Biography
The Rev. Dr. J. Philip Wogaman is Senior Minister of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., and pastor to President and Mrs. Bill Clinton. A native of Ohio, Dr. Wogaman was Professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., from 1966 to 1992. He is the author of many books, including Speaking the Truth in Love: Prophetic Teaching to a Broken World and his most recent title, From the Eye of the Storm: A Pastor to the President Speaks Out. He is the past President of the Society of Christian Ethics of the United States and Canada and is currently president of the Interfaith Alliance. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Claiming Our Birthright" 
  
Years ago, when I taught Bible courses in an undergraduate college, I discovered to my surprise that the students responded better to the Old Testament than to the New Testament. I think it was because of the stories! Great plots, exciting action, very interesting characters. Even after all these centuries, the characters are so believable, so much like you and me.

And so it is that we look again at the story of Jacob and Esau. The whole story is much too long for one sermon. We'll look at just one scene. It goes like this:

"Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. Esau said to Jacob, 'Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished.... Jacob said, 'First sell me your birthright.' Esau said, 'I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?' Jacob said, 'Swear to me first.' So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright."

On the basis of the story, you might wonder about Esau! Jacob's "offer" to him was, "I give you the stew, you give me our whole inheritance." Some kind of bargain! Do you get the impression that Esau wasn't too bright? Certainly he wasn't into "deferred gratification." He wanted what he wanted right now. The story becomes a kind of parable on the foolishness of giving up what is enduring for the sake of what is transitory.

A story like that can set you to thinking. How often people neglect really important things for the sake of some passing attraction. Esau really wanted the stew. That was his immediate desire. What of the big inheritance? What could matter less at the moment? He quite forgot that in that culture, birthright was everything. It was his link to the long past. It was his tie to the distant future. It was the very meaning of his humanity.

He said, "of what use is the birthright if I die?" Of course, he wasn't about to die! But even if he was, couldn't he just as well have revered the question? Shouldn't he have said, What is the use of living if it is at the cost of my reason for living?

But let's face it, we're all like Esau—at least part of the time. We can be so attracted to ephemeral things that we forget our birthright. So what is our birthright?

The most important birthright is the one directly conferred upon everyone by their birth: It is life itself. What could be more important than that? You may wonder sometimes. Sometimes you may feel like Jeremiah when, in a fit of despair, he cursed the day on which he was born. At least, you don't have to blame yourself for that. Being born is the one thing for which you are not responsible! It just happened to you, by birth. Suddenly you woke up, and there you were! But what a gift! The gift of life! Each of us is incredibly fortunate. Out of all the billions and billions of possibilities, life landed on us, and here we are. It is our birthright.

Paul's letter to the Romans makes a larger point. Not only are we given the gift of life, but along with it God offers us the gift of spirit. Listen to his words:

"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.... But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you."

That sounds a little anti-physical, but that is not the point. Paul is reminding us that if we base our whole life on the immediacies of physical existence we will lose it all—because one day we are all going to die. But God's gift is that we are more than our physical existence. We are also spiritual beings. We all can have a spiritual life that transcends our physical existence. Our spiritual nature is our greatest birthright. It is there for us to claim.

Frederick Buechner's novel, The Book of Bebb, has an interesting scene in which this evangelist named Leo Bebb is talking about his chief associate, who is called Brownie. Rev. Bebb is part charlatan himself, and part deeply spiritual, and you never know which is going to come out on top. But this is how he describes Brownie to the narrator of the story, Antonio:

"Now, you take a man like Brownie, Antonio, and you ask yourself where the Almighty went wrong. Well, I tell you it's not the Almighty went wrong, it's Brownie went wrong. The Almighty gave Brownie a life, and Brownie never lived it.... But it's not too late for him, Antonio. Even for Brownie there's hope. There's got to be. Because if there's no hope for just a single one of us, then there's no hope for any of us..."

Sometimes, like this Brownie character, we can be so wounded in spirit that we're afraid to make a move. The point is, God is right there for us, helping us claim the life and spirit we've been given. It is our birthright. We can claim it this very moment!

But more can be said about our birthright.

We also have a cultural birthright to claim. Life didn't start just with us. Before us there have been great civilizations with long histories. A vast treasure house has been bequeathed to us: Treasures of art and literature, of philosophy and drama, of music and humor. We can't have it all, but we can drink deeply from this vast reservoir of truth and beauty.

A friend of mine was a prisoner of the Germans during World War II. He was kept in solitary confinement for a long period in an isolated castle somewhere in Germany. He reports on the method he used to retain his sanity. On the walls of his room, he wrote from memory all the Bible verses and hymns and poetry he could think of, the things he had stored up through the years that now had become his best friends. That is a good reminder of how important it is for schools to help students drink deeply of their cultural inheritance—and that includes the churches as they nurture children and young people in these treasures.

This is not about elitism. Somebody else I know started an arts program in the state of Kentucky. Through the program, serious music is brought into dozens of small town schools that could never afford expensive concerts. Picture a junior high auditorium in which hundreds of young people are captivated by the members of a string quartet, explaining their instruments and introducing the young audience to a whole new world of great music. That kind of thing can happen anywhere. If only we will claim this part of our birthright.

Much has been said recently about corrupting influences in the mass media-violence, a cheapening of human values, crude sensationalism. I deplore all that, too. But sometimes I think the greater loss is the emptiness of it all. It is not enough to deplore what is there now; it needs to be replaced by some of the treasures readily available. Occasionally something really good is available in the media; we ought to encourage more of that.

Finally, this is about how we are going to use our God-given talents. It is a matter of "use it or lose it." We have to give back to God and to fellow humanity from the treasure that has been given us. We all have to make choices because we have more than we will ever be able to use. But we can make our lives count.

Herman Wouk's novel, The Caine Mutiny, contains a poignant moment. The central character of the novel is a young naval ensign named Willie Keith. He was, frankly, spoiled rotten by a wealthy father and mother. When he went off to the war, his father gave him a letter in a sealed envelope, telling him to read it when he was about to go on active duty. Weeks later, in Hawaii, Willie finally opened the letter. It spoke to him, and it speaks now to us. This is part of what it said:

"Dear Willie (Keith): By the time you read this letter, I think I will be dead. I'm sorry to startle you, but I suppose there's no pleasant way to break such news.... The prognosis is one hundred per cent bad.... I'm a little young to go, according to the insurance tables, and I must say I don't feel ready, but I daresay that's because I've accomplished so little. I look back on my life, Willie, and there's no much there. Your mother has been a fine wife, and I have no regrets on that score. But I seem to have led such a thoroughly second-rate life—not only compared to my father, but in view of my own capabilities. I had quite a feeling for research. When I fell in love with your mother I thought I couldn't marry her without undertaking general practice in a high income community. It was my plan to make a pile in ten or fifteen years of such work, and then return to research. I really think I might have done something in cancer. I had a theory—a notion, you might say—nothing I could have put on paper. It needed three years of systematic investigation. Nobody has touched it to this day. I've kept up with the literature.... But now there's no time even to outline the procedure. The worst of it is, I now feel your mother would have stood by me and lived modestly if I'd really insisted. But I've had a pleasant time... I've loved reading and golf, and I've had all of that I wanted. The days have gone by all too fast.... Think of me and of what I might have been, Willie, at the times in your life when you come to crossroads. For my sake, for the sake of the father who took the wrong turns, take the right ones, and carry my blessing and my justification with you.... Good-bye, my son. Be a man.

Dad

Are we ready to claim our birthright—the gift of life and spirit, the gifts of culture and civilization, the opportunity to give back and make our lives count? The frightening thought is that we don't have to! Nobody can force us to be what we were created to be. But it is there for us. God's love and God's gifts are there for us. God never forces us. But may God give us that extra measure of courage and grace to claim the gifts.

And may God bless each of you this day and every day. Amen.

Interview with J. Philip Wogaman
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Dr. Wogaman, in your message based on the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau, you say that we are all a bit like Esau as caught up in ephemeral things that we forget our birthright. As you reflect back on your distinguished career, Professor of Christian Ethics and more recently Senior Pastor of the Foundry United Methodist Church, how would say that that understanding of your own birthright was revealed to you?

J. Philip Wogaman: Oh, that's a searching question and I probably am not the best one to answer it, but I can think of so many points at which I have chased after little things that didn't matter much, and I begin to see what really does endure. You know, often it's an immediate pastoral contact with somebody in the moment of their deepest need, and maybe I haven't even felt I had time for it, but I discover that there is something very deep and enduring there, and everybody's birthright is a little different. Everybody's calling is a little different, but underneath it all, the birthright of God's love, that's what is enduring.

Talbot: And the spiritual nature, the discovery of one's spiritual nature and one's cultural birthright. In your message you refer to a wonderful music educator in Kentucky.

Wogaman: Yes.

Talbot: I suspect you know him personally.

Wogaman: Actually, he's my own son.

Talbot: He is your son, and his name?

Wogaman: Stephen Wogaman. It's a new performing arts organization, but they've been at work for a number of year, and discovering that kids in even the most unlikely place will really respond to great music. I mean, that's not to play down the kinds of music they are already interested in, but they have been unable to unlock whole treasures of classical music and things that never would have occurred to those kids apart from this program.

Talbot: And I suspect that you learned that from your parents. You are a child of the church. Your father was a distinguished minister.

Wogaman: He was, but there were always books around. My great treasure as a child was to be introduced to literature, to history, to philosophy and things that have endured through the years, but that's available for everybody.

Talbot: There is an Arabian proverb—can you say it quickly—that speaks to so much of this understanding.

Wogaman: Oh, it is about how a friend is one to whom you can pour out all of the contents of your heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

Talbot: And that was relevant to how faith helped in dealing with the national trauma surrounding the President and your role as his counselor.

Wogaman: Yes, yes, and we've all as a nation had to struggle through that, and I think our country is making it and our President and his family are making it. This has been a trying period, but I am very pleased with the way that it is all working out now.

Talbot: Thank you for your vision and leadership, Dr. Philip Wogaman.