The Comfort of Each Other
Genesis 24:34-49; 58-67
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
There is something peculiar about summertime that makes it the perfect season for weddings. Perhaps it is the generous freedom allowed by early sunrises and late sunsets. The light and warmth that permeate the earth during the long summer days seem to be an echo of the intimate and inviting love felt by many who decide to commit their lives to one another in the spring and summer months. The warmth of spring and summer heats the soils and roots of plants long silenced by the coolness of fall and the chill of winter, reawakening life from the restful depth of winter hibernation.
Summer is inviting. You can stay out late. You can eat outside. Freedom from school tempts the youth to explore the world with reckless abandon, while summer vacations allow the adults among us to taste the same bits of freedom that the youth so wholesomely and carelessly inhabit. The nature-enhanced freedom that summer enlivens in us is also uncovered in the rites of weddings where two people share in the freedom to be together, the freedom to love one another, the freedom to share in heartaches and joys, and the freedom to provide a comforting presence to each other in body and in spirit. It is appropriate then, that on this summer day the subject of our passages from Genesis and the Song of Solomon are about the comfort of God provides us in the form of each other.
Our story from Genesis today picks up on the story of Isaac. When we last heard of this Old Testament patriarch, the young boy Isaac was bundled up with sticks and laying upon an altar, without a solid explanation from his dad as to why. The next story in Genesis tells us that Isaac’s mother, Sarah, has just died at ripe old age of 127. By the time our passage today, Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah, the young Isaac has certainly drunk from a cup full of sorrow.
Isaac is lonely. The mother that has just died had waited a hundred years before she could bear a child. While I am not a parent and cannot speak from personal experience, I have seen first-hand what joy parents and grandparents have at the birth of a child. My brother and sister-in-law had their first child in August of last year. Their daughter is the first girl in a generation on our side of the family and the first baby born since me, 27 years ago.
And my parents sure don’t let their granddaughter forget it! By the time she was born she already had about two years worth of clothes and outfits for every occasion. The first grandchild and first child is the gleam in a family’s eyes, so there is little doubt that after waiting for 100 years to have a child together, Rebekah and Abraham properly spoiled the young Isaac. Surely there was a wonderful and intimate bond between mother and father and son. And when Sarah died after a mere twenty-seven years with her son, we can imagine how devastated Isaac must have been.
Nothing can replace the loss of a human relationship. God has created humanity with bonds rooted deeply into our very souls. I have always thought the metaphor relating family histories to trees was a proper one. Families, like trees, are dynamic. They grow and change over generations. Branches sprout from branches and trees grow as high as they do deep. The inner rings of a tree reveal the history of that same tree, with layers upon layers upon layers of compacted wood that interconnect the present with the past.
Families have those same layers. We sprout branches from our current branches and root deeply even as we grow in breadth and height.
But trees and families also experience loss and frailty. As a branch suffers from disease, from brokenness, from a lack of nutrition it withers and fades. But the memory of that branch remains in the scar it leaves upon the tree. No loss of friend, no loss of family is ever complete. They remain with us, a permanent bump of bark, a persistent reminder of our lives lived in love and community. And on any living tree, let us not forget, that the very scars that mark the painful moments of loss and neglect, also remind us that new growth is possible, branches can still be created and God can still work in our lives, grafting into our souls new friends, new family members, new communities of hope and love.
The interwoven nature of death and life, of separateness and togetherness is common to all people. Perhaps this is why the writers of our passage in Genesis placed the story of Isaac’s marriage directly after the story of the loss of his mother Sarah. A significant branch in the Israelite family tree had only recently withered and faded; the memory of Sarah was still a fresh wound.
In scholarly circles the author of this story is known as the Yahwist and one of the characteristics of his writing is an emphasis on human emotion and God’s intimate involvement in the daily lives of humanity. Remember the story in Genesis of Adam and Eve? In that story God walks in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, God has intimate conversations with them and knows deeply their human emotions and cares for them on a very personal level. That same writer carries over the same commitment to the emotional side of humanity in this story of Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage.
In the story of Isaac and Rebekah, as well as in our own lives, God allows the right people to meet, to interact and to come together. However God does not force us into relationships with one another. We are responsible for creating loving relationships that echo God’s love for us. In our passage, God does not forcibly make Rebekah say “yes” to the servant of Abraham’s proposition of marriage, even though their union is in God’s plan. We see in the later verses of chapter 24 that the men in Rebekah’s family are arguing about whether Rebekah will go immediately back to Isaac or whether she will wait. So they call in the Rebekah herself and ask her directly, “Will you go with this man.” Rebekah answers with the succinctness and firmness of a woman with an independent mind, “I will go.”
Thus we see in this story that human relationships, even those brought together by the will of God, rely upon human will and the mutuality of partnership. Furthermore, in a striking similarity to the promise of God to Abraham, Rebekah is blessed by her mother and brother with the words “May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads; may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes.” God’s promise of relational and familial fulfillment extends equally to Rebekah, the woman, as it does to Abraham, the man.
And what does Isaac think about Abraham finding Rebekah and her acceptance of Isaac as a husband, even though the two had never met? We are told that when Isaac first sees Rebekah he was walking in a field in the evening. Very interestingly, there is a word in Hebrew that is not translated in our English Bibles. The word in Hebrew is tAnæp.li (panah) has a variety of meanings that suggest why Isaac, who is still mourning the loss of his mother, may have taken an evening stroll. The word panah is complex and has layers of multiple meanings. Here are a few: to turn, to make clear, to look behind, look forward, find direction (as in a compass), turn toward evening/morning, to free from obstacles, to clear the ground for planting.
Isaac seems to have been looking for direction. Perhaps he was looking behind to memories of his mother. Or looking forward to future relationships. He was making clear his mind, realizing that as his relationship with his mother had reached sunset, there was yet a sunrise to behold. He was on a walkabout of faith, restoring his spirit by mourning for his mother. He was clearing the ground of his turmoil of weeds and brush in order to make way for new shoots of relationships to grow. And in this evening stroll of solace, a rebirth of relationship walked directly into his life, in the form of Rebekah riding on a camel.
The text goes on to say that Isaac took Rebekah and she became his wife. Even more importantly, we are told that “he loved her.” This marriage was not only about restoring Abraham’s lineage and progeny, but was also about the human desire and need for love in interpersonal relationships. Rebekah and Isaac loved each other and this love was brought together by the guidance of God, the foresight of Abraham and the faithful diligence of Abraham’s servant. Relationships of comfort and solace and love don’t always spring from nothingness but come from daily interactions of people with one another.
In Isaac’s union with Rebekah we are told that he was “comforted after his mother’s death.” Indeed. God’s answers to our cries and prayers for comfort are not always directly from God’s own self, but are experienced in our relationships with other people. We comfort each other. Some of God’s most miraculous work, it seems to me, is found in the simple blessings of having other people who love us in our lives. God comforts us by enhancing and creating human relationships of love. And blessed are those who not only receive, but also give comfort and love to those who need it.
I believe it is vitally important to underscore that though Isaac received comfort and resurrection of love from the arms of wife, there are many other ways that same comfort of God is experienced in relationships other than marriage. I am reminded at this time of a story told by the writer and teacher Parker Palmer. Palmer had struggled throughout his life with depression and in one case his depression lasted months upon months. Palmer did not leave his room. He wouldn’t answer the telephone. He wouldn’t unlock the door. He severely restricted those people who he allowed to visit with him. One friend that he allowed in was named Bill. And what was remarkable about their relationship together was Bill’s perception of Palmer’s needs. Bill would come everyday for only thirty minutes or so. He would first take off Palmer’s socks and then his shoes and simply massage his feet. A wordless expression of solidarity and love. As Palmer says, Bill “found the one place in my body where I could still experience feeling—and feel somewhat reconnected with the human race.”
Love and relationships can be resurrected from the darkest of times by the power of God working in and through the comfort we provide each other. It happens with marriages. It happens with friendships. It happens with strangers. As singer/songwriter David LaMotte puts it, “We are each other’s angels and we meet when it is time.” God’s provision of comfort is not only that we are loved by our Creator, but that our Creator provided us with each other to carry us through our times of sorrow and pain, helping to resurrect our lives, to grow new branches and to celebrate the joys of life with the comfort of each other. Amen.
