from The Barrel

Sunday July 11, 1993

Key Scripture—Genesis 25: 19-34



“To the victor go the spoils.” And one of the most important spoils of battle is the right to tell the story. The victor tells the story. The vanquished, if they are mentioned at all, are cowards, knaves and fools. The winners get the glory. Their cause was noble and just. And God usually turns out to be on the side of the winners.

As I read the story of Jacob and Easu I was painfully aware that it was Jacob’s story. It was the Hebrew story that was written from the point of view of Israel or Jacob. Were the story told from the point of the Edomites, the descendents of Esau, they would have seen it differently. The injustice perpetrated on Esau would not have been passed over as the eccentric choice of a capricious God.

But let me go back a bit. As I read this story in the Old Testament I tried to hear what the core meaning the story was attempting to convey. I had to listen very hard. The story kept telling me that Jacob was chosen by God to have power over Esau. Before they were born it was destined that, “the elder shall serve the younger.” According to the story God chose Jacob from the very beginning to be the one who would come out ahead. And when, at the end of the story Jacob preys upon his brother’s weakness and shamelessly victimizes him, the story concludes, “Thus Esau despised his birthright.” Which, of course, makes him the one to blame for his brother’s cold-blooded deceit and extortion. Yes, the game of "blame the victim" goes back that far.

Is that how God works? Is that how a just God operates in our world? Does God choose people to be victors and condones their deceit and trickery, their wanton disregard for the common rules of decency? Is it okay to be mean and unprincipled, to be cunning and conniving, to be ruthless and sinister if one is chosen by God?

I have difficulty with that concept in the Old Testament. God chooses Abraham and calls him to leave his home and country and to go to a land that God will show him. God makes a covenant with Abraham that God will give him the land. The land, which, incidentally, was inhabited by civilizations as old as Abraham’s. God chooses Abraham and gives him the homeland of the native peoples. But Abraham’s promised heir is long in coming. When Sarah can’t produce a child for Abraham she designates her Egyptian slave, Hagar, to be the surrogate mother of Abraham’s son. Hagar gives birth to a son, Ishmael. Ishmael is not to have the inheritance. God belatedly gives a son to Abraham and Sarah. Isaac becomes the legitimate heir and Ishmael, the bastard, is driven out with his mother, the Egyptian slave woman. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, God's favorite, has twelve sons, who later became know as the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Jacob’s clan migrated to Egypt where his son Joseph had come into high office. The Pharaoh had enslaved the Hebrews, whom God later delivers from slavery and leads them into the Promised Land. But the land flowing with milk and honey is not sitting vacant and ready for the privileged group. No. There are inhabitants in the land. There are Amorites, Amalekites, Jebusites, Hivites, Perizzites. These native people, however, do not seem to matter. God promised the land to Abraham and his descendents. So the process of conquest and settlement proceeds under the direction and with the blessing of God. The native peoples must give up their homeland, must cede their birthright to the invading hoardes who come under Jehovah’s banners.

Please excuse me if I sound a bit skeptical, but I have a lot of difficulty with that interpretation of history, and with that theology. I have difficulty with a concept of God in which God champions the cause of the arrogant and steps on the oppressed on the way to giving the privileged ones their inheritance.

I was raised in a British colony. After Columbus had discovered the island and claimed it in the name of God for Spain, the native people who knew their island was there all the time were victimized and oppressed. Their birthright was taken away from them by deceit and force and violence. Slaves were brought from Africa, to produce tropical harvests for God’s chosen people in Europe. The African’s were not only physically abused, they were separated from their homeland, they were removed from their families and clans, they were deprived of their culture and language. But these more ancient civilizations were destined to serve the younger.

When slavery was no longer economically feasible my ancestors were brought from India as indentured laborers. They were promised land and a lump sum, and a return passage to India after five years. But most of them could not read, and they came to the land where, they were told, money grew on trees. After they had served their indentureship most of them continued to work on the cocoa and sugar plantations because they were largely unlettered and did not know their rights. Their land went to their bosses, and to the missionaries. They, too, sold their birthright, for a bowl of lentil stew. And the British and colonial history I studied in school told me that God was on the side of the British.
I always had difficulty standing up and singing,

God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King.
God save the King.
Send him victorious, happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us.
God save the king.

Even as a child I knew it was not right. He was not my king. I had difficulty praying to God to send him victorious, happy and glorious long to reign over us.

But in the Caribbean the native peoples had been vanquished. Most of them had been destroyed. And in our native lands our people had been vanquished. And the spoils went to the victors. And they wrote the history books I studied. They told the story. They told my story from their perspective.

And in this country the native peoples are struggling to hang on to the treaty rights into which they were tricked as their birthright was taken from them. They are struggling to reclaim their culture, to regain their traditional religion. Even the “mess of pottage” which they were forced to accept they must struggle to hold on to today.

And in the southwest the expanding United States took over huge chunks of Mexico and the victors drew a border and separated people from people, and family from family. And today Mexican people must sneak across that border, to enjoy some of the birthright that they lost with their borders.

I could go on to talk about the economic exploitation in the border areas, and in the Third World countries who continue to sell the birthright of their resources for the mess of pottage of promise of economic gain. We could go on and talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement and who is getting the birthright and who the mess of pottage. But I want to turn back and ask, How does God figure in all this? Is God really the santifier of the status quo? Is God really the Providence of the privileged? Does God really give power to the powerful to determine the destinies of the vanquished?

Is not the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob also the God of Hagar, of Ismael and of Esau? Is the God of Israel not also the God of Edom, and of the Amorites, Perrizites, Hivites and Jebusites? Is the God of the British, the French and the Dutch not also the God of the Caribs, the Arawaks, the Indians, the Zulus, the Ibos and Yorubas? In Old Testament studies we often repeated, “How odd of God to choose the Jews!” How odd, indeed! How odd of God to choose the British, and the United States of America. But then, to the victor goes the spoil. And it is the victor’s history, sociology and theology which prevails with the conquered. It is the victor’s god who gives the victory. But the victor's god is not necessarily the God of the Universe. Certainly not the God of love and of justice I have come to know, who has made of one blood all the families of the earth, whom we address as our Mother and Father in heaven.

Worship the Lord your God and God only shall you serve.

May God grant us a vison of that realm of love, justice, and freedom where God reigns in eternal glory. And to that kingdom, may we give our allegiance.