In our sermon series using texts from Genesis with the theme “Family Matters,” today’s story is about the births of Esau and Jacob and the selling of the birthright. This family is clearly dysfunctional, with each parent favoring one or the other of the twins, and the twins in conflict. It is a conflict so deep that Rebekah eventually sends Jacob away for his own safety. Yet, in the midst of that, God is clearly working through that family, carrying on the promise to Abraham made a generation earlier to another dysfunctional family. God is never going to give up and is working within us, even if we, too, are in the midst of dysfunction, whether it is in our own families or in our nation and our world. And we are invited to join God’s work, to embrace each other.