A Legacy of Promise

24th Sunday of Pentecost and All Saints     November 3, 2024

The texts for this sermon are Genesis 23:1-2; 24:1-4,10-15; 25:21-24 and Hebrews 11:1-3,6 and Matthew 13:3-9,17

There are two kinds of people:
those who leave a legacy and those who inherit it

There are four kinds of people:
those who leave a healthy legacy

those who leave an impoverished legacy
those who make the most of what they inherit
those who don’t.

Our Genesis text offers a view of what things look like when a robust legacy is inherited by those who know what to do with it.

The story opens with the death of Sarah:

Sarah’s lifetime, the span of Sarah’s life, came to one hundred and twenty seven years. Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (a place now called Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her.
Genesis 23:1,2

Sarah, Abram’s wife, journeyed with her husband from a land of comfort filled with her own people and customs to a land and people unknown. Sarah, the wife of the Father of the Promise. Sarah, the mother of the Son of the Promise. Sarah, the woman who directed and protected and made room for the Promise to flourish.

With her death and his aging days, Abraham realizes he must find a wife for Isaac; a wife of like kind. He sends his chief steward to his and Sarah’s homeland with a commission:

Swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but will go to the land of my birth and get a wife for my son Isaac.
Genesis 24:3,4

The servant took ten of his master’s camels and went with all the bounty of his master in his hand.

He travels to Nahor in Abram and Sarah’s homeland. He settles himself and his 10 camels beside a well and prays:

God of my master Abraham, make it happen for me today and act benevolently with my master Abraham. Look! I am standing by the water spring and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let it be that the girl to whom I say “Incline your jug to me that I may drink” and she says “Drink, and I will also water your camels” ---to her you will have brought for your servant Isaac. 
Genesis 24:10-14

Hardly before he completes his petition a lovely young woman appears, walking straight and graceful with a large jar balanced on her shoulder.

Draw for me please a little water from your jug, he says

She smiles,

Drink my lord and hurried to lower her jug to her hand and give him a drink.

Then she says

For your camels also I will draw water until they have finished drinking.

And as we know, she did just that, going to the well and back, empty water jar, then full water jar, enough times to slack the thirst of ten camels!

Abraham’s servant watches in amazement. When the pleased (and assured) servant asks her who she is, Rebekah answers without hesitation:

I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milkah whom she bore to Nahor (Abraham’s brother). And we have both straw and plentiful food and also a place to spend the night.
Genesis 24:47

Rebekah shows herself to be open and unguarded, unflinching at hard work, strong and capable, and immensely generous and hospitable.

Then, when the servant negotiates marriage with her father Bethuel, and the prospect is put before Rebekah to leave her family and journey to a land far away and unfamiliar with one stranger to marry another stranger, she says 

I will go. 

I will go. Unlike Sarah, Rebekah has a choice; but like Sarah, she embraces this journey of mystery and uncertainty.

If this were all we knew of Rebekah, it would be enough. We would appreciate her and we would see her a worthy spouse for Isaac.

But there is more. She is the only woman whose birth is recorded in the Scriptures. What is more, her birth announcement in Scripture comes between the story of the binding of Isaac and the death of Sarah.  This placement in Scripture is not happenstance. Her birth, is recorded after the wrenching obedience Abraham undertook to offer Isaac back to God and before the account of Sarah’s death. She bridges these two episodes that speak of costly obedience, pain, and mortality. 

This sequence, this announcement of her birth hints at a flicker of light, offers a glint of hope, and portends a still-living legacy. 

It is especially important that we note that when God provides a ram in place of Isaac, God repeats his promise of progeny:

I will bestow my blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. Genesis 22:17

And then, when Rebekah takes the reins of a ready camel, with her family surrounding her to bid her farewell, they say to her:

Our sister, may you become a thousand myriads, and may your seed inherit its enemies’ gates!”  Rebekah arose, and her handmaidens, and they got up on the camels and they followed after the man. Genesis 24:60

Rebekah receives the same blessing God conferred on Abraham.  

It is Rebekah who inherits the promise. As Sarah was appointed to be the mother of the Son of Promise, it falls to Rebekah to carry this promise into the future. 

When Isaac meets Rebekah, it is to Sarah’s tent he takes her and it is there she claims his heart.

Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother…she became a wife to him and he loved her. Genesis 24:67

It is Sarah’s death which propels the legacy toward the second generation; Sarah’s life made Isaac possible, Sarah’s death makes Rebekah possible.

When Rebekah appears to be unable to have children, Isaac pleads with God to bless Rebekah. She conceives but the pregnancy with twins is so difficult she says she’d prefer to die so now she prays, and God gives her a revelation: the elder of the twins will serve the younger of the twins. Both twins will father progeny that populates two nations.  God gives Rebekah responsibility for this revelation, not Isaac. It is her legacy. 

It is Rebekah who later risks it all to see this legacy bequeathed to the second son, Jacob.

What has this to do with us?

On a personal level, it says that who we are, what we do, what values we live by and inculcate in our children define the kind of legacy we create and pass on. 

On a communal level, it speaks to the People of the Promise: to those of the Abrahamic Promise and to those who call on the Name of the God of Abraham. On the Jewish-Christian axis what does this mean? Does it not mean we are to be people whose hallmark are love and blessing, hospitality and fidelity? Are we not to be ready, eager even, to move forward into a call from God that asks us to forsake certainty and comfort and make sacrifices to ensure the vitality of the legacy God has passed to us?

Does all this not cause us to think of our own forebears? How did those Methodists of 1871 live into this legacy, many of whom had or were children of those who had left a homeland to live in a new one? Did they not start from scratch in a small rural community to build not just a building for prayer and worship but a faith community that offered a welcoming, life-changing fellowship of grace and mercy and redeeming love decade after decade? one century into a new century?

We here and now are a remnant not so unlike the remnant spoken of in Jeremiah where God says 

Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,…Proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘O Lord, save Thy people, the remnant of Israel.’ With weeping they shall come, and by supplication I will lead them. Jeremiah 31:7, 9a

We are a remnant of the congregation of 1871, and it may be the case that we think we’re at Sarah’s grave, mourning what we’ve lost and feeling there’s no future for our church. But is it possible to hear of the birth of Rebekah and awaken to the promise of new life. If we want life instead of death, then let us do as God says in Jeremiah: Let us praise our God who answers death with life. Let us repent and pray, ‘Save your people, O God’ and plead for God’s guidance.

But let us understand, if we do choose to claim life, and we want to be faithful to both the holy legacy birthed by Abraham and Sarah and nurtured by Isaac and Rebekah, as well as the legacy of faith demonstrated by our 1871 founders, we may be asked to ride a camel into unknown terrain
and embrace the pangs of birthing.