What we just heard is Isaac giving his blessing to his son Jacob.
Some of you know this story.
And if you know this story, then you know that all is not as it seems.
There is a joke here. A prank.
Who can tell us what that is?
Isaac is giving his blessing to his son Jacob, BUT Isaac thinks he is giving his blessing to his other son Esau - Jacob’s twin, older by just a few minutes.
Isaac has been deceived. Jacob has played a joke by pretending to be Esau, but the consequences of Isaac’s joke are much more serious and much more long-lasting than the jokes we’ll be hearing shortly during our St. Patrick’s Day lunch.
Now, you might be wondering: how on earth did Jacob trick his father Isaac into giving him the blessing that his father meant to give to Esau...
Well. When this story takes place, Isaac is old and blind. Isaac thinks death might be coming soon for him. So he summons his oldest son - Esau - and says to Esau:
“My son, I’m old and don’t know when I will die. So take your hunting gear - your bow, your quiver of arrows - and go out and hunt some game for me. Make me the delicious food that I love and bring it to me so I can eat. Then I can bless you before I die.”
And Esau heads out to hunt.
While Esau is out hunting, their mother, Rebekah, goes to Jacob and says, “I just heard your father tell your brother Esau to go hunt some game and make some delicious food, so he can then give Esau his blessing. Here’s what you need to do: go to the flock and get two young goats, and I’ll prepare the food your father loves, and you can take it to him, and he will eat it, and he will bless you before he dies.”
Now, Jacob’s not dumb. He says, “won’t father know it’s me and not Esau? Esau is a hairy man, but I have smooth skin. What if he touches me - he’ll find out, and I’ll be cursed instead of blessed!”
But his mother Rebekah has it all figured out...
So Jacob goes and gets the goats. Then his mother Rebekah makes the food. She also takes Esau’s favorite clothes and puts them on Jacob… and then she takes the hide of the goats, and puts it over the smooth neck and arms of Jacob, so that if their father Isaac touches him, he will feel the goat hair and think it is Esau.
It’s a foolproof plan!
Jacob goes to his father Isaac. “Father,” he says, “I’m here… It’s me, uh, Esau. Here, eat this food I made you.”
Isaac says: “How did you find this so quickly, my son?”
Jacob says, “The Lord your God led me right to it!”
Isaac says: “Come here, let me touch you.”
Jacob approaches his father Isaac, and Isaac touches him, and feels the goat hair, and Isaac says: “the voice is Jacob’s voice, but the arms are Esau’s arms. Are you really my son Esau?”
Jacob says, “I am.”
And Isaac says, “OK!” Isaac eats the food, and gives Jacob his blessing - the blessing that was supposed to be for Esau.
Well, soon after this, Esau comes back from his hunt, prepares his food, and takes it to his father. His father says, “Who are you?”
And Esau says, “What do you mean? It’s me, your oldest son Esau.”
Isaac is shocked. He’s trembling. He says, “Then who was that who just came? He brought me food and I ate it, and I gave him my blessing!”
Oh! When Esau hears what his father said, he lets out a loud agonizing cry and weeps bitterly. He says to his father, “Bless me! Me, too, father!”
But Isaac says, “It’s too late. Your brother has already come deceitfully and has taken your blessing. I’ve already made him more powerful than you, and I’ve made all of his brothers his servants.”
Isaac can’t give Esau the blessing for the first-born, because it’s already been given to Isaac. All Isaac can do is give Esau a secondary blessing, but it’s not as good as the blessing Jacob got. Jacob got the blessing of the firstborn son, and that blessing can’t be undone.
It was an awfully mean trick Jacob played on his brother, wasn’t it? At lunch we’re going to hear some jokes that make us laugh, but Jacob’s joke is one that made his brother cry.
There is some deep truth here, in the story of Jacob stealing his brother’s blessing. To understand that deep truth, we need to take a short detour and spend a few minutes with the Creation story.
So, stick with me as I talk about Creation for a few minutes, and then I’ll come back to the story of Jacob.
In Genesis chapter one, we read of God creating the world. God says, “Let there be light,” and there is light. God says, “Let the waters be separated,” and the waters were separated. God says, “Let dry land appear,” and dry land appears. God says, “Let plants appear,” and plants appear. God says “Let stars and planets appear in the sky,” and stars and planets appear in the sky. God says, “Let the animals appear,” and the animals appear.
Every time God speaks a word, that word instantly becomes truth.
God speaks, and creation happens. God’s word is so powerful, so full of truth, that there is no distance, no gap, between what God says and what God does.
You hear people say, “If you’re going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk.” That’s because they are too familiar with people whose talk doesn’t match their walk.
But with God, talk and action are not two separate things. If God says it, it happens. The truth of the spoken word is so true, so complete…
Now, look again at the blessing Isaac gives to Jacob. The words of the blessing are so complete, so true, that once they are spoken, the blessing goes into effect. Isaac’s words are true, and there is great power in truth.
Why can’t Isaac take back his blessing and give it to Esau?
The words Isaac spoke in pronouncing the blessing do not work that way. They are words of truth. Truth is bound to action - the two cannot be separated. Just like the words God spoke at creation.
In Harry Potter, this same idea is present, when Harry’s name comes out of the Goblet of Fire.
The names that come out of the Goblet of Fire are the names of those who must compete in the Triwizard Tournament, and Harry’s name came out… but Harry’s name wasn’t supposed to come out.
Why can’t they just nullify the act, which was obviously not meant to happen? Why can’t they just say, “Harry, your name came out, but obviously there’s a glitch, you don’t have to compete.”
They can’t. Because when it comes to magic in the world of Harry Potter, truth works the same way as it does in Genesis 1. Once spoken, word becomes truth. It can’t be undone.
Imagine if everyone lived that way: anytime somebody says something, says they’ll do something, you can know without a doubt that they will do it. You don’t have to wonder if they will follow through. They’ll do it because they said so… and their word is true, 100% of the time.
Isaac’s blessing upon Jacob can’t be undone, because Isaac’s word is true. To undo the blessing would mean making the word of Isaac into a lie. And a blessing that invokes the name of God just can’t be made into a lie.
It’s a terrible outcome for Esau, and we can’t help but feel sorry for him. Even though the Bible has us rooting for Jacob, we still feel sorry for Esau.
But at the same time, I am in awe of the sacred value this story places on the truth of one’s word.
More and more today we encounter people whose word doesn’t mean a thing. A person can say one thing today, and something else tomorrow.
People will make up their own truth to fit their agenda - and the truth they make up is nothing but lies. “Alternative facts.” “Fake news.”
And much of the conversation in our society today is being shaped by lies.
Lies like:
Vaccinations cause autism.
Climate change is a hoax.
Immigrants are mostly criminals and terrorists.
People want to believe these things, and they want others to believe them, even though they are not true. They repeat them over and over until people think they are true, but that doesn’t make them true.
At the Academy Awards a few weeks ago, Barbra Streisand helped introduce the movie BlacKKKlansman, which was nominated for best picture. In praising BlacKKKlansman, Streisand said that the movie “is based on truth, and truth is very rare these days.”
Truth is very rare these days.
What is true is that vaccinations save lives. Vaccinations were developed by science, and science is not made up. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, science is true whether you believe it or not.
What is true is that climate change is real. It is occurring at a rate that far outpaces anything that’s ever happened before, and human activity is the reason...and it is incredibly destructive. This week's unprecedented flooding in the midwest is a result of climate change. We have the research and data to support this, and the data are true, whether you believe them or not.
What is true is that, since 1990, 2 million white people have moved out of california and 12 million immigrants have moved into California. In that time, when we’ve had this huge influx of immigrants, the economy has grown/improved at a better rate than the nation at large, and violent crimes are at record low levels. In other words, immigrants are not the criminals and terrorists that we’re told they are. In fact, more acts of terrorism have been committed by right-wing white supremacists. The terrorist attack this week in New Zealand is another example of this. The statistics don’t lie. They are true, whether you like it or not.
And many don’t like it. So they twist the truth into a lie. They come deceitfully, like Jacob approaching his father Isaac, and they steal the truth.
They present lies as truth. Repeated often enough, people believe the lies. They see them repeated again and again on TV, on social media; and the ideas get embedded in their minds, and they believe the lies.
Derek Penwell, a clergy colleague of mine, writes in his new book that he was once asked to explain to a class of 2nd graders what he did.
At first he wasn’t sure how to do that - how to explain to those 7 and 8 year-olds what he did as a pastor, in a way they would understand.
When he figured it out, this is what he said:
“My job is to tell people the truth. My job is to tell people the truth about how much God loves them and how God expects them to act toward one another… Telling the truth is the main part of my job.”
Truth is powerful. Especially in a world of lies. Especially in a world that tries to fool us, trick us, deceive us. Truth is revolutionary. Truth is liberating. Truth is holy. Truth is what we are called to.
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