Do you remember what it was like to fall in love for the first time? Do you remember the shyness, the rush of joy? How the slightest mention of your love’s name would set your heart beating fast. Was it perhaps even “love at first sight?” One look and you knew that was it - and the love story begins. That is what happened to Isaac and Rebekah. Love at first sight and hospitality to strangers and the importance of a home land are the themes of scripture as we continue the story of Abraham and his family this Independence Day weekend.
Last week you heard the chilling story of how God tested Abraham’s faith by telling him to sacrifice his precious little boy. Thank goodness that was not the end of the story. Isaac was spared and he grew up. Sarah lived to be 127 years old and then she died in the land of Canaan. Abraham goes to some of the leaders of the Hittites and tells them that he is an immigrant with no property rights but he needs a burial plot. Abraham has a good reputation in the foreign land and he is able to purchase a family burial place and he buried Sarah in what we know now as Hebron in the land of Israel. Now Abraham has sacred land which will belong to his descendants forever. This piece of land was a tangible symbol that God’s promise of descendants in a new land was coming true. This story helps us understand some of the conflict over who has rights to the land, that is raging in Palestine and Israel.
By the time Sarah died Isaac was about forty years old and Abraham decided it was time to find a wife for his son to ensure that he would have descendants, so he sent for his most trusted servant Eliezer. Abraham made Eliezer swear to God that he would go back to the land that Abraham had come from to find a suitable woman from among his clan and bring her to Isaac.
So Eliezer set out with ten camels and many gifts and after a time approached the city of Nahor. They stopped at a well where the women came in the evening to draw water. Eliezar prayed to God for a sign. If he asked a young woman for a drink from her pitcher, and if she also offers to give water to the camels that will be the sign that she is the one for Isaac to marry. Just at that moment beautiful Rebekah comes to the well. She not only gives the man a drink she fills her pitcher again and again until ten camels had enough to drink. Do you have any idea how much water a camel can hold? I guess that was more than enough time for Eliezer to decide that Rebekah was the one for Isaac.
When the camels had finished drinking, Eliezer took out the gifts he had brought – a gold nose ring weighing half a shekel …… and two gold bracelets weighing ten gold shekels and asked, “Whose daughter are you? And can you put us up for night?” When Eliezer realized she was related to Abraham and she was willing to extend hospitality to him the man knew God had answered his prayer.
Rebekah ran home to tell her family and her brother Laban came out to the well to greet Eliezar and bring him to his house. There he unloaded the camels, fed them and provided water for Eliezer to wash his feet and the feet of the men who had come with him. Eliezar was so excited that he wouldn’t even eat dinner until he had told the whole story to Rebekah’s family and that is where our reading begins today. And it ends with love at first sight as Rebekah, a beautiful young girl with a gold nose ring and lots of chutzpah, goes off to a strange land to marry a man she doesn’t know. Isaac took Rebekah to be his wife and he loved her. Rebekah went to live in Sarah’s tent and took her place as the mother of the promised descendants in a strange land.
It turns out that God wasn’t finished with old Abraham. Abraham still had a lot of life left in him…. After Sarah died he took a wife named Keturah and had six more sons who were of Arabian lineage. Along with the story of his other son, Ishmael, we have a clearer understanding of how Islamic people trace their ancestry back to Father Abraham. He died when he was 175 years old and was buried in the cave next to Sarah.
These stories about the origins of God’s faithful people and the land they settled in speak eloquently to us this Independence Day weekend as we face new challenges and new frontiers. Much like Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Ishmael and his half brothers, we face a future that is uncertain. People come to America from many lands searching for freedom and a safe home. The freedom we all enjoy is bought at a tremendous price by generations that have gone before and by those today who love this country.
It is right that we remember with gratitude our founding fathers and mothers, but we must also look ahead to the future. The Scripture for Independence Day contains verses from The Letter to the Hebrews that mention Abraham and his faith as he left his home land… They say, “It was in faith that all these persons died. They did not receive the things God had promised, but from a long way off saw them and welcomed them, and admitted openly that they were foreigners and refugees on earth. Those that say such things make it clear that they are looking for a country of their own. They did not keep thinking about the country they had left.” (Heb.11:13-15 TEB) They did not keep looking back….
It is interesting to read the letters in the paper from those who look back and say times were better back then. But were they really better for everyone? Would sweatshop workers agree? Would the descendants of slaves agree? Would women now or the descendants of women who were denied basic civil rights agree? We understand the concern that is behind those letters wishing we could go back to a time when life did not seem so complicated, but we cannot go back. God’s purpose for us is to be worked out in the here and now. Our children and grandchildren are the new generations.
We face new challenges to our freedom. We are in danger of being held in bondage by fear of terrorism and escalating violence. We seem to be captive to rising fuel and food costs. Our frontiers are not forests and plains and oceans as they were for our forbears. Our dangerous frontiers are crime, abuse of our environment, and over indulgence. Our country is not isolated from the rest of the world as it once was. The problems of, “the other side of the world,” are now our concern, and we are called to extend hospitality and share our resources.
If we really are a people of God, a nation under God then we must believe that God is truly a living God whose presence is with us here and now, leading us to a new promised land. That belief - that freedom we’re given through God’s word carries a weight of both discipline and responsibility.
Abraham and his family had a trusting relationship with the living God. Lord knows they were not perfect, just as we are certainly not perfect. But they prayed, they blessed God’s name they listened and watched to discern God’s will for them - believing that God would guide them. As I said last week, we are called to have the same faith, the same discipline of worship and prayer and listening for God’s guidance. We have the same responsibility to further God’s will in our time, in our families, and among all people.
This weekend as we celebrate the love we have for our homeland, pray with me that people everywhere will be free - free of oppression. In the words of the great hymn God of our fathers… “Thy love divine hath led us in the past, in this free land by thee our lot is cast; be thou our ruler, guardian, guide and stay, thy word our law, thy path our chosen way.” May our land be a place where for everyone it is love at first sight. Amen.