William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Genesis 3:17-35
Where to begin….this sermon….any sermon….a year’s worth of sermons? How about a love story? You can never go wrong with a love story. Besides, isn’t that how we ended the year just past….with a love story (albeit, of a different kind)? That one spoke in “baby talk” about God’s passionate devotion to his creation. This one speaks (in gritty adult conversation) about Jacob and Rachel’s passionate devotion to each other. Oh, it’s a good one. So good that somebody ought to film it. But who would play Rachel? Meg Ryan? Gwynneth Paltrow? Julia Roberts? Ponder that for a while. Drop me a note, mid-week, if it keeps you awake. Somebody in the church should think about it before the people in Hollywood think about it for us.
Actually, Rachel enters the story late. As does Jacob, by a few seconds. A few seconds, that is, behind his twin brother Esau, at whose heel the Bible says Jacob is grabbing when they come…. first one, then the other….from the womb. It is as if Jacob is saying, even prenatally: “Out of the way. Me first.” Which wasn’t how it turned out at birth. But which was very much how it turned out in life, given that Esau was never so quick again as the day he came into the world. In fact, Esau was slow. Of step. Worse yet, of wit. And hairy, too (or so the Bible says). For we are told that Esau was a hairy man while Jacob was a smooth man.
I don’t know much about that. What I do know is that Jacob soon surpassed his slightly-older brother….tricking him once….tricking him twice….even tricking their daddy with the connivance of their mommy (go to work on that one, all of you amateur Freudians)….to the point that by the time both boys were teenagers, Jacob owned the elevator while Esau got the shaft.
Which made Esau rip-roaring mad. And which made Jacob leave town (quickly), finally landing in the land of Aram (which, today, would put him squarely in the middle of Syria). Which was his mother’s brother’s land….meaning his uncle’s land….meaning his uncle Laban’s land. But before Jacob reaches town, he reaches the town’s well….the local “watering hole” as it were…. where, as sometimes happens at local Birmingham watering holes, he meets a woman. And he falls deeply (and immediately) in love. Within three verses of meeting sweet Rachel, we are told that he kisses her and breaks into tears. Jacob is the first person to fall in love in the Bible (or so Harold Kushner, America’s favorite rabbi, tells me). Prior to Jacob, men take wives and may, or may not, come to love them once the deal is done.
Jacob wants to marry Rachel but, because he has left town quickly and because his wealth is future-wealth rather than reach-in-your-pocket-and-flash-a-big-bankroll-wealth, he has no money to pay for Rachel. For you see, in agricultural societies, the loss of a daughter represented the loss of a field hand. So the would-be suitor needed to put up some kind of compensation for thinning the family work force. Which Jacob did by saying to Laban (his uncle….Rachel’s daddy): “Look, in exchange for sweet Rachel, I’ll work for you seven years. Work hard. Work long. Work cheap. Like, for nothing.”
Seven years come. Seven years go. And concerning those seven years, the Bible says: “They seemed to Jacob as but a few days because of the love he had for her.” All you single guys out there, write that down on your bulletin. If a variation on that line doesn’t wow her, she’s got a block of ice where her heart should be.
So there is a ceremony. Everybody sings. Everybody dances. Everybody drinks. Everybody drinks too much. And old Uncle Laban….wily old Uncle Laban….pulls a fast one on the fast one, slipping Rachel’s older sister, Leah, into the marriage bed in the place where Rachel ought to be. Leading Jacob to learn what many have subsequently discovered. That as clever as you are, sooner or later you’re going to run up against somebody slicker than you are.
So, back to the drawing board. How many more years for Rachel? Seven more years for Rachel. Which Jacob pays. I told you this is a love story. Finally, fourteen years after their first kiss, Jacob and Rachel are properly husband and wife, just as Jacob and Leah are husband and wife (although Leah, if you read Genesis carefully, is primarily a baby-maker, while Rachel is clearly the beloved).
Still, nobody leaves Syria for six more years. During that period, Jacob prospers….both in terms of children and animals. Then, in year twenty, Jacob (with a little nocturnal nudging from God) says to wives, kids, manservants, maidservants and sheep (insofar as one can talk to sheep): “It’s time to get out of here. Let’s go home.”
The story, which is actually a paste-together job of two different writers, then gets a tad fuzzy as to whether Jacob’s getaway is going to be easy or hard. Assuming it is going to be hard, Jacob rounds everybody up and leaves the ranch while Laban’s back is turned, giving himself (and his not-unsizable entourage) a three-day head start on his uncle.
But with all those babies.…not to mention all those sheep….Jacob can’t move very fast. So seven days later, Uncle Laban and his band of merry men catch up with the departees, whereupon everybody huffs a lot, puffs a lot, bluffs a lot, but nobody hurts anybody….or even threatens to hurt anybody….until Laban says: “You stole my gods. It’s bad enough that you took my daughters, my grandbabies and my sheep. But why did you have to grab my gods, too?”
What are we talking about here? We are talking about “teraphim” here….household idols…. small cultic worship objects….maybe with a carved face, maybe not….maybe figurines, maybe not. Nobody’s quite sure what they were. Or who took them. And in the dominant version of the story, Jacob doesn’t know who took them. In fact, so sure is Jacob that nobody in his party took Laban’s gods, that he tells his uncle: “Go ahead and look. You find ‘em….whoever has ‘em….I’ll kill ‘em.” Well, you know who has ‘em, don’t you? Of course you know who has ‘em. Rachel has ‘em. She swept them up on the way out of town and has been hiding them ever since. But Laban, at Jacob’s urging, goes hunting. He turns Jacob’s tent upside down. No gods. He turns Leah’s tent inside out. No gods. He searches both maidservants’ tents….and, for all I know, every other tent on the grounds. No gods.
Finally, he reaches Rachel’s tent. Where Rachel is sitting. On the gods. And she says: “Pardon me, father, if I do not rise up and show you proper respect, because (at the moment) it is with me as it sometimes is with women.” Meaning that Rachel is in the red tent (to borrow an image from a well-written and popular novel). For to “be in the way of women” is to be religiously and ritualistically “unclean.” To which Laban can only say: “Oh….(or) Sorry….(or) Next time I’ll knock.” In point of fact, whatever Laban said is lost to history, since neither storyteller bothered to record it.
The question, of course, is why? Not why didn’t they record it. But why did Rachel steal the gods?
To add to the booty?
Possibly, but not likely.
To show up her daddy?
Possibly, but not likely.
To present to her hubby?
Possibly, but highly unlikely.
The gods Rachel stole were not representations of her husband’s God. Presumably, over the twenty years of conversation following that first kiss, Jacob’s God had become Rachel’s God. Presumably, they had come to some kind of agreement that theirs was the one God….the creator of the heavens and the earth….the God of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and soon-to-be Joseph (her child, Joseph)….the one God of Moses and the Law, David and the monarchy, Isaiah and the prophets….the God of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ….and through him, the God of our faith, apostolic and universal, which even we (at least one Sunday in six) rise and fervently proclaim. So what is this business about Rachel’s sweeping “holy stuff” off her daddy’s mantel and stuffing it under her skirt?
Well, I think I have figured it out. What’s more, I’ve even found a trio of scholarly commentators who agree with me. Rachel grabs the gods because she wants a little backup in case the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (and all those other guys) can’t cut it and falls short on delivery. Concerning Jacob’s God, Rachel saluted, but isn’t certain….signed on, but isn’t sure….traveled seven days down the road, but is covering her bets….just in case. And, in that regard, I submit that she is not all that different from a lot of us. Her sin (if schlepping the gods under her skirt can be termed a sin as opposed to a “weakness of the spirit”) is not thievery, nor is it idolatry, so much as what I called in last Sunday’s unison prayer: “Our on again, off again, trust in God.” “Sure I believe,” she said. “But in a world where slam dunks are hard to come by, doesn’t everybody hedge their bets?” She steals the gods from her father because she never knows when she may need them. And she hides her theft from her husband because what spouse wants to tell the last of the true believers (or, in her case, one of the first of the true believers) that, spiritually speaking, she’ll go where he goes, but she’s not where he is.
I abhor telling old preacher-stories that have already found their way into 74,000 sermons. For you’ve heard at least one variation about the man who tumbles off a cliff, finds himself in free fall, grabs a branch, hangs on for dear life, looks in the general direction of the heavens, and then lifts a prayer: “Hey, I say, is there anybody up there?” To which God answers: “Hey Joe….I know….I’ll show….let go….my arms will hold you.”
Still clinging to the branch, Joe prays once more: “Again, I say, is there anybody up there?” Second time, same answer: “Hey Joe….I know.…I’ll show….let go….my arms will hold you.” Third time, same prayer, same answer. Fourth time, new prayer: “Hey, I say, is there anybody else up there?”
The last time Billy Graham was in town, I chartered a bus, posted a sign-up sheet and took a bunch of my parishioners to the Silverdome. We sang. Billy preached. Then we settled ourselves in for the altar call. During the third verse of “Just As I Am,” one of our most committed leaders rose from his seat and went down front. We waited on him, just like Billy said we would. A half hour later, our paths crossed on the way to the bus. I half expected he would say: “You know, Bill, I’ve always been a Christian and I’ve always loved the church. But something happened tonight that touched a nerve in me and that opened a door for me….one that I just needed to walk through.” In point of fact, I had figured out half a dozen things he might possibly say to me. But what I was not prepared to hear was the explanation he finally offered, when he said: “I just figured, hey, it can’t hurt.”
Twenty-five years later, I’m still thinking about his answer. It’s clear that he wasn’t talking about a just-in-time commitment so much as a just-in-case commitment (just in case the commitments I have made before weren’t enough….just in case the beliefs I’ve expressed before weren’t enough….just in case the faith I’ve proclaimed before wasn’t enough). Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong at all. But pushing the logic, maybe he should join three or four additional churches, then get baptized in every one. He sounded like my father who never had any feeling for things “Catholic,” yet never drove a car (I mean never drove a car) without a St. Christopher medal pinned to the headliner….just in case, don’t you see….just in case.
No big deal, really. No big deal at all. If it makes you feel better….more confident….more secure (ah, that’s it, more secure)….why not? In fact, why make a fuss about Rachel’s keeping a skirtful of gods? Only this….“this” being my suspicion (just a suspicion, mind you) that loyalty divided is loyalty diluted. Spiritually speaking, sooner or later you’ve got to put all your eggs in one basket. There is nobody else up there.
In the sixties there was what the Roman Catholic Church called the Second Vatican Council. And the changes introduced were so radical that they upset a great many of the faithful….including, to the surprise of absolutely no one, a great many of the priests. In an effort to soften the impact, sessions were scheduled for Catholic clergy, and Jesuits (who have always had a holy calling for teaching) were conscripted to explain the changes. One enlisted to this task was Father Gene Monahan. On the day in question, Father Monahan stood (center stage) before a throng of his colleagues….barefooted….wearing just a pair of whitewashed trousers and T-shirt (an undershirt, really)….and looking into the eyes of an auditorium filled with bewildered priests, this is what he said:
" I am 54 years old. I have spent most of my adult life with my back turned to the congregation as I ministered to the altar. Now, the church says: “Turn around and face the people.”
" I have spent most of my life hiding among the incense pots and candles doing my work as a cleric. And now the church says: “Come out and be with the people.”
" I have spent most of my adult life saying the mass in Latin. And now the church says: “Speak English. It is the language of the people.”
On and on he went, describing the changes (personally and painfully)….until he reached the end of his litany and concluded: “As you can see, I have been stripped of almost everything. All that I have left is God.”
My friends, I would submit to you that where he stopped his speech is the best of all possible places to start our year.
