Bringing Esau Home

I had this funny picture in my head of a freak-show barker shouting, "Come, See a Real Live Preacher".

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Bringing Esau Home

Like Isaac, did you wonder where this strange voice came from? Was this not the boy you held and wrestled and played catch with, marveling at his strong arm and growing muscles?

The body was that of Esau, but it was the voice of Jacob you heard. Jacob, smooth and slick. Jacob with his own plans and hidden agendas. Jacob, desperately needing to be blessed but knowing nothing of blessings.

Like Isaac, you trusted the body and ignored the voice. You drew me close, son to father, and you blessed me with the sacred words of our tradition and way.

What we both remember is that I came home from college, my head addled with a shiny new education and my heart bursting with a young man’s passion for Christ. I came into the modest home where I was nurtured and before the father who raised me and said some young and foolish things. God forgive me, I said that I could never live like you lived, with a nice house and all the comforts of home.

“Following Christ means leaving all this behind,” I said. "This is fine for you and mom, I guess, but I can't live like this."

I said these things never thinking how they would hurt you. You who loved Christ enough to spend your whole life on the border and in between. You stood between your East Texas culture and its horrible racism. You stood between the expectations of your family and the way of Christ. You stood on the border between the poverty of Juarez and life as we knew it in El Paso.

I have come to understand that loves meets flesh on the border and in between. And love that never meets flesh is no kind of love at all. Love must have incarnation.

I loved the poor in some abstract sense, but you helped poor people. I had a theology, but you knew what it meant to whisper God words gently into the ears of the hurting. I cared about my image, but you cared about truth and about me.

You listened to me carefully and took me seriously. You shrugged off the sting of my words and looked behind them to my passion. You bore the pain and thought only of me.

And you said, “I’m so glad that you are taking seriously the call of Christ in your life. So very glad.”

It took me fifteen years and having children of my own to understand what you gave me on that day. I have my own home now and my own family. I want to tell you that I still carry that blessing with me. I feel its power growing in my heart, and I hope to pass it on to my daughters when it is their time.

I have dreamed dreams and wrestled an angel or two. Keep the fire burning downstairs for me, for I am ready to cross the river and come home. I met Esau on the way and we are reconciled.

I’m bringing him home for Christmas this year.