Siblings
Thumbnail image: “Esau meeting Jacob” by George Frederic Watts
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
July 12, 2026—Proper 10A
Genesis 25:19-34; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
A number of you have likely seen the photograph on the bulletin cover before (see: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-250-washingtondc-picture/). People are already saying the word Pulitzer for the way it captures not only a moment in time, but also a reality of being Black in America.
It was taken on a metro train in DC, on July 4. We don’t know where the Black woman in the center of things is going to. But the masked men who surround her on every side are members of the white nationalist group, Patriot Front, on their way to or from their protest march, in which they carried American and Confederate flags, and loudly proclaimed their intention to “Reclaim America.” To reclaim America for white people, that is.
Of course, they have the right to yell whatever they want, and there were only 400 of them. But there’s also no avoiding the fact that these kinds of beliefs are being expressed more and more openly, and are increasingly (and disturbingly) reflected in federal policy. Did you happen to see that Labor Department ad campaign, with picture after picture of muscular blond men gazing purposefully at the horizon, over a tagline straight from Nazi propaganda, "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage." Or the Department of Defense, whose decisions to fire and refusal to promote women and people of color make it clear that, in their belief system, a woman or black man could not possibly be qualified: it must have been DEI.
There are people in this country, some in very powerful positions, who clearly want to return to a system in which only white men have meaningful power. Alongside them are those who are simply willing to exploit people’s fear and uncertainty, offering up non-whites and immigrants as the source of any and all problems.
Which has never been a difficult pot to stir. Scapegoats work, because they allow human societies a focus for all our anger and desperation, as well as offering a possible solution: get rid of those people, and everything will be fine. There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with the system. It’s just … them.
And there’s always, always an available “them.”
You see it from the very beginning of human history: in our origin stories, in cultures across the world, there are explanations of how different groups came about. Some of these origin stories stake out deliberate hierarchies, such as the Chinese story of the mother goddess Nüwa, who created the nobility by sculpting them out of fine yellow clay, but simply flicked pieces of brown mud off a string to create the common people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCwa). The inequality, sometimes, is literally baked in.
Biblical origin stories, in contrast, do not divide humanity at the point of creation. It’s only as civilization develops that the people of God begin to ask: who are we, with regard to the people next door?
The story of Jacob and Esau is one such story, and the biblical response is: we are siblings. Siblings who might well have been striving with each other since we were in the womb, jockeying for primacy of place, wanting the bigger portion, willing to steal the bigger portion, as we compete for our parents’ love and God’s favor. But still … siblings.
It is remarkable in its honesty. As the story of Jacob and Esau becomes the history of Israel and Edom: two brothers, two tribes, eternal enemies fighting over the land, ever seeking that extra inch of space in the backseat. Admittedly, there are undertones of righteousness vs unrighteousness that creep in. But even as Esau is portrayed as the hairy one, the hunter, the less-civilized … he still receives a blessing from Isaac, even though Jacob has stolen the one that should have been his birthright. And Esau prospers. Perhaps even more significantly, it is his ability to forgive Jacob which eventually mends the rift between these two brothers. As Jacob puts it: Esau shows him the face of God.
We are siblings. All emerging from the same womb, made of the same stuff. And because we are siblings, we can be sure that we’ll be in competition; and sometimes we’ll fight; and too often we will fear that we are getting less than our brother or sister. When that gets bad, we might well be tempted to cheat, as Jacob did. To steal; to take far more than our fair share and to justify that with a narrative about our own deserving and the other’s undeserving.
That is the reality of the world that the bishop reminded us that we must tell the truth about. But that reality is not the whole of the story, or the end of it. God invites us to remember that none of this is actually about righteous vs. unrighteous, about sculpted clay vs. gobs of mud, about superior vs. inferior races or cultures. That human tribes and races and classes are all just as simple and as complicated as sibling rivalry. That Jacob was a trickster, so that he was richly blessed but also had to leave his homeland, and it took him a long, long time to make his way back. That Esau was perhaps too simple and too trusting, but he too received blessing, and was able to make a life with that. That our life with God will eventually bring us back to those we have wronged (as it brought Jacob back to Esau); that our rival might well be the one who shows us the face of God; and that we never run out of chances to make things right.
After the brothers embrace, estranged for so many years, Jacob returns some of the riches he’d gained from the blessing he stole from Esau: a sizeable herd of goats, sheep, cows, camels and donkeys. Esau protests that it isn’t necessary, but Jacob insists.
Making it right, acknowledging the theft, asking forgiveness. Reparation.
Because God’s ways are not the world’s ways. The world’s ways are so often those of a life lived in the flesh, encouraging us to blame others and justify ourselves, to separate and dominate, to take and keep whatever we can. Whereas a Life lived in the spirit calls us to understand and recognize the other, to embrace and forgive, to acknowledge the damage and do our best to make it right.
None of us was on that train in Washington DC, with all those masked white supremacists surrounding one Black woman. But all of us live in the country, the world in which such things happen, in which they are done as a reminder and as a threat. Such things are the thorns that choke, the boots that stomp down the soil in the hope that nothing else will be able to grow.
But the Sower keeps on sowing. Keeps throwing out handsful, bucketsful, silos-ful of seed. Onto the hard ground. Amidst the thorns, the path, the good soil. Everywhere. Knowing that some of it will be trodden underfoot; some of it will be taken by the evil one and twisted into lies; much of it will not take root.
But the Sower keeps sowing anyway. Sending us out, planting us in a million different ways in a million different places. Our money used to support and nourish rather than dominate and extract. Our voices raised to condemn oppression and exploitation. Votes cast on the side of mutual flourishing, weighted towards those on the margins. Even our deliberately puzzled “I don’t understand what you mean” in the face of a comment we’re expected to laugh along with. “Why would you say something like that?” All of them: seeds scattered by our extravagant, patient God.
And every shoot that breaks through the hard ground is a reminder that no matter how serious or powerful the forces of separation and domination are, life and love will continue to work its way through. May we be good seed, my friends, willing to be sown as many times and in as many places as possible. Amen.