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.
[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
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