Sibling Rivalry: Extreme Version, Part 1 (July 12, 2026) Genesis 25.19-34

Anyone who has the pleasure of being around me for more than ten minutes will notice two things: 1.) I like to talk. A lot. and 2.) I love history and the more obscure something is or was, the better I like it and the more apt that I am to tell you about it. You may not care, but you will be informed. 

I also like watching movies when I get the chance. Many of these movies are the standard fare of blockbusters or popular flicks of no importance. Others are ones that require one to pay attention throughout the viewing. And some are, of course, guilty pleasures. Then there are movies I may watch once and hate, especially if they are “based on a true story,” which often means, “We kept the actual names of the characters, but everything else is pure fantasy.” But sometimes one of those films comes along and I think about what it would have been like had this actually occurred in the historical narrative. One such film is The Lion in Winter.

It was an award-winning play that was adapted into a 1968 award winning film starring Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn. In this film, O’Toole and Hepburn portray King Henry II of England and his estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitaine who come together during a Christmas celebration in which Henry is to announce his heir to the throne, a story that is pure fantasy but is also a fascinating study in shrewdness, diplomacy, and treachery. Both Henry and Eleanor have their favorites whom they wish to take the throne and both scheme with said son to make sure this takes place. The sons, of which there are three, have their own ideas: the youngest, John, is Henry’s favorite, while the oldest, Richard, is Eleanor’s with the middle son, Geoffrey II, angry and resentful of being left out of the intrigue, plotting his own course to gain the throne. As you can imagine, things soon spiral out of control with all three of the sons in the movie ending up imprisoned by Henry who later allows them to escape. It ends with no clear answer to what will happen and with Henry and Eleanor wishing each other well as she is taken back to her imprisonment, knowing that they will meet again next year and the game will continue. It is a classic film that illustrates that humans in the 21st century are the same as they were in the 12th century who illustrate that they are no different from humans in Biblical times. What is old is new again.

Today we heard a story that is an “oldie but a goodie.” If you weekly follow the lectionary, you will know that the past few weeks the First Testament readings have come from Genesis and tell the story of Abraham and begin to tell the story of Issac. Today is a continuation of this cycle, we hear about the story of Issac, yet if you listen closely, you will notice that Issac’s story is not that long and that this is really the beginning of the Jacob/Joseph saga.

What we truly have in this reading is two stories. One involves Issac and Rebekah, the second is the story of their sons Esau and Jacob. Both stories are illustrative of the power of God and God’s choice. In each story there is also the human element, allowing us to know how we all would sometimes act.

In the first story we are told that this is to be the story of Issac. We are told that he is the son of Abraham and married to Rebekah. Rebekah was barren, a tragedy for women in that day and time. With no children to give to her husband, what good was her life? I’m sure this weighed heavily on the camp as they all could remember what occurred with Abraham and Sarah. Abraham, who was still living, probably thought the same and I wonder if he tried to give Issac advice on whether or not to do as he did, take another woman to be the mother of a child. If he did consider that option, I’m sure he was soon reminded about how that situation ended and prudently decided to quit trying to give advice on matters out of his control.

In the end, Issac does the sensible thing and prays to God for Rebekah. This works because she soon becomes pregnant. But all is not well. The pregnancy is a difficult one. It was so difficult that Rebekah exclaimed, in the words of the NET translation, “If it is going to be like this, I’m not so sure I want to be pregnant!”[1] She then turns to God to enquire what is happening to her.

She is told in an oracle that, “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.”[2] There will be twins born for whom it appears that any room is too small for them to be in together. They already fight each other in the womb, and it will continue after they are born. Two nations that will be kin to each other, but will bicker, fight, cheer on the other’s demise, and try desperately to be free of the other. Even when the ancestors are long dead, their descendants will carry on the rivalry. In other words, siblings.

We know the siblings as Esau and Jacob. They are fraternal, not identical, twins. Esau is dark complected and hairy. Jacob is known to be one who wants to get ahead in the world and is willing to try to get past his (marginally) older brother to do so. While they are growing up, the twins most assuredly have a rivalry going.  If you are familiar with The Smothers Brothers Show of the 1960s, you remember Tom’s signature line to his brother Dick, “Mom always liked you best!” This was absolutely true of the parents of these boys. Isaac, who saw in his eldest what he never was, a man of action, loved Esau, who became a “man’s man”, something along the line of John Wayne or Emanuel Hayden (someone who I did not know about until I looked up outdoorsmen), a hunter who brought back wild game to for Issac the gourmet to enjoy. Jacob in contrast was a homebody. He preferred to stay in the camp and when he did go out, he would tend the flocks of Isaac (this will come in handy for him shortly). He may not have been the “man of action” Esau was, but Jacob was a thinker and, in his own way, a doer. Rebekah loved him, though we are never told why. Perhaps she pondered over the oracle given to her by God which she may or may not have told to Issac. Either way, she loves Jacob and later shows herself to be as shrewd and cunning as her favorite son proves to be later in his life. Given how the parents felt toward their favorites, I am positive that there was just a teeny bit of tension in the camp, since it is certain that the favoritism of the parents was well known. How Esau and Jacob felt about being neglected by the respective parents is never made known to us. Both were good at their respective professions and seemed to not have an issue with the other’s. But theologian Miguel De La Torre gives one of the best descriptions of what was happening here. He states: “Isaac’s family, on the outside, seemed like the perfect nuclear family, a monogamous relationship with two sons, each successfully engaged in his own profession. But like the façade worn by many families today that appear a bit too perfect and ideal, dysfunctional relationships are undermining family stability, leading all to an eventual breakup. Parents pick their own favorite child, loving them at the expense of other family members. Rather than seeking the good of one another, brothers take advantage of the situation to advance their personal interests. One leaves the testimony of Isaac’s family troubled, hoping and praying that our own families fail to emulate Isaac’s.”[3]

We never know anything about Esau and Jacob after their birth until we come to the story today that occurs when they are adults. Then, boom, things get interesting.

One day, Esau comes in from hunting with nothing but a weariness in his whole body. He is, understandably, hungry. Jacob is in the camp cooking a pot of lentil stew, perhaps to impress Isaac, that smells delicious. Esau asks for some of that (literally) “red, red stuff” (a play on Esau’s name) that he may have mistaken for a “blood stew,” a stew with meat. In the text Jacob gives a ready answer to the request, but I wonder if he was so ready. In Frederick Buechner’s book The Son of Laughter, he imagines the two men playing a game, a bantering back and forth of what the soup is worth to Esau. Is it worth any of the hunting implements? A girl?  Respect and love from a brother? No, it is none of these. Finally, Jacob says (according to Robert Alter) “Sell now your birthright to….me.” Jacob knows what he is doing. He is asking Esau to give him the portion of the inheritance that Esau will receive when Isaac dies. It will be a double portion of everything Issac possesses and will also make him the patriarch of the family. Not only that, it will indicate through whom the people of the promise will come. Jacob knows this and asks for these things. Perhaps he knew of what God had told Rebekah. It is plausible as she loved him more than Esau. But for whatever reason, Jacob asks for it. Esau is incredulous. Not because of the request for the birthright that is rightfully his, but because he is hungry. He is famished and says that he is about to die and if so, what good is the birthright to him then? But Jacob wants to make this a legal transaction. He has Esau swear, perhaps the putting his hand under Jacob’s thigh to make the oath binding. Esau does this without any protest or hesitation and gets his bowl of soup. He then, “…ate and drank and rose and went his way…”[4] The narrator gives us a very clipped and fast paced ending of this story. Esau shows just how little he thought of his birthright by wolfing down what he paid for and then going about his business. One wonders if Jacob reported to his mother what occurred and what she thought about all of this. Issac, who should have been aware of what was happening, is nowhere to be found in this story.

Nobody comes out looking good at the end of this story. Esau is seen as a dullard who despised tradition and family interests all for the sake of a bowl of vegetarian stew. Jacob is seen as cunning and taking full advantage of someone in distress.  Why God would have used either twin to fulfill the promise is beyond our comprehension and yet God uses Jacob to fulfill the promise and even makes a nation of Esau. This story, the beginning of the Jacob saga, shows us once again how God, through people who in ways that to us are scandalous, continues to work. John Goldingay states: “I often reflected on our having two sons, born of the same mother and father, more or less brought up in the same way by the same parents, who turned out as very different people, even from birth. Within humanity in general, there are people who always want to be number one, and people who couldn’t care less. There are people who want to be president, or have a hit record, or win a TV competition, or be their parents’ favorite child, or be top of the class, or get into the Guinness Book of Records, or write a best-selling novel (or theology book). Then there are people who couldn’t care less, have no ambitions, have no great accomplishments on their vita, have no game plan for their lives; they are people who just muddle along. One is not better than the other. Both can be a danger to themselves and to other people. Their ambition or their lethargy may mean they ruin their own lives or fall short of what they could be, and/or that they fail to serve other people because of their self-concern.”[5] The stories of Esau and Jacob are seen here in this statement.

Sibling rivalry is still with us today. Anyone who has siblings or more than one child knows this. We all want to get the best of our siblings and sometimes we do. But do we consider the consequences? Esau and Jacob clearly did not as this text is only the beginning of a story that ends with a family ripped apart, one son fleeing the rage of the other and being a refugee for almost 20 years, and a mother, who had schemed to make sure the younger got the blessing, never again seeing her beloved son. There are times when we do something that hurts our siblings and it may take years to heal the rift. And all because we have to come in first, or have the best poster, or the best costume, or….well, you fill in the blank.

Isaac and Rebekah do not come off much better. Both parents stoked the rivalry in favoring one son more than the other. This is hard for all parents, and I know that some children feel resentment toward another sibling because of how that sibling is treated by one or both of the parents (This shows up later in the saga displaying Jacob’s not having learned the lesson that bad things happen when there is favoritism). Who knows? This whole story could have turned out differently if parents trusted God and not themselves. But again, this story illustrates the mystery of how God works. God uses people who are flawed and will do things that cause us to wonder why God chose them. And then we look at ourselves, perhaps thinking we are better than those in the story and realize that they are just like us, with us doing the same things they did so long ago.

We in the church have sibling rivalry too. I at one time had a calendar that was all cartoons entitled Church Chuckles. One of the cartoons showed two churches side by side, one huge, the other quite a bit smaller. The sign in front of the smaller church proclaimed, “Half the size, but twice as righteous.” We may laugh, but that is how we act sometimes toward our siblings in Christ. We believe that we have the correct answers; that someone using “that” Bible cannot really be a believer; that someone who listens to “that” music must clearly be degenerate; that if someone likes this carpet, then we have to leave. How we treat one another in the church is sometimes what makes people not want to be a part of the church. They say that if this is how they treat one another, ones whom they say are family, then we want no part in it. One story that illustrates how we treat each other: there was a Baptist and Methodist church in a small town that stood side by side. When summer came, they would open their windows to, hopefully, make things cooler. One evening the Baptists were singing a rousing chorus of Will There be Any Stars in My Crown? to which the Methodists next door, upon hearing this, rose quickly and began to sing No Not One. We laugh, but why? Are we so sure that we are the only ones who have it correct? Should we not reach out to our siblings in our churches and other denominations and work together for the good of the church and the world? If we did this then there may be more who would say, “I want what they have.” 

But there is also how we treat our siblings in the world. Anytime we exclude anyone for any basis we go against the will of God. One of our confessions, The Confession of 1967, informs us that: “God has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family….Congregations, individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize their fellowmen, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess.” We are called to put away the rivalries that divide us. Esau and Jacob could not do that. The sons in A Lion in Winter could not. In both cases, families were torn apart for years. What might happen when we work together to end our rivalries? Reconciliation across the spectrum will occur when we stop saying “I want what is yours. Give it to me.” Let’s put away the rivalry that divides us and look upon our siblings with the same love that was in Jesus Christ. Only then will we move forward. Amen.

[1] Biblical Studies Press. The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible. Biblical Studies Press, 2005. Print.

[2] New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition. Friendship Press, 2021. Print.

[3] De La Torre, Miguel A. Genesis. Ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. Print. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible.

[4] New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition. Friendship Press, 2021. Print.

[5] Goldingay, John. Genesis for Everyone, Part 2: Chapters 17–50. First edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. Print. Old Testament for Everyone.