Year A Pentecost 4
Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-6734 So he said, “I am Abraham’s servant. 35 The LORD has blessed my master abundantly, and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys. 36 My master’s wife Sarah has borne him a son in her old age, and he has given him everything he owns. 37 And my master made me swear an oath, and said, ‘You must not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose land I live, 38 but go to my father’s family and to my own clan, and get a wife for my son.’
42 “When I came to the spring today, I said, ‘Lord, God of my master Abraham, if you will, please grant success to the journey on which I have come. 43 See, I am standing beside this spring. If a young woman comes out to draw water and I say to her, “Please let me drink a little water from your jar,” 44 and if she says to me, “Drink, and I’ll draw water for your camels too,” let her be the one the Lord has chosen for my master’s son.’
45 “Before I finished praying in my heart, Rebekah came out, with her jar on her shoulder. She went down to the spring and drew water, and I said to her, ‘Please give me a drink.’
46 “She quickly lowered her jar from her shoulder and said, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too.’ So I drank, and she watered the camels also.
47 “I asked her, ‘Whose daughter are you?’
“She said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor, whom Milkah bore to him.’
“Then I put the ring in her nose and the bracelets on her arms, 48 and I bowed down and worshiped the Lord. I praised the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me on the right road to get the granddaughter of my master’s brother for his son. 49 Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so I may know which way to turn.”
58 So they called Rebekah and asked her, “Will you go with this man?”
“I will go,” she said.
59 So they sent their sister Rebekah on her way, along with her nurse and Abraham’s servant and his men. 60 And they blessed Rebekah and said to her,
“Our sister, may you increase
to thousands upon thousands;
may your offspring possess
the cities of their enemies.”61 Then Rebekah and her attendants got ready and mounted the camels and went back with the man. So the servant took Rebekah and left.
62 Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. 63 He went out to the field one evening to meditate and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. 64 Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel 65 and asked the servant, “Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?”
“He is my master,” the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself.
66 Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. 67 Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-67
© The New Revised Standard Version,
(Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989In the name of God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we’ll continue our reflection on the Old Testament passages from Genesis. Two weeks ago we read the passage about Abraham’s wife Sarah telling Abraham to send his second wife Hagar and his first son Ishmael away into the wilderness. Last week we heard the passage of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son Isaac whom he had with Sarah, and this week we hear about the choosing of a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac.
Do you remember me saying how Abraham’s wife Sarah was a Jew, and Abraham’s second wife Hagar, who was suggested by Sarah, was from Egypt; an Arab. I also talked a little about how we see in this passage the division that still exists between the Jewish and Arab world and now even in this past week, how terribly we have seen this division lived out. One generation teaches another the way of hatred and violence.
In today’s passage we see again something of this division, and I’ll just put the whole reading in context before we hear it.
Of course Abraham and Sarah were old when they had Isaac, in fact Sarah laughed when she was told she would have a child. There is a book called, “The woman who laughed at God”. And just before our passage today from Genesis 24, Sarah had died. Abraham bought a piece of land with a cave at one end in Hebron, Canaan, where he buried his wife. And now Abraham, who is old too, in fact he is dying, wants his son Isaac to have a wife. We need to remember that the traditions, times and cultures were vastly different to ours. So Abraham calls one of his servants who is never given a name and makes the servant swear an oath that he will go back to Abraham’s homeland in Mesopotamia and find a wife for his son Isaac. Abraham tells the servant that on no account must Isaac marry one of the local Canaanite girls; he has to marry a girl from his own people. And so the servant asks what if he can’t find a girl who is prepared to leave home and come with him to marry Isaac. To this Abraham calls upon his faith and remembers that God has promised him descendants and land and he says to the servant that basically God will provide.
So the servant heads off and arrives at the city of Nahor in northern Mesopotamia, where he finds a well or spring, and it is sunset, the time of the day when the women come out to get water, and the servant prays that God will make it clear to him which girl to ask to be Isaac’s wife. The servant prays that he will know the girl who is to be Isaac’s wife, and he prays that the way he is to know this is by asking the girls for a drink of water; the right girl will not only offer him a drink, but offer to give a drink to his 10 camels too. Half way through his prayer, Rebekah arrives to draw water and so he asks her for a sip of water and then she offers to water his camels as well. Wow- the first girl he asks! Then the servant enquires about her and about who her father is and he is amazed to hear that this girl’s father, Rebekah’s father, is a man named Bethuel, who is descended from one of Abraham’s brothers so that Rebekah and Isaac are in fact cousins of one distance or another.
[Let’s hear the passage].
Well by the time the servant returns in the caravan with Rebekah it’s too late for Abraham who has died and Rebekah is given Sarah’s tent which is an expression of how the headship has passed to her and to Isaac. And then Isaac and Rebekah are married. Of course then the next part of Genesis is about Isaac and Rebekah and their two sons, Esau and Jacob… but that’s another story….!
One thing that is the same today as it was all those thousands of years ago is our reliance on water and its nourishing of life. Aqueducts, like large bridges or courses that carry water, were not simply a Roman invention; they had already been used for hundreds of years. But no matter if it was in the days of Abraham and Isaac, or in the days of Jesus, or still today throughout vast areas of the world, having clean water running from a tap was not what you had. Instead you went to a well, the spring, people gathered around wells and rivers, and they were indeed life-giving.
The well or spring was the life giver to Hagar when she was sent out into the wilderness. The well was the place where the servant went to meet Rebekah who became Isaac’s wife. The well featured in Jacob’s life and where he met Rachel.
The well was a life giver to Moses after he fled Egypt and a life giver in other places in the Exodus story where God provided water, sweet water, for the Israelites. The well was a significant and symbolic source in the Jewish history and faith stories.
Then even in the Gospels we might remember the account of the woman who comes out to the well, not at sunset when the other women came out, but in the middle of the day by herself, and there she meets Jesus who asks her for a drink of water and in his response we hear the significance and symbolism of the well; he says to her… 13 , “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
It is no accident, that in asking for a drink of water, in all these accounts, in seeking water for the body, that a deeper spring of life wells up within the people; through prayers, desperation, conversation, the presence of God.
In today’s passage, the unnamed servant relies on God, and through prayer as he waits by the wellspring, he is seeking something deeper, something life-giving, both for his master Abraham, and for Abraham’s son Isaac, but also as an expression of participating in the promise of God.
One thing that differentiates between humans and all other living things is that we participate in life as an expression of meaning. A bird is satisfied flying, nesting, finding food. A cat’s life is sleeping, eating, wandering, and trying to catch the bird. A fish swims, an elephant wanders, a spider hunts. But for us, we participate in life as an expression of meaning.
Every movie made, every book written, every painting painted. Every family, every journey, every friendship. Every movement, every protest, every belief. Every group we belong to, every political view we hold, every thing we buy. Every jog, every meal, every garden, every hobby, every thing we make. Greed, love, hate, knowledge, forgiveness and un-forgiveness. It is all about how we participate in life as an expression of meaning and we are drawn to things in life as we seek this meaning.
We all go to wells and springs to seek life and meaning.
Some wells are life giving, some are bitter and not about life.
And for all of us in our lives there can be a mixture of different wells and springs, again some that are life giving, and some that are not.
What are the wells that you are drawn to in your life? Are they life giving? Do you find God there? Are they wells where you pray and find a way ahead in life? And you will know when a well is good; you will meet God there, a place where God provides, and leads you on. A place where you will find water for your soul; a wellspring, gushing up to life.
Let me finish with two little passages…
Psalm 114: 7-8.
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob (Isaac and Rebekah’s son)
Who turns the rock into a pool of water,
The flint into a spring of water.
John 7: 37ff.
Jesus said…
Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “out of the believers heart shall flow rivers of living water”.
Amen.