Accepting Forgiveness
By Charles Rush
November 14, 1999
Genesis 33: 1-10
e day I preached on
American Beauty
happened to be Halloween. Between standing on the sidelines of the
soccer field that night, running into people trick-or-treating, and
getting a mocha java at Starbucks on Monday, I must have had a dozen
conversations with people around town about that movie.
Obviously that film hit a little too close to home for our
comfort. There was one other part of that movie I want to mention
today and we can talk about it in these prosperous times because it
doesn't affect us too much at the moment.
At one point in the movie, Lester decides to quit his job, to save
his honor. He can tell he is about to be downsized out. He is
frustrated. He is angry. He is humiliated as Alpha-Male no longer
able to provide game from the hunt. So he goes home and announces to
his wife that he is planning to quit. If he quits, then at least he is
in control and this provides him with a modicum of self-esteem. So he
comes home, drinks too much, and spews out this tirade about how
pointless his company is, how pointless careers are in general.
It is painfully unbecoming and juvenile... and... everyone of us
have made that speech if we have ever been through a time in our
careers where we were sidelined, viewed as objectively irrelevant, or
retired early. We may not actually make it in front of our spouses.
The controlled among us might just make it to ourselves in the car on
the way home from a long day that ended with a bitter meeting.
But most of us make that speech to our spouses because we are
inviting a reality check. We want some bounce back, if for no other
reason than to remember that we are important to someone in
metropolitan New York.
If you recall, when Carolyn heard her husband was going to quit his
job, she freaked out. And it provoked a bitter exchange that was also
a little too close to home. Immediately, she feels the financial
pressure. She was very content to have a second income job. But she
did not sign on to be the primary breadwinner. That was the job for
Alpha-Male. She was in the support role.
The more she drank and the more Lester went on about the
pointlessness of career, her bitterness began to extend itself. She
had this moment, this very painful moment, when she realized that here
she was at mid-life. In her mind, she had made quite a few concessions
to get there. She felt like she had more than fulfilled her duty, had
sacrificed, had not been fulfilled in some important ways, and there
she was.
In her mind, she had a picture of where she wanted to be
financially, materially at 50. She had a pretty definite picture in
her mind. She had never really given much voice to that picture but
she had it right there. Her husband is telling her at 42 that she won't
get to that place and that he doesn't care anymore. He is just
dropping the ball. He isn't holding up his end of the arrangement.
All these concessions that she thought she had made: her lack of
fulfillment, her unhappiness day in and day out, her sexual distance.
All of that she could at least manage because she was going to have a
level of material comfort and her image at least that would... sort of
make up for the difference. You take out that material comfort... you
take that away... and what do you have left but pain and suffering.
That is when she went into attack mode. That is when she got
venomous. We all have these unspoken expectations of what our lives
are going to turn out to be. Most of the time, we don't ever give them
any voice. Most of the time, we are only able to articulate them, when
we get to this place where we realize that they are not going to come
true. That is when we have these bitter exchanges with our spouses,
with our significant others, or close friends.
I am tempted to say that in the world we live in, the question is
not if you will have this discussion it is when. Most of us will not
get through our careers without being downsized out, retired early, or
fired to be rehired back at lower pay as a consultant. Some of us will
contract a lifestyle altering disease or have some health issue in our
families that significantly refocuses our future. Some of us will have
children that don't turn out to be as educated or motivated or parental
as we would like. Some of us are going to have spouses or significant
relationships that are a terrible disappointment. Any of these
scenarios are upsetting enough in their own right that we become
emotionally and spiritually undone. It is in our most intimate
relationships that this will be the most intense: with our spouse, our
parents, our brothers and sisters, our kids, our dear friends that we
have known and shared with forever. We can cause our greatest harm,
closest to home. And it is right here that we will have to learn the
gutsy, tough work of forgiveness to make it on through.
Our biblical story about Jacob and Esau is pretty gutsy and
realistic on this front. I would invite you to read the several
chapters devoted to these two brothers. They were fraternal twins.
The Bible says that they fought, even in the womb. This is what it
says, "Rebekah became pregnant. But the children almost crushed one
another insider her, so she said: If this be so, why do I exist?"
(Gen. 25:21,22 The Schocken Bible) It was a portent of things to
come. And so like boys. I have a godson. There are three boys in
all, under the age of 5. Their mother is calling all of us to eat
dinner. We are all wrestling. Mom calls again. My godson yells back
"We want more rough housing." Only rarely have we ever stopped before
blood runs.
These two boys fought each other from inception. Even when they
were born, they were wrestling. The first one came out all red and
hairy. His parents named him "Rough one". That is what Esau means.
He looked like a rough dude.
The second one was born right after him. Indeed, when the first
one came out, the second one had hold of his ankle, so they named him
"heel holder" or "heel sneak" or "heel grasper". All of these words
had a connotation to them for the same word "holder", "sneaker";
"grasper" also was used for "cheater". They named him Jacob. Indeed,
Jacob was known to be a conniver. Most of the stories that are told
about him in scripture and told of his conniving or of his being
conned.
When they were teenagers, Esau had been out hunting all day. Esau
was the hunter, Jacob farmed and herded animals. Esau came in from the
hunt, famished. He was impulsively grousing. I'm sure he was saying,
"there's nothing to eat in this house" like all of our teenagers but it
is not recorded in scripture. What is recorded is this. Jacob tells
his brother he will give him a delicious nouvelle porridge that he has
already whipped up, if Esau will promise him his birthright. Food
now. Inheritance, 60 years from now. Food wins.
He was a conniver. It is said that when John D. Rockefeller would
see people, he would always walk them to the elevator, where he would
bid them goodbye. At the last minute before the elevator closed, an
innocent young man would slip in, and move anonymously to the back.
There he would listen to the conversation as the group was riding down
and walking out the front door. Then he would come back in the
building, ride the elevator back up to Rockefeller's office, and report
what he overheard.
Years go by. Jacob marries another Israelite, Rachel. They have
children. Then there is this tid bit in scripture. It says that Esau
married two Hittite women, Yehudit and Ba'semat. Their names are hard
to pronounce. They are foreigners. The Bible has this one little line
that speaks volumes. It says, "And they were a bitterness of Spirit to
Isaac and Rebekah." There is family tension. It is not spoken about
further but there is some disappointment.
More years go by, Isaac is old and dying. He can tell the end is
near. He calls his oldest boy Esau to his side. He asks for one last
favor, something they have done before many times. He asks his son to
"pick up your weapons-your hanging-quiver and your bow, go out into the
field and hunt me down some hunted-game, and make me a delicacy, such
as I love; bring it to me, and I will eat it, that I may give you my
own blessing before I die" (Gen. 27:3,4). Esau goes.
But his mother overhears and schemes herself. She calls Jacob, the
heel-sneak, and tells him to make his father something to eat quickly,
so that he might get the blessing instead. Why does she do it? Is it
because she loves Jacob more? Is it because she doesn't want her
foreign daughter-in-laws to inherit their money? We don't know. We
usually never do.
The old man is blind. In the Bible, blindness like this is usually
more than simply physical. It means he is clueless. He is spiritually
blind as well.
Jacob makes the savory dish and serves it to his father. His
father says, "You sound like Jacob, let me feel you?" Jacob holds out
his hand, the back of his hand, which is the only part of him that is
hairy like his brother. His father is fooled.
The old man blesses him and says, "May God give you from the dew of
the heavens; from the fat of the earth, much grain and new-wine! May
peoples serve you, May tribes bow down to you; be master of your
brothers; may your mother's sons bow down to you. Those who damn you,
damned! Those who bless you, blessed!" (Gen. 27:28,29) That is pretty
broad, pretty categorical, pretty one sided.
Esau comes back; Isaac tells him that he has been tricked. Esau
cries out in rage and says, "Isn't there something that can be done?"
Isaac says, "I gave him my blessing! Now blessed he must remain!"
Then Esau has this wonderful response. He says, "Haven't you
reserved a blessing for me? Have you only a single blessing, father.
Bless me too." And the old man was silent.
It seems arbitrary to our modern ears, part of that is because we
have lost the sense of words being contractual. We have lost that
sense in which you shake on a deal and that deal is solid. But in the
ancient world, without recourse to courts, words had that kind of
binding authority.
The closest parallel we have is a bad estate settlement. I knew a
family where the grandfather died, with a fairly large estate, but lots
of grandchildren and great-grand children. No one had ever actually
looked at his will but they had a nice summer compound on Martha's
Vineyard, a large piece of property with several houses on it. The
assumption was that it would be in the family forever. But when the
will was read, it became apparent that care had not been taken. The
grandfather had not done a couple of simple things to set this up.
Furthermore, it also became apparent in the months that followed, that
none of the grandchildren had the money to pay the inheritance taxes
and none could buy the others out. Whereupon much bitterness on the
phone with each other, at their grandfather, at the arbitrary legal
system. Long and short, they had to sell the summer place that had
been in their family forever.
Today, it is no longer the arbitrary word of one person; it is the
arbitrary word of an Estate judge, a judge in a divorce settlement.
Isaac says nothing. Esau is enraged. He is enraged at the system. He
is enraged at his Father for being so stupid. He is enraged at his
Mother for her manipulation. He doesn't feel loved. And he can't
really be angry with them directly, so he turns all of that fury on
Jacob.
He says out loud, "Let the days of mourning draw near and then I
will kill Jacob my brother" (Gen. 27:41). Jacob gets wind of this and
flees. He stays gone for the rest of his life. He moves in with his
father-in-law. They herd together. Years go by. Both of them have
huge herds. He has a falling out with his father-in-law, Laban, and
they split up.
Shortly after Jacob is out on his own again, he decides that the
time has come to reach out to his brother. He takes a few servants,
has them collect good size herds as gifts for his brother, collects
together some other gifts, and sends them on. It is an appeasement
offering.
Appeasement offerings might work with strangers. They might work
with small stuff, but they never work in intimate relationships. They
never paper over big wounds. I knew someone years ago. She wanted to
talk to her husband about their love life. She wanted something more
than they had. After considerable thinking about it, she finally
raised the subject one evening.
He snapped at her and said something like "everything would be fine
if you would lose 20 pounds. It was a stupid thing to say. It was
said thoughtlessly. It was hurtful and a bad defense technique to keep
from talking about his issues with intimacy. But it did its job. She
was very vulnerable right at that moment. Man she was hurt. She
couldn't even talk for a few days, she was so hurt. Then she was mad.
After a couple days go by, he realizes that he is a bonehead, but
he cannot bring himself to talk about what is actually going on. He
buys her this $5000 bracelet and brings home some brochures on an
exotic vacation. He lays all this on the dining room table and she
just says, "I don't think so. You really hurt me. This is deeper than
that. You're not getting off that easy."
Jacob makes this same mistake and even worse it is with his
brother. We are told that they wrestled all of their life. Now that
they are fully mature men, they are still wrestling; only they are
using their wealth as symbols of their power. Jacob is really trying
to give a gift of good faith, but there is just a little brag there
too. Look what a large gift I am able to give you.
This story is so like brothers. His 3 or 4 servants report back to
him that Esau is coming to meet him, but rather than just send 3 or 4
servants, Esau has sent 400 men ahead of him. Jacob has done pretty
well, but apparently his brother has done even better. He was in on
the IPO for AOL. Jacob is really worried. Surely Esau intends for him
to sweat quite a bit. These 400 guys coming is either a really good
sign or a really, really bad sign. With your wrestling brother, you
always have to be prepared for the body slams when you least expect
it.
Jacob sweats and sweats. Finally, he takes everything he has and
sends it ahead of him with a note that says, "Everything that is mine
is yours." He has been pacing the floor for hours, days. At some
point, you get to this in intimate relationships. Forget about the
stuff. You can have the stuff. The only thing that really matters is
the relationship. That is all that really matters. At the end of the
day, where are you if you are surrounded by great security but cut off
from all your significant relationships. You are just comfortably
alone, capital A. Forget about the stuff. Do what you have to do to
fix the relationship.
That is right. Jesus taught us that there is a direct correlation
between the profundity of our love and our ability to forgive and
accept forgiveness. Forgiveness, accepting forgiveness, is all about
developing mature intimacy. It is about being open, honest, and
vulnerable in the good sense, the humane sense. It does not come
naturally. It is a spiritual gift. And the real life situations where
we grow learning about it are as frightening as watching 400 guys
rumbling across the desert on horseback. The ground shakes around
you.
Jacob divides all of his family, all of his herds in two and sends
them ahead. Esau's huge tribe meets them. There in the distance is
Jacob, standing alone. His brother is walking towards him. Moment of
tension. The bible says "Esau ran to meet him, he embraced him, flung
himself upon his neck, and kissed him. And they wept" (Gen. 33:4).
Esau grew through this, but we have to presume that Jacob really grew.
Truth be told, accepting forgiveness may be one of the hardest things
to do. We would rather keep our distance, keep score of our hurts.
Accepting forgiveness requires intimate humility, a deep honesty. It
is admitting we were wrong. It is being in the grace of someone else.
It is tough work.
Jesus taught us that we can only forgive as we have been forgiven.
We need to be on both sides of that equation, accepting forgiveness,
and spreading it around. Being people of forgiveness doesn't mean that
we no longer have standards. Actually forgiveness requires standards.
What it does require of us is real intimacy in relationship, care about
others that wants them to grow, a spiritual kind of commitment that is
going to work this relationship through come what may.
One time, someone asked the theologian Karl Barth, if we would see
our loved ones in heaven. Would we be reunited with our loved ones?
Barth said, not only our loved ones. We would all be healthier if we
would remember that. If the church was really being the church, we
would never leave each other until we had worked out our differences,
forgiven one another and become reconciled. As it is, most of the
time, when we have a difference, we just go our separate ways.
Thinking eternally, we will see each other again. We will have to work
this relationship through until it is reconciled. Apparently, in the
mind of God, the relationship is more important than one side being
right. We will have to work it through. Let's get some practice here
and now. Amen.
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