The stupidest story in the Bible

How much do you know about Jacob and Esau?  Odds are, pretty little.  But I was tooling around on the internet the other day, and I came across a youtube video of a long drawn out cartoon / commentary about how the Jacob and Esau story was stupid, and for a moment it made sense.  After all, that story always has seemed a little bit silly - somehow Isaac figures that goat skin all over his smooth son's arms in any way resembles his hirsute son?  It seems a little silly.  I am hardly likely to win fatehr of the year anytime soon, but oh my, I could tell the difference between my two sons no problem.  They're totally different in every way, aside from genetics, and I could tell the difference between them blindfolded.  

But maybe that's the point.  Perhaps the ludicrousness of this story underscores the ludicrousness of our faith.  You see, back in the day, Martin Luther figured something out about the Christian faith.  He figured out justification.  He figured out that the death of Christ on the cross justified us before God.  That our sins are forgiven, and that God no longer sees all our terrible sins when he looks at us.  And we are redeemed and forgiven.  And strangely enough, those of us in the church, we no longer see this as absurd.  'Of course,' we say 'why wouldn't we be justified?  Justification is the article on which the church stands or falls.'  Yes, it seems really simple, until you think about it.

How did the execution of a Jewish carpenter two thousand years ago affect you in the slightest?  How do his good works and his inherent goodness apply to you?  It's a straight up question, and one that most of us don't even think about for the overwhelmingly vast majority of our time.  Jesus gives good advice, he's a neat guy, he has interesting things to say, but does this in any way actually connect with us?  Yes.  And I'll tell you how.

As mentioned on Sunday, the Old Testament reading of Jacob grappling with God, wrestling with God until morning, it happens at a key point in the scriptures.  It happens as Jacob is trying to figure out what will happen between him and his brother.  You see, Jacob, in case you didn't know, he'd stolen his brother's blessing under false pretenses, he'd taken his brothers birthright for a mess of pottage, and he was now on the lam, watching lambs, waiting for a chance to return.  But here's the problem .  Things with his brother were bad.  Really bad.  His brother had four hundred men with him, and his brother was big and mean.  Esau was a warrior, a fighter, a hunter, an outdoorsman, he was big and strong.  And Jacob, by comparison, was a creampuff, someone who got his way by talking his way into our out of things.  He could in no way hang with his brother and fight him.  He was going to have to run, or to make things work.  But if he was going to run, he was going to have to keep running forever.  He'd already been doing that, and now, it was time to face his brother.  And his prayer to God before he met his bother was that he might be saved from the grasp of Esau, his enemy.  

After wrestling with God all night, Jacob was changed.  His hip was put out of joint, and his name was changed, from Jacob to Israel.  And so when he went out to meet his brother, it wasn't to run, and it wasn't outfitted for war, it was to grovel and to beg for forgiveness.  You see, the thing is, that if you wrestle with God, wrestle with him all night, he's going to work on you and change you, through his word.  And to do that, you have to actually be connected and immersed within that word.  You can't start off with the idea of God that you want, the God of 'itching ears,' the God who tells you what you want to hear.  You have to start off with the actual God, and to get through what he has to say, you have to wrestle with him, all night if you need to.  

You have to grapple with what God really says, and know him for who he really is.  You have to get into the scriptures, and see what God has in mind for you and for your life.  You'll come across the very real truth that the way he wants you to resolve difficulties and broken relationships is through forgiveness and reconciliation.  It's through mercy, through asking for forgiveness where it is required.  It is through repentance, and through love.  And the Biblical requirement is that if you have overstepped, you must repent; and if someone else has sinned and repented, you must forgive.  You don't have a choice.  And this isn't the sort of thing you understand unless you actually do the work, and wrestle with God, and allow him to change you through his word.  Otherwise, your itching ears will make for you a God who says that you're tops, the problems you have in your life are problems caused by other people, and all you have to do is to steer the course and wait for everyone else to figure it out.

In other words, a lot of what you have to do as a Christian is to see God, and his word, for what they actually are.  You need to see God for who he actually is.  And this is the miracle of how justification works, and how it ties in with that story of Jacob and Esau.  For justification to work, you need to see God for who he actually is, and as Jesus says 'he who has seen me has seen the father.'  If you want to know who God really is, get to know Jesus Christ for who he actually is.  Not just the parts you like, either, but get to know the parts you don't like  Wrestle with him and realize that he promises grace, but requires repentance from each and every single one of us.  Realize that the gospel is offered to sinners, and those sinners need to know their sin, and confess it, and be done with it.  In doing so, we'll be seeing God for who he actually is.  

And he won't be seeing us for who we actually are.  That's the real kicker that we weren't expecting, isn't it?  For people who want to be seen as their real selves, to be known as who they really are, they really expect and desire to be recognized as their true selves.  But I have some bad news for you in that department:  When God looks at you, he doesn't see the real you in the way we'd expect.  In a way, the story of Esau and Isaac and Jacob gets less silly the more you consider the story of Christ.  You see, the story of Esau involves Jacob sticking some goat skin on his hands and neck, and fooling his father into thinking he was his brother.  In that, when Isaac touched his hands, he felt his elder son, not his younger.

And that's what happens with us too.  When God looks at us, to bless us, he doesn't see us.  He sees the merits of Christ.  When he reaches out to touch us and give us his blessing, he doesn't see our merits, he sees those of Christ.  He sees the work and righteousness of Jesus.  When you remember that, all of a sudden, the story of Esau being an hairy man is a way better story.  God gave a blessing to someone who didn't deserve it, just like Isaac did.  He gave it to us, because looking at us he saw Christ.  And just like Jacob, we don't get the blessing whipped away because it shouldn't have been ours to begin with.  We were blessed, we were blessed at baptism, and we are blessed at the Lord's Supper.  We are blessed through word and sacrament, we are blessed through God's love, we are forgiven and redeemed.  We are given all these things because God sees Christ when he sees us.  

And the so-called 'real us?'  The sin is removed, and the rest, God looks at, and says that it is good.