Matchmaker God

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Romans 7:15-25a

One of the storylines in the musical play Fiddler on the Roof is about the efforts of the matchmaker Yente. She works hard to find young women and men that can build a life together. Sometimes, her matchmaking is based on finances. The baker’s wife died and he needs a woman to care for his children. The young man with a sewing machine is unlikely to make enough money to support a wife.

But as the story goes on, the possibility of a loving relationship takes the forefront of the matchmaking, as the young people defy Yente and their parents and make their own matches. Tevye, the father, resorts to telling his wife Golde that he has had dreams about the matches his daughters have chosen. The girls all tell him they are in love. Towards the end, Tevye asks Golde if she loves him. At first, it seems a preposterous question! Then as she reflects on the question, she concedes that after all, maybe she does love him.

… in our first reading from Genesis, Isaac has grown up and established himself as a wealthy businessman in Beer-lahai-roi. To maintain their hold on the land God promised to him and his descendants, Isaac needs to remain on his land. So, Abraham sends a trusted servant and a team back to Haran where some of his family still lives.

They traveled with camels bearing provisions and expensive gifts for the bride. There is disagreement just what the distance was, but we can assume it was hundreds of miles, and would take several weeks.

Once the servant arrives at a likely place, he rests his camels and watches – and prays! He asks God, “Let me know who to ask, and let this be the sign that I have spoken with the woman you have chosen. She will agree to give me a drink, and offer to water my thirsty camels as well.”

Rebekah is the young woman who matches the description, there are some negotiations, and she sets off for Beer-lahai-roi and her future. Isaac loves her, and they have a mostly good life together. God’s plan to bless all people through Abraham’s descendants is now focused on the relationship between Isaac and Rebekah.

… Have you ever thought or believed that God put you together, matched you, with another person? I hope many of you have felt that your primary relationships were at least blessed by God, if not put together by God as matchmaker. While Mike and I have had our challenging times, we have always felt that God put us together, through God’s human matchmaker named Colleen.  

God puts us into other relationships, too. Maybe not as directly as the match between Isaac and Rebekah, but it’s the Holy Spirit’s desire to help us communicate with each other. So, we choose companions, and congregations, and activities that help us feel connected to each other.

But … relationships are hard, because we humans have hard places in our hearts. When we get married, we promise to love each other forever. But we all know life is hard at times, marriage is harder at times, and it’s easier than ever to get a divorce.

Sometimes our friends annoy and disappoint us, and the relationship breaks apart. Sometimes, our congregations – no, some of the people within those congregations – annoy and disappoint us, and the relationship breaks apart.

If we are committed to staying in the relationship, we both, or we all, have to admit that we are at least partly to blame, partly wrong. We need to admit that Paul’s words ring true for us. We don’t always do or say what we know we should, and we do things and say things we know that we shouldn’t.

… Recently, I watched an old episode of the TV show Monk. It’s about Adrian Monk, an insightful detective with a problem. He’s obsessive about not touching anything, and about having perfect order for all his things. The episode was about connecting with his father for the first time in decades. The father had abandoned the family when Monk was a child. They rode together for hundreds of miles in the father’s semi-truck. It was a chance to repair the relationship, for them both to admit they had been wrong.  At the end of the trip, Adrian had identified a murderer and the two had begun a new relationship.

… Why is it so hard to be in relationships with other people? Why do we do things we know we shouldn’t? Because we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves from it. Sin can be obvious, but more often it is sneaky. It is sin that makes us do things we regret and sin that makes us not say things we should. This tendency to sin is what makes relationships so hard.

… So, what is the remedy? I can suggest some things. First, we can remember that sin is a built-in part of being human. It’s inescapable, but Jesus has a remedy for it – it’s called forgiveness. It’s ours for the asking, and it’s ours even when we don’t ask for it.

The second thing I can suggest is for us to remember that God puts us together in relationships. We are children and parents and spouses in families that God made, when we consider that God may be the matchmaker for couples in the first place. We need to remember that we all sin, and we all need forgiveness.

Third, we are members of congregations, who are at least in some ways put together by God. Here, we are all siblings, children of God, sinful and forgiven children of God. And we are members of small groups, like my lunch group, a collection of people from three congregations. In congregations and in small groups, we each have our quirks, and sometimes those quirks become irritating. But we have grown to love each other and overlook and even forgive the quirks when they begin to annoy us too much.

God is in all our relationships whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. God can help us have better relationships when we remember the Divine Presence is always present, reminding us we are imperfect and forgiven, reminding us to forgive those in our lives because they are also imperfect.

This week, I hope you will pay attention to the relationships you are in, and how often you sense God’s presence. Also notice the interplay of love and forgiveness in those relationships. Offer forgiveness when you need to, instead of resentment. Amen