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This story of Abraham’s servant going to find a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac and everything happening so according to plan, if I can say it that way, it just seems so right out of the movies. It starts with what appears to be the makings of a very old school arranged marriage that’s not fair to anybody, especially the woman. Arranged marriages always leave you asking “what’s love got to do with it?” But surprisingly Rebekah is given the choice and it’s a choice remarkably like the one Abraham made in responding to God’s promise. Like Abraham, Rebekah had to leave her native land and her father’s house to go to a land she’d never seen, but a land that would become hers and her offspring will become a great nation. Like Abraham she goes. If Abraham is called the father of faith, Rebekah rather than Sarah should be called the mother of faith. She arrives and is immediately struck with, smitten by Isaac whom she finds doing a prayer walk in a field. The story ends with the words, “and he loved her.” This is the only place in the Bible that I am aware of where a husband’s love for his wife is actually noted. Also, their marriage is one of only a handful that’s not complicated by other wives and concubines.
Probably the most astonishing thing of all in this story is the role God has in bringing them together. Abraham sends his head servant off on a fool’s errand – “Go find a wife for my son from among my people. These Canaanite women just ain’t like us.” The servant loads up a small caravan of ten or more camels and goes to roughly the area Abraham came from. He goes to the local watering hole, the well, where the local shepherds like to watch the young women come to draw water from the well. There must have been something oddly “vah-vah-voom” about that. Expecting that there will be women coming, he prays and basically tells God what to make it happen to make it clear to him who is the right woman for Isaac. It will be the woman who gives him water and waters his camels too. As soon as he opens his eyes, there’s Rebekah. She fills the bill. Gives him water – check. Waters the camels – check. Related to Abraham – check. A match made in heaven. Pray, faith, wait, God comes through….umm….hmmm….It does happen, you know. I don’t know if you have ever had your jaw dropped by God when you asked for a sign, a specific sign, and you got it. I have. It happens.
Well anyway, the idea that God can play matchmaker and that a marriage can be life-long and monogamous are ideas that challenge us these days. There are all kinds of views out there these days on love, marriage, and family. Just to pop off a few, there’s the idea that we are not complete or whole without a significant love relationship. You may remember the iconic moment in the vintage 90’s film Jerry McGuire when Jerry, played by Tom Cruise, says to Dorothy, played by Renee Zellweger, “I love you…you complete me.” That one turned up all kinds of red flags in the world of relationship advisors saying, “You should be complete in yourself. You shouldn’t need another person to complete you.” Well, yeah. If you’re saying that to someone you just recently met, red flags should be flying. That’s just your body pumping some feel good hormones at you. Even in the long run we cannot make another person responsible for making me feel complete. That’s a huge burden for one person to bear.
But…there’s the other side of that coin. We do need relationships, significant relationships with significant others to be complete…if there is such a thing as completeness in this life. We are not independent, autonomous, rational, decision-making individual beings who can do and be what we want to do and be with no consequences to others. We are relational beings. Sure, there’s some “unique to me” stuff floating around in us, but for the most part, I don’t know who I am apart from the relationships (not just love relationships) I have and have had and some relationships are more foundational to who I am than others so that without those people in my life I am very incomplete and, in some cases, freaking devastated.
Then there’s also the idea that there isn’t just one person you’d make a good fit for. Danny DeVito’s character, Eddie, in the recent movie Jumanji: The Next Level voices this in some advice he gives to his grandson, Spencer. Spencer is a bit broken up over a relationship that is on the outs with a girl with whom he was well fit. I couldn’t find the quote exactly but DeVito says something like “Don’t get too bent up over one girl. If I was your age, I’d just go ride the subway. There are all kinds of girls there to meet and one in five of them I’d marry.” When it comes to mates fit for us, there is more than one person with whom you could make it work, but is there that one person we are meant to be with. It depends on who you ask.
Then there’s what’s vogue today in popular relationship psychology. Some will say monogamy and marriage are unrealistic expectations only meant to cause us shame and guilt. They say we are living longer now and people change and grow and you can’t expect life-long commitments. So, grow as a person all you can with the person you’re with now and there’s no shame in moving on to someone else. We should all be mature adults and able to let go of people when they or we need/want to move on. It only hurts if you hold on to those unrealistic expectations. They also make the argument Evolutionarily speaking we are not wired for monogamy. It’s better for the species if we have more than one partner. To that I say, in every culture that has endured those evolutionary urges have always had to be curbed. Stable communities require relationships based in trust and for some reason, the evolutionary urge to have more than one partner does a world of hurt in the trust department.
Then there’s the biblical perspective. Well, honestly, it’s all over the place and you have to say that the role of Scripture at times is to show us that some things are wrong, for lack of a better word, by making them look accepted and even right; things like polygamy and giving a slave to your husband as a wife to bear children for you. These things are wrong. Just because it’s a seemingly accepted practice in the Bible doesn’t make it right. If you pay attention to how in the biblical stories having multiple spouses plays out you find it leads to a world of hurt.
King Solomon is probably the worst example of them all. He was the wisest and richest of all of Israel’s kings but he had the habit of marrying to form alliances with other kings. He had over 700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines. Nowhere is love mentioned in these relationships. These women were simply treaty trophies to him, but they were real women, real persons, certainly not property. I bet he didn’t get to know a one of them. He spent all his time collecting proverbs and plants for his garden. Solomon’s marrying for political reasons in the end led to him putting shrines to other gods in the Temple so that they could worship their own gods…in the Temple…and he did it with them. Polygamy damaged his relationship to God…we can only imagine the damage it did to the women.
To the other extreme, the New Testament would seem to offer celibate singleness as the way to go, but with the advice that if you can’t control your urges, it’s better to marry than to burn with passion or to be untoward to another. But the singleness thing was simply the bias of the Apostle Paul whose opinions were skewed by his own ability and preference to live single and probably more so by his very urgent expectation that Jesus would return at any moment and that, to him, was more important than love, marriage, and pushing a baby carriage. That noted, there is for sure in the New Testament the overall bias that monogamous, life-long marriage is the best way for women and men to partner up. We also find that marriage should be rooted in love, a love that grows and blossoms to resemble the way that Jesus loves the church and the church loves Jesus – unconditionally and selflessly, full of hospitality, generosity, patience, kindness, and forgiveness. Serving, not demanding to be served.
Turning back to our reading here about Isaac and Rebekah, there’s a couple of things to notice. First, in God’s plan for healing his very good creation from evil, sin, and death through a people of faith, marriage and family are central. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is the story of marriages and families who are trying to be faithful. It’s not the stories of faithful individuals. Moreover, even Jesus was born and raised within the context of the marriage and family of Mary and Joseph. Solid societies are built on solid families not on individuals seeking self-fulfillment.
Second, one could make the argument that yes, there is that one certain somebody that God would have us to be with. But we need to acknowledge that if God does indeed bring two people together, those two people need to keep God in the relationship, acknowledge that the relationship is a gift from God not to be taken for granted, and in times of trouble we must always let God and the relationship take precedence over me, myself, and I. God has a purpose for our marriages, for our families. The best way to keep things healthy is to together seek that higher purpose.
To close, I think I need to say that this sermon is not meant to be part of the ongoing debates of who can and cannot be married due to sexual orientation and what constitutes a family. As far as I’m concerned, the love of Christ will and should always surprise and challenge us in its scope. God’s heart will always be bigger than our own and God’s arms open wider than our own. It’s best we learn to live with that reality. I’m simply trying to say that in God’s plan to heal this hurting creation, particularly the aspect of wounded human community, the roles of marriage and family are vital. Amen.
