Sermon July 27 2014
Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11, 45b
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
God of the covenant, we live in a world where promises are broken, and where we are not always completely honest with one another. Help us to continue to trust in the promises you have made with us, and help us to create a trusting, covenantal community with all of your creation. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.
What does it mean when we say that we trust someone? Do we mean that we always know that the person we trust will do exactly as we want or exactly what they say? What does it mean to you when someone makes a promise to you?
I struggle with trusting another human being completely because I know who very fallible we all are. And when I say I know how fallible we are, I mean I am very aware of how fallible I am—and I figure I’m not all that different in regard to weaknesses and imperfections than other people.
I don't think people are out to get me, not really. There are the times when people like you and I live according to our own individual interests instead of considering the interests of family, community, state, nation, or world. We get stuck on the very local and don’t necessarily look very far for answers, for the effect our actions have. And some of us, in that situation, might not be completely honest because we see some good for ourselves or for our kind of people in the dishonesty.
The story of God’s people continues and Jacob, as I said last Sunday, has now met his match. Last week, Jacob received God’s promise of land, of children, of a nation from his descendants. Now he’s arrived in Haran where he found a well and waited for his wife to arrive, sort of . . .
When he got to Haran he did find a well where he also found shepherds waiting to water their flocks. They waited until all the flocks arrived and only moved the stone from the well then—and they did it together. Jacob asked about Laban, his mother’s brother, and as the shepherds began to talk to him, they noticed Rachel arriving at the well to water Laban’s flocks. Immediately, Jacob jumped up to move the heavy stone so that she could water the flocks immediately. Unsurprisingly, in the language of love stories, the bible says, “Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud.” Having declared himself by his actions, Rachel ran home to tell Laban who she’d met. And Laban invited Jacob to stay with them.
Jacob’s place at Laban’s home was a kind of in-between place. He was a kinsmen—a relative with no visible means of support. So Laban knew he’d have to work, but in today’s text, we hear that Laban didn’t want him to think he was a servant. He was going to pay him. “What shall your wages be?” Jacob, who seems very much into Rachel, said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.”
They agreed to the bride price—and after seven years, the wedding feast was planned and the party was underway. After the party, after lots of food and wine, when things were a little fuzzy, Jacob went to the tent where his bride was waiting for him. And the next morning, instead of seeing Rachel by the light of the dawn, he saw her sister Leah.
Jacob, the trickster has been tricked! Laban received 7 years of labor with his flocks as a price for his daughter Leah—and Jacob promised another 7 years when he found out that Rachel was not yet his wife. So, even though they married at the end of a week, he worked for another 7 years for no pay, only his marriage to Rachel.
Now I’m sure that marriage to the one you love is worth even more than seven years of hard labor. Just nod your heads. But what is the price of deceit, dishonesty? Nobody likes to be lied to and Jacob has met his match.
Furthermore, he was married to two sisters who were now in competition for his time, affection, and for his children.
But imagine, before we move onto the rest of the story, just these days when Leah was forced to marry a man who didn’t choose to marry her. Not only did she not have much choice, but now I can imagine that he was angry. Whether or not he like or dislike Leah, she was not his choice. And whether or not Leah like Jacob, she really had no choice either. In no part of our text today do we hear the voices of the women who married Jacob. Eventually, we hear their conversations, but as their marriages to Jacob begin, we don’t hear a word.
Jewish law throughout the bible allowed men to marry more than one wife and insisted on absolute fairness. Different wives could not be treated differently, equal food, clothing, love, and intimate attention were required. According to one source, this discouraged polygamy because it was expensive—but it was just. Leah couldn’t be treated worse in the tangible ways. But it had to have been difficult. Rachel, as the story continues, has trouble conceiving and must wait years before having a baby, so her story is painful as well.
The time, the place, the culture, really, the whole world they lived in was very different than our own—yet we can relate to the very human emotions in this story.
We can relate to Jacob when he felt betrayed by his family. His Uncle Laban lied to him when he told him that seven years labor would be the price for Rachel. And the pain wouldn’t have been any better for his own history of deceit. It might have made it hurt more, realizing the pain he’d caused his parents and his brother. That mind of realization isn’t easy. But I think it might make us better at who we are trying to be. This kind of experience, no matter how we’d like to avoid it, might make us more empathetic. In time and with experience, we might better know how our own actions reverberate in other people’s lives. I by no means wish for betrayal, yet we all have the capacity to do it and this is how it feels.
Leah was a silent conspirator with Laban—she went to Jacob’s tent, became his wife, but she had little choice. In that day and culture, Laban had ultimate power over her life so he traded her for seven years of labor to a man who hadn’t chosen her. Laban’s lies about her being the older sister may not have been real tradition, but her life may have depended on marriage to some man. She was Laban’s property and responsibility, as his daughter and needed to marry in that time and place for the sake of her own life.
Rachel is silent in this part of the story alongside her sister. In Genesis 29 and 30, we can read about the marriages of Rachel and Leah and about the birth of their children. The struggle between them continued every day. Think how threatening our siblings can be to us, how strong our desire is to know that we are a favorite child, how hurt we are when parents are unfair or seem that way, think how important it is to be successful as we relate to our siblings. They may be our first real friends—and our first rivals. Rachel is silent here, but if she did love and want to marry Jacob imagine her broken heart at Laban’s scheming and Leah’s cooperation.
Initially, when Laban entered the story he seemed genuinely pleased that Jacob had come to live with him and even that he wanted to marry his daughter Rachel. Yet he is presented as someone bent on his own self-interest. We may know people like him—we may have had times in our lives when we resemble him ourselves. Selfishness and greed live within all of us at times.
We know all these people, I think, and some of them we know very well. And people like them live all around the world and right next door to us in our homes and in neighborhoods all over the county.
There is one trustworthy character standing in the background of all that is going on. And it’s a good thing that God has generations for God’s promises to work out because with people carrying them out, these things take a little time.
Jacob’s deceit led him to exile with Laban who tricked him into marrying two of his daughters—and kept him in servitude for 14 years. In that time, lots of babies were born to Leah and Rachel and to their slave women Zilpah and Bilhah—at least twelve boys it turns out and one girl. This generation of God’s covenantal family puts them a whole lot closer to God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah of a multitude of offspring, like stars in the sky and God’s reaffirmed promise to Jacob of descendants like the dust on the ground.
The covenant that God made with Abraham and Sarah to be father and mother of many nations, focused on children and childbirth being a blessing; through children, God showed God’s faithfulness. At the time, children were a particular blessing from God. In today’s context, however, God’s blessings take other forms.
God’s blessing is evident when we learn to keep our word and our promises to people, especially the important promises that are truly valuable. The values and lessons we learn in relationship to people who are not family bring blessings into our lives. We might learn and grow as people and even within our faith as we come to know people who have different traditions and origins. Jacob certainly learned about the habits, if not the traditions, of his mother’s family in Haran.
Our awareness of how God works in our lives can grow as we reach out to people with the compassion Jesus taught his disciples when he told them stories and sayings about the realm or kingdom that God was and is building. The kingdom of God wasn’t exactly like they imagined—it was like the mustard weed, really? It was like yeast, often used as a symbol of impurity or even rotten death? The kingdom of God was like the man who hid a treasure so its value wouldn’t raise the price on a field he wanted to buy. Huh?
God’s blessings are to be found, I think we can say with assurance, anywhere we are really looking for them. Pleasant experiences, monetary reward, wealth, material gain or emotional and physical pleasure aren’t signs of God’s blessing. God’s blessing is found in stories like this one in Genesis. Rabbi Rachel Montagu writes that Leah and Rachel’s daily struggle to maintain the equilibrium of their household is a more useful example of creative struggle with God and other human beings that the story of Jacob’s single night of wrestling God in next week’s text. Though that’s a great story and we’ll get there.
Leah and Rachel’s daily struggle exemplifies our own daily struggles and daily interactions with family members, friends, coworkers, roommates, classmates, or teammates. Each day we struggle in our attempt to maintain self-respect and keep our love for others in this messiness of the promises we make and break to one another.
That’s the place of God’s blessing, the blessing is in the struggle—not the violence, not the death, not the hatred, or the horror of betrayal and deceit—but in the struggle and in the attainment of the promise that God has made. God has promised us abundant life, in this life and in the next. God has promised us love, love to give, love to receive, love to sustain, love to care—all kinds of love. God has promised us a kingdom, full of struggle, full of this thing we call life.
To the glory of God, God of promise, God of life. Amen.
