“Trash or Tresure?”
This past week at church camp up at Geneva Center I had the privilege of leading about 40 young people ranging in age from 9 to
I think we have a tendency to forget this when it comes to dealing with other people some times. We fail to recognize and therefore do not acknowledge that others are valuable because there is a piece of God in them. We tend to focus on the trashy parts of their lives instead of recognizing that even they have something of worth to contribute to this world and that with a God with whom all things are possible; even the lowliest of people, those whom we tend to value least in our society, can achieve great things with God’s help. I think that is one of the lessons we lean in the passage of scripture we read this morning.
Here we have a story about Laban playing a pretty harsh trick on Jacob but it wasn’t the case, however, that Jacob was a model of decency either. He arrived in Paddan-aram, the land of his father-in-law, Laban, as a fugitive. He’d had to leave his homeland in Canaan because he cheated his brother out of his birthright and deceived his father about it. In this new place, Jacob hoped to escape the wrath of his brother and make a fresh start. On the surface things would appear to be going better for Jacob; he falls in love with Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, but there is a price to be paid for this good fortune.
Laban’s question in the verse we read first helps set the scene for what is about to happen. “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing?” A reasonable answer to this question is yes, Jacob should serve his uncle for nothing for at least three reasons. First, Jacob is a young man living in the household of an older male relative, and family obligations of the day required that the younger man show his respect for the family by supporting it without compensation. Second, Laban is providing Jacob with refuge, at an unknown cost and risk to his own household, for which Jacob is considerably in Laban’s debt. Third, at some point after Jacob’s initial arrival, if he does not begin to contribute to the material welfare of Laban’s family, he will transition from the role of guest to the role of freeloader, which will bring unrest to Laban’s family. But Laban makes it seem like he is trying to be a nice guy and the question gets Jacob to thinking and gets him to enter into a contract that he likely would not have had it not been for Laban’s prompting. The deal is Jacob will serve Laban for seven years in exchange for marrying Rachel.
Jacob fulfills his end of the bargan, but at the end of seven years, on his wedding night, when Jacob is possibly not seeing well from too much drinking at the wedding party, Laban pulls a classic bait-and-switch, and sends Rachel’s older sister Leah, no doubt well veiled, into the wedding tent, and Jacob doesn’t realize the switch till the next morning. There is a poetic justice in that Jacob the deceiver gets deceived. The stage for Laban’s deceit of Jacob was set years earlier by Jacob, his brother Esau, their father Isaac and their mother Rebekah. Esau, who was born first, and Jacob, who was born “with his hand gripping Esau’s heel”, and so his name was derived from a Hebrew verbal root meaning “He takes by the heel” or “He supplants.” That is pretty much how Jacob lived his life, in a pretty low down and dirty trashy manner; again best depicted in his stealing his brother’s birth right with the help of his mother. There is a sense in which we are ok with the tables being turned on Jacob, but does he really deserve all this?
Jacob confronts Laban, who brushes his trick off by saying “This is not done in our country — giving the younger before the firstborn.” Further poetic justice in Laban saying, “You may have stepped ahead of your older brother where you came from, but that kind of thing is not done here.” Laban then says Jacob can have Rachel as well if he will work another seven years. So he does. The end result being that Jacob, in effect, winds up with four wives, because both Leah and Rachel come with a maid, and in the custom of that day, they become partners to Jacob as well.
A few months ago when the raid on the polygamist compound in Texas was all over the news I kept hearing people talk about how messed up that situation was. Here Jacob one of the heroes of the Old Testament finds himself in that same messed up situation. In Jacob’s defense he didn’t really want all of this; the passage leads us to believe he didn’t even really like Leah all that much. Jacob really wanted Rachel to be his wife but in any case, Leah winds up being Jacob’s wife now in addition to Rachel. Apparently Jacob let his lack of warmth toward Leah show, and it was a constant source of tension in the family. Later, when Rachel’s maid had a son by Jacob, Rachel named the child Naphtali, which comes from a Hebrew word meaning “my struggle.” And she declared “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed” Not exactly the makings of a happy home life. Messed up though it may have been that is what this family had to work with.
Truth be told if we encountered this kind of family today we would be inclined to write them off as no good, hillbillies, or trailer trash, or crazy, or some other derogatory term. There is little in this account that is acceptable by our church going, God fearing standards, or for that matter even by the standards of society. It is however important I feel to remember that this dysfunctional family is the beginning of something big; it is the beginning of the people of Israel. The 12 sons born to Jacob and his four wives become the beginning of the 12 tribes of
Here in the first book of the Bible, we find the story of a messed-up family that, despite its troubles, is used by God to accomplish God’s will. So maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to write off rough beginnings. Our God is a God of endless possibilities and there is nothing our God cannot do. So we can never write off a person as no good or beyond God’s redemption because with God’s help not only can that person be redeemed they can be used by God to perform mighty deeds of faith.
Lots of people grow up in problematic circumstances, and some are even inclined to blame their rocky childhood for their failure to blossom in later life. But there comes a point where, if we are to gain any kind of balance in life, we have to allow God’s redeeming and transforming love to work in our lives regardless of how bad or even how good our upbringing was. We need also to not cast judgment on others because with God no matter how battered and worthless a person may look on the outside there is always value somewhere within them as a beloved child of God who has intrinsic self worth as one who bears God’s image. It’s actually helpful that Genesis, this book of beginnings, presents us with a dysfunctional family transformed and used for God’s purposes, because it reminds us that not only can good things come from ragged beginnings, but also God can use those shaky people, as God used Jacob’s family to fulfill God’s covenant with humankind. We have no reason to doubt that God can accomplish something similar with us, no matter where we started.
Marilyn Meberg, in The Women of Faith Daily Devotional tells the following story “Alec is in love. He is so sure of his love, he’s talking marriage. Alec is 3 years old; so, too, is his fiancée. They met in preschool. They place their little chairs next to each other during story time, swing together on the playground, and share the chocolate chips plucked from their cookies during snack time. …Last week I picked up Alec at preschool so we could go get an ice-cream cone before I took him home. I was eager to meet the potential little bride so I asked Alec to point her out to me. Just as she was climbing into her mother’s minivan, she turned, grinned at Alec, and called a warm “See ya.”
I must admit to being a trifle stunned to see that this dear little girl was exceedingly cross-eyed and wore very thick glasses. As we drove away Alec commented dreamily, “Isn’t she beautiful?” So like God, I thought. We often say love is blind, but God’s love sees all our imperfections and, like Alec, says, “Isn’t she beautiful?””
With God there is never a distinction between trash and treasure when it comes to people because God always sees the treasure in all of us. God does see us as we are but God also sees us as we may yet become through God’s grace. This is how we ought to see one another. This means no matter how messed up the situation, not matter how disposable we may think someone may be we can never be dismissive with them because God may be accomplishing big things through them. This also means we may never underestimate what God can do in our lives. May we value always the image of God in others and in ourselves. Amen.