Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
The servant said to Laban, “I am Abraham’s servant. The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys. And Sarah my master’s wife bore a son to my master when she was old; and he has given him all that he has. My master made me swear, saying, ‘You shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose land I live; but you shall go to my father’s house, to my kindred, and get a wife for my son.’
“I came today to the spring, and said, ‘O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, if now you will only make successful the way I am going! I am standing here by the spring of water; let the young woman who comes out to draw, to whom I shall say, “Please give me a little water from your jar to drink,” and who will say to me, “Drink, and I will draw for your camels also” —let her be the woman whom the Lord has appointed for my master’s son.’
“Before I had finished speaking in my heart, there was Rebekah coming out with her water jar on her shoulder; and she went down to the spring, and drew. I said to her, ‘Please let me drink.’ She quickly let down her jar from her shoulder, and said, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels.’ So I drank, and she also watered the camels. Then I asked her, ‘Whose daughter are you?’ She said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor’s son, whom Milcah bore to him.’ So I put the ring on her nose, and the bracelets on her arms. Then I bowed my head and worshiped the Lord, and blessed the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me by the right way to obtain the daughter of my master’s kinsman for his son. Now then, if you will deal loyally and truly with my master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so that I may turn either to the right hand or to the left.”
And they called Rebekah, and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will.” So they sent away their sister Rebekah and her nurse along with Abraham’s servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, “May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads; may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes.” Then Rebekah and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man; thus the servant took Rebekah, and went his way. Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi, and was settled in the Negeb. Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel, and said to the servant, “Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?” The servant said, “It is my master.” So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
In 2017, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts gave the commencement address to the graduates and their families and friends and at a private school in New Hampshire. And a portion of it went like this:
“Commencement speakers typically wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that and I'll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice.
I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.
Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don't take friends for granted.
I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time, so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.
And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of good sportsmanship.
I hope you'll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others.
And I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.
Whether I wish these things or not for you, they're going to happen. And whether you benefit from them - and thrive in spite of them - or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”
When I read those remarks, I wondered how the parents and family members reacted to hearing them. If they’re anything like most of us, our hope for our children is that things will be better for them than it was for us, right? We want them to experience success and happiness. We want their lives to go smoothly.
We don't actively wish them adversity like Judge Roberts. As a matter of fact, I've had those conversations with parent friends over the years about how they’ve prayed that their children would never know adversity.
The truth is we're all going to know adversity in one way or another. So we just might need to figure out how to be prepared ourselves in our lives so that it doesn't catch us off guard or catch us unable to deal with it. And that's why I think these lessons that we're getting from the book of Genesis this summer are such important lessons for us.
Because if we start to think that we are alone in our adversity or if we think nobody's known adversity before us these stories reorient our thinking. When something difficult comes along in our lives, it helps us to reconnect to our forebears in the faith. It helps us to recall how from the beginning of time people have known trouble and disappointment and failure and pain and sorrow. We're not the first ones. And so we've had all of these lessons from the book of Genesis this summer that really deal with adversity.
I think we always want to skip to the good parts. Because we end every one of these lessons all summer long with the good parts. Recall the story of Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah. Suddenly there's a ram in the thicket so everything gets resolved. God is there, God is good all the time. That's where we end all these lessons.
But I want us really intentionally to spend some time thinking about what's not good in these stories because there's a lot that's not good. And so today we have this beautiful looking Love Story. It looks lovely, but we need to rewind so that we can begin to understand what takes place that makes this story what it is.
When we left Abraham in our lesson last week it was really a tough day. He'd waited and waited and waited and waited for the descendants that God promised he was going to have. And by the time anybody comes along he's getting up in years. At least he has his first son Ishmael. That doesn't go very well and Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, are banished into the wilderness.
And then there was Isaac, his son by Sarah. He is referred to as “the son Abraham loved.” This son, God says, you need to offer him up as a burnt offering. This is one of those times we need to pay attention to what Holy scripture does not say: we're not told that Abraham flinches or gives a second thought to it. Abraham immediately obeys. But that's a costly little piece of obedience for Abraham because yes, there is indeed a ram in the thicket. There is indeed something for that offering.
But what we're left with in the Book of Genesis is a fractured family. The next time we hear about them, Abraham has gone to live in Barsabba. Sarah has gone to live and dies in Hebron. And Isaac has made his way to the Negev by way of Beer-lahai-roi, which translates to "well of the Living One who sees me" which also happens to be that place where Hagar and Ishmael were banished off into the wilderness. It's a costly day of obedience for Abraham because this family that for which he had prayed and longed for, now is fractured.
This could have really been the end of the Abrahamic line. Isaac has wandered off by himself and he's not producing any descendants that could be the end. And Abraham is faced with, “How do I make this right? How do I fix this?” Because otherwise the promise is gone.
So he sends his servant to find a wife because Isaac needs a wife. Isaac who's now wandering around in the Negev by himself needs a wife. He sends his servant out to find a wife and he sends him back to Abraham's own family, his own people to find this wife. And note the discernment of this servant does as he goes looking for this wife. He prays. He asks for signs – for something visible and tangible to help him recognize that he has found the right one.
And where does he end up but at Abraham's brother's own encampment. And the girl who happens to come by is Abraham's brother's granddaughter. He waits and he prays and watches as she does and says the very things for which he has prayed.
In this patriarchal society we would think that Nahor and his offspring would all say, “take Rebecca and go.” But notice they ask Rebecca if she is willing to go. And so right there, we know Rebecca is no ordinary gal. She is something different, something special. She agrees that she will go to this man she's never seen, about whom she knows nothing. She will go.
Because that's a theme in the Abrahamic stories - being asked by God to go someplace without knowing where we're going or what we're going to see; whether there's adversity in front of us or there are good things in front of us. We don't know. But we're being asked to step out in faith with no idea what to expect. Here is Rebecca, one more in the line, saying I will go.
As they are making their way to the Negev to where Isaac has made his home, she looks out and she sees this man, her husband, about whom she knows nothing. She has no idea that he was nearly sacrificed by his father, how he has mourned for his mother. She really doesn't know Isaac at all but there he is.
He loves Rebekah. Love was not a prerequisite for marriage in the ancient world. But Isaac loves her and now he is beginning to find comfort from all of the things that have happened in his life.
So yes we're all going to know some adversity. Abraham and his progeny they all certainly get to know some adversity. But the test for us is how we meet it. How does God help them meet their adversity?
Abraham who watches the promise of generations of progeny evaporate right in front of him, musters up enough faith to continue to believe in the vast, rich promise of faithfulness from God. He does the one thing he can so that the promise doesn't just die.
And then there's Isaac who is still a young man but we can safely assume he has seen a lot and hurt a lot. If Isaac has reached a place in his life where he believes there is just nothing left, that he will mourn and grieve the rest of my days. Some of us really would have folded up the proverbial tent at that point, wouldn't we, if we were Isaac. And said ‘enough.’
But somehow this village that has surrounded him - Abraham and the servant and Rebecca - they all give him that new lease on his existence, that opportunity to take one more step in faith. Because that is what we do for one another in community with all of God's people for one another. We give that reason to take one more step in faith and to believe that all is not lost.
Rebecca has no idea about the backstory for this man that she has come to marry. Her life's going to be rough, too, but she has stepped out in faith and in belief that with God it will be possible. And no doubt as she begins to learn her role in continuing this family, she will understand her value to God as well.
And then we certainly can't forget this this wonderful discerning servant who has prayed who has patiently watched and waited for signs from God that he is moving in the right direction. He encourages this young woman to follow God's plan.
We can't possibly know all of the things that we will face in our lifetime. But what we do know is that we have the promise of God's faithfulness to us. We have the promise that God will not forsake us. We have the promise that God will be with us no matter what. And even when the answer isn't the answer that we think we'd like to hear, we have the promise of God's faithfulness to us.
And so we learn that in those times that we feel betrayed, in those times that we feel disappointed, in those times that we suffer and are hurt, in those times that we are lonely, in those times that we are insulted -- all of those things that Chief Justice Roberts says to the young graduates. What we know is that God is there through all of those things, that God's love is Abiding Love.
What we learn from these Genesis stories is that our prayerful supplication, our own prayerful discernment of what is God is calling us to do and to be, is how we face adversity. And when our will is supplanted by God's will, then we, too, can find our way out of the pain, out of the hurt, out of the disappointment and back to our God. In the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.