it’s about producing spiritual fruit, virtues, love of God and neighbor. I think this is also why Jesus told so many stories. So we could sit at his feet like a child and open our hearts. We may hear some guidance, we may hear comfort, we may at time hear judgment (Paul reminds us today that judgment isn’t condemnation) but it all about us learning the eternal and absolute value of the promises God has made to us.
– So maybe, more than anything, it’s a story about desire, and maybe that’s what all of Jesus’s stories are about: How we can learn to desire the Kingdom of Heaven. You cannot give or offer anything to anyone who does not want it. Esau had no desire for God’s promise although nothing in the story says he was a bad man. Yet he was foolish. Jacob, on the other side, was restless and relentless about God’s promise and in spite of all his shortcomings, we’ ll see that God will bless him indeed (but that’s the story for next time).