SCRIPTURE: Genesis 29:15-28
TEXT: 25When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” THEME: God is journeys throughout our lives. INTRODUCTION This is a middle story setting up the events for a longer saga. Like the “Empire Strikes Back” after the epic beginning with Star Wars, The Ewok’s installment fills in some background and sets us up for the events to follow. We were introduced to Jacob last week, the younger of twins, steeped in sibling rivalry, an opportunist, weaker than his older brother but cunning. After buying his brother’s birth right, he now has stolen the only blessing from their father, taking the promise from God, given to his grandfather, passed on to his father and reserved for his brother Esau, through some crafty deception and the help of his mother Rebekah, the blessing is now his as he escapes to his family’s ancestral homeland in Paddan-aram. He Immediately meets a girl watering her sheep at a well and falls madly in love. My Gosh, if we didn’t already know the story, it is like a soap opera. You can’t make things like this up. Truth is stranger than fiction. Telenovela! SCRIPTURE Laban appears to be a good guy, telling his nephew just because they were related that he shouldn’t work for free, “Tell me, what shall your wages be?” He already knew the Jacob was in love with is younger daughter Rachel, A good con artist will want us to think, that what they want us to do, was our own good idea. Jacob answered, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel” DEAL. Jacob is so in love that the seven years fly by. That is like waiting through four years of college and three years of a master’s program. Laban gathers the people for a wedding feast, but in the evening, he switches his daughters bringing Leah to Jacob. Aya! When Jacob wakes up in the morning, he realizes he has consummated a marriage with Leah and not Rachel. Telenovela! Jacob confronts Laban about the deception and he responds, “Oh I thought you knew that the younger daughter cannot get married until the older daughter is married first. Common knowledge really. That’s the way we do things here, according to our cultural norms, or don’t you abide by that kind of things?” Ooo, what a burn. So here is the con; Complete the wedding week in respect of Leah, in return for agreeing to work for Laban for another seven years he gave Rachel to Jacob for his wife. Laban and his sister Rebekah have inherited a conniving gene. Paired with beauty, it is a deadly combination. Laban has played Jacob masterfully and will profit from his labors for another seven years. God is recessive in this story, in much the same way God journeys with us at times. Not abandoning us but involved in weaving the details our stories together. Along with the daughters, Laban also gives a maid for each daughter. From this arrangement Jacob will sire 13 children that become the 12 tribes of Israel. APPLICATION This is a middle of the journey story, in a world that although good, is filled with inequities, injustice, trickery and greedy self-interest. How is God's provision found and understood amidst the drama of our world? This is a story of formation. From where we have met Jacob as an ambitious, self-centered, back stabbing, conniving individual into a participant in the mission of God. If the Bible were about karma, this passage would prove, “the sum of a person’s actions decides their fate in the future.” It seems that Jacob’s ill treatment of his brother Esau is repeated upon him; lying, deception, the exploitation of a person’s weakness, sibling rivalry, stealing and trickery. We may think that turnabout is fair play but it is not. If it is wrong, it is wrong, and just because it was done to us it does not mean that we get to do it back. The added promise given to Jacob at Bethel, is that God will be with him. And although it may not seem like it at the moment, God is. We all have times when God seems silent. Ineffective, what we were up against was so daunting, it feels like our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling. Although it is not very fun, just keep at it. Formation stories take time, to change culture, to change systems, to change attitudes, to change persons. The constant drum beat of righteousness, equality, respect, humanity has been played long and consistently. Yet there are those who ignore it, find it as an irritant, and try to suppress it. Last week we mourned the loss of Representative John Lewis. Contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr. He has been a constant force for civil rights. Coordinator of peaceful demonstration, sit ins, marches, and protest. He has been arrested, beaten, spat upon and has risen to be the conscience of the Senate, to do what is right, to do what is just for all people. Respected, listened to, honored. This is a journey that has been long that God created the undergirding foundation. He said, “'When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to say something,' He not only talked about activism but did it “Making some good trouble.” CNN's Jim Acosta and Haley Byrd reported: John Lewis said, “I felt when we were sitting in at those lunch counter stools, or going on the Freedom Ride, or marching from Selma to Montgomery, there was a power and a force. God Almighty was there with us.” He described an incident when, he was beaten while attempting to enter a "white waiting room.” "Many years later, one of the men that had beaten him came to his Capitol Hill office he said, 'Mr. Lewis, I am one of the people who beat you … on the bus, “He said, 'I want to apologize. Will you accept my apology?'" Accepting his apology and hugging the father and son, the three cried together, Lewis remembered. "It is the power in the way of peace, the way of love," Lewis said. "We must never, ever hate. The way of love is a better way." There may be times when God seems silent, but God is never inactive, God is always moving, weaving, using what has happened for God’s advantage, loving us, and calling us to participate in ‘God’s good trouble’. To move us toward an active Civil Rights, for us to eliminate sexism, for slavery in all of its forms to be eliminated, for all lives to matter, for public fund being used to heal and build communities rather than suppress, for new cultural habits that take our focus off of our self and placed on helping those in need, for the global community to find a cure for the Corona virus. CONCLUSION Telenovela is our story. We are filled with over the top emotions, extreme passion, unquenchable desire and have created complex dramatic plots. This is why God loves us so much. We are far from being boring. We are loved and God sees us as good, but Trouble has taken simplicity away from our lives, we are haunted by a fear of being found out, we live from one crisis to another. Our drama has become the focus of our overly stressed lives and we are blind to God’s guiding movements through the Spirit, leading in the background, writing a better end to our story. Faith opens our eyes to see what God is doing. Faith enables us to take a leap from our best laid plans for what God has to offer. Relationship with God moves us towards identity, assurance, self-confidence, security, love, stewardship, and mission. We can take responsibility for our actions instead of trying to run away from them, we can foster relationship instead of control them. We can change from how we have been to transformed into a better version of ourselves. We can be an Upgraded version of ourselves fixing the bugs, and living freely with God. We can change our culture, we can modify our traditions, we can move our country in another direction, taking what is good and making it better. This is an exciting drama of faith, a God inspired telenovela.
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