Like all parents, the act of naming your child can be a source of great stress and anxiety. What happened to the days when you just named your child after a family member? For example, I have an Uncle named Mike, he has a son named Michael. His daughter married a Michael. They have a daughter named Michaela. I mean, this should be easy, right? Nope. I think my generation began giving novelty names to our children which eventually led to the naming of Kanye West’s child as East..East West! Really?
When our second daughter was born we could have named her after my Mother, Elise’s Mother, or one of our Grandmothers. But we needed to be creative. Somehow we came up with the name Rebekah. Not Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm fame. Rebekah from the Bible. I mean, what could be more reverent. Rebekah is from the Old Testament. She is a Matriarch. Sarah, Rebekah, Rachael and Leah. Obviously, I was not very aware of the back story of just who Rebekah was and what she did.
Now, let me say first that our Rebekah is a great person. She is 28 years old, doing a PhD in Anthropology at Cornell and doing her field work in Sickle Cell Anemia in Tanzania. She cares very much for those not as fortunate. Can you tell that I am a bit proud.
However, as a teenager, she worked hard to live up to her namesake. For example, when she was just starting to drive, we allowed her to take our Jeep to a cook out at a friend’s home. Parents would be on hand. What she did not tell us was that she left there early and drove to Joliet, Illinois (about 2 hours from home) to see a boy she met at a concert. It took some deception on our part to get the truth out of her.
Which brings us back to our heroine in today’s reading in Genesis. Rebekah plots with Jacob to fool Rebekah’s husband, Isaac,into giving his blessing to Jacob instead of Esau, the first born. Esau and Jacob were twins and Esau was born first with Jacob literally grabbing his heel on the way out of the womb. She gets Jacob to dress in clothes made out of animal hides to resemble the hairy body of Esau (apparently waxing was not big in biblical times). Rebekah prepares a meal for Jacob to give to Isaac in place of the meal Esau was to give Isaac at the time of the big blessing ceremony. Oh, BTW, Issac is blind and relies on feel to ID the correct son.
Jacob completes the trickery and gains the birthright leaving Esau out in the cold and apparently crying. Just don’t see him as the crying type, do you? He does vow to kill Jacob…understandable…forcing Jacob to flee his home and go to the land of his Uncle Laban where he eventually marries both his cousins. Leah and Rachael. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.
So, at face value, Rebekah and Jacob are really bad people and Jacob does not deserve the blessing awarded to him by Isaac. But if we read back a couple chapters we find that years earlier Jacob offered a really hungry Esau a bowl of stew that he had just finished making in exchange for his birthright. And Esau says yes!! He cannot bear a bit of the pain from hunger for a moment and decides that filling his belly is way better than some stupid birthright.
Hmmmm. So Esau was really the one who was trying to get the blessing from Isaac that really belonged to Jacob. Esau had willingly surrendered it. So the trickery was meant to assure that Jacob got what he had earned years before. And now you know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say (if you don’t know who Paul Harvey is, google him and listen to some of his fascinating stories).
So, how does this tie into our Gospel? It is partially about fasting. Jesus’ disciples don’t fast as long as Jesus, the bridegroom, is in their midst. But he makes it clear that there will come a time when fasting will be needed. And why is fasting needed? The culture kind of trivializes the whole concept of fasting over lent. Those silly Catholics are at it again given up chocolate, coffee, Facebook or, my personal favorite, brussels sprouts.
Ask Esau about how his life would have been different if he had practiced a little self discipline that fasting can bring. How the pangs of earthly desires can overcome the gifts and rewards of the spirit. In looking over the readings for today I could not help but think of Jesus’ line about not giving pearls to swine. Or birthrights to hungry siblings.
And then there is this wine skin analogy from Matthew in today’s Gospel. Where you apparently would never in a million years put new wine into old wine skins for risk of the old skins bursting and losing all the precious wine. I see the Pharisees as the old wine skins. Not capable of stretching and taking in all that Jesus was saying. The Good News..The New News. They were trapped in the ways of Mosaic Law and could not open themselves up for the truths Jesus was speaking. If they did..if they went against centuries of what they thought they knew to be true…they would surely burst. Lives turned upside down. Old tears being ripped open again.
Esau could not fast to achieve something better. A birthright to lead his people. It just wasn’t meant to be. His life was focused on the base things of life. Hunting, living off the land, might makes right. This was not in God’s plan. In fact He says to Rebekah that the younger child will lead the older one. Let us learn to be new wine skins and take in, and USE, the graces God gives us. May we use discipline to build character and strength such that we use those graces to their fullest.
