A Glimpse Inside
Today’s passage is a rarity in the Old Testament. Because seldom in the Old Testament do we learn what a character is actually feeling inside his heart. When God calls Abraham to leave his family, his home, and his land, to go somewhere unknown, how does Abraham feel? We don’t know. The story only tells us, “Abram went, as the Lord had told him” (Gen 12:4). When God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, how does Abraham feel? We don’t know. The story only tells us, “Abraham rose early in the morning” and gathered his son Isaac and his supplies (Gen 22:3). Here at the crucial junctures in Abraham’s life, the storyteller is silent about what is going on inside his heart. Some readers have carelessly mistaken this silence as a mark of primitive storytelling. They take the Old Testament to be crude and unsophisticated, just telling us what happened and little else.
But I think this silence is actually the genius of the ancient Hebrew storytellers. The genius of the Old Testament is what it doesn’t tell us, because these gaps become gateways into the story. We as readers or listeners are invited to imagine how the characters are feeling. We are invited to imagine how we would feel in their place. How we would feel if God called us to leave everything we knew. How we would feel if God called us to do the unthinkable. We talk about the Bible as the “living Word” because somehow its story lives on in us. For thousands of years, humans have looked into the Bible as though looking into a mirror, recognizing themselves and God in this story.
But as I mentioned, today’s passage is a rarity. For in today’s passage, we do learn what a character is feeling inside his heart. Jacob has just arrived at Laban’s home and has been received well. So well, in fact, that he appears to have taken up work around the home as part of the family. Only after a month has passed, does Laban acknowledge this, saying, “It’s not right that you’re working for nothing. What can I pay you?” (Gen 29:14-15). And it’s here that we learn what is inside Jacob’s heart. “Jacob loved Rachel” (Gen 29:18). Which is a big enough revelation in itself, but it gets even bigger in just a couple of verses, when we learn this: “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Gen 29:20). For a story that is awfully reserved when it comes to sharing characters’ emotions, this is a significant disclosure. The storyteller doesn’t just share these sort of details without a reason. We know that this must be a crucial point in the story.
The Turning Point
Jacob is perhaps best known for the moment when he wrestles with God. Many readers identify this juncture as a turning point in Jacob’s life. After all, he receives God’s blessing, a new name, and he walks away with a limp, forever marked by the encounter. But today I’d like to make the case that the definitive turning point in Jacob’s life is actually earlier. It is the moment in today’s scripture when we learn that he loves Rachel. In other words, the reason that the storyteller gives us a rare glimpse inside Jacob’s heart is because this is a turning point in his life. Love is the turning point. Almost everything that happens from this point on can be explained by love.
Consider Jacob’s life up to this point. Born with his hand on the heel of his brother, Jacob is indeed a grasper, a clasper, a grappler. His name means something like “heel-grabber.” He is a go-getter. The decisive moments of his childhood show him prevailing over others through cunning and deceit. First he finagles his brother out of his birthright. Then he tricks his father into giving him the firstborn’s blessing, which (again) belongs to his brother. Jacob may not be completely honest, but he cuts an impressive figure and would do well, I imagine, in our culture today. He will do whatever it takes to get ahead. He is a born winner.
But what happens when love enters the picture? He begins to lose. The very next story after we learn he loves Rachel shows us his defeat, as his father-in-law tricks him into marrying Leah instead of Rachel. Jacob, the deceiver, is deceived. The master of deception is beaten at his own game. He didn’t see it coming. He was blind to it. Why was he blind to it? “…because of the love he had.”
Later in Jacob’s life, on the night before he sees Esau for the first time since their monumental falling out, he wrestles with a stranger. Now Jacob is a born wrestler, but this is unlike any struggle he’s faced before. The timing suggests that he is in fact wrestling with his past, that this is a divinely inspired reckoning or coming-to-terms with his own history. For the next day he will be meeting Esau, and the deeds of his past now threaten not only him but his loved ones; he’s afraid for their lives. What if Esau should seek vengeance? The result of this nocturnal struggle is blessing, but not the kind of blessing that he’d grown up chasing, the blessing of wealth and prestige. No, this blessing comes at the cost of a limp. What is it that has made him vulnerable? Why does he walk away wounded? “…because of the love he had.”
As Jacob gets older, he continues to lose. He loses his beloved wife, Rachel, who dies in the act of giving birth to her second son, Benjamin. Then he loses his beloved son, Joseph, as his other children mercilessly deceive him—another instance in which the master of deception is beaten at his own game. Jacob is learning what perhaps any loving father learns. His children are beyond the bounds of his control and protection. His children bring him to tears more than once (cf. 37:35; 44:31, 34), and at the end of his life this born winner will have lost so much that he will summarize his life for Pharaoh in this way, saying, “Few and hard have been the years of my life” (47:9). Why has Jacob suffered so much? “…because of the love he had.”
What Cannot Be Seen
If love is indeed the turning point in Jacob’s life, then his “before” and “after” shots may make us think twice. Because before, he looks like a winner. And after, he looks rather like a loser. [Love blinds him, love wounds him, love brings him a great deal of suffering.] Here I’m going to have to take the apostle Paul at his word, when he says, “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen” (2 Cor 4:18). Love may look like losing, but perhaps there’s more than meets the eye here.
What comes to my mind is Jesus’ invitation to take up our cross daily. To the outside observer, the cross may look like losing your life. That is what the eye can see. But in fact, Jesus says, the cross is saving your life (Luke 9:23-24). That is what the eye cannot see. So, it may look like Jacob is losing and losing and losing, but in fact he is being saved. “…because of the love he had.”
When most people look at the cross, they see only suffering. But behind the suffering, is the real meaning of the cross. It is not suffering that saves us. It is love.
“More Pleasure Than
Pain”
I’m reminded of a Harvard research project that recently published its findings. The researchers had undertaken an eighty-year study to investigate the sources of happiness. The researchers’ primary finding is that happiness has one key predictor: meaningful relationships. The authors tell the story of two men: one was a very successful lawyer, and the other took a second-choice career as a high school teacher. The lawyer made tons of money, was respected widely, and had the means to do just about anything he wanted. People would probably consider him a “winner.” The teacher, on the other hand, was more strapped for cash but had a network of close friendships through his students and their families and his role in the community. What fascinated me most were how these two men answered a series of true/false questions when they were 55 years old, at the height of their professional lives. The lawyer indicated in his answers that life had more pain than pleasure, and that he often felt starved for affection. The teacher indicated the opposite: life has more pleasure than pain, and he did not often feel starved for affection.
Is this not the story of Jacob’s life? In the first half, he is a winner who looks out for number one. Yet he must feel terribly alone and exhausted, as he competes with others and then runs from the resulting danger. But then in the middle of his life, something changes him. “…because of the love he had.” From that point on, Jacob begins to live for others. The good news of his story, is the same good news of the cross. Even when Jacob loses, he wins. Because now he is living in love, which means he is never alone.
He has Rachel. Joseph. Even his brother Esau. There is, of course, an element of loss in each of these relationships, for love inevitably entails loss of some kind. But what the Harvard researchers discovered, is the gospel truth that Jesus proclaims. Loving relationships fill us with life even beyond their loss. It is why we like the high school teacher might indeed affirm that, even when things don’t go our way, life has more pleasure than pain. That, because of the love we have, this life is more than worth it.
Prayer
Your love is the turning point in our stories:
But sometimes we lose sight of what cannot be seen,
And our tears, our pain, and our loss
Can become overwhelming
…
May Jacob’s story teach us anew
The power of your love,
Which endures loss
And fills us with life.
Grant us contentment, please,
In the relationships that sustain us,
And draw us evermore into your abundant life.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.
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