Co-Lead Minister
“A Decent Proposal”
Genesis 24
To join with us by watching our online worship, please click here.
One evening when our sons were in their 20’s they were hanging around our house with their posse of friends, lamenting that they didn’t have girlfriends. “Mrs. Bowman it’s so hard to meet the right girl,” they whined. My response wasn’t particularly sympathetic: “Perhaps if you didn’t hang out in a pack and act like morons, you’d have more success.”
Who knows what kind of conversation son Issac had with his mother Sarah. He was still 40 and living in his parents’ basement. He and his father hadn’t spoken since that time when his father Abraham threatened to kill him with a knife until God told him to put the knife down. But that’s another story. Abraham though obviously thought something needed to be done. God had promised Abraham and Sarah that if they left their land and family and headed off on a journey of faith, they would be blessed with multiple children and generations of descendants, and there was no way that promise was going to be fulfilled if his only son didn’t get married. (Actually, there was another son, but again, another story for another time) Abraham took matters into his own hands and sent his steward back to where Abraham and Sarah came from to find a good Aramean woman to marry Isaac. She needed to be one of Abraham’s people to be sure their lineage remained pure.
The steward, someone who was more than a servant, who enjoyed the total trust of Abraham, immediately started out on the arduous journey and when he finally arrived at Nahor he made his camels kneel by the well outside the gates of the city and wondered how he would accomplish this match making task. And so, he prays: “God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. I am standing here by the spring of water, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. Let the girl to who I shall say, ‘Please offer your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say ‘Drink and I will water your camels’ – let her be the one who you have appointed for your servant Isaac.”
And lo and behold, before he finished speaking along came Rebekah with a jar on her shoulder, and she began to draw water from the well. “The girl was very fair to look upon,…” the author of Genesis tells us, “…a virgin, who no man had known.” So far, so good. The steward runs up to the unsuspecting Rebekah; “Please let me sip a little water from your jar.” “Drink, my lord,” she said, and quickly lowered her container from her head. Not begrudgingly, not hesitantly but swiftly responding to the stranger’s request for a cup of cold water. And then, even better she adds, “I will draw for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.” She hastily empties what water she has into the trough and then runs, says Genesis, runs, back to the well to get more. Back and forth, back and forth, down to the well, back up to the trough. We know the servant had brought 10 camels, that’s a lot of water to hustle back.
The steward can hardly believe how well this is going…she’s beautiful, a virgin, generous and hospitable, energetic. But remember, there is still one more criterion before he can know if he has been successful. The right woman needs to be kin to Abraham. He must have been almost afraid to ask; “Tell me whose daughter you are.” And then the final good news, the sign of God’s providence and ongoing faithfulness to Abraham, “I am the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah, who she bore to Nahor.” She comes from a line of impressive matriarchs and although the relationship is complicated, it’s clear that Rebekah is indeed part of the extended family of Abraham and Sarah.
In great delight, and greatly relieved, the steward hauls out the jewelry and gifts he had brought with him, putting a nose-ring on Rebekah’s face and bracelets on her arms. And she runs to the house to tell the family about what has happened.
It’s interesting that Scripture says, “Then the girl ran and told her mother’s household…” (Genesis 24:28) ‘her mother’s household’. Although this was a very patriarchal society it appears that in matters of marriage the mother had a part in the arrangements. Maybe it is because of that, that Sarah was bolder than we might expect, and that later in the story she has an unusual amount of independent agency.
When Rebekah’s brother sees the nose-ring and bracelets he is quick to invite the steward back to the family home. There he meets with Rebekah’s father Bethuel and her brother Laban. He recounts to them his historic task, including that he is not only on a mission from Abraham but on behalf of God; that it is God’s will that Rebekah be part of the fulfilment of God’s promise that Abraham and Sarah will birth a new people and a great nation.
The steward asks for a straight answer regarding his vicarious proposal: “…tell me, so that I may turn either to the right hand or to the left.” Both men agree that he can take Rebekah. It’s not clear whether they are more impressed by the tales of God’s faithfulness or by the evidence of wealth displayed by the emissary – the nose-ring and the bracelets and the steward’s assurance that “The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; …” (Gen. 24:34) And he’s given it all to his son Isaac.
With the marriage arranged, the men settle down to party the night away. But in the morning, when the steward wants to hurry back home immediately, Rebekah’s mother and brother hesitate. Let her stay for 10 more days. Give Rebekah time to prepare for departure, time to say goodbye, to hear final stories and words of wisdom from her mother. But the steward won’t have it; he wants to leave without delay, to complete his task for Abraham. And then we hear perhaps the most remarkable part of this story, perhaps the part that still bears wisdom for us. Rebekah’s mother and brother say they’ll ask Rebekah about her departure. She will be given a choice regarding her future. They call her out of the tent, and they put it to her. “Will you go with this man?”
At this moment we need to notice the shift in the narrative. Up until now there has been so much hurrying in this story. The steward set off immediately when Abraham sent him. He runs to Rebekah when he first sees her. She quickly responds to his request for water and runs back and forth to the well for the camels. Then, writes the author, she runs all the way home to tell the household about what happened. In this brief passage about the encounter at the well, the author uses the word ‘run’ three times and ‘quickly’ twice. And now it seems like the narrative takes a breath – there is a profound pause in the story of our ancestors, and tension in the future of God’s people. “Will you go with this man?” Will you go? Will you leave all that is familiar and will you be open to God’s future, for you and your people? Will you respond to God’s call? Will you go?
Up until this moment we have been given several indications of the character and quality of the one who might be the next bearer of God’s promise. She is fair, she is pure, she is kin to the generations who have been called earlier. She is generous, compassionate, offering not only a cup of cold water to the stranger but troughs full of water for the camels. And now history waits on the final sign: will she respond to God’s invitation. “I will.”
And with this response Rebekah shows that she has not only the qualities of a good wife, but much more importantly, the gifts of a servant of God. A willing spirit, an openness to the adventure and the unknown future of God, a desire to embrace God’s possibilities.
What I find inspiring in this story is that each character in our stories of faith is in conversation with God, seeking to understand God’s will, seeking to comprehend God’s Way along the way. But God does not, ever, force a response from us. Does not ever coerce. God invites, and we pause to consider.
Rebekah’s openness is not to a promise that things will go exactly as imagined, but rather to the possibilities of life with God. If Rebekah had said no, history would not have ended. Who knows how many people God called before Abraham? Who knows how many times Abraham and Sarah went left when God hinted at right. How many times do we make decisions without even wondering about God’s will? And how many times do we only later recognize what feels like God’s blessing in the subsequent events.
I was once struggling with a decision about whether to apply to a new congregation when one of my friends said to me, “For heaven’s sake Deb, it’s not as if God isn’t infinitely flexible.” If you say yes, God will be with you on that path. If you say no, God is ahead of you in the alternate direction. We are not responsible for playing some cosmic guessing game with God about which is the right way to go, the correct decision to make. The truth is, wherever we go, God will go with us. Maybe the faithful move is not right or left, but a step forward, into the unknown.
Debbie Blue writes: “… maybe faith is more like moving than staying put sometimes – trusting in a God who cannot be fully grasped by a religious system. To have faith is to be plunged into the unfathomable. It is, after all, hope in things unseen, as the apostle Paul puts it.” (Debbie Blue, Consider the Women)
In Genesis, the earliest ancestors of our faith wandered. Adam and Eve wandered out of the garden. Abraham and Sarah wander away from their roots and into unknown territory. Jacob wandered in the desert. Maybe it’s our willingness to roam the unknown that qualifies us to be part of the fulfilment of God’s dreams for creation. We wander in the ‘waste space between clarities’, the sort of space where grace erupts and ‘radical astonishment abides.’ (Blue, chapter 2)
“Will you go with this man?” asks Rebekah’s family. “Will you step into this journey with God that began with Abraham and Sarah?” And she responds, of her own volition, “I will.” Maybe, as a faithful people we just need to be willing to go on a journey, with no certainty as to direction or effectiveness, with only the certainty that God goes with us. Maybe we can have a sense we have the right purpose, we can intuit the way forward, but how freeing could it be to consider not that we are lost, or confused but in the ‘waste space between clarities’, and that that space is rich with grace and radical astonishment.
May we recognize those moments when the same is asked of us. “Will we go with God?” May we have the strength to ponder the question, and the people to surround us with love and discernment so that when we respond ‘I will’ we will know the blessings of walking in the way of Love. Whatever that way leads us.