July 17, 2005

Scripture Reading:   Genesis 28:10-22

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Identity theft is a term we are becoming very familiar with now days.  Identity theft is when someone steals your identity.  They have taken possession of your credit card information, social security number, bank account, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and other personal data.  Once the thief gets this information that makes up your identity, he or she will go on a shopping spree of gargantuan proportions.  You will be left to deal with the financial, legal, and psychological bills.

Newsweek magazine in the July 4 issue has a cover story about identity theft entitled, “40 Million Hacked Credit Cards – Are You a Victim?”  Perhaps some of us in here have already been victims of identity theft, or will be victims.  The article sights the victim’s story.  For instance, Daniel Bulley is a Chicago based engineer, 42 years of age.  In the eight weeks before he caught on, his identity thief charged $3,000 on credit cards and spent an additional $1000 on telephone cards.  Bully spent hundreds of dollars sending out certified letters to close accounts and is haunted by visions of overseas hucksters.  Or, there is a 23 year old single mom, Chevonne King-Lewis who checked her credit report three years ago.  She found that someone had opened more than 25 credit card accounts, taken out a loan and even filed for a marriage license in her name!

It use to be that to get this kind of information, people would have to rifle through dumpsters, or steal your wallet, or hang around when you were withdrawing from an ATM machine.  Now they go to the source itself.  They are hacking into companies that are safeguarding, or should be safeguarding, millions – sometimes billions – records on their computers. 

What a nightmare.  Who here has ever had their wallet stolen or lost their wallet.  It is an awful experience.  You have to cancel everything in your life, credit cards, ATM cards, your insurance cards, checking account, library cards, drivers license, etc.  It is not only a hassle.  It is unnerving.  It is unnerving because of how exposed you become financially.  But, also it is unnerving because you really have no identity for a while.  You can’t cash checks because you have no photo i.d.  You cannot even access your hard earned cash in your checking account.  You can’t drive.  Strangers in banks and stores have no way of knowing who you are or believing when you tell them.    If it is this bad when your wallet is stolen which you discover in a matter of minutes, hours or at worse a day.  Imagine if they got of hold of every piece of information about you without your realizing it for months.  It gets me scared just talking about it.

Identity theft happened in the Bible too.  Genesis talks about two brothers, Jacob and Esau, who were twins.  Their father was Isaac, blind and very old, and there mother was Rebecca.  Esau was born only a few seconds earlier than Jacob, but that few seconds made all the difference.  Esau became the older brother.  Being the older brother in those days meant that you got your father’s blessing.  This meant that you got the lion’s share of the inheritance.   So Jacob in cahoots with Rebecca decided to steal Esau's identity.  One day Isaac asked Esau to hunt some game and cook him his favorite meal.  Isaac was getting ready to give Esau his blessing which in those days meant the inheritance.  Rebecca was listening in and told Jacob what to do.  Jacob went and got some food and prepared his father’s favorite meal.  Isaac was blind so they tricked him by putting animal skins on Jacob to make him feel hairy like Esau.  He put on Esau's clothes to make him smell like Esau.  He lied to his Father when he was questioned because his voice and used Esau's name.  The identity theft was complete, Jacob cashed in on Esau's veritable social security number, credit rating, and most of all time of birth.  Like the banks who give thieves house mortgages because they know how to fill in the blanks with your information, Isaac gave Jacob Esau's blessing.  It didn’t take long for Esau and Isaac to figure out what Jacob had done.  It was a nightmare for Esau.  He begged his father to give him a blessing too.  Yet, it couldn’t be retracted.  Back then when the blessing was given the words could not be taken back even if it was given under false pretenses.  Today, people go to the police for the outrageous crimes, but they can’t really do anything either.  Identity theft is a tangled and complex web.  There are too many jurisdictions involved and yet no jurisdictions really involved.  Mostly the victim has to fight identity theft all by himself or herself.  Talk about angry.  I would be enraged if it ever happens to me.  Esau was enraged too.  He was so enraged he wanted to murder Jacob.  Jacob heard of Esau's plans and fled.  Who can blame Esau?  How much lower can somebody get than to steal not just some money, not just their car, or their jewelry, but their whole identity. 

Justice should be done right?  This is the bible after all.  If Isaac can’t do anything about it, what is God going to do about it.  This is where our scripture passage for today begins.   Jacob was a refugee.  He was on the run.  He had stolen Esau's identity, but where had that gotten him.  He was a refugee.  Lost in a wilderness, fleeing to his mother’s relatives.  He was fleeing for his life.   Here is where God comes in. 

 Read passage….

 What on earth is God doing at this crucial point?  The identity thief, Jacob, stopped for the night and had an amazing dream.  He saw a ladder going all the way to heaven with angels ascending and descending.   He heard the voice of God who said, “I am with you and I will keep you.”  There is a woman who bought a house in Rialto Californian under the name of Jamie Llanes who lives in Chetek Wisconsin.  If I was God I wouldn’t show up in the Californian’s dream saying, “I am with you and I will keep you.”  No way!  I would show up in Jamie Llanes’ dream and reassure her.  Who wrote the Bible anyway?  Isn’t the Bible suppose to be concerned about morality?  When will Jacob get what he deserves?  When will Esau get justice?   What is God doing here reassuring the bad guy? 

 The answer is that the point of the bible is not morality.  Even though it is certainly concerned with morality,  the point of the Bible is something different. The answer is that the Bible is about faith moving in raw experience.  It is about being lost and God showing up in the darkness. 

 We are all identity thieves in one way or another.  No, we might not be stealing people’s wallets or social security numbers.  But, we steal identities that are not our own in many other ways.  For example, on T.V. there is an add  for a debt reduction agency which points out one kind of identity theft.  In the add is a smiling man mowing the landscaped lawn of his half million dollar house.  In a sing-song voice you hear him thinking as he is smiling, “I have a great life.  I have wonderful kids, great wife, a 4,000 foot house, 2 suburbans, a motor boat, I am a member of the country club…  How do I do it? “  Still smiling the man continues, “I am in debt up to my eyeballs.  I can hardly pay my minimum payments.”  Without changing his expression, smiling, “Can anybody help me?”  So many people want to live the affluent American dream.  That is the expensive American dream.   They see their neighbors getting stuff.  They want to get stuff.  They see catalogs with happy families on motor boats, they want to get motor boats.   They see their neighbors joining the country club, they want to join the country club.  They see their neighbor getting a 30,000 Suburban Car, they want one too.  This is the American dream after all, and aren’t they Americans.  So if they can’t afford the American dream, they steal it, or at least charge it.   Ultimately they too end up like Jacob lost in a wilderness with no identity at all.   It is a wilderness of debt, bill collectors calling, and constant anxiety.  Instead of the American dream, they are in an American juggling act. 

That is one kind of identity theft.  Another kind of identity theft that I encounter in my counseling practice is extramarital affairs.  Often the person has a fantasy that goes with the affair that they wish they were married to this other person, or the fantasy that this other person is so much better than their spouse in a certain way.  The person is funnier, sexier, smarter, nicer, richer…whatever.  They feel trapped in their married life with an old set of problems and want this new life, this new identity.  So, in a way they steal the identity by surreptitiously having an affair.  Yet, what I see happen all too often is that they end up feeling more trapped than they ever thought possible.  Their life is managing the loose canon of the affair and the person in it, hoping no one discovers what is going on, hoping that she or he won’t get mad and blow the whistle on them.  They feel torn, guilty, angry and lost.  They feel a lot like Jacob a refugee between both people and dissatisfied with both relationships.

Or, so many people live vicariously through the lives of celebraties.  For instance, people love to follow what is happening to royalty of Europe.  Little girls dream of being princesses, grow up and read magazines about real princesses.  It is what fuels and pays the paparazzi.  Remember Princes Diana of Great Britain?  She was the envy of all the world.  She was everything everyone dreamed about.  She was beautiful, fashionable, charming.  But, her life unraveled before the world’s eyes.  She had bouts of depression and rage.  She self injured.  She was tormented and chased down by reporters constantly.  She was not happy.  And she ended up dying in  a car accident which was driven by a drunk driver and was being chased by paparazzi.  Yet the fantasy of her lives one.  People still long to find every detail about her as if to claim her identity for their own. 

All of us are identity thieves in one way or another.  All of us envy something someone else has, we long for the life on the other side of the tracks and seek the greener pastures which always seem to be just beyond our reach.  If we can’t get it legitimately well, we will go to just about any length to get it illegitimately.   We can’t stand the though of being just second class citizens, the runt of the litter, forgotten, and nobody.    We know how Jacob felt. 

That is why I am so glad the Bible is not just about morality.  The Bible is not just about God rewarding the good guy and punishing the bad guy.  The Bible is about the promise of God and God delivering on that promise no matter what.  God had promised Abraham that he and his descendents would be blessed.  He has a son Isaac.  And Isaac had Esau and Jacob.  Talk about dysfunctional family!  We’ve got stealing, envy, cheating, murder, the whole shooting match.  Yet, God delivers on his promise anyhow.  The promise that God will always be with them.  What was God doing showing up in the identity thief's dream?  Because God was making the point that Jacob’s identity is not dependent on his father’s blessing but it is dependent on God.  Jacob’s identity is through God and God alone. 

Our true identity is not in our wallet or on a computer data base somewhere.  Our true identity is not our social security number, our license picture, our credit cards, our date of birth, our mother’s maiden name.  Nor, is our true identity the status items we own, the fabulous romance we live out, the fame we command.  It is not our titles, it is not our degrees, it is not our occupations, it is not our looks.  Our true identity is found in God’s blessing to us and God’s promise to be with us.

Jacob is alone, fleeing for his life, and sleeping in the wilderness.  He dreams of angels ascending and descending.  Heaven has come to be on earth.  The despairing judgments of human existence, the impossibility of gaining the right identity, are pushed aside.  God commits himself to the empty-handed fugitive, the identity thief.  Likewise, God commits himself to us.  God promises to be with us and it is a promise of royal dimensions.  In Psalm 91:11-15 it is proclaimed:  For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways…because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him;  I will protect him, because he knows my name.  When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honor him.

God is with us.  This is the promise of God.  This alone is our identity.  This is our identity which no thief can ever take from us.