Fred Craddock is probably the best teacher of preachers in the last century. Now I have to admit to you that part of why I like him is because he is a Georgia mountain boy.  He is very folksy in his preaching style. One of the things that Fred Craddock taught was that there was one sermon in every preacher. And that you have to find out what that sermon is and then find interesting and different ways of preaching it. After a little over two years here, I don’t know if you’ve figured out what my sermon is. My sermon really is that the sacred is in the common everyday things of our lives. That somehow in this culture that emphasizes glamour and artificial ways of entertaining, we often look for God in this big spectacle.  We forget that God is right here in what we perceive as the dullness of our everyday life. We wait to see what the next MTV rock video is going to be. What bells and whistles it has. We wait to see what the next movie is going to come out with great special effects. I’m personally waiting for that third Lord of the Rings movie; because I want to see what they do that will just mesmerize me.  We are dazzled by that.  We often think that what razzles and dazzles us is real. We mix that up with our Christian faith, when in fact God is right there in the common parts of our living.

Several years ago I was sitting talking to a group of friends. One of my friends who had gone off on a weekend spiritual retreat was talking to another one of my friends. He told her that she has to go on this retreat because she would never experience God the way she needed to unless she went on this retreat. It was the spiritual high of all highs.  I told him that was the most insulting thing I had ever heard in my life. He said “what do you mean?”  I told him that I can name the four times that God touched my life in the most profound way. It was at the birth of each of my children. Now what I want to say to you about that is I expected that after the first one it would all get dull, you know the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, one – old hat. Somehow with the birth of each of those children, and the uniqueness to which they came into this world, was this wonderful mystery of the understanding of the true gifts that God gives us in life, and an overwhelming sense of what that meant to me at the given moment. So, I want you to listen to my preaching and take to heart that sense of where the sacred really happens to be, and to know that we gather here on the Lord’s Day that we might know God’s spirit; not just for the hour that we are here, but for what happens in our lives after we leave here.

Now I want to get back to the thing about children.  When we look at the roles that we have played in our children’s lives, I think all of us as parents come to understand that there were times that we did a really good job, and times we were off the mark. It’s a really kind of a mix. And the first time that something really bad happens to our kids we probably have a tinge of guilt of something that we did wrong.  But in the mix we also have the assurance that God is with us in our parenting as God is with us in everything else. I didn’t do everything right as a father and probably won’t in the days to come, but there were two things I was very clear about from the time each of my children were born. That was that they did not belong to me. They weren’t mine from the very time they were born. They were these unique precious children of God that I got to nurture and care for and take care of for God over a period of time and sometimes that was scary. You see it wasn’t really what I wanted for them that mattered the most. It’s how God wants them shaped. And I think that’s a bigger calling. It wasn’t so much whether I wanted one of them to be President of the United States or anything that might put slight pressure on them. It really was what God intended for their life, and to know what that was is always a mystery. I think before I had children that I made this assumption that children were born as a blank slate, and that you molded them into whatever it was that they were going to be. And that they came out at eighteen just exactly like you had molded them. I can honestly say to you as I look at each of my children, from the day they were born, I saw something of their personality that I can see even now. Somehow God had made each of them uniquely who they were, even Rachel and Hannah who are the twins. People will ask how you tell them apart. Any one in our family will look at them strangely because, if you know them, you know that they are both very different people. And they will let you know that if you mistake one for the other.

I’m going to go back for a moment to the story of Jacob and Esau and say to you that I’ve got one more Genesis story to go before we get to the fall programming. Someone asked me if I was going to preach the Old Testament and that’s it.  No, I’m going to flip back and forth, and I’m not going to tell you what I’m preaching next time. You just have to show up to find out. But as we look at the story of Jacob and Esau we see again the raw and primitive honesty of Genesis. We see this family life played out in all its strengths and all of its weaknesses. And when I read that Isaac loves Esau and Rebecca loved Jacob it pains me to think that parents would do that. But it’s honest and says it like it is. As we look at that story we see that even as these babies were in the womb of the mother, there was a pull and a tug and a struggle over what their future was going to be and that somehow God’s hand was in their future. As we look at this story, and it is true of most of the wonderful stories in the Bible, there are certain perceived rules about how life is going to be. And then God comes into the middle of those perceived rules and turns them upside down. In ancient times the oldest son inherited everything. And there was a reason for that.  If you have twenty children and you divide your wealth up evenly between the twenty of them, within two or three generations there will be no family wealth. A good modern example is that none of the Rockefellers of this generation have the money that the first one had. By the way they aren’t doing too bad either, but none of them have the money that the first one had because it has been spread out.

My great grandfather’s father was a very wealthy man in central Virginia. And in that region they still follow the practice that the firstborn son inherits everything. Of course the notion was that the first son would inherit everything and then he would take care of the rest of the family. Well, in my great grandfather’s case, that’s not what happened. And, unfortunately, my great grandfather was the third son. So when his father died his oldest brother took all the inheritance and told the others to go find something else to do. So there are very wealthy Crouch’s in Virginia, and they are related to me but they are not my family. We are often told we should run someone against them when they run for political office, which they do all the time. So you see the practical purpose of that firstborn’s right. And you also know the awesome responsibility that went with that. It wasn’t just the privilege of getting to get all of the cash, but what went with it was the managing of the family money so that all of the family could be taken care of. But even in that primary mode of operating as a society often God has different plans. We see that the one who ended up as the most responsible and having the biggest impact on the world that God has created was not the oldest but the youngest.

The other thing that we see in this story is something that we all know as parents. Esau and Jacob, from the very beginning, were unique and different from each other. There are things that we can admire about Esau.  Esau is this tough guy, a man’s man; a burly guy who goes out and catches things and brings in the water. But we also think there are things that he could be better at. To be quite honest, as we say where I grew up, he was dumb as rocks. He came in hungry and gave up his whole birthright just so he can get the stew that his brother was fixing. On the other hand, we look at Jacob who was a very sophisticated man who was to become the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. People of Israel still bear his name. But, for all of his cleverness, I’m often disturbed by his character. He was a liar and a cheat.  He not only stole his brother’s birthright, he also stole half of this father-in-law’s fortune. Yet, somehow in the middle of all of that gross humanity, God had a plan for both of them. When we read on into the story, what it says is that Jacob would be the father of Israel, and that Esau would be the father of the Edomites, the neighbors of the Children if Israel. It isn’t as important, from my perspective, which one got the better deal as it was that God had a unique place in life for each of them. We live in a culture that is always looking at what someone else has and trying to figure out why they have it and we don’t. And that it’s unfair, right? Rarely do we look at what we have and think about how it’s unfair that we have it and go give it to a bum or something. I don’t see that happen too often.  It’s interesting how skewed our view about that is.

The interesting thing to note is that God has created you and me as who we are. Some of us are born with quick minds and some are not. Some of us are born, from recent studies, to be fat and some to be skinny. Some of us are born with white skin and some of us with dark skin.  Some of us are men and some of us are women. But the truth is that God created us uniquely exactly as we are. And I do believe that God has something in store for each of us in our lives that has to do with who we are and who God has made us to be. We spend far too much of our lives trying to figure out what God made someone else to be and what they might do to make that happen. And we spend too little time looking at who it is that God has called us to be and seeking to become that person. And when I think about that, I think about the artificial divide that is often in many places in our lives. Sunday morning has to do with worshiping God, and then we go home and live the rest of our lives because we’ve kind of done the God thing while we were sitting here in church. Perhaps we should rethink that. What we should really see and understand is that what we come here to do is to remind ourselves that we are people of God. That God is present and God is with us in our lives all week long. God is not just here in this place of worship. God is out there with us every day of our lives. There may be things that you like and don’t like about yourself, but ultimately God has created you to be who you are. And you have to figure out what God has called you to be and to do. It may be He has called you to be the father of Edomites or it may be He has called you to be the father of the Israelites. And either way it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are who you are, and God has called you to be who you are in that situation. So maybe you were called to be the man’s man. You know–the tough guy, the one that goes out and hunts and fishes, and spits tobacco. But whatever that is, that is what God has called you to be, and to live that as fully as you can, seeking to know God’s will. Maybe God has called you to be a sophisticated urban progressive man. That’s alright too, but who ever it is that you are called to be, first and foremost, you must see in the mystery of that calling that God’s hand is in your life, and that you must seek to see where that hand is leading to you.

My children will often ask me what I want them to be when they grow up. And I’ve told every one of them that what I want them to do is to find a passion for something in life that they can not live without and give their lives to that. And I don’t know what that is. Because I make the assumption that it’s not my will that’s important in their lives. It’s their listening in the deepest part of their souls so that God can show them where it is. And no, I can’t wait until they’re seventy years old and I’m what, 103 or something. Then I can see what wonderful things God has done for them. And I hope the same is true with you. Let’s bow our heads for a word of prayer.