13th Week, Ordinary Time, Saturday, July 8
Genesis 27:1-5, 15-29 / Matthew 9:14-17
Jacob steals Esau's blessing Saturday: Are you really my son Esau?”
This story gives us an insight into how God dealt with biblical people.
He didn't dangle them from puppet strings. He didn't program them as we program
a computer. He didn't put them under a mystical spell and then speak through
them.
On the contrary, God gave them the same freedom and autonomy that he
gives us. In other words, he worked through their free actions, even when these
were sinful. One of the important lessons this story teaches us is that nothing
not even sin-can frustrate God's plan.
***
How open are we to letting God work through us, no matter what he asks
of us?
"For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down... making
[the earth] fertile and fruitful, giving seed to him who sows and bread to him
who eats, so shall my word be... ; it shall not return to me void ... achieving
the end for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:10-11
***
The author of the first
reading interprets God’s intervention in history as a free option for progress.
Isaac, the farmer and shepherd, though younger, is preferred over the
culturally inferior hunter, Esau, notwithstanding the latter’s vested
birthright position. God often chooses the younger (Joseph, David, Solomon),
the one who can break with established situations and rights, above those who
try to monopolize God and his authority.
Can we be people of
compromise? To settle disagreement and make peace, to solve disputed matters
and to become at least tolerant of one another? Yes, but not with the Gospel.
Not when it comes to the renewal of life, whether personal or communal, that is
constantly asked of us. Jesus tells his disciples and us, who are living in
messianic times, that we are new, liberated people: we cannot compromise with
salvation, with our faith, with the Gospel. Young wine belongs in new
wineskins. New times require new attitudes.
***
It is easy to find the drama of deception and trickery in fiction
literature as well as in real life stories. But to find it in the Bible (of all
books) would be rather surprising to some, yet it shouldn't be that surprising
at all. Because the Bible is about the book of life and how God has loved and
saved a sinful humanity from self-destruction. Nonetheless we read about
deception and trickery in the 1st reading. Whether it was Issac or Rebekah, or
Esau or Jacob, none of them can say they were truly honest or truthful.
Earlier in Genesis 25:29-34) there is the account of Esau selling his
birthright to Jacob over some stew that Jacob had just made. Jacob offered to
give Esau a bowl of stew in exchange for his birthright, to which Esau agreed.
So already Esau was not true to his word. Isaac also wanted to bestow the
birthright to Esau, but he knew he was not doing the right thing because he
wanted it done privately and secretly.
That was probably because he had known that Rebekah had received the
prophecy that the twins Esau and Jacob were fighting in her womb and would
continue to fight all their lives, even after they became two separate nations.
The prophecy also said that "the one people shall be stronger than the
other people; and the elder shall serve the younger;" (Genesis 25:23)
Yet Rebekah also took things into her own hands and not leaving it into
the hands of God. So it was a really messy story of God's chosen people
resorting to deception and trickery and even committing grave sin just to have
their way and get what they want. Yet despite the crookedness of His people,
God still made things straight for the coming of His only Son to save the
people from their sins. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. May we walk
the ways of God in truth and love so that we will live a meaningful life of
honesty and integrity?
***
Opening Prayer
Lord our God, we are your people on the march, moving forward to you with your Son who came to make everything new. Dispose us Lord, to accept the pain of leaving the familiar behind us. Uproot us from our established ways and guide our faltering steps toward your new future in Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord forever.
