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 24th 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.
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