"God buys whole fields for you" - Sermon for July 30th, 2017 Lectionary 17

Sermon

Text: Genesis 29:15-28, Psalm 105, Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who sees us as worthy.

  In the last few weeks we’ve been reading about Jacob and how he’s “shrewd.” But, really it’s all about cheating his way through things to get his own way. He cheats his brother out of his birthright, and then his blessing, and dealing with all of that he flees for his life.

  Today, we read of another cheating, this time though it’s Jacob who is cheated. This section is preceded by Jacob continuing his travels after last week’s dream, and God’s promise to be with him. He arrives at his Uncle Laban’s, his mother’s brother. And as he approaches he arrives at the well, and while talking to some workers there, Rachel comes to get water from the well. And what happens when a man and a woman meet at a well in the Old Testament?

 They get married!  And it seems to be the case here, they are both immediately struck by the other, love at first sight for sure. Jacob goes up to her, kisses her, and weeps aloud! Laban invites him in, and somehow Jacob waits a whole month before asking Laban, in the beginning of our reading, I will serve you for seven years if you let me marry your daughter Rachel. And Laban agrees, and those seven years fly by. If it were a movie it would be a montage of romantic music, fleeting eye glances, maybe a few scandalous hand touches and “accidental” bumps and hugs. The time ends and Laban holds a huge feast. And when Jacob goes to the wedding tent that night, he does what happens wedding nights, but the next morning when he awakes, it’s LEAH! What did you do to me! How could you deceive me like this! I worked 7 years for Rachel, not Leah! “well, we don’t marry off the younger before the elder daughter, work for me another 7 years and you can have Rachel too.”

And this isn’t addressing other issues in this story, Rachel and Leah have no say in this, they don’t even speak. How do they feel about being sold in marriage as property, worked for to obtain. And there is also a certain verse, 17, Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful is how our NRSV translation puts it, which is better than many. The NIV puts it, Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful. Another has, “Leah was older than Rachel, but her eyes didn’t sparkle, while Rachel was beautiful and had a good figure.” We don’t really know what the descriptor of Leah’s eyes means. Lovely, weak, non sparkly, the word is so infrequently used and has no modern counterpart that it’s hard to know what it really means. But, what has happened is that Leah is identified as the ugly sister who can only be married off through trickery, before Rachel the beautiful sister. The whole treatment of them both as property and Leah as an ugly thing is sexist and cruel. At the beginning of the marriages it is said that Jacob loves Rachel more than Leah, flat out states it.

Our answer to all this cheating, both ways, and the sexist, cruel behavior, is often to then go, well, at least we don’t behave like that. At least, we’re not sinners like they are, and we think that’s the message, thank God you don’t behave like that, we’ve changed so much in the years.

 But, we behave exactly like that, we act “shrewd” all the time, we cheat others, purposefully or without thinking, we may not sell women into marriage, but we certainly treat other people like objects all the time, treat women as inferior, we label some as ugly and worthless while others are beautiful and wonderful. We still treat people like dirt. We sin and cheat and are cruel just like the people of Genesis.

And God is still at work. God is at work through us even though we may be cheating, sexist, cruel people.  Does God want us to continue in those ways?  As Paul asks in Romans, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means!” We can’t treat God continuing to be at work as an excuse to continue in our sinful ways. We have to always work to confront sexism, racism, classism, beautyism, bullying all other forms of cruelty and abuse. And also see this as Grace that God does not give up on us when we do sin.

There is another aspect to this text I want to look at before we close, yes, we are often the aggressors, the cruel, the cheaters, the sinful ones who take advantage of others, but sometimes we are the ones on the other end. And there’s a person in this that is that exact person. Leah.

I feel for Leah in this text and in everything. She is the unwanted sister. What are her thoughts as Jacob and Rachel flirt and exchange glances those 7 years, and then in the 7 years Jacob works to also have Rachel as his wife, is it any different for Leah? The one who has been tricked upon him? Who is there not because he loves or wants her, but because he has to accept having her? Because, how often are we Leahs? Are we the ones who are put aside, labeled as ugly or different, the ones who aren’t picked for things. Who are taken advantage of, pushed around, treated like objects, seen as inferior.

The good news of this passage is that Leah is always loved by God and her father Laban, and in the end is indeed loved by Jacob. When Rachel dies in child birth she is buried in a remote location, but when Leah dies she is buried alongside Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob when he dies asks to be buried with her. She may be seen as the one unwanted, but to God she’s always wonderful, she’s worthy to be loved, she’s worthy to be wanted, to be claimed.

I look at our reading from Matthew today, especially the middle two parables a treasure hidden in a field and the person sells everything to buy, and a pearl of great value, where again they sell everything to buy. We are that treasure, that pearl, despite our sin, to God we are like Leah, we are wonderful, worthy to be loved and claimed, even in the midst of our sin. God buys whole fields for you. God goes above and beyond for you. Being Leahs doesn’t mean we are unworthy, it means we are God’s loved ones.