TWO WOLVES INSIDE YOU
A Sermon by
Genesis 25
19These
are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham was the father of Isaac, 20and
Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah,
daughter of Bethuel the Aramean
of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban
the Aramean. 21Isaac prayed to the LORD
for his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD granted his prayer, and his
wife Rebekah conceived. 22The children
struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is to be this way, why do I
live?” So she went to inquire of the LORD. 23And
the LORD said to her,
“Two nations are in your
womb,
and
two peoples born of you shall be divided;
the
one shall be stronger than the other,
the
elder shall serve the younger.”
24When
her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. 25The
first came out red, all his body like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau. 26Afterward
his brother came out, with his hand gripping Esau’s heel; so he was named
Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.
27When
the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob
was a quiet man, living in tents. 28Isaac loved Esau, because he was
fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.
29Once when
Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. 30Esau said to Jacob,
“Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished!” (Therefore he was
called
And the children struggled within her. I personally have never had the pleasure of
carrying a kicking fetus in my body. So I
can’t compare it to the other “joys” of our painful human predicament. In fact, most women I know would rather that
men just stay out of the discussion completely when it comes to comparing notes
on the struggles of childbirth, especially carrying a baby into the last
trimester during the ravaging heats of summer.
And they would certainly prefer that we men refrain from the old “can-you-top-this”
game when comparing pain from the more private parts of the male anatomy with
childbirth. So, no, I readily admit on
my part—and for all males past, present and future—that we have no idea what Rebekah was going through as not one but two babies were
using the inside of her rib cage as a soccer ball. And Rebekah said,
“Just kill me now.” Or in Old Testament
language, “If it is to be this way, why
do I live?” But as a theologian, and
amateur observer of human life, I have to say, yes, Rebekah,
it is that way…and always will be perhaps.
Paul the Apostle might say that the twins inside Rebekah represented flesh and spirit,
that flesh and spirit compete for the souls of mortals. In Romans 8 Paul says that giving in to
fleshly demands leads only to an animal existence and death, while setting your
mind on the spirit leads to peace and true life. But it is a tougher battle than Paul
implies. One would need a finer blade
than the laser scalpel of a robotic surgeon to excise all the bad and leave all
the good inside each of us. Just look at
our twin contenders in our text today.
Neither Esau nor Jacob could wear the white cowboy hat of a good guy or
the black cowboy hat of an outlaw, because there was some of each in both of
them.
Esau was born first, reddish and hairy, with Jacob greedily
grabbing onto his heel. Esau the hunter
so disdains the life of nomads, the life his father Isaac has built up, that he
sells his birthright as elder son to his brother one day just to get a bowl of
vegetable soup. Ingrate…(you know kids like him, don’t you?), he despises the
family business that provides for his very existence. But Jacob the quiet, conniving herder is
happy to take that birthright, thinking nothing about the welfare of his own
brother. Later Jacob wears a goatskin to
trick his blind father into blessing him instead of the hairy Esau, thus
stealing Esau’s blessing as well as his birthright. Jacob is a liar and deceiver, greedy and
ambitious. And further on we read that Esau marries a Canaanite woman named Judith and
“makes life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.”
Gee! Which one is the
good guy for whom we are to root? Esau
is associated in tradition as the ancestor of the Edomites,
a middle-Eastern culture no longer in existence. Jacob on the other hand comes down to us as
the ancestor of the Israelites and stands in Judeo-Christian tradition as one
of our founders. And maybe that is valid
because we seem to be a lot like Jacob these days, filled with ambitious greed,
willing to sacrifice anyone to get what we want. And yet we also seem like Esau, disdainful of
the tradition that got us where we are, wanting to
shake off the values and principles of our parent’s faith and go hunting in the
wilds for game. We are like the worst in
each of the twins. And yet, at the same
time we are like the best in them—aware of God’s omnipotence, capable of family
love and compassion, true to some sense of God-given integrity. What a mess.
“Two nations are in your womb,”
God said, “and two peoples born of you
shall be divided.” No wonder Rebekah said, “If it
is to be this way, why do I live?”
I have told you before about Adam, not the first Adam, but a
counselor at my church camp when I was a teenager. One night under the shadow of huge hanging limbs
and under the mysterious brilliance of pinpoint starlight, Adam told our group
of boys that there was a war going on out there, a war between good and evil, a
war in which we all would fight, having somewhere along the way to choose a
side. What Adam neglected to say to us
that night, perhaps because he was too young himself to know it then, was that
the war was not just “out there,” it was also already inside us.
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle
that goes on inside people. He said,
"My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all. One wolf is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret,
greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride,
superiority, and ego. The other wolf is Good. It is joy,
peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy,
generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his
grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
It is more than a little intimidating to hold up the old
Cherokee’s two lists and look in the mirror.
Which do I see more often in my life?
Anger, envy, resentment, and ego? Or joy, love, generosity, and
empathy? Fortunately for us, we
don’t look too often in that mirror.
Instead we tilt it to look at others around us. A crusty old Army retiree named Sarge would always come up to me after a funeral I had
preached and say, “Bill, I want you to say those same things about me when I
die.” I would respond, “Sarge, you haven’t done any of those things. People would wonder if I knew whose funeral I
was preaching.” And he would say, “Makes
no difference, just say them anyway.”
Tilt the mirror. Let me comb my hair by looking at the handsome guy
beside me. That way we hope, “I don’t
have to actually be anything if I can
somehow trade on someone else’s goodness.”
In the same way, tilt the mirror if what I see in it looks too dark and
menacing. Let me see if I can distract
myself, and you, by pointing to the scabs and scars of others.
In this political season we have entire news hours dedicated
to probing for the evil wolf inside our candidates. I think the scandal accruing in the minds of
unthinking Americans over Barak Obama’s
name is just hilarious—and just deeply sad.
“Sounds like Osama, sounds Muslim.”
Well, the name of my Scots-Irish Protestant great-grandfather was
Fernando Socrates McDonald and that sure didn’t make him a Hispanic Catholic or
a Greek Orthodox. But it did cause a lot
of people to call him, “Uncle Bud.” And
John McCain’s getting shot down as a Navy pilot in the Vietnam War, may not
qualify him in some people’s minds for anything except a Purple Heart, but I
will tell you that those of us who wore POW bracelets in those war years prayed
earnestly every day that the person behind the name on our bracelet would one
day come home safely. And I give thanks
that John McCain was one of those who did.
We are blessed to have two decent, capable, people-oriented candidates
for president. So what does it say about
us that we can’t wait to feast on their failures or moan at their
missteps? Which wolf are we feeding? Desire for scandal, our love of seeing others
squirm and suffer, splashing around in the pool of our cynicism, which wolf is
getting fed?
Some folks think we are incapable of rising above ourselves,
that this struggle of two “nations” within us will always torment
humankind. Loren Eiseley, philosopher
anthropologist, writes, “The long history of man, besides its ennobling
features, contains also a disruptive malice which continues into the
present. Since the rise of the first
Neolithic cultures, man has hanged, tortured, burned and impaled his fellow
men. He has done so while devoutly
professing religions whose founders enjoined the very opposite upon their
followers. It is as though we carried
with us from some dark tree in a vanished forest, an
insatiable thirst for cruelty….This shadow of madness…has haunted every human
advance since the dawn of history and…may well precipitate the final episode in
the existence of the race.” Heavy words, heavy thoughts.
If I could talk with Dr. Eiseley today, I
would tell him that it all depends upon which wolf we feed.
Paul the Apostle would agree and would encourage us by
saying, “But you are not in the flesh;
you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” (Romans
8:9) About this earthly battle going on
inside us, Jesus of Nazareth would also encourage us, saying, “Take courage; I have conquered the world.”