"Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop"

Jacob said to Laban, “Why then have you deceived me?”

Genesis 29:25b

The “Kent Spike Stud.”

A World Cup MVP contender? Tie fittings for an inter-city British Railways line? A thoroughbred entertaining dreams of the Triple Crown?

No. No. And no.

The Kent Spike Stud. Manufactured by Kent Stainless, Ireland’s leading manufacturer of stainless-steel drainage hardware. But the Kent Spike Stud has nothing at all to do with drainage. That’s because Kent Stainless has diversified and now makes and distributes the Kent Spike Stud.

Bullet-shaped and three-inches high, when installed strategically it’s the perfect device to deter people from parking themselves where they’re not wanted. No wonder they’re also called “anti-homeless spikes.”

Whether or not you sign on to using such tactics to discourage people from occupying certain public ─ or even private ─ spaces, many argue that, as pure design, the Kent Spike Stud qualifies as art.

That’s why, earlier this month, a cluster of the spike studs were installed in a glass case as the latest objets d'art to enter the permanent collection of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

But the installation’s tastefully antiseptic label ─ Spike Stud, 2014, Stainless Steel ─ notwithstanding, why does the menacing Kent Spike Stud merit a place in the collection in the first place? Corinna Gardner, a curator at the V&A, suggests, “Sinister objects demand our attention just as much as beautiful ones.”

And that’s why, among a handful of other reasons (such as, getting a handle on the idea of Jewish destiny), Jacob merits a place ─ a prominent place ─ in the stories of the origins of the Hebrew people.

Fact is: Jacob is an almost fatally-flawed patriarch. It really is hard to see much good in him, although I suppose you have to admire ─ or is it envy? ─ his moxie. And reviewing his adventures up to his back-to-back marriages to the sisters Leah and Rachel, you’re left to wonder what exactly God sees in Jacob as a future nation-builder.

A reasonable person is left to conclude that ─ except for the fact that he proves to be an improbable romantic (he’s smitten with his wife-to-be Rachel) ─ Jacob is out-and-out sinister. How sinister? Um, how much time do you have? Well, three offenses leap from his rap sheet:

Come birth-time, just as his twin brother Esau is about to take first-born honors, Jacob literally tries to claw his way out out of the womb into the dog-eat-dog world by climbing over Esau. He fails, but never really gives up trying to trump his hapless elder twin.

Proof? After they’ve grown up ─ in the legendary “stew for stupefying wealth” scheme ─ Jacob talks Esau into bartering away his twice-as-large inheritance.

And then, as their age-dimmed, functionally-blind father Isaac lies on his deathbed, the metrosexualized Jacob pulls the wool over the old man’s eyes by aping Esau’s ferocious butchness. Isaac, taken in by the ruse, gives his paternal blessing (and the material perks that go with it) to scheming second-son Jacob rather than to first-born Esau. In effect, as Isaac tells the soon-livid Esau, the pecking order is now turned on its head: he ─ the elder son ─ must now take his marching orders from Jacob.

Taken together, a theme emerges: Consumed by jealousy, resentment, and greed, Jacob leverages his survivor’s instinct to become a master of deception.

But the master deceiver is about to meet his match!

Picture this: Esau is now out for blood ─ Jacob’s blood. Their mother Rebekah, who from the start has had Jacob’s back, tips him off and encourages him to seek refuge among her geographically-distant relatives. And in the spirit of “if God gives you lemons, make lemonade,” Rebekah suggests, “While you’re at it, marry one of your cousins. A first-cousin will do nicely.” Yes, it sounds weird in the shallow-gene-pool sense, but that’s the way they did it.

And that’s exactly what happens. Jacob escapes Esau’s clutches just in the nick of time and soon finds himself at a well on his Uncle Laban’s sprawling ponderosa.

Now, the minute a well pops up in a story like this, you should be hearing wedding bells, because time after time after time, wells in the Bible function as a prototype for Match.com. Meaning: communal wells are hook-up joints of sorts ─ where a man-on-the-make ─ or at least, a man-in-the-market-for-a wife ─ can check out eligible women.

Examples: Isaac meets Rebekah for the first time at a well. Moses meets one of his future wives, Zipporah, at a well. And that’s why ─ in John’s Gospel ─ the disciples get all jumpy when they stumble upon “Eligible-Bachelor-Number-One” Jesus and a footloose woman chatting it up at a well in taboo Samaria. What else could it be but a pre-nuptial assignation? The joke is on the disciples, of course, because, yes, Jesus is talking to the woman about marriage: her five marriages! And Jesus clearly doesn’t intend to make it a sixth.

So, we have the well. We have the bachelor. All that's missing is his future intended. Violà! Who should appear but Rachel ─ one of his Uncle Laban’s daughters ─ a first-cousin, no less. Jacob tweets, “Victory is mine!”

That prompts Jacob to hang around working for Laban … for free. Very out-of-character, but a sure-fire way to woo the love of his life while lulling the father into the reality of a Jacob-Rachel match-up. Clever. You would expect nothing less from Jacob.

A month of this pre-marital sweat equity goes by. Laban says, “Jacob, you’re a hard worker. You should get paid. Quote me a figure.”

Jacob’s answer? “I’ll give you a figure: Rachel. Marriage to Rachel.”

So Jacob and Laban hammer out a deal: Laban gets seven years' free labor out of Jacob. Jacob gets Rachel when the seven years are up. Simple.

So, what about those seven years? Agony for Jacob? Hardly. “Jacob served seven years for Rachel,” Genesis says, “and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”

Sublime! Too bad things turn sour … because at the wedding, Laban pulls a bait-and-switch. Meaning: Chalk it up to the open bar, all the bridal veils, the poor lighting, there’s the morning after. The dawn long-past, Jacob yawns, rubs the sleep from his blood-shot eyes, and turns to his freshly-minted wife: “Man, was I drunk last night. You won’t believe this, but I dreamt I married your sister Leah!” His new wife comes into focus. Pregnant pause. “Holy moly! I did marry Leah!”

Of course, no one likes being deceived, so Jacob goes ballistic! And then he goes to Laban: “I thought we had a deal!”

Laban: “Oh, I guess you didn’t get the memo. In these parts, we marry off the first-born daughter before any of her sisters.”

Having moved the goalposts, Laban now negotiates a twofer: Jacob gets to marry Rachel the very next week(!) if he agrees to party-it-up for the customary, full seven-day wedding celebrations underway as a face-saving gesture to Leah … and if he agrees to work for Laban ─ free ─ for another seven years.

In the end, Jacob honors his end of the bargain ─ as does Laban. Love triumphs … along with symmetry. Yes, symmetry. Like: seven years’ labor, marry Leah … marry Rachel, seven years’ labor.

Another example: Jacob bilks his brother Esau (a relative) … a relative (his Uncle Laban) bilks Jacob.

Symmetry. In other words, if you take all of the Bible literally ─ word for word ─ it’s tempting to read Jacob’s story as history: Jacob defrauds his brother … he then tricks his father … after that, he gets the woman of his dreams (but only after failing to get her the first time around) … and (in a future installment) on a dare he wrestles with God and wins mind-boggling concessions before the match concludes with God committing a foul. Jacob has that effect on people.

But history isn’t obliged to be symmetrical. And what we have here is symmetry on an epic scale.

So what?

It’s the symmetry in these stories ─ or the way seemingly unrelated episodes connect to each other, even mirror each other over the long arc of Jacob’s lifetime ─ that makes the stories read less like A History of the Jewish People and more like The Lord of the Rings … more like a morality tale or fable designed to awaken the moral imagination, while it entertains.

For example, Jacob’s crimes against twin Esau in the first part of the story resonate later on, when sinister Jacob is twinned with sinister Laban … and the deceiver is deceived.

Or take Jacob ─ in the heyday of his skullduggery ─ exploiting Isaac’s blindness by pulling off a cosmetic-and-costume switch. And then roughly seven years later, blotto-blind on his wedding night, Jacob himself is blind-sided by the Leah-not-Rachel switch. This mischief then captures the ultimate in symmetry: second-born Jacob conned by first-born Leah:  a Bizarro-World negative of Jacob’s own anti-Esau scam.

It’s that symmetry ─ when the other shoe drops ─ that unmasks Jacob’s own morally-questionable history … symmetry that awakens Jacob’s moral imagination with one sobering question: “Am I really any different from Laban?”

Bottomline: The stories of patriarchs and matriarchs in Genesis aren’t just stories. And it would be a stretch to believe they’re history. They are intentionally-crafted case studies that encourage us to explore how we might love God better and better … love our neighbor better and better … and get better and better at even loving ourselves … by teaching us how to make choices that will determine the people we will become.

But if ─ by chance ─ we see a bit of ourselves in Jacob, are we destined to be like him? No, of course not … if we make better decisions ─ more loving, more neighborly decisions ─ than he did. Read: Our decisions determine our destiny, just as Jacob’s will determine his.

That leaves us hanging, as any good morality tale at this point should: Will Jacob, his unlovely and unloving behavior exposed, catch a slanting glimpse of the untapped goodness God sees in him?

And given Jacob’s unsavory history, why should we even care?

Well, sinister people demand our attention just as much as beautiful people. No question about it: Jacob demands our attention.

Amen.

"Do NOT Pull in Case of Emergency!"

“In gathering the weeds you will uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow until the harvest.”

You know, you can’t make this stuff up.

To chants of “USA! USA! USA!,” Adam Kwasman, an Arizona state legislator and Tea Party congressional candidate, joined protesters in Oracle, Arizona, this past week in an attempt to block buses carrying migrant children to a local YMCA camp. The kids were earmarked to take up temporary residence at the camp.

Picture this: The protesters ─ along with Kwasman ─ are waiting for the buses to arrive, ready, as a Daily Kos blogger described a recent anti-marriage equality rally, “to explode out of the vitriolic rage that comes from losing endlessly.”

Kwasman ─ ever the vigilant patriot ─ catches sight of that icon of American culture and innocence: a yellow school bus crammed with squirming kids. And he tweets (channeling “Incoming Bogey, 10 o’clock high!”): “Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law.”

Then all hell breaks loose. Kwasman, demonstrators, camera crews converge on the school bus.

Kwasman later hyperventilates, “I was able to actually see some of the children on the buses and the fear on their faces.”

Well, duh. Who among us wouldn’t be on the verge of a “Depends moment” if we saw an angry mob converging on our school bus? Read: “Kwasman, you’re one scary guy!”

Well, he was one unlucky guy … because ─ with the cameras rolling ─ turns out the bus was filled with YMCA kids as American-as-apple-pie headed for bliss: a parent-free, care-free stint at summer camp.

As for the fear on the kids’ faces, a reporter said they were bouncing off the walls of the bus, juggling their iPhones with giddy abandon to preserve forever the fever-pitch moment. Imagine, come September: “What I did on my summer vacation!”

The ultimate in irony (or is it farce)? The Los Angeles Times reported, “As of Wednesday, no buses with migrant children had arrived at Oracle, Arizona.”

Too bad the would-be congressman went off half-cocked … prompting us to ask, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

Answer? Jesus nails it in his “Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds.”

To recap: A wheat farmer is handed a tricky situation. His workers discover that the competition has sown weed seeds into the farmer’s pristine wheat field. Word to the too-worldly-wise: this “weed” is not marijuana. When you hear “weed” here, do not ─ I repeat, do not ─ think marijuana! And now that I’ve planted that ear worm, we can move on.

The saboteur’s seeds aren’t just any kind of weed. In the parable’s original language, the “weed” is actually a copycat: darnel. It looks just like wheat when it’s growing ─ in some places it’s called “false wheat” ─ but once harvested and consumed, it’s pretty toxic. We might have a case of attempted murder on our hands here! Or worse, if it achieves wider distribution, a class action suit.

Problem is: it’s only at the harvest that you can make a definitive finding as to what’s the genuine wheat and what’s the toxic knock-off.

So the workers approach the farmer with alarm. “Boss, major weed infestation. We need a plan and we need decisive action … now!”

But the farmer is a realist. Going after the wheat look-alike now would be decisive, but premature. In other words, yanking up the toxic elements immediately would solve the weed infestation problem alright, but the collateral damage would be too great. The whole field ─ acre upon acre of uprooted wheat and weed ─ would look like a war zone. And that would play right into the saboteur-neighbor’s hand. No harvest.

So, the farmer defers taking action. Why? Because at this stage he just doesn’t know enough. Weeds and wheat are growing together and you can’t tell them apart. That means you don’t know how each plant will turn out. When will you know? That’s a long way off. For now, live and let live.

So, what’s Jesus’ point?

Beware the weed-pulling impulse! … when the buses are rolling in at 10 o’clock high (“USA! USA! USA!”) … or at other times when we catch people in the act of not living the perfect lives we’ve charted for them.

Why wait? Because activating the weed-pulling impulse would condemn our alleged perpetrator-neighbors without engaging our charity.

It would condemn them outright without factoring-in our own accountability.

And it would condemn the targets of our moral rage irresponsibly.

First, condemning our neighbors without charity. At this point, we may have a pretty clear lock on the way we think God wants the world to operate. Suspiciously like our own. Imagine that.

At this point, we may think God has deputized us judge to make the world a better place by withholding from these people the love ─ or at least the slack ─ they are due as our neighbor … or by denying them their rights and a hearing … or in extreme cases, by executing them.

What does Jesus have to say to that? “Mind your own business!” … because, first of all, God isn’t done with those so-called evil-awful-people-over there yet.

And God isn’t done with each of us yet!

The sixth-century writer Philoxenus put it this way: “We should be slow to judge others, because God judges us infinitely more leniently than we judge one another.”

And then, condemning alleged perpetrator-neighbors without factoring-in our own accountability. That is, without an action-plan. In the parable’s case study, an action plan that will prevent the saboteur from corrupting the integrity of the wheat field next season.

In our own context, that would look like roundly condemning human-made climate change ─ going after Big Oil, carbon-spewing industries (like fossil-fuel-burning utilities), bloated energy-consuming agribusinesses, gas-guzzling automakers ─ condemning the polluters without changing ourselves first. Read: without taking steps to shrink our own carbon footprint by taking an open, no-holds-barred, hard look at the cars we drive, how we drive, where we drive … the environmental impact of the food we eat (how it’s grown, where it’s grown, the costs of putting it on our dinner table) … the homes we live in, light, heat, and cool.

In other words, it looks like engaging in “carbon shaming” ─ all talk, all condemnation ─ without holding ourselves to account by becoming full-blown, responsible citizens: highly-vocal and organized environmental activists in our homes, in our parish, and in the public square.

And that points to weed-pulling ─ condemning others ─ irresponsibly: launching into finger-wagging and tongue-lashing without first sniffing out the facts.

Now, at first glance, the parable might lead us to conclude we should throw our hands up and do nothing at all ─ ever ─ even in the face of patently reprehensible behavior. Well, that doesn’t accord with common sense. And it doesn’t fit the moral imperative Jesus teaches elsewhere in the Gospels, the moral imperative Jesus himself lives.

Meaning: Clear cases of abuse, such as spousal and partner abuse, child and elder abuse, and (yes) capital punishment? All open to fact-finding, not open to debate … because abuse of this sort or any other can never be shown to love God, our neighbor, or ourselves.

Fact-free, irresponsible condemnation, then: What does it look like?

Adam Kwasman’s fizzled stunt. And what triggered the stunt? The crisis at our borders ─ 57,000 children fleeing villages, towns, and cities, primarily from Honduras and El Salvador, since October.

Now, freeing themselves from the burden of facts, many folks like Kwasman are conflating this recent migrant surge with long past-due immigration reform. For example, should long-term undocumented immigrants be deported … given an option to attain citizenship … or be granted some other permanent status that would allow them to stay in this country legally?

This is not the issue we’re talking about here. For the most part, the children ─ some accompanied ─ are surrendering en masse to border agents. In general, this isn’t a surreptitious, illegal-border-crossing immigrant crisis. It’s an overt humanitarian crisis. The kids­ ─ most of them, it appears ─ are legitimate asylum-petitioning refugees and not merely those seeking better economic opportunity here (which might be grounds for deportation).

What are the legitimate refugees fleeing? Endemic gang violence. Kids being forced to join gangs. And if they refuse, they and their family members face retaliation.

They are fleeing, as well, murder, pervasive rape, and being pressed into human trafficking enterprises. They are fleeing places like San Pedro Sula, a city in Honduras with the world's highest homicide rate. From January through May, 2,200 children had fled San Pedro Sula for the relative safety and security of the US.

And ─ fact ─ the children aren’t just being “sent” here. As of this week, about 43,000 of them have been released to relatives or sponsors around the country, according to officials at New York’s Administration for Children and Families, a division of the state’s Health and Human Services.

And yet, condemning the children irresponsibly has become a cottage industry for those immune to pesky facts and untroubled by the humanitarian impulse firmly-embedded in the Christian Gospel.

Take the Florida congressman who says these aren’t migrant children arriving in waves at the border. They’re “gang members,” he says, “thieves, rapists, and murderers.”

Or another congressman, who thinks the kids should be turned back at the border because they might be carrying the Ebola virus. Um, Congressman, Ebola virus hasn’t been found among the populations of the Western Hemisphere. You could look it up: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/fact-sheet.pdf

And then there’s the prominent anti-immigration activist who says he has iron-clad proof that this is a Commie Chinese plot. Why the Chinese? It’s not immigration; it’s infiltration, he says. The Central American migrants are being shipped here ─ by the Chinese ─ to overthrow the US government.

I mean, what do you say?

You say, “Beware the weed-pulling impulse!” Beware knee-jerk condemnation: weed-pulling without charity … weed-pulling without personal accountability … fact-free weed-pulling.

Because, Jesus says, “in gathering the weeds you will uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow until the harvest.”

Amen.

"Red-baiting"

Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. Genesis 25:19-34

Gold-digger, leech, user, usurper, manipulator, con artist.

All synonyms the Urban Dictionary lists for ‘opportunist.’ Put those skills on your résumé and, unless you’re gunning for a job as future governor of New Jersey, chances are you’re not going to get very far … except in the Bible.

Proof? Jacob, the barely younger of the non-identical twin team of Jacob and Esau.

Now, Esau. He’s the blunt-hunter-butch-biker type. Jacob, not so much. More the tech-savvy, artsy sort, with a hint of gender ambiguity.

Esau. Hairy, red hair actually. That’s how he got his name, Esau (“Red,” in Hebrew). Peakèd Jacob? Skin as soft as a baby’s behind.

And yet, Jacob: gold-digger, leech, user, usurper, manipulator, con artist? “You gotta love this guy!” … according to Hebrew tradition, anyway. Admired, approved, and adored on earth, as in heaven. Even God, the prophet Malachi suggests, has a positive opinion about Jacob: “I have loved Jacob, but Esau have I hated.” Strong language.

Jacob, who cheats his own brother out of his inheritance … whose checkered career launches with the two duking it out in their mother Rebekah’s womb to the point that come birth-time ─ when Esau is first out of the gate ─ Jacob refuses to throw in the towel. He digs his tiny, talon-grip-fingers into Esau’s heel in one last stab at yanking his brother back into the womb.

What’s in his sights? A clear shot at the gold. First-born in the pecking order and all the first-class perks that go with it: a father’s attention, a father’s love, a father’s wallet … and majority-shareholder status when the Old Man finally shoves off this mortal coil.

What’s at stake? Isaac, having inherited his own father Abraham’s vast holdings, is rumored to be at the top of the prequel to the Forbes Billionaire List. And that means for the first-born heir-apparent in the family: “ca-ching!”

But we’ve got a problem. Jacob is ─ hands-down ─ a distasteful guy. And yet, we hold him up as a hero.

How is it he’s taken in so many people?

Answer: Jacob is a trickster, a stock character in stories told by people since time immemorial. Tricksters are so clever, so audacious, so outrageous and roguish, you gotta love them ─ sometimes begrudgingly, at other times enviously, as in “Gosh, I wish I could get away with that!”

Tricksters break all the rules. They’re even known to do a little gender-bending now and again. Yes, drag is in their bag of tricks, like Stewie on Family Guy … and a bit like Jacob, when, as their father ─ their legally-blind father ─ is on his death-bed, Jacob slathers on the testosterone in an attempt to pass himself off as Esau. All to get the father’s unique, once-for-all-time, as-I-lay-dying blessing traditionally bestowed on the first-born.

A nice gesture? A quaint custom? No. Means even more perks after the funeral. In that era ─ before tabernacle or temple ─ more or less like being the family High Priest or your very own home-grown pope.

The trickster, then, master of deception and disguise. But above all clever, quick-witted. And actually, a bit of fun.

Think here, in the African-American tradition, Br’er Rabbit, who ─ conspicuously absent brawn ─ more than makes up for it in wits. Or Tom Sawyer when he tricks his friends into enjoying the “privilege” of whitewashing that expansive fence on his chore list. Tom Sawyer: the model for Bart Simpson, quintessential trickster.

In the storyteller’s world, all geared to entertainment. All heirs of fellow-trickster Jacob, the sort of fellow who puts the “fun” into family dysfunction.

How? Picture this: The twins Esau and Jacob ─ more fratricidal than fraternal ─ are now adults. Having lost the “who’s-on-first” battle, Jacob has been playing catch-up from the get-go.

According to legend ─ this isn’t in the Bible ─ their grandfather Abraham has just died, and master-chef Jacob is whipping up comfort food for father Isaac in-mourning: a hearty red lentil stew, customary post-funeral fare. Really, comfort food.

All out of the kindness of his heart or cynically trying to score points? You decide. But it’s convenient for Jacob that Esau is AWOL ─ the wild son off to the wild parts where the wild things are. He misses Abraham’s funeral altogether. Jacob, for once, gets to play the “good” son.

No sooner does Jacob announce, “Soup’s on!” who should come gate-crashing in? Esau, wouldn’t-you-know. With his usual understatement ─ not! ─ he claims he’s going to die if he doesn’t get some of “that red stuff” pronto.

“You mean,” Jacob drips with withering condescension, “Giada’s Zuppa di Lenticchie Rosse, you Philistine?” Palm to forehead: “‘Red stuff.’ Honestly, why do I even try?’” And then ─ recomposed ─ “Well, brother dear, it’s going to cost you. What if I were to tell you it’s going to cost you your inheritance”?

Esau tosses off a what-do-I-care “Whatever.” And the brothers make a deal: stew for stupefying wealth.

But where’s the trick? Well, you could say that the trick is getting Esau to do the trade. In that case, what you have here is more a joke ─ a play on words ─ than a trick: red “stuff” for the red brother.

If, however, you want to work the trick angle, it could be that Jacob catches Esau in his surly brother’s own histrionics. That is, if he doesn’t get the “red stuff,” Esau is going to expire right there at Jacob’s feet. And, if he’s dead, Esau reasons out loud, well, you can’t take it with you!

But the trick is: Esau is good at shooting off his mouth. Not so good at thinking things through. Meaning: Stuffed with Jacob’s stew, he’s going to die another day, but live without his inheritance ─ and quite possibly, at the mercy of deep-pocketed-by-then Jacob.

Either Esau fails to make the connection or else he thinks Jacob won’t hold him to the bargain. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It’s preposterous. It’s outrageous! But if Esau thinks Jacob is going to cancel the deal, he doesn’t know his own brother ─ his brother, the trickster.

Not so different from the greatest trickster of them all in the Jewish tradition ─ at least, since Jacob. And that is Herschel of Ostropol (in Ukraine). Like other trickster-folk heroes, he’s pretty elusive, so we don’t have specific dates for him, but he might have pulled off his shenanigans about 300 years ago.

What did they look like? Suspiciously like Jacob’s. For example:

One day, Hershel and a friend scrounge enough money between them to buy two loaves of bread. Hershel picks up both loaves, examines them with much fanfare, and tosses the lighter loaf to his friend, keeping the larger one for himself.

“Well, that’s not very nice,” the friend protests.

“And if you were in my shoes,” Hershel asks, “what would you have done?”

The friend: “I would’ve given you the larger loaf and kept the smaller one for myself.”

Hershel’s response? “Well, now you’ve got the smaller one! What are you complaining about?!”

Sure, we can laugh at Hershel, Br’er Rabbit, Bart Simpson, and all the other iconic tricksters like Jacob. And we can envy their chutzpah. But do we really have to like them? Do we really have to be like them?

In Jacob’s case, no ─ at least not in his trickiest phases. That is, later in life, he’s wanted dead-or-alive by his brother. That triggers a crisis in which he’s forced to take a good, long, hard look at himself. What does he see? Not just a “despicable-me” person (you can laugh at everyone else’s expense for only so long), but a fatally-flawed agent for working out God’s will: doing his part ─ as his father before him, and his father before him have done ─ to create a “people of God,” God’s Chosen People.

Boil it all down to a blunt truth: Jacob may be chosen, but he’s far from “choice.”

That’s because Jacob realizes he has opted for opportunism over opportunity. And there’s nothing funny or even entertaining about that.

Meaning: Long before his come-lately makeover ─ in bargaining with his “red brother” over the “red stuff” ─ Jacob has increased the chances that Esau will always be in the red because he let his ginned-up, winner-take-all metabolism go into over-drive. The result? A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break up the family dysfunction ─ to be open-handedly generous ─ to do the right, fair, decent thing? Lost forever.

Bottomline: In this episode, Jacob chose the short-term. He chose not to be the developing, neighbor-loving, neighbor-connected person God believed he could become. And in so doing, he diminished the chances that he could ever achieve God’s dream for himself or his family and descendants.

And that’s the trick Jacob unwittingly ends up playing on himself ─ for years and years ─ until he hits rock-bottom and chooses to write-over his hard drive by dealing with unfinished business: re-connecting and reconciling with his twin, his brother Esau.

Like Jacob, each and every day ─ all the time ─ we’re presented with chances to be both God’s Chosen and “choice” … chances to choose opportunity over immediate, what’s-in-it-for-me opportunism.

Opportunity, on the other hand: the real-time, real-life chances God gives us to become the people God is convinced we can become, people who do the right, fair, and decent thing over and over again … and becoming better and better at it. Becoming better and better people while we’re at it.

How? Well, there’s a real knack to it. It takes practice. It takes discipline. It takes doing. It takes time to train a fearless and dreaming ─ a playful! ─ heart to choose opportunity, to imagine the people we can be, to imagine the place God believes we can occupy tomorrow, next week, next year … still striving, pushing ahead. It is possible. Our challenge is to make it likely.

Just ask Jacob. He'll tell you, “Choosing opportunity over opportunism? There’s a knack to it. But no trick. Honest!”

Amen.

"Traditional Marriage": Neither traditional nor marriage. Discuss.

“Go to my father’s house, to my kindred, and get a wife for my son.” Genesis 24:38

2 … 3 … 1 … 4 … 18 … 700 ... 0.

A winning Powerball ticket? No.

And yet, this sequence of numbers could be the set-up for a quiz: Match up the biblical character (Jacob, Moses, Solomon, Jesus, David, Abraham) to the number of his wives at any one time.

Answers?

Moses 2 … Abraham 3 … Isaac 1 … Jacob 4 … David 18 … Solomon 700 (doesn’t include his 300 on-call “companions-without-benefit-of-wedlock”) … Jesus 0.

Remove from the mix the outliers (Jesus and Solomon). That gives you 5.6 wives per married guy. And if you eliminate David ─ with his 18 wives ─ that will leave you with 2.5.

5.6 or even 2.5 wives at one time, per customer, on average. It does say something. And it says nothing.

It says something about marriage norms ─ from a male perspective ─ for about 11 centuries of life in Hebrew culture in its most formative period, apart from the Babylonian exile in the 6^th century BCE.

On the other hand, average-wives-per-lucky-man says absolutely nothing about “traditional marriage,” or at least the way the Bible is being used today to oppose same-sex marriage in the court of public opinion and in our law courts.

That’s because every time purveyors of “family values” speak about “traditional marriage,” they believe ─ or they’re trying to convince us to believe ─ they’re relying not just on a conveniently ill-informed understanding of human history, but on what they claim to be a “biblical” understanding of marriage as existing (or even possible) solely between one man and one woman.

Take Jim DeMint … please! The former US Senator from South Carolina and current president of the Heritage Foundation claims: “Since the dawn of time, traditional marriage ─ the union between one man and one woman ─ has been the building block of civilization.”

To a critical mass of his sympathizers, the “dawn of time” begins with the Bible’s first couple, Adam and Eve.

Problem: “Traditional marriage” (defined by DeMint and company as the union of one man and one woman) would come as news to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon ─ even Isaac, with just one wife. Polygamy-inclined superheroes of the Bible, every last one of them.

So, without going into the case for same-sex marriage (been there, done that) and dispensing with a Cliff Notes version of the history of marriage (www.livescience.com/37777-history-of-marriage.html), let’s narrow the focus to one soundbite: The more you rely on the Bible to argue for so-called “traditional marriage,” the closer you are to losing the argument.

That’s because history proves there’s no such thing as “traditional marriage.” It’s a nice idea (the historicity of “traditional marriage"), but wishing doesn’t make it so. “Traditional” implies permanence: the same institution … for all time … understood everywhere … by all.

But history ─ especially history as it’s processed in the Bible ─ proves that marriage is anything but the same institution understood for all time, everywhere, by all. Like our own species, it’s constantly evolving, from being primarily about property (“Who gives this woman to this man?”) ─ and more property (kids!) — to mutually-shared romantic love and companionship (married-with-kids optional).

Proof? Isaac and Rebekah.

Picture this: Abraham is convinced that God will make of his family ─ generation upon generation of his family ─ a uniquely-favored nation, God’s Chosen People. But he begins to sweat when, at 40, his son Isaac has yet to settle down with a wife ─ or wives ─ and a teeming brood of offspring.

So, Abraham commissions the most trusted member of his household to act as matchmaker and ships him to far-off relatives back in the homeland. The matchmaker’s portfolio? Find a suitable wife for heir-apparent Isaac from among Abraham's relatives (“suitable” here meaning marked with God’s seal of approval).

And that’s what happens. The lucky girl? Rebekah. After getting an eyeful of the bling in the deal ─ that’s not to suggest she factored Abraham’s untold wealth into her decision, but let’s be real ─ Rebekah consents to the marriage and makes the labor-intensive trip back to Abraham’s territory. She takes one look at Isaac, he takes one look at her. And not sure if it’s “Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you,” but they do the deed on-the-spot in his recently-deceased mother’s tent. I’m sure this is just a custom and not at all Freudian. Whatever. Their conjugation seals the marriage. Their arranged marriage.

Repeat: Their arranged marriage. Well, there goes “traditional marriage” right there! Just shot to hell. Thanks to the Bible. And the story of Isaac and Rebekah.

Note: the key word here is “story.”

Meaning: Marriage traditionalists pour mega-watts of energy ─ and mega-bucks ─ into devising and defending same-sex marriage bans, arguing states’ rights and, consequently, the force of state-by-state statutes ─ some that have been on the books for a long time, others with the ink still wet ─ statutes that either imply or explicitly state that marriage exists exclusively between one man and one woman.

Now, these partisans talk a lot about history. But history isn’t on their side, as it seems not a week goes by that some federal judge or Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t strike down one of these statutes. This is good news. And why are they being tossed? It’s un-American ─ and it would appear unconstitutional ─ to write discrimination into law, no matter what you think the Bible says.

As a result, marriage traditionalists like Antonin Scalia and Michele Bachmann have got a problem. And it isn’t just Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Barney Frank!

They’ve got a problem because their by-now-gear-stripped and yet full-throated “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” rhetoric stands or falls on the Bible. And that’s a thin thread on which to hang their bloated argument, given the fact that Adam and Eve ─ another marriage story ─ the original marriage story ─ the marriage origin story ─ is unadulterated myth.

Tip: You can’t argue civil law from myths. And it’s folly to argue states’ rights, federal statutes, or social policy from biblical illiteracy.

That leads to a complication: When it comes to marriage, there isn’t much at all ─ if anything ─ statutory (as in laws on the books) in Scripture. Factoid: the Torah publishes a lot of laws ─ 637 to be exact ─ but nowhere in the Bible, not even in Torah, does it read: “Marriage shall be defined as one man and one woman.” In Scripture, as far as understanding the parameters of marriage goes, all you have is stories, not statutes.

Well, then, what about Genesis and the creation of the woman, fashioned by God from Adam’s rib?

You know, I’m glad you asked! Because to use the Creation account in Genesis ─ embedded as it is in layer-upon-layer of myth ─ to argue for the equation “1 man + 1 woman = marriage,” you have to believe that the woman — Eve — not only existed, but that she was literally created ─ cloned! ─ from Adam’s rib.

Read: God doesn’t just tolerate cloning. God invented it … that is, if you attempt to use Genesis as a science textbook. Not. A good. Idea.

And if you rely on the Adam’s rib myth as the foundation of two-becoming-one-flesh marriage, you’re missing the point altogether, the human story behind the legend. And that is: Genesis introduces the story of the creation of a second human in order to weave a mythic solution to the common human need for companionship, regardless of gender.

Proof? In the mythology of Genesis, God pronounces each order of Creation (light, darkness, heavens, seas, earth, plants, animals, birds, and so on) “good.” But then God says after the one-off creation of Adam, “A person alone? Not good!”

That means connection, companionship, friendship, even marriage? All good in God’s eyes.

Why, then, would people who use the Bible to argue against same-sex marriage condemn their neighbors to a loneliness ─ an aloneness ─ God expressly judges “not good”?

Furthermore, taking into account the multiple-wives averages mentioned above, Adam + Eve (1 man + 1 woman) turns out to be the exception, not the rule in the Bible. And if you argue, “Well, at least it’s still mixed-gender-based,” one word: C’mon!

Not much, then, in the way of tradition. And you have yet to reckon with the story of Rebekah and Isaac.

Question: Aside from the math (1 man + 1 woman), how “traditional” is their marriage? As in, how much does it look like our marriages? I mean, if there’s a universal and enduring tradition to marriage, theirs should look like ours … ours like theirs, no?

Well, we’ve already covered the overtly non-traditional arranged-marriage complication. My hunch is we don’t want to recover that one as a best-demonstrated practice for the foreseeable future. Some parents might disagree. Nevertheless.

And then there’s the issue of age. Appearing to be not the marrying kind at the age of 40, Isaac is beginning to ripen around the edges. And the neighbors are weighing in, “He never married, you know (wink, wink).” Well, let’s give Isaac the benefit of the doubt and just say that his father never found the right girl for him. Problem: usually in that culture, wife-hunting beyond the age of 16 or so? The young man is on his own.

So, Isaac at 40. Hold on to that thought — that picture — as you imagine on the one hand, the fresh and virginal, roughly 12- or 13 year-old Rebekah and on the other, the approaching-the-autumn-years-of-his life Isaac. Well, let’s make it interesting: Imagine their first kiss … with a yawning 20-plus age difference between them (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) … in an arranged marriage. How does that sit? Or how does that fit as a norm for so-called Bible-based “traditional marriage” … in the 21^st century? Just wondering.

And did I forget to mention that Rebekah is Isaac’s first cousin-once-removed? Cousins that close used to marry. But in our day, do we really want to recommend swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool as a component of “traditional marriage”?

Coincidental to the family ties angle is Abraham’s insistence on Isaac’s marrying only “our kind, dear.” Sure, he doesn’t want to corrupt the family brand. It’s linked to God’s promise to create, through Abraham’s DNA, God’s Chosen People. But his genetic bias does smack of notions of ethnic or racial purity. Not too different, really, from white supremacists inter-breeding in the diversity- and cerebrally-challenged backwoods of Montana and Idaho.

Restricting marriage to the tribe, clan, race, ethnic group or religion. Is that what “traditional marriage” means? Because that describes Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage.

Then there’s the love angle. Genesis tells us that Isaac “loved” Rebekah, notably after he married her. No mention of whether or not their love was mutual. No “and Rebekah loved Isaac.” Everything is from the man’s perspective. For just about half the population ─ the female half ─ how’s that working for you?

But Isaac’s “love.” Specifically, love in an arranged marriage. Nice if it happens, but not guaranteed. Then again, “love” in the Bible is a squishy concept compared to our notions of romantic love as the critical non-negotiable of a good and healthy marriage.

That’s because in the Bible, love-as-applied-to marriage can be either intentional or “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore!”

Intentional love: “I am determined to love you because I’ve taken you as my spouse.” Worst-case morning-after-the-wedding scenario: “Don’t worry, we’ll learn to love each other.”

“That’s amore!” kind of love: a loving phenomenon that approaches how we look at love-and-marriage. As Old Testament scholar David P. Hamilton puts it, love as a function of “emotions, glands, and hormones.” In other words, “Because I love-love-love you, I want you to be my spouse.” In the Bible, this sequence of love-marriage is more the exception than the rule.

So, biblical love in a so-called “traditional marriage”: It’s a chicken or egg thing. Which comes first? Love or marriage?

My hunch is that we prefer to take the ambiguity out of it: choosing the love-precedes-marriage option and with love growing dynamically throughout the marriage. I think that’s what we would like “traditional marriage” to mean, leaving Rebekah and Isaac’s marriage lacking, by our standards at any rate.

Better yet, let’s stop talking about “traditional marriage” altogether. How about “marriage”? Marriage between two mutually-loving and loved persons. “Forsaking all others.” Period.

Because the bottomline is: Pre-arranged … one man plus multiple wives … skewed toward male privilege … and away from mutuality and equal affection … romantic love not necessarily in the bargain. That’s about all you can say for “traditional marriage” as advertised.

So, “dearly Beloved,” when you hear folks hawking the fiction “traditional marriage = 1 man plus 1 woman since the dawn of time,” challenge them, whether they’re charlatans or just clueless.

Challenge them with what you know about history.

Challenge them with what you know about the Bible.

Challenge them with what you know about a simply lovely couple: Rebekah and Isaac.

Amen.