Despising A birthright

Recently I was reminded of the story of Esau and Jacob.  My daughter had read about it and was trying to recall the story.  Stolen, birthright, mispronounced names.  To be honest I was having trouble remembering too.  My husband teased me that he remembered and I didn’t.  I laughed at that, at how much there is to remember.  And how much we can forget. In the Bible or otherwise. 

But when my daughter mentioned the hairy arm part, it all came back to me.   Funny enough, that’s the very part I didn’t like, and yet the same part that brought it flooding back.  The stolen blessing, the sold birthright, the brothers in struggle, favorites, parents, inheritance.    We cracked open the Bible to read more.  

We read about how they were born.  How they came late to their parents lives, how their arrival was a surprise in its double event.  How one preferred the wilderness and one preferred the tents and civilization.  How the one who liked solitude and the freedom to roam in the fresh air did so until he grew hungry one day.  He came upon his brother as he was making a stew, and famished as he was, he asked for a bowl.  Untethered and presumably tent-less as he was, he didn’t have much with which to buy it.  Slim pickings in the desert that month. 

But he  was the first born so he actually did have something.  Something that didn’t seem too valuable to him, but would go well in a barter.  His birthright.  

So, cashing in long term gain he didn’t care about for short term survival, he bought himself some warm stew.  It helped him live, and thrive.  For the time at least.  

As we read it, we stopped halfway.  

I knew there was something about this story, or a lot of somethings, that were calling to me. 

The one line that stood out to me from the first retreading was this: “Jacob despised his birthright.”

If that isn’t a loaded scripture I don’t know what.  

 I mused aloud then, still do, that I would have to ask God what He was saying here.  I wanted to know more.    I’m sure he’s said a lot of things to a lot of people over the years about this story.  To be honest, I haven’t been paying attention.  The stories I remember are just that- stories.  Like the one my daughter told me, Ripe with meaning, ready for interpretation, ready for some new revelation.  I’m listening now. What hidden layers of insight would You like to peel back? 

As I sat here in prayer, that story tumbling about, a phrase I recently heard that bothered me suddenly tumbles out too.  “Prosperity gospel”. It was said with disgust, an accusation of sorts.  And to be honest, I heard it with disgust.  An accusation indeed.  I don’t think labels serve the body of Christ too well.  And I don’t think the gospel needs any- perceived or true-accusatory words attached to it.  I think that only divides and separates us, not truth from fiction.  There’s One Gospel.  We humbly seek interpretation 

And I don’t think that prosperity is such a bad word.  Now before you get into some compartmentalism, get your kickers in a twist, or start to worry about that blasphemous word too, let’s just consider this for a minute.

In 3 John 1:2, the greeting to the church is this: “Beloved, I pray that in every way you may prosper and enjoy good health, as your soul also prospers.”   Prosper in every way.  

When did we get so comfortable with the thought that Jesus wants us only to suffer? “In this world you will have trouble.  But behold, I have overcome the world!” Yes we will suffer.  Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.  For thou art with me.  Thy rod and the staff they comfort me.  Thou preparers a table before me thou anoints my head with oil. My cup overflows.” 

Now, of course, the truth is the Lord wants first and foremost for our souls to prosper.  But who is to say that He doesn’t want us to prosper in other ways too! To pour out an oil of bless upon our heads, our hearts, and our entire beings.  Blessings that  *overflow*?! Overflow means more than enough.  Overflow means you don’t just squeak by.  Overflow means you have more than what you need. Overflow means you have enough to share.   Aren’t we supposed to go into all the world and preach the gospel? How can we do anything if blessings don’t overflow? We can be the recipients yes but we can also be the blessers.  In every way.  What’s so wrong with that thought? 

I think of Jacob and Esau.  Esau had “more than enough” available to him, but preferred to leave it more often than enough to be out in the wild.  But eventually he ran out and he had to find someone else’s overflow.   

Now, he had a birthright and he had an inheritance. His Father’s house and land and food and everything was available to him.  But he despised it, maybe, or at least traded it for the wilderness.  

The birthright was nothing to him but a formality.  It served no form or function to him. Then he grew starving and he sold it for his hunger.   Here’s  a question- did he despise it before he sold it, or was the selling despising? Or did he despise it after?

This begins to churn in my spirit.  What is some of the birthright that maybe we’re despising? Is it the tents we can’t stand.  We didn’t like their size or fork or function.  The rules the predictability.  The confinement, the ‘necessary’ troubles of living in community? 

Whatever the reason, many are in a wilderness -for good or bad.  But have you traded your birthright? In a moment of desperation or despair, have you sold it away or have you called upon it.  Have you traded your birthright  to feed your soul? Or have you used it to set yourself free from isolation? To connect back to the source of your royal birthright? Not your brother, but your dad? The one who own is all, who is the bread of life, who will feed your soul’s hunger, eternal?

Have we settled for less than because we refuse to dwell in our father’s tents (and I don’t mean churches!).  We thought we were leaving the churches and their “tents”.  The brothers who bothered us. The mothers who rejected us.  The fathers that tried to love us, but couldn’t make us to want to stay.  Have we failed to dwell we them or return to them because we thought we couldn’t be tamed?  Maybe we didn’t actually  have to be.  

Esau’s father loved him.  He loved his wildness.  Yet Esau felt He couldn’t stay.  Because he himself despised his birthright, he sold it. He wandered in the wilderness most often, rejecting the home but to get a meal when he was famished, and leave again. More available, but didn’t dwell there. He chose the wilderness, until one time he grew so hungry that felt he the urge to trade in a part of himself, his birthright, to get a bowl of soup.  

I don’t think he ever had to do that. At least, I don’t know that he had to sell his birthright.  I bet his father would have given him a bowl without groveling or such gruffness.   Either way, he got what he needed, at a great cost, ate it, and left. “He showed contempt for his rights as the firstborn,” it says in one version.

I wonder what was it that caused the schism? Impatience? Jealousy, brotherly fractures? But regardless, His Father still loved Him.  His father still was willing to give him his blessing.  

When Jacob and Isaac’s father was dying, and wanted to bless Esau, he called for his son and asked him to hunt for and prepare a meal for him. While he did, Jacob came in and stole it. It troubles me, that part. Did Esau take too long? Did he get distracted? Was Esau just that cunning? Maybe God allowed it because Esau had, as it says when he sold it “despised his birthright”? I don’t know. But it troubled their father too. When he found out what had happened, he lamented. He wanted so much to bless his son Esau and to give him something of an inheritance. So did Esau.

“Esau pleaded, “But do you have only one blessing? Oh my father, bless me, too!”
Then Esau broke down and wept.

Finally, his father, Isaac, said to him,

  “You will live away from the richness of the earth, and away from the dew of the heaven above. You will live by your sword, and you will serve your brother. But when you decide to break free, you will shake his yoke from your neck.”

Genesis 27: 39-40

That your soul would prosper even as your whole life prospers.  

Are there troubles? Yes. Are there sicknesses and illnesses and deaths? Lost and stolen blessings? Yes.  Rejection and pain? Yes.  Is there hunger and famine and war and troubling times? 

Yes.  

But you don’t have to wait until it gets really bad to come to your fathers house and ask him for some help or a bowl of soup.  And you certainly don’t have to sell your birthright to get it.  Your birthright is what makes it all available le to you.  Just as your choices got you where you are, your place in the family will get you where you need to go. If you don’t despise it.

Weird thing is, our Father loves us and our wild too.  He knows how we reject the easy life, the community, the family troubles.  He knows how we get impatient, rush, get famished and make some bad calls. The hardest part? We end up rejecting the blessing, too.  

How often are we, as individuals, as the church, selling our soul for a loaf of bread.  Or staying on the outskirts, running in and out only to get some food, until it gets so bad, we’re so desperately hungry that we’ll do just about anything.  I don’t know exactly what kept Esau away.  Trouble, pride, envy? Was he too troubled to stay or was it too troubling to come back often. Did he love the wild too much to remember? Did he love something or somewhere else too much to linger himself at home?

“One thing I have asked of the LORD;  this is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and seek Him in His temple. For in the day of trouble He will hide me in His shelter;  He will conceal me under the cover of His tent; He will set me high upon a rock.”

Psalm 27:4,5

Have I forgotten?
Like the story? I had forgotten, because I didn’t want to remember the uncomfortable parts, or the part that sounded icky to a little girl. Some hairy man’s arm. Now I laugh. I see it means so much more. It some man’s wild. It some man’s identity. It’s not icky. It’s beautiful.
And it means so much more than those two words used to describe it.
It means it’s something that made Esau different, recognizable. It was the thing that perhaps made him feel despised. But it was the exact thing that His Father knew him as. And Loved him, still, after all these years.

So, I’m asking you, Esau (asking the Esau in me, too).  What’s the thing you don’t like? What’s the things that makes you uncomfortable about others? Or about yourself? What’s the thing you think made you different, that  drove you to a “better place”, a different life for yourself, by yourself? 

Do you know that your Father sees who you are,  already?  Who you always were? He recognizes you and he knows you feel wild and he knows why you left.  He knows why you rejected some things, that didn’t seem to fit right.  But still.  He never rejected you. 

 He still calls you His son.  He still has a place for you, a bowl of soup, a loaf of bread.   You won’t even have to pay for it and you certainly don’t have to beg your brother for it.  You are His son.  

“Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.”

Psalm 27:10

And  He’s loved you all along.  You can still be wild.  You’ll always be wild.  But you can be loved.  

Come back to the Father, your Father. He’s got what you need to fill your soul, and your belly.  You can ask Him- it’s your birthright. And it’s His delight.   You don’t have to have your blessing stolen either. God is not a man that He should lie. But He is limited by our willingness to receive.

You can’t choose your blessing, but you can choose to be blessed, in whatever portion He decides. Go ahead and ask Him what He has for you. Your loving Father, for your full portion. For what He longs to give you, what would be more than enough, to set you free, and to overflow to others? To help set others free too?

The time is now to come out from under your oppressor and be free. It has always been your portion. It’s time to stop settling for less and start settling for nothing but more… of Him. 

He’s the God of the Universe. He has more than enough for everyone. And nobody needs to sell their soul to get there.  Not to one another, not to any brother, not to any tent or any wilderness either- within or without. Not for a bowl of soup or a piece of bread.

He already bought your birthright. It’s settled in Christ. Don’t settle.  
Come home.

“Still I am certain to see  the goodness of the LORD  in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait patiently for the LORD!”

Psalm 27:13,14