Genesis 25: 19-34; Romans 8:1-11
Did you ever give someone a nickname and it stuck? Or were you on the receiving end of one of those nicknames?
I’ve been called ValPal, ValJean… Someone I know was called, Flirtin’ for certain Burton…LongJon Ronnie, Scooty, Marshmallow. One kid who brought a donut and rootbeer for lunch in high school every day got to be known as Munchkin Man. One family started calling their baby son Pooh Bear, but over time that devolved into just “Pooh” and later “Pooh Pooh.” Can you imagine hearing someone call their child that out in public? Other nicknames people admitted were Poopsie, Noodle, Weasel, Bean, Heyo-Jayo, Wormie, Tomato Foot. Nicknames come along as a play on your real name, or because of one incident, one time that no one will let you forget.
Turn to your neighbor and admit a nickname you were called (or one you gave someone else).
Today’s origin story tells the beginnings of Isaac and Rebekah’s family. Jacob earns the name “trickster” very early and Esau gets a reputation for being, well, a “dim bulb.” From the start, Jacob and Esau’s story is marked by struggle, even in the womb. Rebekah wonders out loud why these two, literally, “smash” each other? God answers her directly. She will have twins who will grow up to form two tribes: the Israelites and the Edomites. One of these will be a stronger people than the other, and the younger will best the older, God says (25:23). This explains the roots of later tensions between their descendants.
At their birth, Esau is born first, and Jacob comes behind grabbing Esau’s heel. It is a foreshadowing of the conflict that will imbue the entire arc of their relationship. The names they are given are representative of how they are experienced in the first few hours of their lives. The Hebrew word for hair, sounds like Esau.[1] Esau’s red complexion is the source of his other name Edom (25:30) which became the name of the place where his people settled among the red rock cliffs. In Hebrew, the name Jacob means “he will take away,” and it sounds like the word for “heel.”[2] These two boys would live up to their names.
To make matters worse, Isaac and Rebekah appear to play favorites with the boys. Esau is Isaac’s favorite and Jacob is Rebekah’s. I sure wonder what this looked like growing up? Did it allow each son to feel treasured by one parent, to excel in his own interests and skills? Or did it contribute to an ever-widening gap between them and foster cruel competition?
Evidence leans to the latter description of the boys’ relationship particularly in the scene we have in front of us today. This particular brou-ha-ha we might call, “A Bowl of Beans for Your Birthright,” is the source of future typecasting of Jacob and Esau.
Esau returns famished from the field. Apparently, his hunting was unsuccessful. Jacob is stirring a big pot of beans. They’re smelling good and ready to eat. And Esau is starving. Now, when we say that, “I’m starving!,” it’s usually an exaggeration of our hunger. And I admit that I have been very judgy of Esau’s dramatic declaration. But one commentator helped me reason: Esau didn’t head out to hunt with a Kind bar and beef jerky in his pocket. He literally may be “about to die” and is probably dehydrated and malnourished from the days he’s been out in the field (25:32).[3]
Jacob’s response to Esau is not a demonstration of the generosity of his ancestors we have witnessed in previous chapters. “We can imagine the brother’s conflicts were long and deep.”[4] Thus Jacob seizes an opportunity to exploit his brother’s weakness. Stirring the pot, Jacob refuses to serve his brother unless Esau gives up his birthright (25:31).
Esau, being the eldest, if only by a hair, is entitled to inherit twice as much wealth and land from his father as Jacob would. Esau has no good options in this moment. His inheritance won’t do him any good if he dies of hunger right here. In his vulnerable state, he agrees to Jacob’s despicable deal.
The scripture says afterward that Esau despised his birthright. Tsk… tsk… This is what happens when you sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate. But does it mean that he doesn’t value his birthright? That he foolishly sold it for a bowl of beans? What if “despising his birthright” actually means that after Esau had given it up, he hated even thinking about it, hated the way his hand had been forced, despised himself for falling victim to his brother’s abuse.
The Genesis story doesn’t sugar-coat the life and legacy of our prominent ancestor Jacob. It is an honest appraisal. Looking at the past with anything but honesty and truth is not a helpful or healthy way to move forward ever. This is no fairytale.
There are many practical lessons we could take from this origin story, such as:
- Just because you have the upper hand doesn’t mean you should take it.
- That we tend to criticize the weak one who squandered something valuable while we let off the hook the one who profited from being cunning. What does that say about our treatment of the poor and the way we judge what they do with their resources?
- The ability to honestly interrogate the past can inspire us today, particularly when some want to silence the truth. Facing the past prevents a recurrence of past abuses and helps us understand current realities.
But the take-away I am stuck on today is the very human reality that we tend to live up to the names, or labels, we are given. And I believe that the good news that Jesus came to offer us is that he wants to set us free from the ways others have defined us, or how we have defined ourselves.
I typically love the way Frederick Buechner cleverly describes biblical characters in his book, Peculiar Treasures. He has a humorous way of making them seem extra-human, relatable. But in his description of Jacob and Esau and some of their relatives, he calls Jacob, a crook, sneaky, greedy, a double-barreled con artist, the kind of guy who would bilk Heaven out of the moon and stars if he could. Buechner describes Esau as lame-brained, slow-witted, a dim bulb who lost his shirt to his own brother.[5] This caused me to consider the ways our silly nicknames, or the labels we assign to people close to us, may actually be harmful to them and what they believe about themselves.
And as a community, what if our judgments, our categories – the boxes we keep people in is limiting what God wants to do in them, in us?
What if Isaac and Rebekah told the boys how they were born after years of praying for them? What if they had not played favorites, but nurtured balanced relationships and taught the boys to appreciate their different gifts? What if they sent Jacob into the field to hunt and kept Esau around the camp stove?
How might it change a person’s life, or a whole peoples’ trajectory if they were labeled, that is known for, who they could be, rather than who they appear to be? God, after all, changed Jacob’s name to “Israel,” a name-change declaring who Jacob could be! God is a name-changer.
There are so many people, so many of us, who have allowed ourselves to be defined by the labels we have been given, the labels imposed on us as children, or as teenagers, or young adults… (i.e. Stubborn, Lazy, Bossy, Baby Sister, Overbearing, Crazy). And we are still acting and reacting as if those labels are neon signs glowing above our heads. It’s time we stop living with labels we’ve outgrown! Stop believing what people used to say about you and believe what God says about you. Paul reminded the early Christians in Rome, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ HAS SET YOU FREE from the law of sin and death.”[6] The Spirit of the law through Christ HAS SET YOU FREE from the labels of a sinful past. Freedom in the Spirit means there is liberation in allowing ourselves to be re-labeled by Christ, renamed by the God who has made you in their own image. That’s who you are and whose you are. But not only you. Your friends and neighbors too. It’s the community of Christ’s obligation to nurture new identities in one another. And the way we do that is by imagining a new label above every head: “child of God” / “made in My image.”
Our students went to camp this week where the camp pastor told them they were prophets for this new day. That new label was given to them and now we, their faith family, have the responsibility to continue nurturing that message (identity) in them. But they have a lot of old and false labels to overcome, to set aside, in order to believe this new truth about themselves. They will believe who they are by the way we treat them, the words we say to them.
Robert Frost wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Folks today might say, “Family is where you go to work out your $@#* (stuff).”[7] The commitment to be boldly inclusive means we are okay with getting people’s stuff on us in order to accept them, make room for them, and be in relationship to them. Faithfully thinking, means we will think before we speak and be good stewards of our words to and about each other. Progressively Baptist means we are committed to honest examination of our past mistakes so that we don’t repeat them generation upon generation.
Using the sticky note attached to your bulletin, write a response that you can bring to the altar during the hymn of response, or take with you to keep thinking about. What is a label you’ve been given, that you no longer want to accept and want to let go? Or perhaps you need to let go of a label you have assigned to someone else.
Let me leave you with this simple prayer by Macrina Wiederkehr:
O God help me
To believe the truth about myself
No matter how beautiful it is[8].
[1] Notes Common English Study Bible
[2] Schlimm, Matthew, Working Preacher commentary on Genesis 25:19-34 July 2026
[3] Schlimm
[4] Garnaas-Holmes, Steve, Unfolding Light Worship Resources
[5] Buechner, Frederick, Peculiar Treasures, “Esau,” and “Jacob” 1979
[6] Romans 8:2
[7] Garnaas-Holmes
[8] Wiederkehr, Macrina, Seasons of Your Heart, Prayers & Reflections 1985