“Between the Cumber and the Spirit”    Genesis 25:29-34

By The Rev. Chet Okopski,
Preached at Grace Church, Spring Hill, FL

INTRODUCTION TO CUMBER: 

Wendell Berry once wrote:  “The breath of God is only one of the divine gifts that make us living souls; the other is the dust.  Most of our modern troubles come from our misunderstanding and misevaluation of this dust.”   Esau, in God’s Word, shows to each of us the importance of navigating in this life between the divine gifts and the dust.  Sharon Daloz Parks in her beautiful essay titled: “Household Economics” teaches about what the early Quakers called “cumber.”  Cumber is the unnecessary things of life that we have come to believe are necessary.  God’s Word helps us navigate between the cumber and the spirit.  We all need that help.

There’s a neat little book by Robert Randall titled:  “What People Expect from Church.”  Have you ever really thought about what it is that most people want from their church?   Of course we come to church to worship God, but there are as many different attitudes about this as there are people here today.
 
Randall says that people bring four yearnings to Church.  Maybe you fit into one of these categories, or to all of them.  He says people come to church with the “a) Yearning to Feel Understood  b) Yearning to Understand  c) Yearnings to Belong  d) and the Yearning to Hope.”  He says that people really want: “a)  Preaching that Reaches Out   b) Teaching that Connects  c)  Administration that Cares  and d)  a Congregational Life that Embraces them.”

All of us yearn for understanding and to be understood.  We want preaching to reach out to us, where we are.   And we want to be a part of a congregation that cares.
 
My friends I am attempting to lead us as a congregation to respond to the inner yearnings of the human heart, to give preaching and teaching that reaches out and connects.  As for your part, and I believe you are doing your part, we must continue to be a congregation that reaches out to one another, and cares about one another in more than just a superficial way.

Oft times when I visit someone in the hospital from here at Grace Church, one of our members or friends from the church will come in or will have been there. Yesterday, when a woman from our congregation was taken to the hospital by ambulance, I met two of our members later in the morning on their way to see her. So I believe we have a caring community here.  And I am proud to be a part of it.

In our Scripture passage today, we study the account of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob.  At first we wonder what’s so terrible about it. But then later on we see when Esau doesn’t get his father’s best blessing that he weeps bitter tears over his decision to sell his birthright to Jacob.   I believe that Wendell Berry hit the nail on the head when he said that “most of our modern troubles come from our misunderstanding of the dust”… the dust that we are made from.   Esau put the value of satisfying his fleshly hunger over the value of the religious tradition of his ancestors.  He didn’t understand the deeper needs of life that would emerge as time went by, the needs that our historic houses of worship have been established to fulfill.  The   “a) Yearning to Feel Understood  b) Yearning to Understand  c) Yearnings to Belong  and d) the Yearning to Hope.”

Esau came in from a hunting expedition, and said to Jacob, his brother, “Let me have a bowl of your soup.”  Jacob was his twin brother, but had come out of his mother’s womb second.  This made Esau the older brother, who received the Birthright, or the right of the first born. This meant that Esau would be the one to carry on the family traditions and name.

Jacob was more than a little jealous about his 10 second older twin brother getting the birthright, so he asked his brother to sell it to him.  Esau saw no value in having the right of the firstborn, so he sold it to Jacob for a mess of pottage… a bowl of lentil stew and some bread.  When we’re young our place in community sometimes has no meaning.  The Writer of Genesis comments on this in verse 34, where He says:  “Thus Esau despised his birthright.”  In the same way some of our young people today reject historic values of the Church, like marriage, creating a generation that is currently unable to connect with each other, or to commit even to social engagements.
   
Daloz Parks writes about what the early Quakers called “cumber.” Cumber is material possessions that we have around us that we don’t really need. The English word “cumbersome” speaks to the meaning of its root word “cumber.” Today we Americans have more possessions than any generation before us.

In my lifetime I have seen the invention and proliferation of the mini warehouse. When I was a child, if someone had come up with the idea of the mini-warehouse, for people to rent to store their extra possessions, they would have been laughed at. We would have said:  “Mini-warehouse, man that’s crazy, why don’t you just sell some of your extra stuff?  Get rid of some of that junk!”  But today, many of us have extra storage for extra possessions...the cumber of our lives.

What is it that you need?  And what is it that you don’t need? (Now I’m not going to tell you what you need and what you don’t need for your life.  I have no idea.  But Jesus does.  And He will guide your to walk.)   Jesus said:  “If you have two coats, you should give one away.”  ...Is there anyone in this room, even among our children, who doesn’t have two coats?

In America we’ve gone from one coat, to two coats, to cedar closets, to storage units, to mini-warehouses.   How do we navigate amid the cumber of our lives?

I believe that we are guided by the Holy Spirit in our lives, if and when we ask for that guidance. Do you pray about what you should buy?  You should.

Martin Luther said that the Christian goes through 3 conversions... the conversion of the heart, then of the head, then of the pocketbook.  My wife and my dad were talking one day.  And the lovely Ginny said that we only watched one TV. My dad said:  “How do you do that...what if you guys each want to watch a different show?”  It made me think about how we’ve gone from one whole family huddled around a little black and white TV to several people in the same family each having their own color sets in different rooms.

Esau was a man who was seemingly UNENCUMBERED.  But then we find out that he got rid of the very thing that he should have kept.  So it gets even harder to do the right thing.  Esau liked the woods and fields, and didn’t want to lug around lots of possessions.  Jacob was the possession guy. Esau had most of his priorities right, except that when he unencumbered himself, divested himself of this birthright, he later found out that this is the one thing that he should have held on to.
 
Sometimes we have that fear... “What if when I get rid of this, then I need it?”...so we keep even more cumber.  “Thus Esau despised his birthright” is a phrase from Genesis that echoes in our modern world... “Thus” it says “Esau turned his back on the ways of his upbringing.”

And when the time came, all the tears to fill an ocean couldn’t undo the loss of the one thing that he should have treasured most.   I get the uneasy feeling sometimes that many folks today have traded their spiritual birthrights away for worldly cumber. And the thing about Esau was, the very troubling thing about the story presented to us is, that Esau seemed right at the time.

“I am about to die, of what use I a birthright to me?” he asks. And when I first read that verse, I thought, “Yea.  That’s right Esau.  What good is the birthright if you’re dead?” It’s the typical worldly response to spiritual things, and spiritual tradition. I call this phrase “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?”... I call this Cumber-logic... the logic of the world.

We’ve all heard it and even participated in it: “I can make time and a half, or double time on Sunday, who’s gonna make that up if I skip it and go to church?” This is perfect cumber logic. This logic is subtle, like the serpent. The choices of the world always seem logical in a cumber- logic sort of way.

Life, for all of us, is a series of choices. And lo, the Devil would have us be choosing between worship and the world, between church and job or recreation...and every day we live we are called into decision about our faith. Why just the other day I said to Jerry Larson, “Jerry, I hear you skipped church to go play softball.” Jerry said:  “That’s a dirty lie Reverend, and I’ve got the fish to prove it.”

As we mature in life, we begin to realize that it isn’t the big decisions that wreck our relationship with God. It’s all the little ones we make every day. Esau had no idea that a bowl of soup would haunt him all the days of his life. But then again, all of us have made decisions that have profoundly affected our lives that seemed not so monumental at the time.

Your decision to commit yourself to Jesus, to ask Him into your life, and to have a living relationship with Him is the most important decision that you’ve ever made. (I supposed I’m assuming that you have... if you haven’t let me stop right now and invite you into the kingdom of God...)  Your decision to reaffirm your faith by worship this morning is a continued reflection of your decision to accept Christ.

Many times we want to go for the big play. Another one of our baseball players came by the other day, with his head way up in the clouds.  He had hit his first grand slam home run.   Now that truly is the big play. But the big play never comes until we’ve made thousands of little ones.

It’s the same way with our faith. Phillips Brooks once preached a sermon on missions.  After the sermon a man came to him and reported that his heart was so moved by Rev. Brooks’ sermon that he wanted to go into the mission field. Rev. Brooks asked him what he did for a living. The man replied that he was an engineer on the railroad. Rev. Brooks then asked this question:  “Is the fireman a Christian?” The Engineer said:  “I don’t know.” Rev. Brooks said:  “Start your mission work there.”

Eternal steps are always small ones.  But each good small decision you make brings your life closer to the goal, to the prize, to the high calling of Christ Jesus.

The Biblical account of Jacob and Esau is nightmarish. In Genesis chapter 27, verse 34, we find Esau hearing that his father has blessed Jacob instead of him, and he “cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!”    Esau could see his bow and his arrows.  He could trust his aim.  He was a great hunter, and his father loved the venison that he brought home to eat.  He chose to trust the worldly things he could touch and feel over the values of community and family joys.  “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” he says to his twin brother.  ‘Now gimme some of that soup!!”

I think of Luke’s story of two sisters, Mary and Martha.  Martha invites Jesus to come over to her house and Jesus comes.  Martha is fixing some little crackers with cheese and olives on them and fretting in the kitchen about when supper will be done.  Mary is sitting at the Lord’s feet and listening to Him talk.  Martha is surrounded by all the cumber of first century Palestine; her kitchen, her pots and pottery, her fireplace, her cooking utensils, her great stuff!   When she sees Mary sitting there with Jesus having a good time (Luke says sitting at Jesus’ feet) she blurts out:  “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone?”   Jesus answers:  “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Esau’s cry, way back in Genesis, rings out through the ages, as he realizes that the one thing he really needed in life, the one thing he should have chosen, he has totally ignored, so now he is left out:  “When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry…”  
 
May you find your path through the cumber of life to Jesus’ feet.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.