Sermon notes for "The Blessing"

“The Blessing” August 15, 2010; Joseph series; Genesis 48

Move 1: As some of you may know, I have a collection of teen-age sports books. In fact, when I was single and seemed to have more money than I could spend, I actually scoured out of print lists and book sales to add to my collect (I gave that up to collect a wife and three daughters!).

One of my favorite football stories (The All-American, Johrn R. Tunis) begins with a game between the private school that sits up on a hill and the public school. At a critical moment in the game, two of the star players for the private school team up to cheap shot and injure the star player for the public school team. This allows their team to win.
As the player from the public school lays in the hospital bed from his injury, one of the players who injured him feels guilty. Then, he gets very angry because none of his teammates feel the least bit guilty about injuring another player. So in a rash moment, he quits the team and quits the private school.

When he goes to explain to his father what he has done, he expects his father to be angry with him. He expects his father to argue that he must continue at the private school so that he can achieve his academics goals and get into an Ivy League school. Full of dread, he explains to his father what has happened.

To his surprise, his father responds by telling his own story. A similar thing had happened when he played football in college. He tells his son that he has never forgotten the emptiness of winning by cheating. It has bothered him all his life. Now, through his son, he is able to make things right.

Maybe you remember an event in your life that you have carried with you, that has shaped how you handled things later in your life.

a. Jacob has been shaped by an event that took place early in his life – the stealing of his older brother's birthright.

1.We remember that story, of course, when Jacob, in cahoots with his mother Rebekah, trick his older brother Esau out of the birthright the older brother should have received from their father Isaac.

2.Jacob receiving his father's blessing, instead of Esau.

b. That moment shaped Jacob's life in concrete ways.
1. he had to flee from his homeland to escape his brother's and father's wrath.
2.There his life prospered and he met his wife Rachel.
3.Eventually, he even was able to return to him homeland with lots of resources.
4.He becomes the patriarch of God's people.
5.He had lived into his stolen blessing.

c.I suspect that moment when he stole his brother's blessings stayed with him in other ways as well.
1.Maybe feeling guilty toward his brother Esau.
2.maybe feeling thankful for the way his life had turned out and seeing some connection between that and claiming his brother's birthright;
3.maybe he connected what had transpired in his life with God being at work,including his receiving the birthright that should have been Esau's.

d. at this moment when Jacob stands before his two grandsons, this is more than just a grandfather blessing his grandchildren.
1.when Jacob saw these two boys, he asks his son Joseph who they were.
2.When he hears Joseph's reply, he bursts out, “I never thought I would see my son Joseph, and now I see my grandsons.”
3.A glorious moment.
4.More than that, a chance for Jacob to complete the circle of blessings.

e. In bestowing this blessing on his grandsons, Jacob affirms the the God who relentlessly works in history.

1.In a way, think how ridiculous it is for Jacob to be offering any blessing.
2.His family are strangers in the land of Egypt.
3.They are the nation so desperate to be saved that they turn to the Egyptian powers.
4.They have now given up their homeland to come live in Egypt.
5.What kind of blessing can Jacob offer his grandsons?
6.But, Jacob does have a blessing.
7.He has a reminder that they ache a hope in their God
8.The promise is still alive. God holds a future for them that is different than anything that Egypt can offer them.
9.God has not forsaken them.
10.They can look to a future blessing because God will be true to God's promises.
So Jacob dares to bless his grandsons

Move 2: but notice what Jacob does.

a. He crosses his hands and ends up blessing Ephraim, Joseph's younger son, instead of Manasseh, the oldest son, who should have received the blessing.
1.I have never done it, but this would be like me using the wrong name of a baby when I baptized him or her (Walter Brueggemann introduces this illustration in his Interpretation A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching Genesis (362)
2.The right blessing – wrong person.
3.Once again, Jacob defies patriarchal rules of that time.
2.Joseph intercedes and tries to set things straight. Imagine a parent interrupting the baptism to say, “Richard, you've got the wrong name.”
3.But Jacob will not be denied. He continues blessing the wrong grandson.
4.Again, imagine in a baptism, I ignore the parent telling me I used the wrong name and continuing.

b. How can Jacob bless the wrong grandson?
1.Is this the mistake of an elderly grandfather? The text tells us that Jacob eyesight had gotten rather poor.
2.Or is this the action of a master manipulator who has stolen a birthright himself, so would think nothing of giving the blessing to the “wrong” person.
3.Or, as some scholars suggest, is this part of the story a later edition, added by someone who noticed that Ephraim had become the greater tribe, so they wanted to retell the story in a way that would suggest God had planned this all along.
4.4. Or had God somehow told Jacob that Ephraim should be blessed, and Jacob is just following God's direction?
5.Take your pick.

c.Regardless, this story speaks to the about our God, who cannot be bound by our expectations and worldly rules.
1.Society may say that the oldest son gets the blessing, but society cannot bind God's actions.
2.WE may try to package God into a stereotype of our liking, but God will not be contained.
3.If you like your stories neat and by the book, you better skip reading the Bible.
4.If you want your world to unfold precise and orderly, find another God.
5.Or, you can choose to follow the God of Jacob and Joseph.
6.The God who can save Israel from starvation through some crazy story like Joseph's.
7.The God who offers hope to Israel, even as they are strangers in the foreign land of Egypt.
8.The God who saves the world by coming in Christ and dying on the cross.
9.Those are not neat, orderly stories – those are hard to believe, messy, can't quite figure it out stories about the God we cannot fully understand or know, but the God who loves us and saves us.

Conclusion: I I Peter, the early church is told “it is for this that you were called – that you might inherit a blessing.”
We lay claim to the calling and God's blessing.