Have You Only ONE Blessing?

When I was a child in church, all the kids loved to lead the whole congregation in the camp song, Father Abraham had many sons. We would line up across the front of the sanctuary and lead the adults. Do you remember the words to the song?

Father Abraham Had Many Sons
And Many Sons Had Father Abraham
And I am one of them
And so are you
Now let’s all praise the Lord!
Right arm!

Of course, we as kids loved it because eventually you end up marching in place and turning in circles. And seeing our parents and grandparents do these motions in the middle of church was fun and silly. But I wonder if we really paid attention to the message of this song?

Abraham, our father, had many sons. Not just Isaac, the favored son?

And how about that phrase “I am one of them and so are you.” Whose included there? Just the folks in my childhood church? Or perhaps others? 
And what about the women who gave birth to these sons? Mother Sarah and Mother Hagar. And what about Jacob's only named daughter, Dinah?

I have so many questions! Questions about the simple camp song.

Genesis is full of pivotal questions – questions that serve as markers in the story, as moments for which there is no return. You might recall that God shows up in the Garden of Eden when the humans are hiding themselves and God asks, “Where are you?” a rhetorical question if there ever was one.

Or you might remember how God comes to Cain after he kills his brother Abel and asks, “Where is your brother?” A simple question that gets straight to the point.

Or there’s that moment when Isaac turns to his father as they proceed together to offer a sacrifice to God, and Isaac asks: Where is the lamb for the burnt offering? An observant question that heightens the tension of the moment!

These questions are placed on the lips of particular characters in the story, but of course, they are our questions as well. They draw us in. We find our little stories in the Big Story. We see the ancients articulating the questions that resonate deep within us all.

There is a question in the biblical story today, in Genesis 27, that opens up a world of possibilities. Let’s set the story up first before we arrive at the question.

Genesis is preoccupied with blessing. Who receives the blessing? Who is chosen by God? How will the blessing make its way through each generation? Uncertainty about the existence of the next generation creates a tension (because God has promised Abraham to be a father of multitudes!). Still, the book also has a clear trajectory as it navigates each succeeding generation. So, we read about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph.

In fact, many of us have been taught to read the book of Genesis through a lens of blessing and by focusing on these four men. Despite the more complicated family tree that is portrayed in Genesis, if we read closely, we generally pay attention to the lives of these 4, and we leave all the others to the side. Others, such as Hagar and Ishmael, and in this story, Rebekah and Esau. Yet, Genesis is also interested in the other siblings who are not the primary characters in the drama. For every Isaac, there is an Ishmael. For Jacob, there is Esau. For Joseph, there are 11 brothers and a sister.

The blessing theme continues in Genesis 27, where we find old Isaac, who is ready to pass along the blessing to his oldest son, to his firstborn, to his favorite. The story has been abundantly clear that Isaac loves Esau, so Isaac calls Esau to him to bless him. But then Team Rebekah steps in with a plan of deceit. It’s brilliant and clever and courageous and deceptive. And we love it. And we know—because we’ve been reading Genesis from the beginning—that the older brother is not going to get the blessing. This is not going to go well for the firstborn. We know somehow that the younger brother who lies boldly and directly to his father is going to steal this blessing. And we love it. And we watch as Father Isaac keeps asking these interesting questions that make Jacob sink deeper and deeper into his lies. (Is that really you, Esau?)

And then finally, Isaac delivers the blessing to Jacob! And perhaps we linger for a moment to ponder how trickery works concerning the blessing. But mostly, we are just so relieved and excited that the blessing continues. Father Abraham had many sons…namely, Isaac and now Jacob.

Blessing, chosenness, election. It continues. Jacob receives the blessing.

And then comes the question.

Esau must have enrolled in seminary while he was in the field hunting game because now Esau has an astute theological question that gets to the heart of the matter.

Having been tricked by his brother, having not received his father’s blessing, and having pleaded with his father to bless him, too. Esau turns to his father and asks: “Have you only one blessing?”

Do you have only one Blessing?

The question opens up possibilities. It unsettles the standard line of thought regarding the blessing. Of course, there is only one blessing, Esau! Of course, only ONE person can receive the blessing! Which is precisely why we have been so invested in this story of duplicity all along!  This question brings into question this whole story about the blessing. With one question, our assumptions about one blessing for one brother are disrupted. Esau, the hairy one, the tricked one, the one who likes to hunt, the man of the field, Esau has asked an innocent question.

Now, Genesis 27 doesn’t take much time to consider an answer for Esau’s question. To be honest, the story doesn’t resolve the issue of blessing in the exact way I would prefer—with both brothers receiving equal treatment, equal inheritances, and equal familial belonging. With both becoming Isaac’s blessed children who together carry forth God’s blessing. Esau does receive a blessing of sorts from his father. Many scholars interpret it as more of a curse, so not a true blessing. And the story moves forward as if Jacob alone has received the blessing. Esau is enraged, and Jacob has to flee the country so that the story doesn’t begin to resemble the Cain and Abel story. Jacob still becomes the blessed one who continues the family story as it moves forward to focus on his 12 sons. And we move along with the story, too.

And the Bible will continue to wrestle with this issue of chosenness and blessing. The Israelites are led out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land, blessings indeed. But not without violence against Egyptians and Canaanites. How can the chosen ones of Israel be taken into exile? How can you be both blessed and exiled?

Our Genesis story today doesn’t provide all the answers we seek, but it does offer a single question buried deep within the heart of Esau.

So, Esau’s perfectly excellent question finds its way down through the ages to us today.

Have you only one Blessing, God?

We live today in a world of divisions and differences. It seems we are drifting farther apart every week as we retreat to entrenched camps on every side. There are many essential and intelligent social and cultural commentaries on why this is so. But let me suggest one possibility for us Christians as we engage differences.

We’ve got to re-envision Blessing and Chosenness. Rework how the theological language of blessing masks privilege. Readjust our feelings of exceptionalism, which breeds superiority. This idea is at the core of Christian identity, it seems. It goes all the way back to Genesis. And it can be beneficial and hopeful language.

But it needs some renovation!

We’ve got to find our way to a place where we can claim God’s blessing for ourselves and also extend the Blessing to Others. Have you only one Blessing? We have to find a way so that we don’t just become Jacob without our sibling Esau.

There are at least 10 mosques or Islamic centers in Louisville. Now, that hardly rivals the number of Baptist churches here, but it is still a significant stat. And, by the way, at least three former Baptist churches in Louisville are no longer Baptist churches—two are mosques and one is a Sikh temple.

And of course, it’s not just religious diversity. There are other social divisions. Others constitute themselves into groups of blessed and not blessed.

Stephen Patterson, a recent Grawemeyer winner, in his book The Forgotten Creed, argues that the earliest Christian creed was a creed said at baptism. It was not a creed about God or Jesus. But one about human identity.

The Apostle Paul incorporates the creed into one of his letters. But the original creed claims that we are all God’s children, a remarkable assertion of human solidarity. Listen to this creed:

For you are all children of God in the Spirit.
There is no Jew or Greek;
There is no slave or free;
There is no male or female.
For you are all one in the Spirit.

Friends, the good news contained in Esau’s simple question is that God has more than one blessing. Showers of blessings, we might say. Blessings for Jacob and Esau. Blessings for all God's people. God is not a miserly, tightfisted giver of blessings,

Have you only one Blessing?

God answers this question a bit differently than Isaac did. God can respond, absolutely!

Let’s look around at our fellow humanity, people of all kinds of diversity,

And proclaim Father Abraham and Mothers Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah had many kids.

And many kids had matriarchs and patriarchs.

And I am one of them, and so you are! And so is your neighbor. And so is your religiously different neighbor. Without exception. All children of the Living God.

Amen.

May the divine light of Diwali illuminate your life! Happy Diwali!

A Benediction (Or Miscellaneous Thoughts)

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