A new introduction to an old friend!
At this time of year, our Old Testament readings are all about
Abraham. Over the last month, if the Old Testament lesson was read,
we learnt how God called Abraham to leave his home in Ur
how he
and Sarah were childless, but God promised them a child;
how
Abraham pre-empted this by conceiving a child, Ishmael, on his
servant;
how that all went rather pear-shaped when Ishmael
started playing too roughly with Isaac, when he was finally born, and
making him cry;
last week, we had that extraordinary episode
when God appeared to be asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac;
and
now, this week, we come to a nearly-grown-up Isaac, and his search
for a wife.
Scholars seem to think that these stories of
Abraham,
which had been an integral part of the Jewish
tradition,
were collected together and written down during the
5th and 6th centuries BC –
this, you
remember, was when the Israelites were in exile,
the Temple had
been destroyed,
and they had no king of their own.
Only a
very few Israelites were left in Jerusalem,
and they had rather
lapsed from their traditions and practice.
So the various
stories were collected and written down,
possibly somewhat
haphazardly, in case it should all be lost.
Abraham
himself is thought to have lived in the early part of the 2nd
millennium BC.
Apparently the earliest he could have been born
was 1976 BC and the latest he could have died was 1637 BC.
This
was in the Bronze age –
he would have had bronze tools, not
iron, and possibly still a flint knife.
Many years ago
now, Robert and I visited the town of Bolzano,
where they have
the museum where the body of Oetzi, the ice-man, is stored.
You
may remember that he was found in the Alps about 20 years ago,
having
been shot by person or persons unknown.
His body had been
preserved in a glacier for over 5,000 years.
The point is, this
was even longer ago than Abraham –
he only had a copper axe,
as they hadn't discovered about bronze yet.
But the things that
were found with him –
his axe,
his coat,
his
trousers,
his bow and arrows,
his knife and so
on,
you could see just how they were used, and he was really a
person just like you or me!
That makes Abraham feel less remote,
as he, too, would have worn clothes we recognise, and carried tools
we'd know and so on.
Abraham had felt called by God to
leave his home-town of Ur in the Chaldees, which in his day was
allegedly highly civilised.
They had, apparently, nineteen
different kinds of beer and a great many fried-fish shops, if you
call that being civilized!
However, they did enjoy other kinds
of food, such as
onions,
leeks,
cucumbers,
beans,
garlic,
lentils,
milk,
butter,
cheese,
dates,
and the occasional meal of beef or
lamb.
Just the sort of food I like!
There was wine
available, to make a change from beer,
but it was expensive,
and drunk only by the rich.
They played board-games,
enjoyed
poetry and music, which they played on the lyre, harp and drum,
and
were generally rather well-found, from all one gathers.
The
only thing was that without many trees in their part of the world,
they had to do without much furniture,
and tended to
sleep on mats on the floor, for instance, instead of beds.
But
definitely a sensible and civilised place in which to live.
When
you hear it described, it doesn't sound all that remote, does
it?
They were people like us, and had similar tastes to us.
But
Abraham had felt called to leave there,
and to take his family
and household and to live in the desert.
And they had all sorts
of adventures, and sometimes things went very wrong, but mostly they
went all right.
And now Isaac has grown up and Sarah has
died,
and it is time for Isaac to marry.
Abraham is urgent
that he marry a woman from his own tribe,
not a local Canaanite
woman, who wouldn't have known about God,
so he sends his
servant back to Ur, to find a suitable relation for Isaac to
marry.
The servant explains, rather earnestly, how he
asked God to show him which the right woman was –
would she
offer to draw water for his camels, or not?
That wasn't an easy
task –
camels, which can go four or five days without water,
like to drink A LOT at one time, so she'd have needed a fair few
bucketsful!
Rebecca's family would have liked a few days
to get used to the idea,
but the servant says he needs to get
back as soon as possible,
and Rebecca agrees to leave next
day.
So she and her various maidservants –
one of them
may have been her old nurse –
got packed up and ready, and set
off.
And eventually they get home safely,
and there is
Isaac coming to meet them.
And they get married, and live
more-or-less happily ever after!
We sometimes get alarmed
about arranged marriages these days;
we know that in those
communities where they're still more-or-less the norm, things can go
horribly wrong –
think of those so-called “honour killings”
we hear so much about!
Even in this day and age, it isn't always
easy for someone to escape an abusive situation if they don't know
where to go.
But as I understand it, an arranged marriage can be
every bit as happy and as successful as one where the bride and groom
have chosen one another;
we all know that you have to work
at being married,
whether you knew your husband for years
beforehand or whether you met him a few days or weeks before the
wedding –
or even at the wedding!
I think Rebecca
was very brave going off with Abraham's servant like that;
she
had no way of knowing who or what was awaiting her at the far end of
the journey.
The servant had bigged up Abraham's –
and
thus Isaac's –
wealth, and had given her lots of gold
jewellery, but was he telling the truth?
But one thing
stands out about this story and that is that God was involved from
beginning to end!
And God led them all to a happy ending.
I
wonder how much we actually believe that God is really involved in
our lives?
I know we say we do, but these Sundays in Ordinary
Time are very much places where what we think we believe tends to
come up against what we really do believe!
After all, not all of
our stories have happy endings, do they?
Some do, many do, and
for these we give thanks,
but what happens when they
don't?
Does God get involved in our lives?
And if so, how
does this work, and how can we work with God to ensure a happy
ending?
Well, the Bible definitely tells us that God is
involved in our lives,
and I am sure most of us could tell of
moments when we were perfectly and utterly sure of this.
But
equally, most of us could tell of moments when we really struggled
with it!
Where was God when this or that bad thing
happened?
Does God really care?
In the story from two
weeks ago, Ishmael and Hagar in the desert,
we found that God
was there with them, even though it hadn't felt like it.
Many
of us have lived through enough bleak times to know that one comes
out the other side.
We know that, when we look back, we will see
God's hand upon it all.
God may not have led us to a happy
ending, exactly,
but we can see how God has worked all things
together for good for us.
It's not a matter of God waving
a magic wand and producing the happy ending we want;
we
all know God doesn't work like that.
And it's not a matter,
either, of God having set the future in stone so that nothing we can
do can change things.
Nor is it a matter of God simply sitting
back and letting us struggle as best we can, although everybody feels
at times that this is what is happening.
It's more as if
God is working with us, moment by moment.
Sometimes we –
or
other people –
do things that mean the situation can't come
out as God would have wished.
God has a detailed plan for
creation, but his plan for our individual lives isn't –
can't
be –
mapped out in moment-by-moment detail
since we are
free to make our own choices.
But God truly wants the best
possible life for each one of us.
The idea, I think, is to stay
as close to God as possible,
trying to be aware of each moment
of decision and what God would like for us to do.
But, of
course, as St Paul points out in the letter to the Romans, that isn't
actually possible!
We're a bit crap at actually doing the right
thing, no matter how much we know we want to!
It was impossible
for Paul to keep the Jewish law in its entirety,
no matter how
much he wanted to.
And although we know we are, and I quote,
under grace not under the law,
we do tend to find it easier to
try to follow a set of rules and regulations than to follow
Jesus!
And, of course, we don't follow those rules and
regulations perfectly –
how could we?
But Jesus
points out that his burden is light!
Sometimes we don't feel as
though it is.
“Come unto me all you who are burdened, and I
will give you rest!”
I am sure Abraham's servant must
have felt incredibly burdened when he went back to Ur to find
Rebecca.
But the servant, at least, spent his time
moment-by-moment in God's presence.
He trusted that God would
lead him, step by step, to the right woman and that God would bring
the whole journey to a happy conclusion.
“Come unto Me all you
who are burdened, and I will give you rest!”
Abraham's servant
trusted God.
I wonder how much we trust God?
It isn't
always easy, is it.
Last week's story, how God asked Abraham to
kill Isaac,
was very much about trust.
Abraham didn't even
argue with God –
he just went ahead and did as he was told,
leaving it very much up to God to do the right thing!
Even Isaac
didn't struggle –
he was a young man at that stage, not a
small boy,
and he could easily have overpowered his elderly
father.
But no –
he allowed himself to be bound and laid
upon the altar.
And God did do the right thing, as it were, and
produced the ram.
And now God did show the servant his
choice of wife for Isaac.
And so was born the Kingdom of
Israel.
We never know the consequences of our choices –
they
may be far more far-reaching than we expect.
But we do need to
practice involving God in our everyday lives,
otherwise, when
the crunch comes, we'll find it much harder than it need be to rely
on him.
“I will give you rest,” says Jesus, but if we don't
know how to come to him for that rest, how can he give it to
us?
Amen.
