Stories about our origins are stories about ourselves and our unique characteristics. Most of those stories tend to highlight the good and eliminate the flaws. They are stories about the values we celebrate. While they may not be altogether true they are part of the ways we pass along those values to the next generation. But, in doing so we sometimes ambush history and our forefathers. In our own origins as a country we are more likely to be taught stories of Washington throwing a dollar across the Potomac or cutting down a cherry tree, Ben Franklin’s inventiveness, Lincoln’s studying by candlelight in a log cabin, Thomas Jefferson’s brilliance. We don’t dwell much on their shortcomings until we start reading biographies. At least, that is the way it was years ago but not so much now.

Not the Jews. They do not embellish or glamorize. Their story begins here in Genesis 27 with deceit, ambition, outwitting others, trickery, opportunism, favoritism and rivalry. This is their story about their own origins. Up until now in Genesis we have read about God’s relationship with a variety of men and women he has called but now we are present at the actual headwaters of the people we know as Jews and their particular culture. This is the story they are taught as children about where they come from and who they are.

In spite of the self-professed flaws where would every community in the world be without them? We have talked before about their contributions in Tyler but we are like one community after another living along the banks of the Mississippi. There is no place where they have not made a disproportionate contribution to the life of that community. But, it’s to their credit that they are so honest about how they began.

From the start they were influenced by their names. Names meant something about your character and your family. They were not chosen lightly and followed you through life. There were very few popular names for children and no books for picking them. They were hand-crafted and except in very unusual circumstances were they changed once given.

As we read last week, Jacob was saddled with a name that meant “grasping and deceiver.” Esau was named for the way he looked at birth – red and hairy. There have been times in my life when being a “junior” was a burden but nothing like being named for the way I looked at birth.

Hang a placard on the bedroom wall of a child that says, “My parents named me overly ambitious and deceptive” and it will have an effect over time. Do the same with “shaggy red animal” and it will probably shape the child. It’s a universal truth that what people expect of us has a great deal to do with who we become.

Of course, both parents favor one over the other and both were ambitious for them in different ways.

Isaac favored the one who feeds him. He loves the son who is easier to understand and less complicated. What little we know of Isaac points to someone who has been protected by his mother from a wild sibling (Ishmael), is an extraordinarily obedient son to Abraham, marries a beautiful woman picked out by his family, and multiplies the wealth and influence left to him by Abraham. He does what is right and what is expected of him. He is a good and upright man.

Esau is just the opposite of that. He causes himself and his parents grief by his behavior. He marries two women from outside the family ties that cause trouble for everyone. In fact, Hebrews 12:16 describes Esau as a completely secular man – the term there is godless. In other words, he was a fool who sold his birthright for a bowl of stew and was tricked out of his blessing.

There is a difference between a birthright and a blessing. The birthright was the double portion due to the oldest son. But it was not only twice the wealth as his brother. It also meant he inherited the leadership of the family and it’s influence and reputation in the community. The birthright symbolized all that the family had accomplished. Despising a birthright is despising and belittling what your father has done in his life. It is rejecting your legacy – not only the past but the future. It is disregarding and disrespecting your parents and your obligations to them.

Esau had no use for his obligations or responsibilities. He was counting on his father’s favoritism to take care of him for the rest of his life. He had no interest in the future of the family or honoring what his father and his father’s father had accomplished. He was interested only in the here and now. That is why Hebrews calls him “godless”. It is not just that he did not respect God but he was a fool toward his own responsibilities as a son and heir.

Rebekah favored Jacob – and not just for personal reasons or because he so resembled her own family – especially her brother Laban. But she had a better sense than Isaac about who could be the successor to leadership in the family and eventually the father of a nation. It was Jacob who was the quiet man – and that word means more than quiet. It means mature and thoughtful. While Esau was away, Jacob remained “among the tents” – or with the extended family. Esau paid attention to Isaac and Jacob paid attention to the family.

What did Isaac see in Esau?

The first born and after that there were no more questions about legitimacy and the ability to lead. It was Esau’s right no matter what his character might be.

He saw a strong and skillful man.

He saw a man who paid attention to him and provided for him as he grew older.

What did Rebekah see in Esau?

A careless man who brought grief and shame on the family with his impetuous marriages.

A man who had no interest in his obligations and responsibilities to the larger family. A man interested in his own pursuits.

A man at the mercy of his own appetites and temporary emotions.

Have you heard of the marshmallow experiment?

In the 1960s Walter Mischel, then an up-and-coming researcher in psychology, devised a simple but ingenious experiment to study delayed gratification. It is now famously known as the marshmallow test. In a sparsely furnished room Mr. Mischel presented a group of children aged four and five from Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School with a difficult challenge. They were left alone with a treat of their choosing, such as a marshmallow or a biscuit. They could help themselves at once, or receive a larger reward (two marshmallows or biscuits) if they managed to wait for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. Mischel, now of Columbia University, reveals in his first non-academic book, The Marshmallow Test, that the purpose of the study was to look at the methods children use to delay gratification—not to measure how well they did it. He admits now that he did not expect that the time they managed to wait “would predict anything worth knowing about their later years”. But after his daughters, who had attended the Bing Nursery, told him years later about how their friends from pre-school were doing, Mr. Mischel noticed that those who did well socially and academically tended to be those who had waited longest in the test.

He went on to survey many of the 550-or-so children who were tested between 1968 and 1974. To his surprise, the longer the five-year-olds had waited for their marshmallows, the higher they scored on standardised tests for college admissions a decade later. The patient children had a lower body-mass index when they grew up, greater psychological well-being, and were less likely to misuse drugs than those who had quickly gobbled up the treat.

The key to understanding the test lies in looking at what Mr. Mischel calls two systems in the brain: a “hot” system that is simple, reflexive and emotional and a “cool” one that is rational, reflective and strategic. Using the cool system helps children to wait for the extra marshmallow, and brain scans show that this system is more likely to be activated when people think about the distant future. Shifting from thinking about the “now” to pondering about the “later” can improve self-control.”

In other words, Rebekah used the “stew test” and saw that it was unlikely Esau would prove to be the leader the family needed.

But, and this is even more important, she saw something else. She saw Jacob as the fulfillment of her own family blessing in Genesis 24:60. “Our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands; may your offspring possess the gates of their enemies.” It was not just Isaac’s blessing she thought about but her own family’s blessing as well.

One of the most powerful symbols in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book “The Great Gatsby” is the green light at the end of the dock as he looks across the water toward Daisy’s house. Critics have said it is a symbol for his own striving to be make something of himself. A reporter several years ago interviewed Asian students who were recent immigrants with their families to the US. What did the green light in the story represent for them? All of them understood the effect of a “green light” in your life. They all understood the importance of striving for something in the future. They all understood the reality of carrying the weight and responsibility of the hopes of their family.

She saw Esau’s godlessness and knew he was unfit. There was no “green light” in his life. But there was in hers and there was in Jacob’s. Esau was not the one to fulfill that blessing or to possess the gates of the enemy. He had proved that.

As well, the Lord had said to her before the boys were born that the older would serve the younger and one people would be stronger than the other.

Rebekah had only one choice and one opportunity and she took it. Had she not, the whole identity of what it means to be a Jew would have been different and, likely, they would have disappeared completely by being absorbed. A nation of Esau’s could not survive. A nation of Esau’s could not be a peculiar people.

We sell Rebekah short if we only think of her as encouraging Jacob to deceive Isaac because of favoritism. It is far more than that. She is risking everything and breaking all tradition by what she does. She is even risking her own relationship with God by accepting the certain curse. She was accepting the likelihood of her own separation from her family and God. We skip over that and we shouldn’t. We should not miss the seriousness of her commitment to the future line of the family. For Rebekah this was not about one child. It was about thousands of future descendants.

Diettrich Bonhoeffer was a confirmed pacifist and devout Lutheran who came to a point in his life that was like Rebekah’s dilemma. How could he be a pacifist and still have a hand in the assassination of Hitler? Here is how most of us would have resolved it. We would have said there are exceptions to the rule and we can justify our actions. In that way, we can escape guilt and the certain punishment by God. We can still please God even though something goes against our principles. All we are offending is our own beliefs and values.

That is not what Bonhoeffer did. Let me read a passage from the book.

“Until now, Bonhoeffer had experienced his own struggle – his “mein kampf” – with the war and his part in it. During his first trip to America he had become a pacifist and was determined not to serve in the army or to do anything overtly violent but he was gradually coming to the conclusion that Hitler and the Nazis were more than criminals – they were evil and “at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil.” This went against everything he had been taught as a member of the Lutheran church and everything he believed. Yet, Bonhoeffer did not try to rationalize or justify his decision. He recognized that it might well be against the will of God and he was prepared to accept the guilt of that. One of his closest friends wrote many years later, “Bonhoeffer confided to me that he was actively and responsibly involved in the German resistance against Hitler, following his moral conviction that “the structure of responsible action includes both readiness to accept guilt and freedom. If any man tries to escape guilt in responsibility he detaches himself from the ultimate reality of human existence, and what is more he cuts himself off from the redeeming mystery of Christ’s bearing guilt without sin, and he has no share in the divine justification which lies upon this event.” Bonhoeffer was not going to act on this for a year – but he had determined to act and accept the guilt of his action.”

“He was determined to act and to accept the guilt of his action.” That is what Rebekah had decided as well. Neither of them were attempting to justify what they were doing. They were not going to rationalize it or avoid the punishment. They were resigned to accepting the severe punishment they fully expected from God.

Look at Romans 9:1-2 and you will see the same in Paul. “I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.”

All of them were willing to accept the guilt and the curse for their actions. It was not just doing a thing that went against their principles. It was doing something that would separate them from God for the benefit of someone else. We talk about “no man has greater love than to lay down his life for a friend” but we fail to understand what it means to lay down a relationship with God to save something larger than ourselves. That is the fate both Rebekah and Paul were willing to accept. They were willing to trade their souls for what they believed.

We’re caught, aren’t we, between our disapproval of her deceit and our gratitude for what she did and what she risked. It’s not a simple story of favoritism. It’s a pivotal moment in the history of salvation. She was put in the position of breaking all tradition and beliefs to ensure the future of the race.

Her boys, generations later, meet again. The descendant of Jacob is born in Bethlehem. The descendant of Esau, Herod the great, slaughters thousands of innocent children to keep one child from becoming a king and overthrowing him. To keep that child from once again stealing his birthright. But, again, he is outwitted. (Matthew 2:1-23) Years later, the son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, meets Jesus and is greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. “From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there, vehemently accusing him. Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate.” (Luke 23:8-11)

Once again, Jacob wears Esau’s finest clothing and, once again, he makes a fool of him. Not only of him but of sin and death for once and all. And in doing so he fulfills the blessing of Rebekah, doesn’t he? Her children will possess the gates of their enemies and that is exactly how Jesus described the church – it will overcome the gates of our great enemy. History has come full circle. Rebekah’s choice was right.

Not everyone is called on to have the faith of Rebekah or to put themselves willfully at risk for the future of an entire race. However, it is important to understand what she did and what she risked for a future she could not see but in which she believed. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews says it was by faith that Isaac blessed Jacob but it was through the faith and courage of Rebekah that the world was saved.