Anyone For a Little Exegesis?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
July 10, 2005

Anyone For A Little Exegesis?
Genesis 25:19-34
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

“I’m starving, famished; my stomach isn’t just growling;
it is roaring!
If I don’t eat something soon – now- I’m going to die.”
How many times have mothers of teenage boys heard these words?
Most mothers would probably respond as my mother might have:
“if you want something, fix it yourself.”

Our lesson from Genesis could have been written yesterday:
Twins are born, both boys,
and they quarrel and scrap right from the start.
One day when they are older, perhaps in their mid-teens,
one says he is so hungry that if he doesn’t eat immediately
he’s going to die.
He’s the slightly older one,
the tough one, the one who likes to be outside, and hunt.
He’s his father’s favorite.
The younger one has smooth skin; he is thin, slight; not terribly muscular.
He is quiet, and prefers cooking to hunting.
He is his mother’s favorite.
He sits cross-legged in a tent stirring a pot filled with a savory stew;
the aroma drifts from the tent
and settles on the older brother, pulling him in.
The younger one is only too happy to share his food with his brother,
but of course, there will be a price to pay,
and the price will be high.
This is all of 4,000 years ago, though, so the younger brother can’t
demand the older brother’s computer, Gameboy, or Ipod.
He demands the one thing his older brother has
that he the younger one would never have:
the older one’s birthright.

The older brother is impetuous, rash,
the kind who acts first and thinks later.
All he cares about right now is filling his stomach.
In his own mind he is on the verge of dying from hunger
so he agrees to his pesky brother’s terms.
He will say anything, do anything for food.

The younger has been down this path before with the older:
the older promising something only to back out of the promise later.
This time the younger takes no chances:
“Swear to me first.”
The older spits out the words with anger
and grabs the bowl the younger offers him.
He devours the stew; not a lentil is left.
His belly full, he goes out of the tent,
giving no thought at all to the bad bargain he has just made.

That’s the story;
Now what is the lesson?
What is it that God wants us to learn from this text?
Is the lesson: don’t ever negotiate with a crafty younger sibling
on an empty stomach?
Or is there more here?
Do we need to take a closer look at the text,
before we come to a conclusion about what the lesson is?
Or is it clear, right there before us?

Last week we talked about what a sermon is.
You may recall that I said that a sermon is a way for all of us
to understand the word of the Lord:
the word as it comes to us through Scripture.
Scripture is read, and then it is interpreted….
interpreted so that we can all understand what God is saying to us.

A sermon is not something I preach at you.
A sermon is God speaking through me to all of us,
myself included, teaching us, helping us to understand.
I am the vessel through which God works,
but I am also one of the listeners.
You may recall I quoted Barbara Brown Taylor,
who reminds us that a sermon is a communal act,
with God, you, and me all at work,
God pouring out his words, his teachings, his hopes, and his desires
for us through Scripture and then through interpretation,
hoping for a response from both preacher and congregation,
a response that is nothing less than our
individual and collective transformation.

To understand this text, we need to unpack it,
we need to analyze it, and then we need to interpret it together… communally.
There is a word for this: Exegesis.
Exegesis is a Greek word that means “to interpret”.
Exegesis is the foundation for any sermon.
It is how most ministers spend a good part of their week.
So let’s do a little exegesis together
and interpret this text so we can understand
what God is saying to us.

We are eager to get to the story of Esau and Jacob,
but we can’t overlook the five verses that precede their birth.
We read at verse 21 that Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, was barren.
She was unable to have children.
Does that strike you as a little disconcerting?
Remember who Isaac was: he was the Son of Abraham,
the second generation of the Covenant.
God covenanted with Abraham at least 5 different times,
“…I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven
and as the sand that is on the seashore…”
(Genesis 12:2; 13:16; 15:5; 17:2; 22:17)
Yet here is Abraham’s son who is childless.
On its face it does not make sense.

But Isaac is a man of faith,
and so he does what we would expect a person of deep faith to do:
he prays. We read:
“Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife,
because she was barren,
and the Lord granted his prayer,
and Rebekah conceived.” (Genesis 25:21)
Isaac prayed and God responded.
In twenty-one words, hopelessness turns to joy in faithfulness.
But there’s one more thing happening here.
did you hear it?
Isaac was 40 when he married Rebekah,
and he was 60 when his sons were born,
which suggests that Isaac must have prayed for 20 years.
He did not just lift up one prayer and have God respond.
As Paul wrote some two thousand years later,
we are to “pray without ceasing.”
(1 Thess. 5:17)
There is a lesson #1, a lesson that’s easy to miss.

On to the twins, Esau and Jacob.
Sons of Isaac and Rebekah….grandsons of Abraham and Sarah.
Esau is born first, with Jacob following literally at his heel.
In those days, the first born automatically inherited
his father’s title and a double share of his father’s estate.
If Isaac had had only the two boys and died,
Esau would have inherited two thirds of his father’s property,
while Jacob, who was only seconds younger,
would have inherited just one-third.
It hardly seems fair, though, because for all practical purposes
Esau and Jacob were exactly the same age.
But Esau was considered to be the first born,
and so Jacob was out of luck.
That was not God’s rule, that was mankind’s rule.

But then, of course, the story gets turned around:
Esau gives up his birthright to his brother for a bowl of lentil stew.
Now either Esau was a rather dim bulb,
or Jacob was awfully crafty, or perhaps it is both.
So we still haven’t found a lesson in this.
We have to ask ourselves, “Could this outcome be because
God wanted it this way?
Yes! God decided to toss out a critical structure of the social system.
God swept it aside, like so much chaff in the wind.
Swept it aside to make a point
and to set the stage for other things God had planned.
Here is lesson #2: God is always in charge.

On to Lesson #3:
Esau the first born is now the second,
and Jacob the second born is now the first.
Does that sound familiar?
Two thousand years later,
our Lord would help us to understand this lesson:
“But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
(Mark 10:31)

God picked the one whom the social structure of the day
would have passed over, ignored,
even laughed at: the weak one, the mama’s boy.
God turned away from the first born,
the strong swarthy one…. the hunter,…the man’s man.
Didn’t Jesus do just the same thing:
didn’t he turn away from the strong, the wealthy, the attractive,
the celebrities, the athletes,
Didn’t Jesus teach us to focus on the outcasts: the sinners,
the orphans, the lame, the weak,
those we consider different, not “our kind”
In favoring Jacob over Esau, God provides us with lesson #4.

Why did God do this to Esau?
After all, he didn’t seem to be a bad person,
he hadn’t killed anyone, or stolen anything,
or committed a crime.
He was just rash and tempestuous.
But that may be the problem right there:
He wanted food and he wanted it right then and there….Now,

This is a man who wanted immediate gratification.
Esau was the kind of person who today might be inclined to run up
his credit cards buying himself things
because he wanted them NOW:
the plasma television, the SUV, the vacation,
the Nike sneakers, the Ipod.
Esau was a man who lived for the things of the flesh,
those things that provided him with pleasure,
immediate pleasure and gratification.
But doesn’t Paul tell us that we should not live for the flesh,
but for the Spirit?
In fact in the epistle the Lectionary assigned for today,
Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, that is just what Paul says:
“For those who live according to the flesh
set their minds on the things of the flesh,
but those who live according to the Spirit
set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
To set the minds on the flesh is death,
but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
(Romans 8:5-6)
Esau did not understand lesson #5; but now we do.

There’s our exegesis of the verses we read from Genesis.
Did you ever expect to find five different lessons packed into 16 verses?:
1. We are to pray without ceasing;
2. God is always in charge;
3. The last shall be first and the first shall be last;
4. We are to remember the outcasts the weak,
those we consider different
5. “To set the mind on the flesh is death,
but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

So where does our gospel lesson fit in all this?
Does it fit at all?
It fits perfectly, for our Lord tells us that we have to do more than hear;
we have to work at understanding.
And we cannot hope to find understanding with a quick read, a quick listen.
Jesus is teaching us that every time we hear the word of the Lord
as it comes to us through the Bible we all have to do a little exegesis.
We have to listen, reflect, analyze and interpret,
all with guidance from the Holy Spirit,
all with the goal of understanding,
so the word will take root and grow.
The fact that Jesus spoke in parables,
which even his disciples often found confusing,
was to emphasize the point that understanding God’s will
requires effort.
Jesus says, “The reason I speak in parables
is that seeing they do not perceive,
and hearing they do not listen,
nor do they understand.” (Matthew 13:13)

We think we see, and so we think we understand;
We think we hear, and so we think we understand.
We read a passage and we think we understand.
But we need to interpret.
Our Lord Jesus Christ read Scripture and then interpreted.
He helped those gathered to hear understand.
And we do the same today,
working through the text to hear God’s voice
so we can grow in faith and obedience.

We are going to continue our journey with Jacob and Esau
over the next few weeks.
Next week’s readings are printed in your bulletin.
Take a look at them over the next week,
and do a bit of exegesis on your own,
perhaps around the dinner table with your family.
What do you think God is saying to us through the texts?

As we read through the texts, we will hear many lessons;
some may be difficult for us to hear –
God is not hesitant to say to his children, “I am not happy with you.”
But the one lesson that comes through consistently in every text
is God’s love for us,
the grace God has given us through Jesus Christ.
That is a lesson that never needs interpretation,
never needs analysis,
That is one lesson that will never need exegesis.
Amen.