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.

A Love Song For All That Will Not Die

A Love Song for All That Will Not Die
June 18, 2011
Virginia United Methodist Annual Conference

I went to the Eastern Shore in 2005 as a result of three things:
a mission trip with college students from the Wesley Foundation at UVA during a freakishly cold Spring Break
the appointment system
and my own big mouth, because it was on that mission trip, as I was sitting down to dinner at Camp Occohannock on the Bay with the then-District Superintendent Jim Hewitt, that I found myself saying, "If you have any openings here, I'd like to be considered."
Two weeks later the move was underway.

Like most things in my life in the Virginia Annual Conference, (and I've got a long history here), I didn't know what I was doing when I got into it. I had no clue what the move was going to involve for my family or for me. I didn't even really know what the Eastern Shore was like. Sometimes it doesn't even show up on maps. People think of it as the end of the earth. Starbucks hasn't even discovered this place yet and they are everywhere. When colleagues heard that the bishop was sending me there they said, "What did you do?"

But friends, let me tell you something, and as Christians you should know this. When somebody tells you that something is dead, be careful. When somebody tells you that that there is no life in this place, be careful because there might be an empty tomb. When somebody tells you that there's a valley of dry bones and a voice says, "Mortal, can these dry bones live?", be careful. When there's a people locked in slavery and a man by a burning bush says, "I can't take that word of freedom back to Egypt," be careful. When there's a promise with no heirs, don't laugh like Sarah behind the tent flap when the promise is repeated. Be careful because this God we proclaim is in the resurrection business.

A few months ago - on Groundhog Day to be exact - I was going back to the Shore across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel - that 17 mile link between Virginia Beach and the Shore. I had been visiting in the hospital across the bay. ("Across the bay" is a peculiar Shore expression. It's applied very loosely. From the perspective of the Shore, everything is "across the bay." Virginia Beach. Across the bay. Norfolk. Across the bay. California. Across the bay.)

At any rate, I had been across the bay and I rolled down the window to pay the toll attendant. That's when it hit me. It had been a long, cold winter. You remember those days? A long, cold winter and Groundhog Day was unusually warm. And when I put the window down it all came flooding in to me. There in the air were memories.

Somewhere in the air were camellias and I was immediately back in my grandmother's garden. Somewhere in the air was the salt breeze of an ocean that was shedding its winter coat. Somewhere in the air were creaking swing sets where I pushed our children on a spring day. Somewhere, I swear, there was rain evaporating from a car's hot engine hood. Somewhere in the air were spring days when I would get into my friend Billy Mack's green Datsun pick-up truck and we would skip school to go...well, there were a lot of things in that air. I could smell it.

With all of that rushing in, I suddenly felt glad to be the age that I was. All of that stuff was in the air for me because of my memory, because of the opportunity I had to live life in this creation for this long. And I wrote a poem, because that's what we do on the Eastern Shore. We are all poets. And the end of the poem said:
When at last
I replaced the glass between memory and me
I sighed a lament
for youth
Not that it was lost
but that the young
should be so immune to what was in the air
With no capacity to resurrect moments that have not yet been
they skim the surface of a shallow sea
It is for those with age to know
what ledges and depths these waters conceal
And to be occasionally
assaulted and affirmed
by all that will not die.

I have been a part of the Virginia Annual Conference for a long time. All of my life. For most of that time I have heard laments and moans, cries of panic and accusation, exhortation and recrimination - all because the United Methodist Church was dying. The United Methodist Church is dying. And I have seen the Revealing Christ campaign and Vision 2000 and All Things New and the Call to Action, all of them born out of the same sense that something fundamental is broken in our witness in the world and something fundamental needs to change because the United Methodist Church is dying.

I don't come tonight to challenge that. Something fundamental does need to change. God will call forth the people. God will continue to set the captive free. If we want to be part of that movement of God's Spirit in the world, we surely must make the United Methodist Church a willing and able instrument. I don't come to challenge the notion that we must change else we die. I come to sing a love song for all that will not die.

Tonight we gather to remember. As we read the names of the faithful servants of the church who have died in the last year, with each name, for some of us in this arena, a flood of memories will come back. These are people, ordinary people just like us, who gave themselves in service through the United Methodist Church because they believed that in doing so they were answering the call of God. As we recall them our minds will be drawn to their personalities, their quirks, their unique habits of dress or speech. We remember moments when we encountered them in very personal ways. The tables where we shared meals. The church meetings where we labored together. The worship services where we sang together. And through it all a grace that made them transparent - even in the flesh, even behind the frailties and the failings - they were sometimes transparent so that the love of God could shine through.

As the names are called I will remember. I will remember William A. Wright, Jr. as a man who never failed to ask me as a youth about how things were going at Trinity:Orange, my home church, which was one of his charges as Charlottesville District Superintendent. Carl Ulrich, who made such a huge transition in his life going from being a lawyer to a pastor - don't tell me God can't perform miracles - and who did it with such a deep thoughtfulness and concern for the church. Joseph T. Carson, Jr. who taught me that any challenge in ministry can be called an opportunity.

And I will remember Elmer A. Thompson, who was so unassuming. So quietly dedicated. So deeply self-aware. And who nurtured a generation of young people though the Youth Engaged in Service program, which produced so many great leaders in the church. When I was in the YES program working with children and seniors in the Highland Park area of Richmond, the letters and visits from Elmer put the Apostle Paul to shame. When I remember Elmer I know there are things that will not die as long as I live.

So many others. And each of them spent most of their ministry in service to a denomination that was told continually that it was becoming culturally irrelevant, that it was not what it used to be, not what it should be, that its future was imperiled and its present was a sign of failure. These servants spent most of their lives hearing this message.

And yet. And yet. These people, clergy and lay, touched lives. They called people to new life in Christ and people responded. They were the environment I grew up in. They instilled in others a sense that the roots of the Methodist movement still had vibrancy and vitality. They held up a vision of what the United Methodist Church could be. They created programs that helped new generations see the possibilities of a life that combines works of piety and works of mercy, spirituality and social justice, open hearts, open minds and open doors. They were not mired in a message of death. Oh, some days maybe. We all have them. But we are here today because they carried something from our past to this day.

When I see young people responding to the call. When I see new faith communities springing up in the unlikeliest of places. When I hear the gospel in the tongues of many different lands. When I see the United Methodist Church still alive in the imaginations of people, I know that God used these people to do something that will not die.

Let's return to the Gospel word from Matthew. What must Jesus' followers have heard when he sat down to teach on the mountain? He shared such strange things with them. Things that must have made no sense to them. Happy are those who mourn? What sort of beatitude is that in the face of death? Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The world does not work like that, Jesus. Forgive those who sin against you. On and on this Sermon on the Mount goes with one incredible command following another.

Then, just as they must have been wondering, as once they did, "Who then can be saved?"...just as we begin to wonder, "Who then can do this following Jesus thing?"...Jesus begins a little section on the birds of the air and the lilies of the field interlaced with warnings about anxiety. It's like Bobby McFerrin shows up on the mountainside and begins to sing "Don't worry, be happy." Only there is something more going on here.

"Do not be worried about your life - what you will eat or what you will drink. Don't be worried about what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds, who do not sow. Who do not reap. Who do not gather crops into barns. (Those lazy birds.) And yet God feeds them.

"And look at the lilies. They don't work. They don't spin fabric. (Those lazy flowers.) And yet God clothes them like Solomon in all his glory.

"If God feeds birds. If God adorns the grass of the field which is alive today and is gone tomorrow. What are you worried about?"

It's not a call to laziness. It's not a call to be idle or detached from the world. It's not a call to blissful ignorance. It's a call to let go of the thing that kills. It's a call to let go of our fear.

Fear that God might not mean all those promises about the reign of God among us. Fear that maybe salvation, for myself and for the world, is really not about grace and faith but maybe it really does depend on my artfully-planned and well-executed program. Fear of failure. Doubt of self. Lack of trust. Suspicion of the stranger's knock at the door. Denial of hope. Dark thoughts that maybe death really does have the last word. As if the cross and empty tomb mean nothing to a world come of age, to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer's phrase.

"Forget how incredible it all sounds," Jesus says. "Disengage your disbelief and seek ye first the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness and...you know the rest...all these things shall be added unto you. And don't worry about tomorrow...because tomorrow will care for itself."

I once heard the author and poet Mary Karr talk about her journey into writing. Karr came to her faith later in life through a very gritty path. She has won much acclaim and a National Book Award for her memoirs. Mary Karr said that a turning point for her in finding her voice was when she was talking to a priest. She was struggling with her writing. Struggling to know what to write. And the priest asked her, "Mary, what would you write if you weren't afraid?" What would you write if you weren't afraid? For Karr it was the beginning of becoming who she needed to become as a writer.

What would you do if you weren't afraid? What would our church do if we weren't afraid? How would we face down death if we were not afraid but seeking God?

I don't come tonight to deny the realities of this world that is captivated by death. But I do deny that those realities have the capacity to win the day. I learned that through the witness of so many faithful clergy and lay people who sought God and loved the world and passed it on. Some of them we are remembering tonight. And for all those family members who are here: we share in your grief but also in your gratitude for all that God has done in the lives of your loved ones.

We also share in a confidence that the love for God and the love of God that we knew through these servants is something that does not perish. The word they proclaimed in innumerable sermons. The moments when grace pervaded the space between them and another person. The hands we held. The prayers they prayed. The witness they gave in confronting the evil powers of this world. The tears they shed and the laughter. These things do not perish because they grow out of love and, as Song of Songs tells us, "Love is stronger than death; passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love."

We also share confidence that tomorrow is not worth our fear because tomorrow is assured. God has already been to tomorrow. The cross and the tomb show us the character of tomorrow. Jesus invites us toward tomorrow without anxiety because Jesus knows that the last word is not death.

So we stand - and we do stand - on tomorrow. It's in the air, just like all those memories. Tomorrow is in the air. It smells like camellias and it sounds like creaking children's swings. It is filled with the presence of God and with the voices of all those saints who sing God's praise. Don't worry about tomorrow. Don't face it with fear. Your desire, your truest desire, is for God. And God is faithful.

I come tonight to sing a love song. A love song for this church which, despite itself sometimes, has sustained the faith and hope of people like you and me. A love song for these human servants who, despite themselves sometimes, embodied that faith and hope for people like you and me. I come tonight to sing a love song for all that will not die. Thanks be to God.