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
