Scripture: Genesis 30: 25-43
Sermon: God the Prankster
Topics: Laban, Farming, Humor
Preached: February 3 pm 2008 Vesper, Woodlawn
Rev. Mike Abma
GENESIS 30: 25-43
When Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, ‘Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. 26Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you know very well the service I have given you.’ 27But Laban said to him, ‘If you will allow me to say so, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you; 28name your wages, and I will give them.’29Jacob said to him, ‘You yourself know how I have served you, and how your cattle have fared with me. 30For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly; and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?’ 31He said, ‘What shall I give you?’ Jacob said, ‘You shall not give me anything; if you will do this for me, I will again feed your flock and keep it: 32let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and such shall be my wages. 33So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.’ 34Laban said, ‘Good! Let it be as you have said.’ 35But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in charge of his sons; 36and he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob was pasturing the rest of Laban’s flock.
37 Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the rods. 38He set the rods that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering-places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, 39the flocks bred in front of the rods, and so the flocks produced young that were striped, speckled, and spotted.40Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and the completely black animals in the flock of Laban; and he put his own droves apart, and did not put them with Laban’s flock.41Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob laid the rods in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the rods, 42but for the feebler of the flock he did not lay them there; so the feebler were Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s. 43Thus the man grew exceedingly rich, and had large flocks, and male and female slaves, and camels and donkeys.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
I think one of the first movies I ever saw in the theatre was The Love Bug in 1968 maybe 1969. Remember the Love Bug? Dean Jones plays this down-and-almost-out race car driver. Buddy Hackett plays his oddball friend and mechanic. And Michelle Lee plays his steadfast girl. They pin their hopes on the most unlikely of cars – this 1963 Volkswagen Bug that seems to have a mind of its own. The villain in the movie is the snooty, wealthy, English car enthusiast, Peter Thorndyk (played by David Tomlinson) who will stop at nothing to beat the Bug and finish first. It remains that most popular of the Love Bug movies because it is your classic “little guy finishing first” and “rich, powerful villain” losing in spite of pulling every fast one out of his bag of tricks. It is fun. It is funny. And because the good guys are quite good, and the bad guys are clearly bad, it is a classic Disney film.
But what if the two sides competing are both a bit shady?
Take, for instance, all the recent Ocean movies:
Oceans 11, Oceans 12, and Oceans 13.
Here are movies where all the characters are thieves, or casino owners, or less-than-law-abiding citizens. So who do we root for then?
Why, we root for the “little guy” thieves, or at least the “good guy” thieves.
So in the case of these Oceans movies,
we tend to like George Clooney
Brad Pitt
Matt Damon
and their oddball band of thieves
better than we like the casino owners,
or their thieving competition.
The fun in all of these movies is how
this rather loveable lot of thieves
outwits and outfoxes
their often richer, meaner, nastier competition.
They are all crooks,
but even among crooks
there are the good crooks and bad crooks.
LABAN AND JACOB — Negotiation # 1
The story of Laban and Jacob is more like an Oceans movie than a Love Bug movie.
Laban and Jacob are both deceivers, manipulators, tricksters, and crooks.
But in chapters 29 and 30 of Genesis,
Laban has everything,
and Jacob has next to nothing.
The one thing Jacob has is God’s promise to be with him.
and that makes all the difference.
So between these two tricksters,
we side with Jacob.
We also tend to side with Jacob
because Laban is rather mean.
Laban was mean when Jacob really wanted to marry Laban’s daughter Rachel.
Jacob and Laban are negotiating things – round 1:
Laban says,” Sure, Jacob, just work for me for 7 years.”
Jacob works for 7 years.
A wedding is planned.
And what happened?
Laban put a veil on Leah, had her walk down the aisle, and Viola, Jacob married Leah instead of Rachel.
When Jacob said, “Hey, what’s going on. You tricked me.”
Laban slickly replied, “In these parts, we always marry the older daughter first.
But I’ll tell you what. In a week, you can marry Rachel too.
Just work for me another 7 years.”
What could Jacob say?
So Jacob worked for Laban a total of 14 years.
In that 14 years Laban’s flocks of sheep and goats exploded.
In that 14 years, Jacob’s family exploded: 11 sons and 1 daughter.
Wow.
LABAN AND JACOB — Negotiation #2
But Jacob never quite trusted Laban after that.
Our reading deals with Jacob and Laban’s negotiations, round 2.
Now Jacob has a bit more to negotiate with.
He has been working for Laban for 14 years and he threatens to leave.
Laban clearly does not want Jacob to go.
The last 14 years have been the best Laban has ever had.
So Laban says,
“Listen, let me tell you a secret. I’ve learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you.”
“Learned by divination (fortune-telling)?”
“Divination?”
What a joke!
All Laban would have to do is look outside his tent flaps to see the size of his flocks.
All Laban would have to do is compare the size of his flocks now to when Jacob arrived 14 years ago.
So why this talk of “divination?”
Because Laban, like so many business types,
is sure he, and he alone, has figured out the secret to his success.
Jacob knows he is in a much better negotiating position than he was 14 years ago.
So when Laban says, “Name your price”
Jacob begins by saying, “Nothing. You don’t have to pay me anything.”
Doesn’t that sound generous, big-hearted, even magnanimous?
But really, it is not as good as it sounds.
What we have here is typical Biblical negotiating.
Remember when Abraham was negotiating a price with the Hittites for a field to bury his wife Sarah. Abraham says, “Name your price.”
And Ephron, the Hittite says, “No, no, I will give it to you.”
Abraham replies, “No, I insist, I will pay for it.”
Ephron: “Well then, a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver, what is that between friends?”
What is that?
A LOT of money!
So when Jacob says, “You don’t have to pay me anything,” this isn’t literally true. This is simply part of the negotiating dance and drama.
When he said it, Laban no doubt braced himself and thought, ah-oh.
Jacob then names his price: all the spotted, speckled goats and sheep.
There are several reasons Jacob names this price.
1. There is the practical reason.
This way, both Jacob and Laban could go through the flocks and easily separate Jacob’s from Laban’s.
2. There is the negotiating reason – Jacob is pretty sure Laban will jump at the offer.
Laban has been herding sheep and goats all his life.
He knows about the birds and the bees.
He knows the spotted and speckled offspring are the exception, not the rule.
He will assume he is getting a GREAT DEAL!
3. There is also the playful reason Jacob picks the ones that are spotted and speckled.
In Hebrew Laban means white.
Therefore, all that are laban, belong to Laban.
All that are not laban, belong to Jacob.
As predicted, Laban jumps at the offer.
“GREAT!” he says in verse 34, “It’s a deal!”
For the next 6 years, Jacob’s wages are all the spotted and speckled offspring.
Laban wants to make sure this sweet deal is even sweeter.
So he quickly goes through all the flocks separating out the spotted and speckled goats and sheep and making sure they are a long way from the flocks Jacob is taking care of.
In spite of this trickery, the flocks Jacob is taking care of produce piles of spotted and speckled offspring.
Why is that?
A FARMER’s QUESTION
I grew up on a farm.
I learned about the birds and the bees and breeding at a young age.
On the farm I grew up on, we had 3 main breeds of pigs:
Most were Yorkshire – pinky-white typical pigs
(like the one in the movie BABE).
But every once in a while we would get a boar, that is a male pig,
of a different breed.
Sometimes these boars were of the Hampshire breed –
they were black and white.
Sometimes they were of the Duroc breed — they were reddish brown.
I learned that Duroc boars and Yorkshire sows produced pinky white piglets with
red patches.
I learned that Hampshire boars and Yorkshire sows produced pinky white piglets
with black patches.
But Yorkshire boars and Yorkshire sows almost always produced only pinky white
piglets.
That is the way breeding works.
So I have always been intrigued by how Jacob got his spotted and speckled flock from a flock of white sheep and goats.
When I was younger, I thought the way he did it was by peeling those branches of popular, and almond and plane tree and laying them in the water.
I thought that somehow these branches caused the baby lambs and kids to be born speckled.
So I experimented on our pig farm.
I peeled branches of a popular tree, a chestnut tree, and a hazel tree
(that is how the KJV translates these trees)
I laid them in the water troughs of the pens of our Yorkshire pigs.
I waited for spotted and speckled piglets to be born.
So what do you think happened?
Did we get spotted and speckled piglets?
No.
We got pinky-white Yorkshire piglets.
No spotted or patchy ones at all.
Now back to Jacob.
Thinking that the white branches in the troughs caused the speckled and spotted offspring is about as ludicrous as Laban thinking that divination caused him to know that Jacob was a blessing to him.
I think the branches are just another comic and hilarious touch to the story.
You see, each of the trees mentioned in Hebrew sound a lot like Laban’s name.
And they are all peeled “white” – which is Laban’s name.
So it is almost as if Jacob lines up all these “little Laban’s” before the flocks,
sticks out his tongue,
and says, “Nah, nah, Laban. I’ve got the last laugh!”
OUR FUTURE IS IN GOD’S HANDS
Why did Jacob’s flocks grow and grow?
Because of the blessing of God — that is the answer, plain and simple.
Jacob may still be far from perfect in these chapters,
but the one thing he does is entrust his future to the Lord.
After 6 more years of service, for a total of 20 years with Laban,
Jacob is ready to obey God and move back to Canaan.
He is again ready to entrust his future to the Lord.
Over his lifetime, Jacob slowly learns that God can use a crooked person
like himself to fulfill his promises and further his kingdom.
That is something we continually need to hear:
Not only that our world belongs to God;
Not only that our communities belong to God;
Not only that our lives belong to God;
But that our futures belong to him too.
What this passage shows is that God has a sense of humor.
This chapter makes us smile.
All Laban’s schemes are funny.
And even Jacob’s branch peeling is, really, useless.
Another place in the Bible that shows God’s humorous side is Psalm 2.
It is about the only place in the Bible that shows God laughing.
There he is laughing at all the kings of the world.
He is laughing at all those who think
they are high and mighty;
all those who think they are rich and famous;
all the plotters and schemers of this world;
everyone who takes themselves, and their wealth, and their success too seriously.
God laughs at them.
The Psalm ends with these words:
Happy or blessed are all those who take refuge in the Lord.
Blessed are all those who take refuge in the Lord.
Blessed are all those who entrust their futures to the Lord.
What does this look like?
I recently read about something that had happened in the inner-city of Detroit.
As you know, the inner-cities of many places in America become places of turf warfare.
Drug lords with their gangs, mark off neighborhoods,
and claim them as their own.
The temptation is to throw up our hands and sigh, “There goes the neighborhood!”
But it takes a certain trust in God to try do something about it.
Apparently a group of older ladies in a church in inner-city Detroit decided to do something.
The decided to simply set up lawn chairs at strategic corners in the neighborhood,
And then all day and long into the night
they would sit there,
with a glass of lemonade in one hand and a video camera in the other.
Within a week, the drug dealers were gone!
The neighborhood started changing, for the better!
The funny thing is, these little old ladies admitted that they didn’t even know how to use the video cameras they were holding.
As Christians we are called to stride into the world and into the future with a certain degree of confidence:
Confident not in some little white branches lying in some trough – they did nothing;
Confident not in some little silver video-cameras held in our hands – they did nothing too.
But confident that this world belongs to God,
We belong to God,
And whenever we take refuge in the power and grace of God
We will be blessed.
Amen
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