Who's Going to Pull the Weeds?

So last week we heard the story of the sower who went out to sow and who spread seed on every sort of soil – hard-packed soil, rocky soil, thorny soil and good soil. The sower, we decided, was a confident farmer, sure of a harvest. So confident that it didn’t matter where he threw those seeds, some of it was going to fall on good soil and produce a hundredfold.


What was that seed last week? The word of the kingdom. And what did we want to be? The fertile earth. Last week we were the soil. This week we are the seed.


It’s a little bit later in chapter 13 of Matthew now. Jesus is still telling parables – those confounding stories about everyday things that were clearly not about everyday things. And this time he is telling the story of the wheat and the tares.


Now, I call it that, the story of the wheat and the tares, but that’s because I grew up in a King James church where when you got to verse 25 it talked about tares. Does anyone have a King James Version? Verse 24 says: “Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field.” So Jesus is making a comparison here between the reign of God, which is unseen, and a man sowing good seed in his field, which you can see.

Then we read verse 25: “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.” While men slept…(presumably women slept, too, but this is the King James Version and we’ll switch back in a minute)…while men slept, an enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. Tares! Oh, my goodness, what are tares? They’re what you use when you want to go up to the second floor of a building, right? You go up the tares. Or maybe you call them teps. I don’t know.

No, of course, I’m kidding. Tares are weeds. In fact, (I learned this yesterday), they are a specific kind of weed. They are probably darnel or vetches. And do you know what vetches are? They are people who don’t say ‘Thank you.’ Like when you hear someone called an ungrateful vetch. No, actually tares…vetches…are nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants that often appear in grain fields.*

So that’s how this parable got the name of the wheat and the tares. Some people these days want to call it the parable of the wheat and the weeds. But really, if we want to be scientific and politically correct about this, we should call it the parable of the wheat and the nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants.

Now this is a strange little story here. How many people remember hearing this parable before? Matthew is the only gospel that tells us this story. And, again, like in the other parable, the sower is a kind of strange farmer. He plants the field but he doesn’t want to de-vetch it. So what happens to your garden if you never go out and get rid of the tares? It gets overgrown in a hurry, right? So we weed our gardens, right?

Not this farmer. And worse yet, this farmer’s got enemies. And this is an enemy who keeps a bunch of vetch seeds in his shed so that he can sneak over to the neighbor’s garden in the middle of the night to sow the vetch in with the good seeds. Today, this would be the guy who sneaks over and TP’s your house. But back in the day, they sowed weeds.

So the servants see that there’s a problem in the fields. The farmer himself doesn’t seem to be too bothered about what’s going on out there. Hasn’t seen that there’s a vetch problem. But the slaves know and they go to the farmer and let’s see what they say. Look at verse 27. “Master, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? So where did the weeds come from?” Do you ever ask this question? I do. I go out and look at the tomatoes and I say, “Where did these weeds come from?” And right after that I ask, “Where did these mosquitoes come from?”

What’s the answer? Where did these weeds come from? “An enemy did this.” The farmer knows. He may not be watching the fields too closely, but he knows an enemy is out there. The enemy planted the weeds. The enemy sent the mosquitoes, too, I’m sure.

So what do the slaves want to do? They want to go pull them up. That’s a sensible thing. Get rid of the weeds that might be choking out the wheat. But what does the farmer say? In verse 30 he says, “No, let both grow together until the harvest and at the harvest time I will have the reapers collect the weeds first and burn them up while I gather the wheat into my storehouse.”

Now a couple of things here. First, the farmer. Why would he want to try this method? The text says that he’s concerned that pulling up the weeds would also uproot the wheat. So there’s an agricultural reason. But I think he’s also got the same attitude as the sower in the first parable. He’s confident. He knows there’s going to be enough grain at the harvest to take to the storehouse. There’s a plan for the weeds. They’re going to be taken care of. But meanwhile the enemy is not going to take up a minute of his time. The farmer knows what the end of the story is.

Secondly, the servants. What are they worried about? They want to know why the weeds are there and they want to know who’s going to get rid of it. So they are philosophers and then they’re pragmatists. Why is it here and who’s going to do something about it? But the farmer does not share their concern. He’s focused on the harvest which is, Jesus tells us, the kingdom of heaven.

Now let me tell you another story. It’s a true story. It happened 50 years ago. 1961. If you went around the South 50 years ago you would have seen a lot of signs that it was still a segregated society. Water fountains for whites and coloreds. Bathrooms for whites and coloreds. And bus stations with separate waiting rooms for whites and coloreds. That was the language and the practice of the day. But in 1960 the Supreme Court ruled that this was unconstitutional, at least for interstate transportation. You couldn’t have separate waiting rooms based on race. But the ruling was not being enforced.

So a group of 13 people – African-American and European-American – black and white – trained in non-violence -- decided to test the ruling by taking a bus ride from Washington D.C. to New Orleans. Together. They called them Freedom Riders.

So they left on May 4 and they went to Richmond and Petersburg and Farmville and Lynchburg. No problems. Then they went through North Carolina to Charlotte. Into South Carolina and at Rock Hill they ran into the first resistance. A group of people met the bus at the station and beat up the riders as they got off the bus.

They kept going. They went to Atlanta, Georgia and they got threats. They went to Anniston, Alabama and on the outskirts of town a mob attacked the bus. They slashed the tires. They threw a firebomb into the bus. They blocked the doors to keep them from getting out when the flames took hold. A gas tank exploded and the crowd moved back from the bus just long enough for the people to get out. The crowd moved back in to beat them up. An undercover police officer fired a gun into the air and the crowd dispersed.

A second bus of Freedom Riders kept going. They came into Birmingham and another mob was waiting. They beat the riders again, paralyzing one of the riders for life. The police finally came and they arrested the riders, putting them in jail for what they said was their own safety. Then they took them over the border into Tennessee and dumped them off.

Another group of Freedom Riders came. They took the bus to Montgomery and again they were met by a mob that beat them up. It looked like the rides were going have to end.

On the night of May 21, a large crowd gathered at the Black First Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr. came to speak. Over a thousand people were in the church. Outside a few federal marshals had come in to surround the church, but there weren’t enough. As Dr. King preached the mob overturned cars and through rocks through the windows of the church. Tear gas started to seep into the church from outside where the police were trying to disperse the crowd. Dr. King told them that it wasn’t safe to leave the church, so they stayed in the church.

At 1 AM, Dr. King called Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States, from the basement of the church. Kennedy was upset with him for causing trouble. Kennedy thought the Freedom Riders were giving the country a bad image. King told Kennedy that the world was changing. That African-Americans were changing. “I am different from my father,” he said. “I feel the need of being free now.”**

Now here’s why I’m telling this story. If the Freedom Riders had not been fired by their faith. If they had not been trained in nonviolence. If they had not been continually hearing the message that what they were about was the civil rights of black people. If they had not had a sense of justice. If they had not had their eyes on the prize. If they hadn’t known that God’s kingdom was coming. If they hadn’t believed that goodness was stronger than evil. If they hadn’t believed all these things, they might have gotten sidetracked.

They might have started to become obsessed with the crowds outside. They might have returned violence for violence. They might have given up in despair. They might have gone back home. But no, they were going to New Orleans. The original group was gone, but new riders came to take their place.

So two days later, another group of 27 riders – white and black – left Montgomery and they were singing as they rode out of town:
I’m taking a ride on the Greyhound bus line.
I’m riding the front seat to Jackson this time.
Hallelujah, I’m travelling:
Hallelujah, ain’t it fine?
Hallelujah, I’m traveling down Freedom’s main line.


When they reached the Greyhound bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi, there were no mobs. They were not beaten. They were ushered into the white waiting room of the bus terminal. And then they were ushered into paddy wagons that took them to jail. At their trial the next day the judge turned around in his chair and faced the wall when their lawyer spoke in their defense. They were sentenced to sixty days in Parchman, the state penitentiary. Some of them were housed in death row.


It seems like another world now. It seems like far more than 50 years have passed. But the Freedom Riders saw the goal. And they rode the Greyhound bus into something a little more like the kingdom of heaven.


So what did Jesus say about this parable? When the crowds had left and they went back into the house, he explains the parable to the disciples. What do they call the parable? Look in verse 36. They call it the parable of the weeds in the field. They are just like the servants. They go straight to the weeds.


But Jesus goes through the whole parable and he says the sower is who? The Son of Humanity. Jesus himself. The field is what? The world. And the good seed are who? The children of the Kingdom. And the vetch – who are they? The children of the evil one.


Now immediately we get the message and what’s the first thing we want to ask? Am I a good seed or a weed? We want to know where we stand with God because we see where this is headed. The weeds end up on the fire. And later Jesus will say that those who don’t measure up will be thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. There is a judgment on the way. And we want to know are we vetch who gnash or are we the wheat in the storehouse -- those who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God?


Scholars will tell you that the community of early Christians that Matthew was writing for was under a great deal of persecution from Jewish groups. In the midst of the conflict they would have heard this story as a word of hope. It might be bad now, Matthew seems to be saying, but in the end God will bring you home. In the meantime we must bear up in the struggles.


In our therapeutic culture we might say that there is wheat and tares in all of us. That’s even biblical. We are created with the all the potential of the good seed. But sin has entered the world and our lives, distorting us from what God intends us to be. So within each of us the struggle is ongoing and God has come to deal with the evil of the world and in us and to redeem our tarnished promise.


But let’s not make this too easy. There is much that God says an emphatic ‘no’ to in the world. It’s not always as overt as the mobs around the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. Sometimes the evil in the world slips in under cover of darkness. We need a purging fire to put to death all that keeps us from God. We need to come face to face with some things. We need to look in the mirror and see the callous heart that won’t let us love our neighbors. We need to see the fear that keeps us from doing what we know is right. We need to see the apathy that tells us the lie that we can’t make a difference. There’s a lot of things God says ‘no’ to.


John Wesley told his Methodist preachers that they should commit themselves to a disciplined lifestyle. That they should work diligently, teach the word, and never spend time triflingly. They should attend to their spiritual lives. They should read the scriptures. And they should do all these things, not for wrath, but for conscience’s sake. Not for fear of the fire, but for the integrity of their souls.


In the end, God knows the harvest will come. And God is not consumed with worry over where the evil in this world comes from or how it meets its end. What God is concerned about is the kingdom and what God wants is children who will not live their lives in fear of the fires of hell, but shining in the light of the kingdom that is to come. Not for wrath, but for conscience’s sake.


Keep your eyes on the prize, brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes on the prize. Thanks be to God.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tare_(leguminous_plant)
**Quoted in Harvard Sitkoff, King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop, [Hill & Wang: New York, 2008], p. 77.

In Search of Fertile Earth

There is a scene in the movie A Bug's Life when Flik, the rebellious, free-thinking ant, is trying to explain an important concept to Dot, one of the smaller ants in the colony. He picks up a rock and says, "Here, pretend - pretend that that's a seed."

"It's a rock," says Dot.

"Oh, I know it's a rock, I know. But let's just pretend for a minute that it's a seed, alright? We'll just use our imaginations. Now, now do you see our tree? Everything that made that giant tree is already contained inside this tiny little seed. All it needs is some time, a little bit of sunshine and rain, and voilá!"

"This rock will be a tree?"

"Seed to tree. You've gotta work with me, here. Alright? Okay. Now, y-you might not feel like you can do much now, but that's just because, well, you're not a tree yet. You just have to give yourself some time. You're still a seed."

"But it's a rock," Dot says.

"I know it's a rock!" Flik shouts. "Don't you think I know a rock when I see a rock? I've spent a lot of time around rocks!"

Dot responds, "You're weird, but I like you."*

Flik learned the dangers of using metaphors to explain deep philosophical concepts. But he stands in a long line of teachers. What you may not realize is that Flik was talking about Aristotle there in that conversation with Dot. He was trying to get Dot to see that the seed was a bundle of potential - that she was a bundle of potential. And even though she couldn't see it now, just like that seed, the makings of a great tree were right there inside her. I know, it was a rock.

Aristotle said roughly the same thing. The great Greek philosopher said that we know the reality of things, not by what we can see at the moment, but by what will become of them. Things, events, people, have a purpose, an end and we are being drawn toward that end. The ultimate reality of a seed is the fully-formed tree that will emerge from it. The ultimate reality of a person is the unfolding of all that potential that we all contain.

But you didn't come here today to hear about Aristotle. You came to hear about Jesus. And, lo, and behold, Jesus is telling a story about seeds.

Now it's not just a story, it's a parable, which is a story-like way of getting at a spiritual truth. It's the kind of thing that frustrated Jesus' followers to no end. I can relate to this because, you know, I'm kind of a storytelling preacher myself and some people do not like that way of preaching. They want to hear a point.

When I was growing up that was the dominant style of preaching - three points and poem. Just tick those points off. Maybe put a clever title on them. Make them rhyme or something. But I think I've successfully eliminated that style of preaching from my bag of tricks. No three point sermons here. Some people say I've got no points. I must be doing something right.

But Jesus was not a 3-points and a poem preacher either. He spoke in stories, parables. And his disciples questioned him about it. In fact if you look at verse 10 in chapter 13 of Matthew, (this is in the section we left out of the reading today), if you look there you will see the disciples taking Jesus aside and asking, "Why do you talk to the crowds in parables?"

Jesus answers in a kind of cryptic way, too. He talks about the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven and how they are not just revealed to anybody. But what he really seems to be doing is challenging the disciples and anybody else that might listen to work for a blessing - to work for the message. Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah who had that great vision of God filling the Temple and then being called to serve a people with unclean lips and then receiving this cryptic saying - "Listen and listen, but never understand! Look and look, but never perceive!"

In that passage it's almost like God is saying, "I don't want you to know what I'm saying. I don't know want you to understand what I'm doing." But Jesus is saying something a little bit different. In verse 15 he says, "This people's heart has grown coarse, their ears dulled, they have shut their eyes to see, their ears to hear, their heart to understand." What he has come to do is to open their ears and their eyes and their hearts. And Jesus appreciates a good student who will work to understand.

But what's unusual about this parable that Jesus tells is that this is one of those rare stories where he interprets what has been said. Usually he leaves it to the listener and on the second hearing, the third hearing, the sixty-second hearing you are still seeing new things in the passage. Actually I think that's true here, too.

A sower went out to sow. Who is this sower, by the way? Who do you think it is?

What's unusual about the way this sower goes about his planting?

He's broadcasting the seeds. He's throwing them here and there - on the path, on the rocks, in the weeds. Now what little I know about agriculture in Jesus' time tells me that it was not all that unusual for a farmer to just throw seeds on the ground. They did do some plowing. But they also would scatter seed. But I'm thinking that it would be pretty unusual not to try to get the seed at least onto the ground where it was likely to grow.

This sower is either very careless or very confident that he will get the harvest he wants, even if he scatters seed like a prodigal. I'm guessing that he is confident. He knows this seed is powerful. He knows what it can do.

By the way, what is this seed? What do we think it is?

Verse 19 calls it the "word of the kingdom." This is what Jesus came to spread - the news of the kingdom. Now is the kingdom of God dependent on whether or not we are faithful? No, the kingdom is coming no matter what. The kingdom is promised. The kingdom is assured. When Jesus begins his ministry, what does he say? Somebody read Matthew 4:17. The first thing Jesus says in his public ministry is, "Repent, because the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand."

So what this tells me is that God is not concerned that if the people don't respond the kingdom can't come. The kingdom is coming. What God wants is for people to respond and to live their lives differently because the kingdom of heaven is here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're still talking about seeds. So a sower, (who just might be God), goes out to sow seed, (which just might be the word of the kingdom), and where does the first batch of seed fall? On the edge of the path.

What's that? What is the path? Why wouldn't we want seed to fall there?

It's hard ground. It's unreceptive. It's a place where birds can come get it easily.

What is the path in us? Ever been in such a state that you couldn't even begin to hear God talking to you? What's that like? You get so engrained in your habits, so engrossed in yourself that you can't even hear. Can't even respond to God. Or maybe you get so used to thinking about the world in categories that have no regard to God that you can't hear any other kind of truth. There's that path. And the word comes and it never has a chance to grow in you.

But this sower is not concerned. The sower knows there's going to be a harvest. So he keeps sowing. And where does the seed fall next?

On patches of rock. Now I know they don't have such things here, but in other parts of the world they do have these things called rocks and they are persistent. I used to follow my dad around the garden every spring in that orange clay soil around Orange, Virginia when he would till and all these big rocks would come out of the ground. We swore they grew a new crop every year.

If you go up hiking in the mountains sometimes you'll come across a scraggly tree growing out of a big rock outcropping and if you look close there will be a little bit of soil - just enough for the tree to grow, but not enough for it grow big. Certainly not enough for a forest.

So what are the rocky places in our lives?

So when we don't have depth, when we don't ground ourselves in God. When we just live from moment to moment and never seek to do the work of prayer and listening for God. When we get excited on Sunday morning but forget about it all by Sunday afternoon. That's when the seed is falling in rocky ground.

But the sower is confident. The sower knows that this seed is powerful. He knows there's going to be a harvest. So he keeps sowing and now where does the seed fall?

In the thorns. In the weeds. In the place where it has to fight for what it needs to grow. What are the thorny patches in your life?

I don't know about you but I often feel like I'm in a thorny patch. We live in such a culture of distraction that is very easy to find ourselves flitting from one thing to another, never focused on God, never focused on the thing that makes for life. What are some of the names of the thorns in our life?

But the sower is confident. The sower knows there's going to be a harvest. And at last, where does the seed fall?

On fertile ground. Eastern Shore land. And from the seed comes an incredible harvest. A hundredfold even. And who is the fertile earth?

Jesus tells us in verse 23 of chapter 13 that it is the person who hears the word and understands. You are the fertile earth when you hear the word and let it grow in you.

So what have we learned in this story? That the kingdom of heaven is a persistent thing. It does not depend on the health of our spiritual lives. It does not depend on our efforts on its behalf. It can be despised, ignored, competed with, or tuned out, but it will still yield a harvest. The good news of Jesus is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And God is so confident of this that God does not parcel out the word of the kingdom like a scarce commodity. God spends it out like a drunken sailor.

But here's the question - the kingdom is at hand, but will you be its soil? Will you be receptive to the seed? Will you make space for it to take root in your life? Will you nurture that word within you? Will you repent and believe the good news of the kingdom?

It may seem that the world is godforsaken. It may seem that the work of God is small and irrelevant and decreasing. But that is only our perception - and Lord knows we see through a glass darkly. There is a life of fullness and richness and fertility and abundance all around us. Don't be deceived by the evening news. We are present at a feast. So why do we persist in the things that bring us only death? Why don't we let go of our small-mindedness and receive what God has to give? Thanks be to God.


*http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120623/quotes

Rebekah's Choice

Mary Karr was seven years old when her mother had “an episode.” She lived in a Gulf Coast oil town in Texas. It was 1961. At seven you don’t realize that things could be different than they are. You’re still learning what this wide, wonderful world is all about. But Mary Karr’s mother was having difficulties – a mental breakdown.

She was a smart woman. An artist. But also a struggling woman. So one night, while her daddy was out at a bar, Mary’s mama pulled her and her sister out onto the lawn of their small house and started piling up things. Things like her artwork and Mary’s springy hobby horse that she had started to outgrow. Things like their clothes. And she poured gasoline on the pile and it went up in flames. Mary huddled next to her sister and watched her metal horse start to melt.

Then her mom took Mary and her sister inside and sat them in the bedroom while she overturned the kitchen, pouring cutlery onto the floor. She came back into the bedroom and held a knife in the air over her children as she wailed, “Noooo.” Finally, before she did any harm to them, she called for help.

Mary Karr wrote about this episode in her memoir The Liar’s Club which won the National Book Award. She says:

I did know from that night forward that things in my house were Not Right, this despite the fact that the events I have described so far had few outward results. No one ever mentioned the night again. I don’t remember any subsequent home visits from any kind of social worker or concerned neighbor. Dr. Boudreaux seemed sometimes to minister to my health with an uncharacteristic tenderness. And neighbors dragged my sister and me to catechism classes and Vacation Bible School and to various hunting camps, never mentioning the fact that our family never reciprocated. I frequently showed up on doorsteps at suppertime; foraging, Daddy called it….But no one ever failed to hand me a plate, though everybody knew that I had plenty to eat at home, which wasn’t always true for the families I popped in on.

The night’s major consequences for me were internal. The fact that my house was Not Right metastasized into the notion that I myself was somehow Not Right, or that my survival in the world depended on my constant vigilance against various forms of Not-Rightness.[i]

You ever had that sense? You know, that maybe your house is Not Right. That maybe, somehow, because of that you are Not Right. That maybe you will only be able to survive in the world because of your constant efforts to fight off the Not-Rightness. There’s a lot that’s Not Right with the world.

But we don’t talk about such things at church, do we? Here it can seem that all families are perfect. Or maybe it’s like Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor’s fictional village in Minnesota, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. We may be guilty of giving the impression that there is no room for the Not-Rightness of our lives. But when we speak truth we know that there is a lot that is Not Right.

The Bible knows this. The Bible speaks this. Even in stories like today where Isaac meets Rebekah and it seems like all is right with the world.

Isaac, however, has his own memories. He was the child of promise, born to Abraham and Sarah when they were both in their later years. His name meant “laughter,” one of God’s little jokes. For, you see, when his birth was announced by three heavenly visitors to Abraham and Sarah’s tent, Sarah began to laugh behind the tent flap. “How absurd! A baby at my age?” she thought. Abraham himself had fallen down on his face laughing at the news once before. But God had the last laugh. The child was born and his name was Laughter – Isaac.

Isaac was the only son of Abraham, whose name meant “father of many nations.” Except he was not the only son. He was certainly Sarah’s only son. Certainly the one God had tapped as the inheritor of the promise. But there was his half-brother Ishmael, born to Abraham’s servant, Hagar. There were the fights between Sarah and Hagar. There was the day when Abraham finally sent Hagar and the child, Ishmael, off into the wilderness. If God had not intervened then, they both would have died.

Then there was the day that Abraham got Isaac up early in the morning for a trip. On the donkey they took with them Isaac saw split wood. Signs that they might be making an offering. Two servants came along. For three days they traveled, Abraham looking always toward the mountains, like he was waiting for a sign. Abraham taking the lead, looking forward, silent. The boy Isaac following behind. The split wood rubbing together on the donkey’s flanks.

Three days they traveled and then Abraham stopped. He told the servants to stay. “The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we’ll come back to you.” Abraham took the wood from the donkey and put in Isaac’s arms to carry. Abraham himself took a knife.

Isaac finally broke the silence. “Father?”

“Yes, my son.”

“We have flint and wood to make a fire. But where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

Did Abraham take a long time in answering? Or did he just tell it out? “Son, God will see to it that there’s a sheep for the offering.” And they kept on walking.

Abraham finally came to stop and built an altar. He took the wood from Isaac and laid it out on the altar. Then he took rope and he tied up his son Isaac and laid him out on the wood. He raised an infirm hand to the sky and in it Isaac could see the knife flashing in the desert sun, ready to come down upon him. Was it in his head? Was it from his father’s lips? Or was it from the very skies itself that the word came? A long “Noooooo.” It could not be that Isaac should end his days this way. God must provide another way. And there in a thicket was a ram caught by its horns. The ram became the sacrifice.

But what must the journey home have been like? Did Abraham tell his son about the command he heard from heaven? The command to offer his son, his only son, as a sacrifice? Did he tell the boy how he agonized over it? How he resisted it? How he argued with God like he had for the sake of the people of Sodom? Did he tell him that he knew all along that God would provide? That in the end, somehow, God would come through?

Or did they walk back down the mountain in a horrible silence? Did Isaac know that from this moment on he had now inherited the promise from a wild and holy God who was always going to leave him unsettled and always at risk? And how many nights did Isaac fall asleep with the vision of his father holding aloft a knife in his trembling hand over his trembling throat?

Did they ever tell Sarah? The Bible doesn’t say. Perhaps they did because the next thing that happens in the biblical story is that Sarah dies. She was 127 years old. But if she heard the tale of the sacrifice on the mountain it might surely have hastened her demise.

The almost-sacrifice of Isaac is told to us as a lesson in faith. Faith even when it doesn’t make sense. Even when it is affront to our reason and our heart. Abraham is blessed because of his faith that God would provide. But faith like this doesn’t lead to harmony or safety. It doesn’t make the story of God’s people a Pollyanna tale of good things happening to good people.

In fact, from this point on in Genesis, God does not intervene nearly as much into the lives of Abraham’s family members. There are prayers and promises, dreams and blessings that all remind us that God is there – but faith from here to the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3 is not lived out as a drama between an intervening God and an obedient people. Faith from here to the burning bush is ordinary people – even Not Right people – struggling to get by and to make sense of the world. And meanwhile the promise of God to make of Abraham and his descendents a great people is coming true. Which makes the time between the mountain of sacrifice and the mountain of the burning bush a good model for our times – as ordinary people like us – even Not Right people – struggle to get by and make sense of the world.

So where do we go from here? What happens to a family after a trauma like this? After Sarah dies, Abraham finds a suitable burial site for her. But he knows that he will follow soon behind. So he called his senior servant to his side and made him swear an oath. “Put your hand beneath my thigh and swear by God that you will get a wife for my son Isaac from our homeland.” They were living in a strange land. Though God had promised this land to them, they were just sojourners. So Abraham sent the servant back for a wife from his own people.

The servant gathered up ten camels for the long journey back to the old country. When he came to a well in that far land he got down off of his camels. He had them all kneel by the well. And he prayed a prayer to the God of his master, Abraham. He prayed that, when the young women of the town came out to get water, he would say to the right girl, “Lower your jug and give me a drink.” And she would answer, “Here is something for you and let me also water your camels.” A woman who would water your camels – now that would make a fitting wife for Isaac!

Well, you can guess what happened next. A girl came out to the well with a water jug on her shoulder. She was a stunning beauty. You can almost hear the servant thinking, “Let her be the one!” She lowered the jug into the well and drew up the water. The servant ran to he and said, “May I have a sip from your jug?”

“Yes, of course, drink,” she said. “And…[wait for it!]…I’ll get water for your camels, too.”

The man watched in awe as she dipped the jug ten more times for each of the thirsty camels. Then he pulled out gifts – a gold nose ring and two arm bracelets. He gave them to her. And because he was from the Eastern Shore he started to ask about her family. “Whose daughter are you? Is there room for us to come stay the night?”

Then the “aha!” moment as he learns that she is of the family of Abraham’s brother. Her brother, Laban, welcomes the servant in along with all of his camels and the other servants who were with him. They bring food to eat, but the servant won’t eat until he tells the whole tale. He ends by saying, “God has led me to your door to get a wife for my master’s son. Now, tell me what you are going to do.”

They respond by saying, “Yes, yes. This must be of God. Yes, yes. Of course, you must take Rebekah to be married to Isaac. But let her stay another ten days before you go.”

The servant resisted. He was ready to return. So they bring in Rebekah and we finally hear her speak. How she felt about the deal being made about her, we don’t know. But at this moment when she can make some sort of statement she chooses to go. “I’m ready to go,” she says.

So off they go, back to the strange land and there’s a little Hollywood moment as they arrive. Isaac is out in the field at the end of the day mediating. He sees camels coming across in the fading light of day. Rebekah looks up and sees Isaac, though she doesn’t know who he is. She slips down off the side of her camel. “Who is that man out in the field coming toward us?” she asks.

“That is my master,” says the servant.

She slips her veil over her face, according to the custom. And though the text doesn’t tell us this, I’m sure they ran in slow motion across the field until they met as the music rose to a high crescendo. Isaac took Rebekah as his wife and he loved her. The text does say that. The credits begin to roll.

Then there is the last line to the 24^th chapter of Genesis. The line that says, “So Isaac found comfort after his mother’s death.” And here’s the thing we need to hear in this passage: Love stories don’t take place in isolation. They take place in the midst of a hundred other things. They take place in the wake of a traumatic death. They take place as people move from their home. They take place in the midst of conflicted families. They take place with rich people and with servants. They take place for men and for women.

The story of Isaac and Rebekah can seem like a quaint little biblical interlude. But it happens in the shadow of so many things. It happens in the shadow of God’s promise that the stars of the heavens and the sand of the sea can’t begin to describe the bounty of the future. It happens in the shadow of children sent off into the desert to survive by their own wits and by the angel of God. It happens in the shadow of a knife in a trembling hand that means faith and risk.

The stories of Genesis that the Jewish people and now we in the Christian Church look back on are stories of trauma and drama. They remind us that we live on a knife’s edge. On one side of the cut is the danger of human choice – we always have this choice. The choice to say “Yes” to life. To be engaged in the world. To take on for ourselves the responsibility to act in this world as we believe God is calling us to act. We can’t shirk our role in this world.

On the other side of the cut is the promise of God’s presence. Even when it is unseen. Even when we are shackled by the traumas of the past and the things that have been done to us. Even when we can’t see God’s new day, God is already there in it, bringing it to new life.

And where do we see that in this story? In a girl with a water jug. In the receiving and giving of gifts. In the hospitality of strangers. And in Rebekah’s choice to say, “I’m ready to go.”

There’s a lot that’s Not Right about this world. You may believe there’s a lot that’s Not Right about you. You may believe that the only thing standing between you and damnation is an eternal struggle against the Not-Rightness of the world. But you’d be wrong. There’s also something terribly, terribly right with the universe. And God will not rest until all is made Right. Thanks be to God.

---

[i] Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club, [Penguin: New York, 1995], pp. 9-10.