Faith.In.Life

Fair Wages

Chapter 31 is a fairly long chapter talking about Jacob’s ongoing interaction with Laban, his father-in-law.  All in all, Laban as a land owner and noble of the land has failed be an honest manager.  You may remember that when Jacob first was working for Laban as the manager it was offered that if Jacob only work for 7 years, he would have Rachel - but this was but a bait and switch.  Ultimately, Jacob ended up working 14 years before Laban released the gift.  But as Jacob has stored up his own wealth through his own family which equally comes with building up his own inheritance, Laban’s son begin to notice and wonder just how fair their father is with this brother-in-law.

As Jacob considers what to do knowing good and well that to abandon Laban is to give up his pay-check, God continues to provide to Jacob as a fulfillment to his promise to Abraham.  God offers through the voice of an angel certain portions of the heard that will have a higher productivity level then the others and even tells Jacob to abandon Laban without the master knowing.  Counterintuitively from what we have read thus far about the disagreements and jealously between Rachel and Leah, when Jacob tells them they are leaving the women agree as if one voice.  But they do not agree with him because of anything God had done, but the fact that Laban has withheld his daughter’s inheritance, treated them as foreigners or slaves, and squandered the very price Jacob paid for them to be his wives.  

So often times people will say the Bible is outdated or does not speak into today’s culture.  And yet, one of the heaviest hot button issues today is what is a fair wage and what should the minimum amount be.  Their is an odd emphasis on what is deserved rather than thought towards what is economically feasible.  We equally here shouts of equal pay across gender and race instead of the common held capitalistic notion where the pursuit of the American dream can create the opportunity for anyone to go from an unlivable wage to even that of a rich person.  

On one hand, the Bible is far ahead of its time because in the culture in which Genesis is written the women would have had no voice or right to any inheritance, and yet the writer takes the time to acknowledge how the women were treated unfairly.  Equally, the Bible suggests that despite was is economically feasible or not, God still provides - Jehovah Jirah.  So often times, though, we will look at unfair situations and believe we have to take things into our own hands to somehow do what only God can do.  God is the one who acts on Jacob and his wives’ behalf by essentially multiplying the loaves and the fishes through showing favor upon the “streaked, speckled, and spotted” animals.  

While it is difficult to trust that God will provide in different situations, we equally know that God has a way of taking care of his own.  Much like Abraham and Sarah, though, even in the midst of God speaking his provision to Jacob and his wives, Rachel fails to trust God’s words and in way of getting back of her father steals his “gods,” or statues of his idols.  Even still, YHWH appears to Laban to tell him to ‘Leave Jacob alone,’ and further provides for Jacob and his wives.  What is more, though, is even in seeing God provide for Jacob, once Laban is determined to find his idols Jacob seems to go from trusting in God, to trusting in his own effort alone saying “all his time I have slaved for you, I am deserved what is owed!”  

All of this sounds incredibly familiar to current talk of our day.   Yet, it seems like the failure of faith is when the people believe themselves to be both servant and provider - the belief that our work will be that which provides for us.  Yet, Jacob doesn’t just end with himself as the primary agent of serving and provision.  At the end of his complaint about Laban we read in Genesis 31:42;

42 In fact, if the God of my father had not been on my side—the God of Abraham and the fearsome God of Isaac—you would have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen your abuse and my hard work. That is why he appeared to you last night and rebuked you!” 

That is, if God is ultimately our provider and vindicator, than it is strange for we who are Christians would somehow claim anything we believe owed to us.  I think about my life on two different fronts in this regard.  

First, I have always said that I do not believe in what is known as the health and wealth gospel in terms of naming and claiming any material status, but I will equally say that I have never been in want.  What I mean by that is in seminary I had a class mate that came out of the insurance industry.  He would talk about how he was on the fast track to retirement by the time he would have been 40, but then God called him into the ministry.  So he would joke about going into the pastorate for ‘time and the money.’  Where in fact in this vocation you will put in quite a few hours for certainly not the greatest pay.  And yet, even in the times where we are working far too hard and realize that we are not sure how we are going to cover this bill or that, God has a way of providing in ways that both Kadra and I couldn’t possibly imagine.  Even when we feel like we have to bring in more money or somehow demand what we believed owed to us, God simply reminds us that sometimes we need to step back and see just how God works.  Of course Jesus said knock, and the door will be opened to you - and what that means is that rather than complain about what is owed, simply look to the God who supplies.

Second, when we experience injustice of some sort where we are wronged and have every right to be angry it would be easy to pull a Rachel and try to make off with something that is near and dear to the people who have wronged us.  We could live into an eye for an eye mentality that sense we were wronged for so long, we should turn the tides and right that wrong with a wrong done to the other in return - even doing so 70 times over.  And yet, Jesus said when we are wronged that we should actually forgive the amount of times that we might want revenge.  I always say that God’s kingdom is an “upside down kingdom” because the first shall be last, and in order to be forgiven we too must forgive.  In the upside down kingdom we are called to be above culture.  In today’s culture we will suggest that extreme wrongs need to be done to the other exactly because we at one point were a victim of some sort.  Yet, this is not the solution.  

This is not the solution - and as we will lay out in our Lenten season - Metanoia is.  Metanoia is the Greek word for repentance calling us to go from doing it our way to encountering God’s way.  Both parties of Laban and Jacob combined with his wives believe that vengeance is theres.  But that is not God’s way.  God calls us to a convent oriented living where we are called to be a blessing because we have first been blessed.  We are called to create markers in our lives (or as they put it in Genesis 31 build a “witness pile”) to how God works in our situations.  In doing so, we do not see ourselves no longer as the person who will right the injustice or somehow vindicate the oppressed, but rather we are told to “call on the god of our ancestors to serve as a judge between us.”  We know that “vengeance is mine says the Lord,” just as much as God cares for the least of these.  In God’s upside down kingdom, the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  So let us humble ourselves in those places where we may want to be prideful, sit back, and know that God is working even when we cannot see Him moving the mountains in front of us.