The Ascension

                              Luke 24: 50-52    Acts 1: 6-11

          In 1983, the magician David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. In front of twenty guests seated before him on Liberty Island, and on national television, the great statue disappeared.  That was an illusion. Throughout history, magicians the world over have performed escape and disappearing acts to our amazement. But they are illusions. They do not really happen, although they certainly appear to be real.

          In 30AD or thereabouts, our Lord Jesus Christ performed his own disappearing act, but it was no illusion. It was real. All Christianity has since relied on the truth of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven. The Apostles and Nicene Creeds recite it. “He ascended into heaven.”  To say otherwise is to ignore scripture. To think otherwise is to humanize Jesus and lose the impact of salvation.

          What does scripture say about the Ascension? Although you can find other verses referring to it, the only passages that appear as eyewitness testimony are found in the books of Luke and Acts, both written by the same author, Luke. There is a passage about it in Mark 16, but modern scholarship almost unanimously accepts this passage as a later appendage and not part of the original manuscript.

          So when it comes to testimony, we are left with the books Luke wrote as an editor, interviewer, and non-eyewitness. Luke was not one of the original disciples, though he knew many if not all of them. His book of Luke is accepted as “gospel,” for he was faithful to his task of interviewing the eyewitnesses and reporting what he was told.

          The gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus led the disciples out to Bethany, just a mile or so outside Jerusalem. He blessed them and during that blessing, Luke says that “he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.”  They worshipped him, went back to town joyfully, and hung around the temple praising God.

          Over in the book of Acts, also written by Luke, Jesus presents himself to the “apostles whom he had chosen,” says Luke. It’s not disclosed exactly where they are. Jesus promises them power, tells them to be his witnesses just like he told them in the gospel of Matthew. Then, Luke says that while the apostles were looking on, Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

          That’s it. From a witness standpoint, these are the Biblical stories of the Ascension. In the gospel of Luke Jesus is carried up into heaven. In the book of Acts, he is lifted up into a cloud which takes him away. Witnesses see him leave, but they don’t see where he goes. He disappears, except this is no illusion. This is real. Those disciples spent the rest of their lives telling that story, even giving their lives to back up their belief that the resurrected Jesus ascended into heaven.

          I find myself asking questions. Where did Jesus go? Where is heaven? Is heaven somewhere up there? Is it, like Dorothy said in Oz, somewhere over the rainbow, way up high? Seriously, where is heaven? The Bible says that’s where Jesus went. I’m not trying to be cute here. Is it up? Is it over there? We have this tendency to think that at death,  the body separates from the spirit or soul, and so then the soul can just sort of float up or out into heaven. But Jesus didn’t lose his body. There are plenty of Biblical references to his body, his flesh, after the Resurrection. So when Jesus was lifted up or carried up, he was carried bodily. Remember, we believe in the resurrection of the body. We have our role model in Jesus himself, whose resurrected body ascended into heaven.

          So maybe the better question is: Where is heaven? If it’s up, how far up? We have sent people to the moon. We have sent cameras in satellites to Jupiter and further. Is that still “up?” Or is it “out?” Whatever it is, we haven’t run into heaven yet, though we have gone millions of miles in all directions, far beyond the confines of earth. Where is heaven? Where did Jesus go?

          If we look back just a paragraph before the Ascension in both the Lukan and Acts passages, we see something enlightening. In Luke, he tells us that Jesus opened the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures. He tells them that he is sending the promise of God the Father upon them. He tells them to stay in town “until they are clothed with power from on high.”  In Acts, it is much the same. They are told to wait for the promise of the Father. And he tells them that they “will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” So the disciples find themselves back in Jerusalem, waiting for power and a baptism, both from the Holy Spirit, this thing with which they have no familiarity.

          Is this just more information about the event of the Ascension? Yes and no. In a very real way, it is a partial explanation of what happened in the Ascension. For in Scripture, it doesn’t take that long to begin to see the connection, the very real connection, between heaven and earth. Jesus is the bridge to connect the two.

          What does he say in the Disciples Prayer, also known as the Lord’s Prayer? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”  What does the book of Revelation say in chapter 21? “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…and I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God…And I heard a loud voice saying  ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man…’ ”  Reading these and other passages, doesn’t it seem as though heaven and earth are not just spiritually, but even physically, connected?

          Where do they come together, heaven and earth? The book of revelation says that the new Jerusalem is “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” The Pauline letters repeatedly refer to the Church as the bride of Christ. Heaven and earth are being brought together by the Church, and it is guided in that coming together by the Holy Spirit, that same Holy Spirit to which Jesus alluded right before he ascended into heaven.

          The Bible is a collection of stories, but that within that great collection is that long binding thread which holds the fabric of those stories together. The thread is love. The Bible is a love story. Yes, it is a creation story, and a covenant story, and a kingdom story, and many more. But at the end of the day, the bible is a love story, the story of God’s overwhelming love for his children and his creation.  He has proven by the sending of his Son that there is no end to his love and no boundary which would stop him from offering us salvation; that is, reconciliation.  We see that foreshadowing in the Ascension, for indeed what follows close on its heels is Pentecost, the day of the great awakening, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the hearts of mankind. Through Pentecost, we are awakened, empowered, emboldened by a power inside us that comes from God himself. The Ascension and Pentecost are inextricably linked, for in the Ascension we can see a piece of earth in the bodily form of Jesus moving into a heavenly sphere. In the same way, Pentecost discloses a God who will send part of the Trinity itself into the hearts of believers right here on earth. It is a Spiritual binding, this exchange of heaven and earth and earth and heaven.

          We have not answered where heaven is. Perhaps we have established that it at least in part resides in the spiritual realm, a place as real as any address on planet earth, but as mysterious as any magician’s illusion we have ever seen. Heaven is real. Heaven is a destination. Heaven may someday be right here, but it will take the return of Jesus for that connection to be complete.

         When we celebrate the sacraments, we invoke a joinder of heavenly voices with our own and we sing praises to God the Father and God the Son. We acknowledge the real presence of Christ’s body and blood, albeit a spiritual presence, in the elements of bread and wine. We are, for a moment in time, united with our Savior in both his death and resurrection. We are raised through the Holy Spirit in Christ’ presence. We are in one of those “thin places,” as the Scots like to describe it, where heaven and earth seem to be separated by the thinnest of veils. We are for that brief moment, experiencing heaven. That’s right. We can experience heaven here on earth through the power of the Holy Spirit.

          So where is heaven? It is, I think, not “up” or “out”, but in. If the Ascension of Jesus was a literal journey into somewhere in the stratosphere, wouldn’t he be somewhere in the world as we define it? I think Jesus ascended, but not so much to another place as to another dimension. I don’t mean anything alien. Quite the contrary. Jesus is a resident of heaven and it is real. I just don’t think we humans will ever be able to assign heaven an address any closer than the place in our hearts where Jesus resides, at least not until he comes again as promised.

          Maybe that’s why the Ascension passage in Acts ends this way.  As Jesus ascended, suddenly two men in white clothing are standing beside the disciples. They ask the disciples a question. “Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who had been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”  The angels announce an interval, an interval in which we still live, between the first and second coming of Christ. But the connection has been drawn by Jesus himself. He must go in part so that we may be filled, that we may be connected, by the coming of the Holy Spirit. And in that interval, the Holy Spirit will keep God’s people in living union, in connection, with the risen and glorified Lord.

          In the announcement of those angels, I think this is where we begin to understand where heaven is. It lives in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. The more we have, the more we live in that dimension. The day will come when all is once again reconciled. If we can take the book of Revelation literally, that reconciliation will come right where we stand. Wherever it is, it will be real. And it will be heaven.

          Why do we stand looking into heaven? He is coming again as surely as he came before. We are connected. Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit. We too can have our hearts opened to understand the Scripture. We too can feel the presence and the power of our Lord through the Holy Spirit. Open the door. Let him in. Don’t stand there looking. We have work to do to get his house in order.

Stormy Messages

                              Jonah 1: 1-15     Acts 27: 13-26

 

 

          The Bible is a great and powerful set of documents and stories, still the most read in history.  God uses many tools to build his case. One can’t help but notice that God will use different means to get to different people in different ways. For instance, he used family jealousy to get Joseph on a caravan to Egypt, where he would later save a region from starvation. He used a teenage shepherd named David with a sling and a few smooth stones to bring down a giant warrior and save his people. In today’s message, God uses a storm, first to get the attention of a delinquent disciple, and later to illustrate how his providence can deliver us from the direst of situations.

          The book of Jonah starts out in this way. It says that the word of the Lord came to Jonah.   It can’t get any heavier than that.  God comes calling on Jonah and God commissions him to a task. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it.    Now Jonah, hearing the word of God, indeed rises and where does he head? To Tarshish, a land in the exact opposite direction of Nineveh.  The book says that Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord. There is our first piece of irony. Have you ever tried to flee from the Lord’s presence? I certainly have. It’s sort of like trying to hide behind your pencil. It’s just not going to work. No one can hide from the presence of the Lord. But that doesn’t stop us from behaving like Jonah and going the other way, as if that will somehow throw God off our scent.

          But Jonah tries. He books passage going the other way and sets out to hide from God. God is not impressed. What Jonah encounters next is a great storm on the sea, followed by his  being thrown overboard, further followed by Jonah being swallowed by a great fish, in whose bowels Jonah resides for three days. During his time in the fish’s belly, Jonah prays. It is the only thing he gets right in this story. He calls out to be saved by the God he has ignored and indeed he is saved. The fish literally vomits him out upon the dry land. There is more to the story, but that’s all we need to know for this message. For this message is about two things: the greatness, the universal sovereignty of God, and the way he uses things like storms to get our attention and make his point.

          Look at the story of Jonah. What do you see? You see God calling Jonah to a task and Jonah in open rebellion. You see the crew of a ship floundering as they first try praying to their gods, which doesn’t work because they are not the true God. Then they try casting off the cargo to lighten the load. Their own efforts fare just as miserably as did their prayers to false gods. In desperation, they ask Jonah and he takes the blame rightly for God’s action. You see not only the sea in all its fury in a storm, but also the power of some of its inhabitants, in this case, a great fish. And what you can see from the interplay of these elements of wind and rain and great seas and great sea creatures is that all of them are subject to the direction of God. When God says stop, they stop. When God says vomit, the great fish can no longer hold his prey. The story is not of a man surviving three days in the belly of a fish, but of the sovereignty of God. God’s will is to be carried out, and all nature will obey.

          In the story of Jonah, God unleashes a storm to get the attention not only of a crew of unbelievers, but also of a disobedient disciple. Jonah is made to descend to the belly of a great fish to find the power of God in his life. There is no running away from God’s presence. Jonah was not doing his work. He was commissioned by God and he ignored his task. God sent a storm into his life as a corrective.         

          The book of Acts contains the story of yet another storm. The apostle Paul was on board a ship bound for Rome. When it docked in Crete, God told Paul to advise the crew not to leave the harbor because a great storm was coming. Now Paul was a big traveler, but the pilot and the owner of the ship thought differently and ignored his advice. They actually voted and the majority favored leaving. They sailed out with a gentle south wind and for a while, felt good about their decision. Their good humor was destined to take a very bad turn, for soon a northeaster came at them from the land. They tried to turn into the wind, but were unable. They were literally carried along by the storm with no way to guide or correct course. In desperation, the cargo was thrown overboard, as was the ship’s tackle.

          For fourteen days and nights, the little ship drifted with the current. Then, Paul had a vision that the people would be saved, but the ship would be lost. The people aboard followed his advice and stayed aboard until the end.  They had ignored him once, but the second time they heard and obeyed him because they perceived him to be a man of God. Two hundred seventy six people were on board, and every single one was saved from almost certain death.

          Paul was doing his work. He was living for God and he was enabled in his task by a vision from God. God sent a storm into his life not as a corrective like he did for Jonah, but as a confirmation that indeed Paul was on task.

          Eugene Peterson says that “God constitutes our work.” What does that mean? It means that God established that which is to be our work here on earth. It is God who gives it form. We may be trained as engineers or teachers or farmers, but that is not what our real work is. We have to look to God to find our work. Usually what we find is that the work of Christianity is to be carried out by us as we go about our daily lives at our jobs, in our homes and in our play. God constitutes our work.

          A quick Google search reveals that there are at least thirty seven instances of the use of the word storm or storms in the Bible. Today we have looked at only two of them. We have seen that God may send a storm to get our attention, to send us a wakeup call. We have seen that God may send a storm to affirm that we indeed are right where he wants us. What ways has God sent a storm into your life? And what have you taken from those experiences? God is our refuge, our shelter, our protector. He is also our prompter, our sovereign, our judge.

          What constitutes your work? As Peterson says, “the storm either exposes the futility of our work (as in Jonah) or confirms it (as in Paul).” There will always be storms in our lives. We cannot escape life any more than we can escape the presence of God. We cannot find his will by going along with a majority vote. There is only one voice to whom we need to listen. We cannot fool or manipulate God.

          What we can do is find our vocation. God has already prepared it for us. He calls each of us to his work. And his work is our work. There is no need to fear the storms of life, unless you plan to try to outrun God like Jonah tried. His failure is our lesson. God is talking to you. You just need to be listening.

Over-Bearing, Never-Ending Moms

1 Corinthians 13

 

 

          It’s been an official U.S. holiday since 1911. Last year, over twenty one billion dollars were spent on it. Today, the second Sunday in May, is Mother’s Day. A lot of flowers and candy has been bought. A lot of meals will be prepared in restaurants to honor Mom. Mother’s day is a great commercial success. It’s good for our economy. But whether it’s a commercial success or not, it’s a good idea. Mothers are well---Mothers! It’s hard to explain, but easy to understand the importance to us of our Mothers.

          I searched around for appropriate Scripture for this day. There is, of course, the famous Proverbs 31 passage that describes a hard-working, always unselfish woman.  And there is the Fourth Commandment, which mandates children to honor their parents, that their own days on the earth might be long in number. But what passage for Mother’s Day? What passage for the social institution whose job description defies a short definition? How do we thank, even talk about, mothers? The subject is at once too big, too wide, too deep, too important, for just some textbook definition.  How do you thank a mother?  I think I know what my mom might say if she were here. I think she might say: “Act like my son.”

          Some things don’t need interpretation. Such is the case with 1 Corinthians 13.  It may be the prettiest piece of prose in the Bible, certainly the best that Paul wrote. It is sublime, so good that no one would want to change a word. Its meaning, however, still requires context to mine that which Paul was trying to say.

          Paul was writing to the church in Corinth. It was a group of proud people who were pretty sure they had cornered the market on spirituality. Chapter twelve talks about spiritual gifts, what they are, where they come from; how all gifts come from the Spirit. Then Paul talks about the church as the body of Christ: one Spirit from whom the body emanates; one multi-membered body of Christ projecting in all directions. None is capable of function without the others. Such is the Church. It emanates from the Spirit and functions as the body of Christ.

          The Corinthians were proud. They had folks who were speaking in tongues. They had wisdom. They had knowledge. They were high Christians. When it came to spirituality, they had it going on. But when Paul looked at the set of facts of which the Corinthians were boasting, he held a strikingly opposing view. For the Corinthians, the presence of spirituality was found in “speaking in tongues” and having wisdom and knowledge. Paul saw this as nothing more than pride. Paul looked beyond the trappings of spirituality to the behavior of the Corinthians and found them sadly wanting. All through this letter, Paul has been talking to the church about its behavior. In chapter 8, there is the reference to a brother being destroyed by the so-called “knowledge” of other members. In chapter 1, their so-called “wisdom” is leading to quarrels and rivalry. Paul says that such faith is based on pride and works rather than a faith based on ethics and the gospel itself.

          Paul says it this way. If I do this or that or the other, but don’t do it for the glory of God, then I don’t have love. This is an empty. works-based spirituality. If you speak with eloquence, if you know everything, if you give your money, if you teach, sacrifice, whatever you do, it’s all just a bunch of noise if it doesn’t come from your love of Jesus. Theologian Gordon Fee says that “to ‘have love’ means to be toward others the way God in Christ has been toward us.”

          What is love? Paul gives us the answer by telling us what it is and what it isn’t. Love is patient and kind. It doesn’t envy or boast; it isn’t proud; it doesn’t dishonor others. Love isn’t self-seeking or easily angered, nor does it keep score or delight in evil. Love rejoices in the truth. Love protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. When does love do these things? Always. Fifteen verbs that give us the essence of Christian behavior.  Condense them into a mixture and call it love, but never characterize it as just a feeling, for love does. Love is a way to behave, a way to live.

          It has often been said that in this paragraph full of what love is, that Paul best captures what the life of Jesus is. It is a life full of that behavior. Notice we are saying behavior, not virtues. Yes, this kind of love is virtuous, but to leave it at that is to put it on a shelf like a trophy. That is not love. Love does. Love acts. Love lives in and defines the real spirituality of us.

          If only we had someone who modeled that kind of love for us today. Yes, this passage may well capture the life and ministry of Jesus, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a living, breathing, tangible example of that kind of sacrificial, selfless love in our midst. If only we had that…

          We do, of course. Most of us do not have to hesitate to know of such a person. It’s Mom. Mom is patient and kind. Mom doesn’t envy or boast, except about us. Mom doesn’t get mad easily. Mom doesn’t act selfish or smart. Mom protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres. And Mom is always – always there.  That’s a God thing, don’t you think? Maybe that’s the biggest reason God made Moms. Sometimes they can act an awful lot like Jesus.

          They’re everywhere, these Moms. They are over-bearing, in the sense that they just keep on bearing whatever it takes to keep us safe.  They are never-ending in what they do for us. The day for them starts long before they wake us up, and doesn’t end for them when they tuck us in bed. Their prayer life usually starts and ends with us. They give, bear, believe and hope because they start and end with love.   

          There is nothing normal about what a mother does for her children, except that it is repeated daily around the world by almost all mothers.  The fact that there are a few exceptions takes nothing away from the overwhelming number of mothers who make personal sacrifice and perseverance look like normal. But it isn’t. Don’t be fooled by the numbers. What mothers do as a matter of course is nothing short of supernatural.

          Like so many other biblical passages, the target of the writer, in this case Paul, is usually somewhat narrow. But when God takes aim, sometimes over history, that target becomes wide. Paul talked then to the church at Corinth. We read now of a church that needs to be rooted in the love and care of the Spirit. And today, we celebrate the mothers of our lives who have brought the love of Christ to bear in our lives. What can we give them in return? We can act like the sons and daughters they raised us to be.

Despising Our Birthright

Genesis 19: 25-34

 

 

         “Why is this happening to me,” moans Rebekah, the wife of Isaac. Why? Why is this happening to me?  In the book of Genesis, we find the story of Jacob and Esau. You remember Jacob, later named Israel, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. And of course, there is Esau, father of the Edomites, a nation with which the people of Israel had a long and colorful history. There is first the story of their conception and birth. Then there is the story of Esau surrendering his birthright. The birth story is fascinating, for in this case, it is really a foreshadowing of what their relationship will look like well into adulthood. They are twins. They give their mother a fit in the womb, so much so that she actually complains to God. It must have been pretty bad, for Rebekah has been barren and has waited many years for this pregnancy, yet she goes to God and asks: “Why is this happening to me?” Gordon Wenham says that their first battlefield is their mother’s womb.  God answers her. “Two nations are in your womb…the older shall serve the younger.”  This will come as no great surprise. It happened with Cain and Abel. It happened again with Isaac, Rebekah’s husband, and Ishmael, his older brother.

          Then there is the birth. Esau arrives first, but barely, reddish in look and hairy. His name actually means hairy or rough. His twin brother comes out clutching Esau’s heel for all he is worth, desperately trying to catch up. He is to be called Jacob, meaning supplanter. The pattern for their future is set.

          Isn’t it ironic how much difference timing and position can make? One hundredth of a second sooner or later, One tenth of an inch on the bat, and a pitch becomes a foul ball rather than a game winning homer. You’ve heard the old saw:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.

For want of a horse, the rider was lost.

For want of a rider, the battle was lost.

For want of a battle, the war was lost.

 

Just a little position and it would have been Jacob who was the firstborn son. Twins, and yet the first to be born was considered the eldest. This was huge in that culture. The firstborn son received not only the birthright, but also the blessing. The birthright alone was a double share of the inheritance left to the sons. For want of an inch…

          Fast forward to perhaps a hot summer day. Esau has been hunting. He comes in from the field exhausted, perhaps without a kill that day. Even if he was successful, the game must be dressed and he is famished. He smells the aroma of his brother’s stew and he wants something to quench his thirst and sate his hunger. Jacob has been waiting for this moment. The stage is set.

          Have you ever been reminded that your family name has value? To do something one way would be less than the family standard and could bring dishonor. My father would say something like: “Remember who you are.”  Over time, I came to understand what he meant.  I came to understand that I had choices. I could go my own way, but that had consequences.  I could go the way I had been taught. That too had consequences. I had to learn to live in a world where choice is a way of life…and so is consequence.

          When I became a Christian, I slowly began to realize that I had been adopted into a new family. Even more than with my earthly family, there are consequences for my decisions and my choices reflect on my family. And there are some choices that can’t be taken back. The story of Esau’s surrender of his birthright is such a choice.

          There are only two players in the story, but just one verse previous, we are reminded of two more players, the parents of these twins. Yes, there are problems between the boys. One is a hunter, the other a quiet man who tends to spend more time at home. They have little in common. Unfortunately for these twins, the favoritism exhibited by their parents is all too transparent. Isaac is taken by the game that Esau brings home, while Rebekah loves Jacob. Neither disguises his or her preferences, and so the unwise behavior of the parents contributes to the dissension among the twins.  

           No one is innocent. This is not a Bible story to which we point to find the hero. There are no heroes in the story of Esau’s loss of birthright. Jacob is downright crooked and conniving. Notice that while Esau says please to Jacob in his request for stew, Jacob does not return the favor. Jacob says: “Sell me your birthright now.” Jacob is in the driver’s seat and he knows it. It has been suggested that the way the demand is stated indicates careful premeditation and exploitation of Esau at his moment of weakness. This is not a random event. Jacob even seeks to insure his advantage by making Esau swear an oath. Jacob is dead serious and he means to profit from his plotting. He is cold and calculating, this future father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

          And then, there is Esau. How immature and selfish can you get! I want it and I want it now. Forget the consequences. Give it to me. Such is the attitude of this future leader of the nation of Edom. It’s all about Esau. What does Esau want.

          I and many of you are part of a generation called the baby boomers.  We are the war babies of World War II. We are also known as the “Me” generation because of our cultural move away from spiritual realization towards “self-realization.” Many in this generation protested anything establishment.  The 1970’s and beyond have witnessed the demise of traditional faiths centered on work and delayed gratification, and the emergence of a consumer-oriented culture centered on the immediacy of daily lifestyle choices.

           From that culture, we have spawned the current crop, the Millennials, also known as the “Me, Me, Me” generation. A Time Magazine article describes Millennials (those born since the year 2000) as a generation that has “come of age in the era of the quantified self, recording their daily steps on FitBit, their whereabouts every hour of every day on PlaceMe and their genetic data on 23 and Me. They have less civic engagement and lower political participation than any previous group.”  They are self-centered like no other generation. They send and receive an average of 88 texts a day. They are much connected to their peers, less connected to their elders than any generation before them, and they have little clue in what it means to wait for anything.

         I think Esau would have been right at home with the Millennials. He wanted what he wanted because he wanted it. That was good enough for him. In the story of the selling of the birthright, there are several sub themes. There are doting, unwise parents. There is the scheming and treachery of a brother who takes advantage of a situation. But they are just the supporting cast. The real story for us is Esau, who exhibits immature, careless indifference to a custom and privilege that the ancient world held dear. He held the right of a firstborn and he gave it away for a bowl of stew. Like so many other people have done since, his act not only hurt him, but also paved the way to an even greater loss, the loss of his blessing from his father. For want of a nail… For want of just an inch of restraint.

          It seems incongruous to us that such a great gift might be squandered for a Happy Meal. How can a man make such a mistake? Perhaps part of the lesson here is for the Millennials, that many of the choices they have today were earned not by them, but by the blood, sweat and tears of those who came before and did without; that material blessing is still something deferred rather than something immediate. Perhaps part of the lesson is that we really have little if any right to bargain away that which was gifted to us by others. Why should we profit from that custom and that sacrifice? Esau took something of great worth, a gift from his father, and tossed it as if it were something of no value. Even in his heartless exploitation of his brother, Jacob at least grasped that the future blessings to which Esau was so indifferent had great value. The time would come soon enough when Jacob would have to pay for his misadventure.

          But what does a birthright have to do with me and you? That is not an American custom. We don’t think that way anymore. We should though, because the real birthright is not material blessings, but the promise of God’s favor upon us and our lives. Esau couldn’t see the promise. Hebrews 11 and 12 talk about those who could and couldn’t see God’s promise. It’s not hard to see which group Esau landed in.

          In the fourth chapter of Galatians, the apostle Paul lays down what it means for Christ to have been sent by the Father to redeem those who believe in his story, the story of salvation. What does it mean? It means that we believers “might receive adoption as sons…and if a son, then an heir through God” [Gal. 4: 5-7].  Here Paul lays out the path whereby we become literally the children of God. This is the promise that the writer of Hebrews was talking about—the promise of becoming heirs, children of the promise.

          “Thus Esau despised his birthright.” He spurned it. He repudiated it. He walked away from his future for a moment, just a moment, in the present.  Esau had a value system that began and ended with what he wanted right now. He cared nothing for the cost. He thought nothing of the consequences of his choice. How sad.How short-sighted!

          Why is this story in the Bible? If you think it’s just a history lesson, think again. If you think it’s not about you, think again. The story comes from God. What is he saying to you? Never let the present circumstances or your need for something right now cloud your judgment so much that you can’t see the long view. We are not here for the present. We are here to glorify God.

          What is your birthright? Where is God sending you? What is he saying to you, his sons and daughters? Don’t despise your birthright. It was bought at great price.