One More Thing with Pastor Tim Burchill 4.29.2024

The End of the Jacob Series
    What I find most comforting about the biblical person of Jacob is that though Jacob makes great strides in his faith and wisdom, he never quite gets all the way there.  Even after all his trials and travails he ends up duplicating the same damaging favoritism in his own family that was so divisive in families of his grandfather and father.  Jacob was his mother’s favorite; Esau was his father’s favorite.  Isaac was in, Ishmael was out.  And then Jacob goes and shows off his affection for his son Joseph at the expense of all his other sons.  (You know the whole multi-colored robe story.)
    The reason I find this comforting is that I sometimes wonder how I could be following Jesus for so long but not be further along than I am.  I sure hope I’ve made strides, and I know I’ve gained wisdom, but shouldn’t I be more accepting, loving, and graceful by this point in my life?  One of the great strengths of our Methodist/Wesleyan tradition is the emphasis we’ve always put on what’s called ‘sanctification.’  Sanctification is just a fancy way of describing the process of getting a little bit better, a little more like Jesus, day by day and year by year.  Of course, the moment we turn our lives over to the leadership of Jesus is pivotal.  Our conversion or baptism or confirmation can be a powerful experience of new life and grace, but they are just the start of the process not the end.  How we follow the leadership of Jesus—how we bear the fruit of the Spirit--and how we grow in our ability to become like him, that is what ultimately defines us.
    Jacob is someone who is always becoming and never quite arriving—at least not completely.  God makes gain after gain in Jacob’s heart and behavior, but there is always some small part of this man which remains stubbornly unconverted.  As a preacher it might be a tough task to draw an impressive ‘before and after picture’ for Jacob, but he is an honest and somewhat typical example of the life of faith.  There is a part of me that really wants God to complete the good work begun in this patriarch—to finish Jacob’s story with a sterling example of holy living.  Then I realize that God has done just that—whether I can point to any particular moment or not.  The power of God’s grace does its work whether it is visible to the world or not.
    So over the several weeks of this Tarnished Halo Society sermon series I’ve come to an appreciation for Jacob.  His life is far different from my life, but as I follow his ups and downs in the book of Genesis, I see a man who recognizes the power and purpose of God; a husband who loves passionately; a father who is more likely to give into his children than hold them accountable; and a child of God who recognizes that he is who he is and has what he has because God has been good to him, not because he has been good to God.  Jacob is not someone I need to emulate.  Lord knows I have enough of my own foibles to worry about.  But Jacob is someone in whom I can see God’s love for an imperfect person—God’s unwillingness to ever give up on him.  And that, sisters and brothers, is a wonderful insight that makes an imperfect person like me extremely happy.