Often in scripture we find people using the phrase, “the Lord your God”, usually when speaking to their parents.  This is a common and necessary transition in our own faith development, the transition from living out our parent’s faith to claiming it as our own.  For some, this happens in adolescence as we become adults and make our own decisions.  For others, this process doesn’t really happen until much later in life, when we begin to recognize our faith as a foreign thing and have to either discard it or claim it.  For still others, we never really ponder this question and continue to live out our parent’s faith throughout our lives.

For Jacob, God had to do a lot to draw his attention to this question.  As a sneaky, manipulative man, stealing his brother’s birthright and then blessing, he seems to live without God for much of his early years.  This is confirmed in his conversation with his father Isaac in v.20: “The LORD your God gave me success.”  But then God intervenes, yet another mark of His grace in this story.  Jacob sleeps and God speaks to him in a dream, confirming His Covenant with Jacob as He had with Abraham and Isaac.  And so Jacob is confronted with the reality of God, perhaps for the first time.

Yet even after seeing God in a vision, even after receiving the promise of God’s blessing, Jacob still seems to be trying to wrestle more out of God.  Like so many, his early faith is transactional – you give me something and in return I give you something.  “IF God will be with me, watch over me, give me food, give me clothes, and keep me safe, THEN God will be my God and I’ll tithe.”  It won’t be until much later that Jacob’s faith moves from transactional to relational – I follow You because I love you, not for what I get out of it.

It’s an important point to ponder today: Is your faith your own or are you still living someone else’s faith, a parent’s or a mentor’s?  Is your faith in God transactional (I give something, I get something) or relational (I love God so I follow)?  To sum it up, in the words of the Covenant Church since it’s very founding, “How is your walk with God?”

 

Jesus loved everyone with whom He came into contact.  In today’s passage, Jesus is face to face with a very motley crew, and yet He loves every one in a tangible way.

First, it’s the leper.  Leprosy was a contagious disease that killed off the nerve endings in your body, leaving you without feeling.  And without feeling, you never knew if you had hurt yourself.  That means that the smallest cut or turn of the ankle would be left untreated and fester.  Often lepers were known for missing the tips of their extremities from these unnoticed infections.  Given the contagious nature of the disease as well as the Old Testament laws against interacting with them, people avoided lepers.  Pharisees, who prided themselves on their obedience to the Law, wouldn’t even allow their shadow to fall on them or anything unclean.  But not only did Jesus interact with this man with leprosy, he “reached out His hand and touched the man.”  And in so doing, Jesus proved that it was His cleanness that was contagious, not the disease, and so the man was healed AND made clean.

Next, it’s the centurion.  A Roman soldier in charge of 100 men, this was one of the oppressors of Jesus’ people and a gentile.  Given the natural anger and fear one feels toward one in an oppressive class as well as the Old Testament laws against interacting with unclean gentiles, people avoided centurions.  But not only did Jesus interact with this man, but He offered to go into the man’s house.  The man showed his faith by announcing his unworthiness to have Jesus come to him like so many others had to – he was, after all, a man with soldiers under his authority – but also that a simple announcement that his servant was healed was all it took.  And so Jesus healed his servant and proclaimed this centurion an example of faith.

Then came Peter’s mother-in-law, many who were demon-possessed, and others who were sick.  Not one was a Pharisee, or a disciple, or an Apostle.  There seems to be nobody with whom Jesus would not interact, nobody He wouldn’t heal, nobody He wouldn’t love.  Would that we could be as open to those “unclean” in our society.