The Trinity
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost, Cycle A27 July 2008
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Call to Worship
Pastor: Creative Spirit, renewer of the earth,
Congregation: Give us and all of creation a new song and new hope.
Pastor: Eloquent Spirit, giver of speech,
Congregation: Put your words of love in our mouths.
Pastor: Blessed Spirit, steward of fire,
Congregation: Ignite our hearts to proclaim God’s word.
Pastor: Blowing Spirit, dynamic wind,
Congregation: Disturb our ways of thinking about you and God.
Pastor: Gathering Spirit, embracing all Congregation,
Congregation: Unite us with God’s children, far and near.
Pastor: Helping Spirit, revealer of truth,
Congregation: Teach us the grace and peace of Christ.
Let us pray:
As we listen to the reading and preaching of your Word, Holy God, impart to us the message that will give us new life this day so that we may love and serve you with our whole hearts.
Amen.
The First Lesson if from:
Isaiah 55:1-5
The LORD says, "Come, everyone who is thirsty--- here is water! Come, you that have no money--- buy grain and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk--- it will cost you nothing! Why spend money on what does not satisfy? Why spend your wages and still be hungry? Listen to me and do what I say, and you will enjoy the best food of all. "Listen now, my people, and come to me; come to me, and you will have life! I will make a lasting covenant with you and give you the blessings I promised to David. I made him a leader and commander of nations, and through him I showed them my power. Now you will summon foreign nations; at one time they did not know you, but now they will come running to join you! I, the LORD your God, the holy God of Israel, will make all this happen; I will give you honor and glory."
The Nicene Creed
I BELIEVE IN ONE GOD, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light: true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father; by Whom all things were made: Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man; And was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried; And arose again on the third day according to the Scriptures; And ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; And shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life; Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the prophets.
In One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, And the life of the age to come. Amen.
The Second Lesson is from:
Romans 8:35-39
Who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble do it, or hardship or persecution or hunger or poverty or danger or death? As the scripture says, "For your sake we are in danger of death at all times; we are treated like sheep that are going to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us! For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future, neither the world above nor the world below---there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Gospel Lesson is from:
Saint Matthew 14:13-21
When Jesus heard the news about John, he left there in a boat and went to a lonely place by himself. The people heard about it, and so they left their towns and followed him by land. Jesus got out of the boat, and when he saw the large crowd, his heart was filled with pity for them, and he healed their sick. That evening his disciples came to him and said, "It is already very late, and this is a lonely place. Send the people away and let them go to the villages to buy food for themselves." "They don't have to leave," answered Jesus. "You yourselves give them something to eat!" "All we have here are five loaves and two fish," they replied. "Then bring them here to me," Jesus said. He ordered the people to sit down on the grass; then he took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, and gave thanks to God. He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. Everyone ate and had enough. Then the disciples took up twelve baskets full of what was left over. The number of men who ate was about five thousand, not counting the women and children.
The Sermon Text is from:
Genesis 29:15-28
Laban said to Jacob, "You shouldn't work for me for nothing just because you are my relative. How much pay do you want?" Laban had two daughters; the older was named Leah, and the younger Rachel. Leah had lovely eyes, but Rachel was shapely and beautiful. Jacob was in love with Rachel, so he said, "I will work seven years for you, if you will let me marry Rachel." Laban answered, "I would rather give her to you than to anyone else; stay here with me." Jacob worked seven years so that he could have Rachel, and the time seemed like only a few days to him, because he loved her. Then Jacob said to Laban, "The time is up; let me marry your daughter." So Laban gave a wedding feast and invited everyone. But that night, instead of Rachel, he took Leah to Jacob, and Jacob had intercourse with her. (Laban gave his slave woman Zilpah to his daughter Leah as her maid.) Not until the next morning did Jacob discover that it was Leah. He went to Laban and said, "Why did you do this to me? I worked to get Rachel. Why have you tricked me?" Laban answered, "It is not the custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older. Wait until the week's marriage celebrations are over, and I will give you Rachel, if you will work for me another seven years." Jacob agreed, and when the week of marriage celebrations was over, Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as his wife.
The title of today's sermon is:
Bad Beginnings: How to Overcome Them
And concerns the theme of:
Some beginnings, including possibly even our own, are shaky or even terrible. But from such unlikely starts, God can accomplish his will through us.
Generations of men have fantasized about what it would be like to have more than one wife, and some in each generation have tried it. But now, thanks to the HBO series Big Love, we can all gain some insight into such a way of life.
The show, set in Salt Lake City, follows the life of Bill Hendrickson, a modern-day polygamist who has three wives and seven children. And what we find out is that the one-man-multiple-wives scenario is not a dream come true for anybody involved.
Bill’s wives include Barb, whom he married first. She is the mother of the two oldest children, who are teenagers, and one of the younger kids. In many ways, Barb is the most level-headed of the women, but the role of being the steady one begins to wear thin after a while.
Bill’s second wife is Nicki. She is a spender who is always fracturing the family budget; plus, she brings some problems from her childhood in a polygamist group run by her father Roman. That group is a break-off from the Mormon Church. Since the established Mormon body hasn’t supported polygamy for more than a century, Roman considers his group the true Mormons. Roman has a pious demeanor but a nasty, devious heart, and his latest wife, in addition to the several that he already has, is a young teenage girl. Roman makes lots of problems for Bill, some of them quite dangerous.
Bill’s third wife is Margene, who is the youngest and is the least inhibited of the three women, which adds its own tensions to the family dynamic.
Each of the sister-wives, as they call themselves, has a different personality, different dreams, different needs and different demands. And, of course, Bill has his own dreams and expectations as well. While they all attempt to work together as a family, there is often conflict, jealousy, sniping and a ton of problems, some of them caused by Roman.
Each wife has her own house, side by side on the same street, and the family members roam freely from one to the other. Each wife has her own car, and Bill has a car as well. Bill owns a chain of home supply stores, but the cost of keeping all this real estate and these vehicles going, coupled with the normal costs involved with a family of 11, is enormous, and Bill is constantly worried about money. What’s more, Barb is the only one of the women who works outside the home.
A further problem comes from the fact that Bill and his wives are trying to live mainstream lives. Many other polygamists in Utah live in compounds, somewhat out of the public eye, as Roman’s group does. But the Henrickson family’s three houses are on a normal street in suburban Salt Lake City. The family does try to keep a low profile about their unconventional arrangement, sometimes passing two of the wives off as single mothers whom Bill is simply trying to help out, but eventually they get outed, and that brings its own problems, including some significant ones to the two teenage children.
We could go on with details, but suffice it to say that if you’ve ever had any thought of living in a multiple-spouse arrangement, despite its illegality, this TV show will cure you of it. Perhaps the only redeeming feature is that when this family pulls back from its problems a bit, there is a sense that there is love, one for another, though often it is nearly crushed beneath the weight of the family’s difficulties.
An editorial title for today’s reading, Genesis 29:15-28, might be “Jacob Marries Laban’s Daughters” (as the NRSV calls this section). A title somewhat more sensitive to the narrative arc of the Jacob story, however, might be “Jacob’s Comeuppance,” for that is indeed what happens in today’s reading to one of the Bible’s most famous tricksters.
Although the lectionary stops the reading at verse 28, the literary unit is actually 29:15-30; the final two verses of Jacob’s labor payment for Rachel are an integral part of the episode, which recounts Jacob’s struggle to marry the woman he loves. This episode is the run-up to the climax of the Jacob story, which is the birth of his 12 sons, the eponymous ancestors of the tribes of Israel (Jacob’s other name; 29:31-30:24).
The stage for Laban’s deceit of Jacob was set years earlier by Jacob, his brother Esau, their father Isaac and their mother Rebekah. Isaac, a somewhat ineffectual figure in the patriarchal narratives, had twin sons by Rebekah, Esau, who was born first, and Jacob, who was born “with his hand gripping Esau’s heel” (Genesis 25:26), and so his name was derived from a Hebrew verbal root meaning “He takes by the heel” or “He supplants.”
And so Jacob did, throughout his colorful life, which is recounted in Genesis 25:19-36:43. Most famously, of course, Jacob stole, with the help of his mother, the right of the first-born son from his brother Esau (Genesis 27:1-29), and for that family-wrecking deception, Jacob was forced to flee from his family’s home in Canaan and, again with his mother’s help, find refuge in the household of his maternal uncle, Laban, a resident of the city of Nahor in the region of Haran in northern Mesopotamia. Today’s reading takes up the tale at this point.
Jacob has been living with his uncle’s family for a month (29:14b), and the opening verse of today’s reading reveals some ambiguity about the relationship between nephew and uncle. Jacob had been received initially by Laban as a relative and guest (29:13-14), both of which roles afforded Jacob special privileges and laid on Laban particular obligations of hospitality, chief among them protection and nurture. (This is the reason for Lot’s bizarre and shocking offer of his virgin daughters to the mob in Sodom rather than the male guests he has sheltered in his home, Genesis 19:1-11.)
In the ancient world, where travel was expensive, dangerous and difficult, it would not have been unusual for a guest to remain for a month, as the text indicates Jacob has (v. 14), and so the abrupt statement from Laban in the next verse that he does not want to take advantage of Jacob’s labor comes as something of a surprise; the text has given no indication of the long-term arrangements agreed to by the two relatives. It is likely that some intervening episodes in the Jacob cycle have been lost from the biblical version.
Laban’s question in verse 15 is tricky: “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing?” A reasonable answer to this question is yes, Jacob should serve his uncle for nothing for at least three reasons. First, Jacob is a young man living in the household of an older male relative, and family obligations of the day required that the younger man show his respect for the family by supporting it without compensation. Second, Laban is providing Jacob with refuge, at an unknown cost and risk to his own household, for which Jacob is considerably in Laban’s debt. Third, at some point after Jacob’s initial arrival, if he does not begin to contribute to the material welfare of Laban’s family, he will transition from the role of guest to the role of freeloader, which will bring unrest and discredit to Laban’s family (since Jacob is an extended member of it).
But Laban has posed the question rhetorically, clearly expecting the answer to be no, of course Jacob shouldn’t work as a slave in Laban’s household. Laban is attempting to appear magnanimous in his question — and there may be genuine solicitude for Jacob’s welfare behind it — but his subsequent actions will call his sincerity gravely into question.
It is significant to note that Jacob has presented his uncle with no gift upon his arrival (or the text passes over that fact in silence), an omission that is all the more striking given the circumstances of Jacob’s presence (he is, after all, asking to be taken into his uncle’s household) and given the elaborate gift Jacob will present to Esau in an attempt to assuage his anger (32:13-21). Elaborate protocol attended the exchange of gifts in the ancient world, even in modest circumstances, and Jacob’s omission may be related to Laban’s demand for his labor in exchange for Rachel.
Laban was introduced into the patriarchal narratives in Genesis 24:29 as the brother of Rebekah, Isaac’s Mesopotamian relative and eventual wife. It is Laban, rather than Rebekah’s father, Bethuel, who plays the prominent role in the negotiations of Rebekah’s marriage to Isaac (Genesis 24), and the text there subtly paints Laban as a man of keen self-interest. This intimation will become obvious in Laban’s dealings with Isaac and Rebekah’s son, Jacob.
Laban’s two daughters, Leah and Rachel, are introduced as though they are new characters in the story (v. 16), when, in fact, they are not. Rachel and Jacob have just had an extended meeting at the well where Laban’s flocks were watered (vv. 1-12), one of three betrothal stories in which well encounters play a key role, the other two being the betrothal of Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 24:11-49), and the betrothal of Moses and Zipporah (Exodus 2:15-22). The association of wells with fertility makes the suitability of the trope obvious for betrothal narratives. The reintroduction of Rachel again suggests that originally disparate epic material about Jacob has been edited into its present canonical form with some lacunae.
Leah and Rachel are described physically in a brief sketch: “Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful” (v. 17). The Hebrew conjunction we-, translated here as “and,” can also be (and often is) contrastive, and should be translated “but,” suggesting in the present context that while Leah had lovely eyes, Rachel was a real knockout (see E. A. Speiser, Genesis [Anchor Bible 1; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964], 225). Leah, whose Hebrew name possibly means “Cow,” is the elder of Laban’s daughters, but there is no reason, on account of her name, to consider her unattractive; her sister’s name probably means “Ewe,” and neither name is negative in its connotations. (The English “cow” connotes large bovines, whereas the Hebrew words often translated “cow” or “cattle” mean smaller animals, such as goats.)
In response to Laban’s question concerning his wages, Jacob asks for Rachel, Leah’s younger sister, in marriage, to which Laban replies with the rather evasive answer, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man” (v. 19), an answer that appears to be affirmative but is in fact merely declarative, which Jacob will come to realize on his wedding night hinc illae lacrimae.
Since Jacob does not have the customary bride price to offer in exchange for his uncle’s daughter, he agrees to work for Laban for seven years for Rachel, only to discover, on his wedding night that, holy cow, it was Leah-the-Cow he had slept with! (The translation of the Hebrew particle hinneh is not easily captured in English; the traditional “Behold” is weak, and the full force of the particle is perhaps best conveyed by the exclamation commonly uttered on discovering that one has locked one’s keys in one’s car.)
Jacob is understandably outraged at Laban’s deception and demands an explanation, to which Laban placidly (and probably facetiously) replies that it is not the custom in his country, Paddan-aram, to marry younger daughters before older ones, and since Jacob, having deflowered her, has now deprived Leah of her prospects for marriage, he is stuck with her, and if he still wishes to marry Rachel, he must work another seven years for Laban, which he does (v. 30).
The ramifications of this story for the family of Jacob are enormous, as the subsequent narrative will relate. The strife and bitterness between the sisters Leah and Rachel, the “mothers of Israel,” will be reflected in the internecine struggles between the “Leah tribes” and the “Rachel tribes” of historic Israel, struggles that will ultimately lead to their destruction and exile.
How Jacob got four wives and a heap of trouble
I have spent a few minutes talking about this TV show as a way to introduce the situation in our Old Testament reading for today, the story of how Jacob, in short order, got four wives and a load of troubles. And like Bill Henrickson, Jacob, too, had a devious father-in-law who made things difficult for him.
It wasn’t the case, however, that Jacob was a model of decency himself. He arrived in Paddan-aram, the land of his father-in-law, Laban, as a fugitive. He’d had to leave his homeland in Canaan after cheating his brother out of the birthright that belonged to the firstborn and then deceiving his father about it. But still, here in this new place, Jacob hoped to make a fresh start. Almost immediately, he falls in love with Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, but to pay the customary bride-price, he agrees to work seven years caring for Laban’s flocks and lands.
Jacob does this, but at the end of seven years, on his wedding night, when Jacob is possibly not seeing well from too much drinking at the wedding party, Laban pulls a classic bait-and-switch, and sends Rachel’s older sister Leah, no doubt well veiled, into the wedding tent, and Jacob doesn’t realize that he went to bed with ugly Betty until he sobers up the next morning.
At that point, Jacob confronts Laban, who brushes his trick off by saying “This is not done in our country — giving the younger before the firstborn.” There’s a kind of poetic justice in that statement. It’s as if Laban is saying, “You may have stepped ahead of your older brother where you came from, but that kind of thing is not done here.” Laban then says Jacob can have Rachel as well; Jacob can marry her as soon as the one-week honeymoon with Leah is over, but he will have to work another seven years for Laban to pay the second bride-price. So that’s what happens.
In short order then, Jacob has, in effect, four wives, because both Leah and Rachel come with a maid, and in the custom of that day, they become partners to Jacob as well.
But here’s where the difference between Jacob’s family and Bill Henderson’s is revealed. On the TV show, for all their problems, Bill does seem to really love all three women and even to appreciate their uniqueness. In Jacob’s case, the Scripture doesn’t tell us how Jacob felt about the two maids, Zilpah and Bilhah, but it clearly states that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.
On one level, who can blame him? He’d had no intention of marrying Leah; he was tricked into it. What’s more, Scripture gives a hint that there may have been something unattractive about her. The NRSV renders verse 17 as “Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful.” Read: Leah was a cow, and Rachel was a hottie (see the commentary below) “She has such lovely eyes,” we say, while thinking, “Too bad they are set in such an ugly face!”
That’s harsh. Stone-cold cruel. It’s also the way men think — often.
But even beyond that, there is a footnote in the NRSV on the word “lovely” that tells us that the meaning of the Hebrew word underlying it is “uncertain.” Further investigation reveals that the word can mean either “delicate” or “weak.” Thus the original intention may have been to say something negative about Leah. In fact, the NIV says plainly that Leah had weak eyes.
But in any case, she was Jacob’s wife now. We can understand why he might not have felt tenderness toward her, but apparently he let his lack of warmth toward her show, and it was a constant source of tension in the family. Later, when Rachel’s maid had a son by Jacob, Rachel named the child Naphtali, which comes from a Hebrew word meaning “my struggle.” And she declared “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed” (Genesis 30:8). Not exactly the testimony of a happy home life.
But that is what this family had to work with. Warring sisters, one of whom is unloved by her husband, slave women with no choice, a husband with a shady past and a father-in-law out to get ahead at his son-in-law’s expense.
Anybody want to nominate this group as family of the year?
This dysfunctional family is the beginning of something big
But we should back up a bit and notice that this family is the beginning of the people of Israel. The 12 sons born to Jacob and his four wives become the progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel. What’s more, this less-than-ideal family is even the beginning of the people of Christ — of Christians; centuries later, when Jesus is born, he is of the tribe of Judah. And Judah is one of the sons of Jacob and this unloved wife, Leah.
None of this is to praise polygamy, of course, and anyway, few of us grew up in actual circumstances where one of our parents had several spouses at the same time. Nonetheless, with the amount of marital infidelity that occurs in our world, some of us may have been negatively affected by fallout from dynamics similar to those in multiple-spouse families. Or we may have come from families that were monogamous but where other struggles in that faithful relationship had a detrimental impact on us.
But here in the first book of the Bible, we find the story of a messed-up family that, despite its troubles, is used by God to accomplish his will. So maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to write off rough beginnings, and that should even extend to our own.
Lots of people grow up in problematic circumstances, and some are even inclined to blame their rocky childhood for their failure to blossom in later life. But there comes a point where, if we are to gain any kind of balance in life, we have to stop blaming and recognize that we are responsible for who we are and what we do on a go-forward basis, regardless of how bad or even how good our upbringing was.
It’s actually helpful that Genesis, this book of beginnings, presents us with a family that puts the funk in dysfunctional (actually, Genesis gives us several generations of a dysfunctional family), because it reminds us that not only can good things come from ragged beginnings, but also that God can use those shaky starts to accomplish his will, as he used Jacob’s family to fulfill his covenant with humankind.
For example …
Jennifer Velez knows that bad beginnings don’t always have to have bad endings.
Velez is the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Human Services, the agency charged with overseeing that state’s welfare rolls, serving about a million people a year who either live in poverty or have a disability of some kind. She was recognized in a recent magazine article for being especially sensitive to the needs of the people for whom her agency is responsible.
Day in and day out, the Department of Human Services faces tough challenges. On a perennially tight budget, it routinely goes to bat for the homeless and handicapped against powerful forces, including insurance companies, drug makers and even state legislators who view the agency as an example of a welfare state out of control. Velez’s job is a high-pressure one, a position that could easily numb the holder against the needs of the people under her care. But she resists that and stays very much in tune with people’s needs, continuing the fight to help them.
In some places, people use jobs like Velez’s simply as a launch pad to jump to something more rewarding, but Velez says that’s not her intention. In fact, she says that when she thinks about where she might go after completing her time in her current office, her dream job would be to become head of the local food bank.
So what makes Velez run? Some of it, of course, is high moral values, good character and a strong sense of compassion. But here’s the part of her story that got my attention: She is basically a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Her mother had been a foster child and was a victim of domestic violence. Her mom later married, but when Velez was only 2, her parents divorced. Velez, her mother and her older sister had to go on public assistance for a couple of years until her mother remarried. Even then, things weren’t a lot better financially. Her stepdad was a laborer who didn’t make much money. Making ends meet was a constant struggle, and some of the places they lived were far from ideal. She remembers a neighbor lady in one place whose eye was frequently blackened from domestic abuse. And when, while doing her paper route, Velez was occasionally invited into a house that was a single-family dwelling, she’d assume the people there must be rich since they didn’t have to share their living quarters.
She eventually went to college, working multiple jobs and taking loans to pay her way. She pulled herself up from her impoverished background but she didn’t run away from it. Today, she is married to a marketing executive, has two kids and a responsible government job. But she works with the compassion of one who knows what a rough beginning is like. Kevin Ryan, the man who was New Jersey’s Human Services commissioner before Velez, and with whom she worked as deputy, says of her:
I think Jen, when she closes her eyes at night, remembers vividly the schoolgirl living in a trailer park immersed in the disenfranchisement of poverty. I think when she recalls that experience, it is both suffocating and liberating — suffocating in the sense that she has a very real sense of all the limitations that poverty forces on you, and liberating in the sense that it’s a compass, if you will, about how to better serve the next generation of kids whose families are living below the poverty line. That is her life’s work.
Velez, of course, is but one example of many that could be cited, but her story is sufficient to reinforce the point we are drawing from the biblical account of Jacob’s battling family. Beginnings are often ragged and difficult, with long-lasting impact. And yet, they do not have to define us or doom us. In fact, whatever kind of start we had, good or bad, we can and should take responsibility for who we are now on a go-forward basis.
We have a go-forward God
What’s more, the biblical account also tells us that we have a go-forward God to help us. In the Bible, God takes Jacob’s messed-up situation and through it drives ahead his covenant with the people of Israel and ultimately, with the people of the world. And we have no reason to doubt that God can accomplish his will with us, too, no matter where we started.
So let us take responsibility for who we are now. Insofar as we use our beginning as an excuse, we need to let it go. Insofar as it can make us instruments of empathy and compassion — the right kind of big love — we need to embrace it. And we can seek the help of our go-forward God as we move ahead.
Today's Psalter is from:
Psalm 104:25-31
There is the ocean, large and wide, where countless creatures live, large and small alike. The ships sail on it, and in it plays Leviathan, that sea monster which you made. All of them depend on you to give them food when they need it. You give it to them, and they eat it; you provide food, and they are satisfied. When you turn away, they are afraid; when you take away your breath, they die and go back to the dust from which they came. But when you give them breath, they are created; you give new life to the earth. May the glory of the LORD last forever! May the LORD be happy with what he has made!
Let us pray as Christ taught us;
The Lords Prayer
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be
thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is
in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen.
Benediction
Brothers and sisters in Christ, nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate you from the love of God. Go, therefore, living as those who have been redeemed by Christ’s love, reconciled to God and empowered by the Spirit to love others as Christ first loved us.
Amen.