Well, the year isn't over, but I don't think there's much chance that what I heard on Christmas Eve will be bested for its completely uncritical superimposition of contemporary preoccupations on an ancient, remote culture by any other thing I might yet hear before January 1:
The patriarch Jacob "was alone, a fugitive, and a disgrace to all. He himself felt like a failure. ... a poor, helpless, and forsaken man." The prophets might have gone so far as to liken Jacob to a worm, but Genesis does not.
This is the introspective conscience of the West at work on the text, the self-doubt which has nearly reached its apogee in Europe and America and explains its decline. It deliberately glosses over the evidence about Jacob, who consistently to the end strives with the God of Abraham and Isaac, acquires a large family and great wealth, and throughout retains the promise and blessing of God, who in fact frequently deigns to visit and contend with him.
Pretty good for an aplastic man on whom people could not quite get a handle, unlike his brother who had made his mark on the world but of whom none of these things would be said. Jacob's virtue was that he was clay in the potter's hand. The latter may be in control, but the clay has properties of its own. Of Esau, well, let's just say he set up early. His passion had led him elsewhere.
At Christ Church, Presbyterian Church in America, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
