“The Original International Man of Mystery” (Hebrews 7:1-3)

 

I wonder if anyone can tell me what is the Old Testament passage most frequently quoted in the New Testament…

You might think it’s something like Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If you’re really into the writings of the minor prophets, you might come up with an obscure verse like Habakkuk 2:4, “The just shall live by faith.”

Depending on how you do your calculation, there are something in the range of three hundred quotations from the Old Testament that can be found in the New. But the quotation that tops them all is from Psalm 110, verses 1 and 4, which run like this:

The Lord says to my Lord:
    ‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’ …
The Lord has sworn
    and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever
    after the order of Melchizedek.’

The first place we find these words is in each of the first three gospels. They come up in the course of one of those nitpicking encounters between Jesus and the religious authorities. We hear them, not on the lips of Jesus, but from his opponents. They use them to try to debunk what people are beginning to say about Jesus: that he is the promised Messiah. Clearly, they recognized these verses as a messianic prophecy.

The next time we come across them is when they are quoted by Peter. They are to be found in the middle of his sermon on the day of Pentecost. He was addressing the large crowd who had gathered in the street when they heard Jesus’ followers praising God in what they recognized as their own languages. And after citing these same verses, Peter proclaimed, “Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah.” (Acts 2:34-36)

This in turn brings us to the Letter to the Hebrews, which we have been following now since the beginning of the year. So I will forgive you if you don’t remember way back in chapter 1, where this text is quoted once again. There, pointing to Jesus, the author asks the question, “To which of the angels has God ever said, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’”? (Hebrews 1:13)

Finally we come to the verse immediately preceding the passage before us this morning: Hebrews 6:20. There the author writes of Jesus as “having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”.

When I was scratching my head early last week trying to come up with a title for this sermon, I thought of calling it “Who the heck was Melchizedek?” And perhaps that’s exactly the question you’re asking yourself right now! Well, the answer comes in the three verses which make up this morning’s passage from Hebrews.

The author takes us far back into the mists of history—in fact, to chapter 14 in the book of Genesis. Now here’s the scene: The rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah had been trounced in battle by the rulers of some of the neighbouring settlements. Among those whom they took as captives was Abraham’s nephew Lot. When Abraham found out about it, he pulled together his armed men and staged an overnight raid on the two rulers and their forces. The result was that Lot was made a free man once again and Abraham forged a treaty with the ruler of Sodom. And that is where Melchizedek enters the scene.

He appears to come to Abraham out of nowhere. He is the king of Salem (later to become Jerusalem) and the scene takes place in the nearby Valley of Shaveh. Melchizedek brings with him bread and wine and pronounces a blessing on Abraham. In response, Abraham returns to him a tenth of all his possessions. Then, as mysteriously as he appeared, Melchizedek disappears into the mists of time.

Now I have to say that this scene is one of a few in the Old Testament that never fail to bring shivers down my spine. It is up there with the three mysterious visitors who later came out of the blue to visit Abraham as he stood at the entry of his tent. And with the fourth man who stood amid the flames with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego inside King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. I ask myself: Could it be that what those men witnessed—and what Abraham witnessed that day in the Valley of Shaveh—was a foreshadowing of the eternal Word, Jesus, who was with God and who was God from the beginning? I’ll leave it to you to come to your own conclusion.

King of righteousness

But back to Melchizedek. Our passage this morning tells us three things about him. The first is a translation of his name. It is a combination of the two Hebrew words melek, which means “king”, and tsedeq, which means “righteousness”. Put them together and Melchizedek’s name means “king of righteousness”—and as such he points directly to Jesus.

But before we go any farther, perhaps we need to ask, what does it mean to be righteous? Many people confuse righteousness with self-righteousness. In reality the two could not be farther apart. Jesus put the lie to what masquerades as righteousness when he told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to pray in the temple. You will recall how the Pharisee strutted in and parroted, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get…” That isn’t righteousness: that is shameless, delusional pride.

Several years ago one of my brothers had new neighbours move in next door. In an effort to be friendly, he went over and invited them over for a barbecue. He was taken aback by their response: “Oh no. We couldn’t do that. Our church forbids us from sharing meals with outsiders.”

As Jesus’ followers we need to be so careful not to radiate that false brand of righteousness, the one that gives the impression that we see ourselves as better than other people. True righteousness is what we find in the tax collector, who crouched in a shadowy corner of the temple where he was barely noticeable. And not having the boldness even to lift up his eyes and look towards heaven, he murmured, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:9-14)

The truly righteous recognize their constant need of God’s grace. They seek to live in daily dependence on him. And this is what we see in Jesus, who said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” And again, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 4:34; 6:38)

We call Jesus righteous in a unique sense, though, because he did what no other human being has ever done: he lived a life of perfect, uninterrupted communion with his Father. Jesus is the true King of Righteousness. In him we are able to see all that it means to live in a relationship with God.

King of peace

The second fact about Melchizedek that our passage this morning points us to is that he was King of Salem—and Salem in Hebrew is the same word as shalom, which means “peace”. My Bible dictionary informs me that that word shalom involves a much broader understanding than what we commonly mean by “peace”. It carries with it a notion of “completeness”, “soundness”, “well-being”, “safety”.

So it was that, on the night before they were to face what would be their greatest trial, Jesus could comfort his followers with the words, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

A few days later, as they gathered in fear for their lives behind locked doors, suddenly Jesus was in their midst again with the familiar words, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) And today Jesus comes to us with those same words, “Peace be with you.” Peace as we face tragedy and suffering. Peace as we run into broken relationships and conflict. Peace as we seek to negotiate the storms and setbacks that are an unavoidable part of life in in a fallen world. And in all of those circumstances, Jesus is able not only to give us inner peace. He also empowers us to be makers of peace. After all, peace is one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Yet there is more to it than that—infinitely more! The peace that Jesus gives us in the here and now is only a foreshadowing of the real and lasting peace that he will bring with him in the new creation. This is the peace that we read about in the prophets:

“No more shall there be…
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days…
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
    they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
    and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labour in vain
    or bear children for calamity,
for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,
    and their descendants with them…
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
    the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
    and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
    in all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. (Isaiah 65:20-25)

That is a picture that never ceases to amaze me! (And what a stunning contrast it is to the images that we see in the news daily right now of bombed-out buildings and desperate refugees fleeing for safety in Ukraine!)

Yes, Jesus does bring us peace as we lay our troubles before him. But the real peace he came to bring is the shalom of the new heaven and the new earth, when all creation will thrive as it hasn’t since the Garden of Eden, in the light of his unending glory. And it is the vision of that peace that calls and arouses us to be makers of peace in the here and now.

Our eternal high priest

Thirdly, Melchizedek was a high priest. Abraham recognized this when he gave him a tenth of all that he had. We don’t know what kind of sacrifices Melchizedek offered in his high priestly role. But we do know the sacrifice that Jesus offered for us in his own life’s blood poured out for us on the cross.

Words are not sufficient to describe what Jesus accomplished for you and for me on that first Good Friday. The closest I can find are from my Anglican Prayer Book when it speaks about what Jesus has done for us through his death as “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world”.

The Letter to the Hebrews will have a good deal more to teach us about Jesus’ eternal priesthood in the succeeding chapters—and I don’t want to steal from what preachers might be led to say in the Sundays that follow.

Yet allow me to say that, unlike Abraham’s response to Melchizedek, we can’t be satisfied with giving just a tenth. Jesus demands our all. As he said to his first disciples, he says to you and to me, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) The apostle Paul said much the same thing a generation later when he wrote to the believers in Rome: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1)

Switch now for a moment to the twentieth century, to 1937, when the Nazi party had all of Germany in its oppressive grip. A young Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat down to put together a study on the Sermon on the Mount. He could not have known that eight years later he would die as a martyr to Hitler’s brutal régime. Nor could he have known how prophetic his words would be when wrote, “The cross is laid on every Christian… When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”[1]

As we focus our thoughts this morning upon Jesus, the King of righteousness, the King of Peace and our Great High Priest, the only response that enters my mind comes to me in the words of the hymn writer Isaac Watts:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

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[1]     The Cost of Discipleship

“Creation—Who cares?” (Genesis 1:1 – 2:1)

It was way back in July 1925 that one of the most famous court cases in US history took place in Dayton, Tennessee. Known ever since as the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, it centred on twenty-four year-old John T. Scopes. He was accused of introducing Darwin’s theory of evolution while acting as a substitute teacher in a high school biology class. Unknown to him, his action was contrary to the state law of the time, which made it illegal to teach evolution in any of its public schools. Scopes was eventually acquitted on a legal technicality. But the case made headlines across the United States and served to fuel one of the most tragic church squabbles of recent times. The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was an acrimonious division that continues in some parts of the church right down to this day.

As with so many of the quarrels that have divided Christians over the centuries, it has generated far more heat than light. It has wasted energy and resources that could have been directed to infinitely more useful and God-honouring purposes. And surely the only winner in it all has been the devil, who must rub his hands with glee.

One of the greatest casualties in this controversy is the passage we read from the Old Testament this morning: Genesis, chapter 1. Skeptics scorn it as a hopelessly primitive, pre-scientific description of how the universe has come into being. They point to it as evidence that serious science and Christian faith are incompatible. And I suspect that for many the result has been to regard what the Bible has to teach us about creation with a certain degree of embarrassment—to ignore it or leave it on the shelf to gather dust.

To my mind this is a tragedy of incalculable proportions. For the more I read from this first chapter of Genesis, the more I find myself in the presence of truths so profound I know I can never reach the bottom of them. But let’s give it a try anyway, and open our Bibles to Genesis, chapter 1, where we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

These first words of the Bible take us back to the dawn of time. Cosmologists debate as to whether that means ten or twenty billion years or something in between. But numbers and statistics are not the concern that lies behind them. Rather, it is to communicate the awesome truth that before anything existed, there was God.

It is hard—I want to say that for me it is impossible—to imagine complete nothingness, absolute emptiness. The closest our author can bring us to it is with the words “formless and empty”, utter darkness. It is a stark and chilling picture. Yet even in this utter void, God is present.

The ancient Hebrews were by and large a land-loving people. For them the sea was a place of danger and chaos—and this is surely the picture conjured up by the waters at the end of verse 2. Yet the author gives us the astounding picture of the Spirit of God hovering over it all. Biblical commentators have often commented that that same word “hovering” is used of an eagle in flight.

For a number of years our family used to spend our vacation on an island in St Margaret’s Bay. Needless to say, we shared it with a number of species of wildlife, including a family of ospreys. I remember many times looking up into the brightness of the blue sky to see one of those magnificent birds wheeling silently, seemingly motionlessly, above me, and never ceasing to be fascinated by it. So it is that the stage is being set. God is silently present and about to act to bring his creation into being. And it all happens with a word.

Into the unimaginable silence of complete nothingness God speaks: “Let there be light.” In Hebrew it’s just two words, yehi or. And with those two words the Bible tells us there was light. Creation had begun.

Science

What follows is not, as some maintain, a primitive myth. Rather, it is a carefully structured rhythmic exposition of God’s creative power. Each of the first six days opens with the phrase, “And God said…” And each closes with the words, “And there was evening and there was morning…,” followed by the number of the day.

Then look more closely and you’ll see that there is a correspondence between day one and day four, day two and day five, day three and day six. It has been observed furthermore that on the first three days God introduces order into the chaos, separating light from darkness, waters from waters, land from seas. Then during the second triad of days he fills the void, setting the sun, moon and stars in the sky, causing the waters to teem with living creatures, populating the land with animals of every description. We could go further and note that on the third and sixth day there is a double creation, followed by a triple action on the seventh.

Much more could be said here—and has been. Indeed scholars have devoted their lives to it. Whole books have been written about it. But it becomes clear that what we have in Genesis 1 is not a scientific, but a lyrical representation of God’s creative power. Yet, having said that, I am convinced that the Genesis account of creation opens the door to scientific exploration in at least three ways.

The first of them is by affirming the order that underlies the universe (quantum mechanics aside for the moment). That is, that God’s creation is open to our comprehension.

Secondly, by refusing to ascribe names to the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, the Genesis account of creation was declaring that these were inanimate bodies. Other ancient civilizations saw the stars and planets as divine beings, possessing a power of their own to affect human life. But the Bible will have none of that.

Thirdly, as we move into chapter 2, we find God parading his creatures before the man to give each of them a name. And that process of cataloguing and naming goes on into our present day, whether it be in the realm of subatomic particles, as yet undiscovered stars, or living beings. Surely this is much of the work of science in bringing understanding and meaning to the world we inhabit.

And so, while Genesis is a pre-scientific document, it is not as some argue, anti-scientific. To the contrary, I think we can rightly affirm that Genesis opens the door to scientific inquiry.

Art

One of the mental images that I take away from Genesis (and I am prepared to admit that this may be fanciful on my part) is of God as an artisan. In my mind’s eye I have a picture of God coming to his creation each day and adding a much-needed detail—dry ground and seas, flowers and fruit on this day, sun, moon and stars on that, fish and sea creatures on the next, animals on the next… And each day, we find God taking a moment to look at what he has done, and declaring, “It is good.”

Five times we hear it said, “And God saw that it was good.” We hear it twice on the third day, once on the fourth day, once on the fifth day, and once on the sixth. Then, after all has been created and his work is complete, we are told, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Now the word “good” in Hebrew can have a variety of meanings. It can mean good in the sense of good for something, useful. It can mean morally good, righteous. It can also mean aesthetically good in the sense of pleasant, delightful or beautiful. And I can’t help but thinking that that sense is at least part of what is meant when we read each of those five times, “And God saw that it was good.”

God takes delight in his creation—in its beauty, its majesty, its complexity. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” says Psalm 19. And in the gospel we find our Lord Jesus speaking lyrically about the flowers of the field, “that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these” (Matthew 6:29).

And so I believe that this first chapter of Genesis begins to lay a foundation not only for investigative science but also for artistic endeavour and for the appreciation of beauty wherever we find it. Creation calls us to stand in awe at the vastness of the night sky, at the whir of a hummingbird’s wings, at the colours of an alpine meadow, and to declare, “It is good.”

Stewardship

All of this brings us to a third lesson that this first chapter of Genesis leaves us with. It comes to us on the sixth day of creation and it has to do with your and my place within it.

In verse 26 we hear God declare, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule … over all the creatures…” And again in verse 28 we are told that God blessed humankind and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Perhaps like me you have heard environmentalists rail against these verses, claiming that they have provided justification for an uncontrolled exploitation of the bounty with which God has surrounded us, denuding the earth of its resources. But a careful reading of Genesis 1 reveals that that just is not so. Indeed, if anything, just the opposite is true.

So what does it mean for us to rule over all creation? German theologian and ethicist Helmut Thielicke taught that we can only properly understand our rulership over creation when we place it within the wider context of God’s sovereignty. He wrote, “We are not to rule and subdue the earth because we stand above the other creatures, but only because we stand under God and are privileged to be his viceroys.”[1]

The contemporary American Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann goes a step farther and places our rulership of creation within the context of Jesus’ teaching:

The dominance is that of a shepherd who cares for, tends, and feeds the animals… Thus the task of ‘dominion’ does not have to do with exploitation and abuse. It has to do with the securing of the well-being of every other creature and bringing the promise of each to full fruition… Moreover, a Christian understanding of dominion must be discerned in the way of Jesus of Nazareth… The one who rules is the one who serves. Lordship means servanthood… The human person is ordained over the remainder of creation both for its profit, well-being and enhancement. The role of the human person is to see to it that the creation becomes fully the creation willed by God.[2]

So it is that Eugene Peterson in The Message renders these verses, “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself.”

The point comes through even more clearly when we look at God’s command to fill the earth. The verb for “fill” here has a secondary meaning of fulfilling, bringing to completion. And so part of our calling is to continue God’s work of creation, to enhance its riches, its beauty and its immense variety.

Our gracious God has placed into our hands an enormous gift in his creation. May we never cease to wonder at its vastness and complexity and to be awed by its beauty. And may we be faithful to his mandate to care for it and to tend it until the day when all creation is brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

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[1]     How the World Began, 67

[2]     Genesis, 32-33

“Rachel and Leah” (Genesis 29:1-12 [16-30] et al.)

 My wife Karen and I may be the only two people in the whole of Canada who do not lament the disappearance of door-to-door mail delivery. About a month after we moved back to Halifax last summer, Canada Post erected a new “superbox” diagonally across the street from our house. For the little while, almost every time we went to pick up mail, it gave us the opportunity to meet our new neighbours and introduce ourselves—and I don’t think it could possibly have happened otherwise.

I remember being present at a presentation some years ago where the speaker made the comment that one of the early factors that have led to the decline of the sense of community in our society over the past 150 years has been the disappearance of the community well. (It has also led to the disappearance of dysentery and cholera, but that’s another issue!) The point he was making was that the well provided a place for people to gather and also a place where they could exchange information and catch up with one another—much like our community mailbox.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that in the Bible wells are often the places where significant conversations transpire. This morning, for example, in the gospel reading, Jesus meets with a woman at a well, who not only discovers where she can find living water but that the person she is speaking with is the Messiah. Last week we saw how Abraham’s servant found a wife for his son Isaac at another well. And in this morning’s Old Testament reading we witness yet another pivotal meeting at a well, as Jacob sets his eyes for the first time on his cousin Rachel and the two fall instantly and incurably in love.

Rachel’s Romance

The story of Rachel and her relationship with Jacob is one of the great romances of the Bible. It is hot and passionate, as Jacob displays the strength of a superhero, dashing across to lift an enormous stone from the mouth of a well so that she and her sheep can have access to its cool, refreshing waters. It continues as he embraces and kisses her and begins to weep aloud, abandoning all the customs and conventions of the day. He is hopelessly smitten with this rapturously beautiful woman.

I wonder how many of us generally think of the Bible as a romantic book. If you’re like me, you’re probably more inclined to go to it to learn about doctrine. I was brought up on the inductive method of Bible study: observe, interpret, apply. And I have no desire to knock that method. It brings a discipline and a focus to Bible study that are vitally important. But the Bible is not just about doctrine—and one thing that the story of Rachel teaches us about, if nothing else, is romance, passion.

Rachel and Jacob’s attraction to each other was instantaneous, as passionate as anything you might see at the movies. Yet it was far more and far deeper than a summer love affair or temporary fling. Theirs was a love that sustained them through time. For seven long years Jacob and Rachel patiently waited for the day her father Laban would allow them to be married. And Genesis tells us, “They seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her” (Genesis 29:20). Then, when Laban substituted his older daughter Leah for Rachel on their wedding night (and Jacob the trickster was tricked!) he was willing to work another seven years to earn the right to call her his wife. It was a love that did not dim in the face of years of family conflict and of the disappointment of childlessness, and that carried them through to the time of Rachel’s death in the anguish of childbirth.

Of course Rachel and Jacob’s relationship is not the only account of romance we find in the Bible. We have only to go as far as the second chapter of Genesis. Think of Adam’s words when he first sets sight on Eve: “At last! Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” (Genesis 2:23) Think of the tender love between Boaz and Ruth, of Hosea’s unrelenting pursuit of Gomer in spite of her unfaithfulness—or of the Song of Songs, eight chapters of unabashed and sometimes embarrassingly sensual love poetry. (I once preached a series of sermons on the Song of Songs, but kept an eye to make sure the children were out of the congregation first!)

Against this backdrop R.R. Reno, editor of First Things, draws some broader conclusions. He writes:

As … [Rachel and] Jacob’s hot passion illustrates, the biblical view treats passion as the engine of destiny, for good or ill… Our loyalty to the future of sin cannot be broken by cool reflection… Only a counterloyalty, a counterlove, can set us free from our bondage to false loves… Only the madness of love and its arrogant disdain for human limitations can motivate us to seek fellowship with God. Thus, the sheer ambition of the promise of salvation encourages a view of the human in which the urgency of desire plays a more fundamental role than deliberations of reason… Christianity and Judaism prize the gift of reason. But neither misconceives its role or overestimates its power… The intellect needs to be informed, but it must also be energized, and to do so the passions must be engaged.[1]

Is it any coincidence therefore that the final pages of the Bible give us a picture of another romance, of a bridegroom awaiting his bride and the overwhelming joy that follows (Revelation 21:2-4)? If Rachel teaches us nothing else, it is that God has made us to be passionate—relentlessly pressing on, as Paul put it, “to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (Philippians 3:12).

Erica Sabiti was the first African Anglican Archbishop of Uganda. As a boy he had been educated in church schools; he had attended a Christian college, studied in seminary, been ordained to the ministry. Yet through all of that he would describe himself as having for many years been eighteen inches away from the kingdom of God. What did he mean? The eighteen inches between his head and his heart. We need to have a faith that touches us deeply, that invades every area of our lives including our deepest emotions, our passions.

Rachel’s Rivalry

There is a whole other side to Rachel, however, that we cannot neglect—a deeply negative side to her passion, if you will. It is reflected in her fierce competitiveness, her utter unwillingness to settle for anything less than first place, even if that meant resorting to less than honourable means to achieve it. In that regard she was the perfect match for her husband Jacob and it led to what to me are two of the strangest incidents in the Bible.

Rachel had been forced through her father Laban’s trickery to share her marriage to Jacob with her sister Leah. What made matters worse, indeed deeply painful for Rachel, was that for years she was unable to conceive, while Leah gave birth to boy after boy. One day, Leah’s eldest, Reuben, was working in the fields when he came across some mandrake plants. Mandrakes are in fact poisonous, but their fleshy, carrot-like roots often resemble miniature human figures and in the ancient world they were commonly believed to have powers as an aphrodisiac or fertility enhancer. When Rachel saw them, she immediately wanted them. Indeed, so desperate was she to gain possession of them in the hopes of bearing a child that she traded her place in her husband’s bed for them. To her chagrin, it was not she but Leah who became pregnant, and bore Jacob a fifth son.

The second strange incident took place as Jacob finally decided he had had enough of living as a member of his unprincipled father-in-law Laban’s household, where life had become increasingly intolerable. It was during sheep-shearing time, when Laban was safely off with his flocks, that they decided to make a break for it. Just before they left, Rachel sneaked into her father’s tent and stole what our New International Version Bibles describe as Laban’s household gods. The word in Hebrew is teraphim, and it probably refers to a small idol kept in the house as a protective talisman. In 1926 archaeologists discovered an ancient near-eastern document from the 15^th century BC suggesting that such figures belonged to the primary heir in a family, that possession of them was the prerogative of the head of the household. So was this Rachel’s way of finally supplanting her older sister Leah? Or was it just a means of finally gaining mastery over her father Laban after his deceitful behaviour all those many years ago? No one really knows, and Rachel’s motives remain a mystery.

It not long before that incident that the Bible tells us that God “remembered” Rachel and she gave birth to a son. Of course God had never forgotten Rachel. Her name means “ewe” and she had always been one of his sheep and always would be. Her problem was that she was so driven, so consumed by wanting to be on top in the worldly sphere, that that eclipsed for her the truth that she was of infinite value to God—that his passion for her burned hotter even than Jacob’s. She was a sheep for whom the Good Shepherd would lay down his life.

Leah the Unloved

Rachel named her first son Joseph. He was the most famous of Jacob’s sons and he would later save the whole family (and as a result the nation that descended from it) from famine. Her second son was Benjamin, from whose lineage would come Israel’s first king, Saul. Centuries later from the tribe of Benjamin would come another Saul, the man who later became Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.

However, it would not be through Rachel, but through her sister Leah, that the greatest line, the line to the Messiah, would be traced—Leah, whose name means “weary” and about whom the only thing that is said is that she had delicate eyes. Poor Leah, always having to live in the shadow of her younger, ambitious, outgoing, clever, ravishingly beautiful sister! I suspect that she too may have been at the well that day when Jacob fell head over heels for Rachel. But he would have taken no notice of her. No one ever did. It was as though she was never there. She bore six sons to Jacob, and while he looked after her and was in all likelihood kind and tender towards her, it was always Rachel that he truly loved.

Yet while Rachel was Jacob’s choice from the get-go, God had his eye on Leah. And isn’t this God’s way again and again? As you thumb through the ancestry of Jesus in the gospels, you come across some of the most unlikely people: Rahab, the prostitute who plied her trade so conveniently just inside the town wall of Jericho and is commended in the great gallery of the faithful in Hebrews 11; Ruth, a widow and a Gentile who had no thought of ever finding another husband; David, the least likely of Jesse’s sons to take on the leadership of a nation, who was good for nothing more than to strum his harp among the sheep, but the one whom God had chosen as Israel’s king; Mary, a girl barely in her teens living in a remote village in far-off Galilee—and, what was more—a virgin! “How can this be?” she asked. But it was. And why? Because we have a God who delights in surprising us, who again and again chooses the least likely, the most unobvious people, to be heralds of his kingdom, channels of his grace. And that improbable lineage includes the likes of you and me!

Brothers and sisters, [wrote the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth] think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1:26-30)

Rachel’s story tells us about passion. Leah’s story tells us that we must never underestimate what our mighty God can do through us or through others. Indeed, his strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). May their two stories combine to impel us to trust in him with passion.

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[1]        Genesis (Brazos Commentary), 238

“Rebekah” (Genesis 27:1-17 et al.)

 

Who among us hasn’t heard it said, “She got to where she is because she was in the right place at the right time”? In his book Outliers Malcolm Gladwell offers numerous examples of famous people who, in part at least, got to where they did because they happened to be in the right place at the right time—people as disparate as Bill Gates and the Beatles, Andrew Carnegie and Wayne Gretzky. Not that these people did not have an enormous amount of talent and ability, not that they did not put in prodigious hours of hard work, but one of the reasons that they succeeded where others with equal ability and effort did not, was that they happened to be in the right place at the right time.

In the case of all-star hockey players, for example, a hugely disproportionate number (40% in fact) are born in the first quarter of the year. “Why?” asks Gladwell. His answer is that the cut-off date for admission into hockey programmes is January 1—which means that by and large children born early in the year will have a significant physical advantage over those with later birth dates. (Wayne Gretzky’s birthday, by the way, is January 26.)

Once again, Gladwell is not seeking to take away from the incredible talent of Wayne Gretzky or from the abilities of the Beatles or Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates. But what he is saying that in each case there were factors outside their control or effort that contributed to their success, and one of them was being in the right place at the right time.

Well, this morning we meet with a woman who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Rebekah’s story begins while she is off-stage, somewhere in the wings. In the spotlight is Abraham, who is now “old, and well advanced in years”, as the Bible describes him. We can picture him stooped and leaning on his staff as he calls in his oldest and most trusted servant. Nowhere in the engaging story that follows are we given the servant’s name, though many suspect it was Eliezer of Damascus, mentioned in Genesis 15:2. Whoever it was, Abraham sends him out on a crucial mission—to find a suitable wife for his son Isaac. He makes him swear a solemn oath to go back to his homeland and his relatives and sends him off with ten camels, loaded with costly gifts.

Rebekah’s beauty

As the curtain rises on the next act we find the servant arriving at the city where Abraham’s brother Nahor lived. The sun was waning and the heat of the day had passed and the women had begun to come out to draw water from the local well. So what was he to do now? Pray! And pray he did: “God of my master Abraham, let the girl to whom I say, ‘Lower your jug and give me a drink,’ and who answers, ‘Drink, and let me also water your camels’—let her be the woman you have picked out for your servant Isaac.” And I suppose we could say that the rest was history. Barely had he uttered his prayer when a stunningly beautiful young woman arrived at the well. “Please, do you mind if I take a sip of water from your jug?” “Drink,” came the reply, “and let me get water for your camels, too, until they’ve drunk their fill.”

It’s an absolutely engaging story, and recounted with all the artistry of a master storyteller. But we need to stop there for just a moment to examine its details. First of all, we need to know that a camel that has gone without water for a few days can quaff down nearly a hundred litres. Secondly, the kind of jug that women in the ancient world used for drawing water held maybe ten litres at most.[1] Now do your math. This means that for ten thirsty camels Rebekah may have had to draw from that well as many as a hundred times. No mean task!

If nothing else, this tells us that Rebekah’s beauty was considerably more than skin deep. Alongside her physical attractiveness she had the gift of gracious hospitality, which in spite of all the violence and animosity of recent years is still so evident in middle-eastern lands. Karen and I encountered an example of it when we were travelling through Libya with our son Simon six years ago. Our vehicle needed gas, so we pulled up at a filling station. Unfortunately the large underground tank was being filled at the time, with the result that we had to wait under the blazing sun behind a long line of cars until the process had been completed, and it took more than an hour. When we were finally allowed to proceed, what did we find but men anxiously ushering us to the head of the long queue? We protested that we were happy to wait our turn. But no, we were guests in their country and they would not take no for an answer.

What a precious gift it is when outward attractiveness is matched by an inner beauty and strength of character as well. I think of the young shepherd boy David, who would not allow himself to be cowed by the roaring and threats of the giant Goliath; of Queen Esther, who courageously risked her life by pleading for her people before King Xerxes; of Daniel and his three young companions, who refused to engage in the pagan practices of the Babylonians; and of Stephen in the New Testament courageously sharing his faith in Jesus before the hostile religious council, who saw that his face was like the face of an angel. The Bible warns about “those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart” (2 Corinthians 5:12). Instead it commends to us the infinitely more beautiful fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

Rebekah’s serendipity

Rebekah, then, as she first appears in the Scriptures, is a woman of both outer and inner beauty—and in that regard I suspect that she was not unique among the people of Nahor’s city. What was equally important (we might even go so far as to say all-important) was that she happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I wonder if you have ever had that experience? I remember years ago, early in my ministry, for some reason deciding to drop into the shabby flat of a man who had come to me for financial help on a couple of occasions. He had had a longstanding struggle with alcohol but had been sober for some time. As it turned out, as I knocked on his door he was just about to open the first bottle in a twelve-pack of beer that he had just bought from the liquor store. I remember one snowy Christmas morning in the wake of a blizzard when just three people turned up in church. I was one of them and the other two were a woman and her daughter. I had seen her regularly in the congregation but had never got to know her. That morning gave us the opportunity to chat for the first time and it wasn’t long before she was involved in a Bible study group and later became the church’s treasurer. And if you gave me time I could probably come up with a whole series of similar incidents—and I suspect that if you look back on your life you could likely do the same, of being in the right place at the right time.

Now I know that most people—and possibly we ourselves—might write those things off as coincidences. But that was not the case with Abraham’s servant. “Praise be to the Lord, the God of my master Abraham,” he uttered in amazement, “who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master. As for me, the Lord has led me on the journey to the house of my master’s relatives” (Genesis 24:27). He had the spiritual insight to recognize that what was taking place at that moment was not mere happenstance. It was the result of God’s faithfulness, God’s gracious leading. Now that word “led” is found only at this point in Genesis, although it is found elsewhere in the Bible, most notably in Psalm 23: “He leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.”

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes about “… the hidden, inscrutable guidance of God …” “We do not always know the gifts of God in advance,” he continues. “But given a perspective of faith, we can in subsequent reflection discern the amazing movement of God in events we had not noticed or which we had assigned to other causes.” He goes on,

In a culture which grasps for visible signs of faith, which is driven toward scientism, and which falls for too many religious quackeries, the story stands as a foil against easy and mistaken faith. The workings of God are not spectacular, not magical, not oddities. Disclosure of God comes by steady discernment and by readiness to trust the resilience that is present in the course of daily affairs. There is an understatedness about the action of the narrative. But it is not reticent about faith. It is an understatement that is ready to be sustained and profoundly grateful when gifts are given. [2]

Another Old Testament scholar, John Walton, writes about learning to see God’s fingerprints, being guided by the everyday circumstances that he brings into our lives.”[3] The servant recognized God’s leading, but he was not the only one being led that day. It was Rebekah as well. And while we don’t have time to go into the details of how this particular chapter unfolds, it becomes very clear that Rebekah was a woman who both followed God’s leading and was fully prepared to go wherever that took her. In that sense she was a true child of God.

Rebekah’s duplicity

So it is that Rebekah is brought to the future husband she has never met, and we are told that “Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her.” And here is where the first shadow of future tragedy begins to cast itself over what so far has been an enchanted love story. The Bible immediately tells us, “And Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” Rebekah soon came to discover that she had not only to be a wife to her husband, but a mother as well.[4] Her situation only becomes worse when what should have been a joyful event, the birth of twin sons, turns out to be an omen of enmity and strife. Even in her uterus she could feel the babies jostling with each other. When she spoke to the Lord about it, the answer was clear: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23).

As they grew up, the two were as different as chalk and cheese. Esau was ruddy and strong, a man’s man, who loved to be outdoors and hunt. By contrast Jacob much preferred to stick around the tents. It was clear that Esau was Isaac’s favourite, no doubt because as the older son he was the natural heir, but perhaps also because he embodied so much of the character that his father lacked. But Rebekah never forgot the prophecy that had been given to her: “… the older will serve the younger.”

Now flash forward many years. Isaac is old and blind and it’s time to think of passing on the torch to the next generation. We have already read it from the Old Testament, so I don’t have to tell you how the story unfolds. Perhaps it was the result of years of living in a passive-aggressive relationship. Perhaps it was just part of the same deceitful streak that we see in her brother Laban. We don’t know and we probably never will. Whatever the cause and with the complicity of Jacob, Rebekah resorts to an act of intolerable deceit to guarantee her son’s place as head of the family and heir to the promises of God.

The result of this duplicitous act is that Jacob does indeed inherit the promise and the blessing of his father. But also the rivalry between the two brothers now becomes open warfare and Rebekah ends up never seeing them again. In her efforts on behalf of one son she loses both. It is a tragic end to a story that began with such promise. And what are we to say to all of this? That the end, no matter how high or pure, does not justify the means, is obvious.

Yet there is also a greater truth at work. Once again Walter Brueggemann cautions us: “This is not a spiritual treatise on morality. It is, rather, a memory of how faith moves in the rawness of experience. We must leave it at that.”[5] And I suppose the apostle Paul was saying much the same when he wrote, “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). May we take heart from Rebekah that we have a God who in his infinite grace and mysterious wisdom is able to take our impure motives and sinful acts and use them for his greater purposes. He is the God of the cross.

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[1]        John H. Walton, Genesis (NIV Application Commentary), 530

[2]        Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Interpretation Commentary), 199-201

[3]        Walton, 540

[4]       Clovis G. Chappell, Feminine Faces, 42

[5]        Brueggemann, 229