Synopsis:
Swedish missionaries move to Congo with young son in 1921. Mother gives birth
to daughter in 1923, but dies following childbirth. Father is broken and
bitter, gives up the baby girl to American missionary couple and returns to
Sweden. Baby girl (Aina, renamed Aggie Berg) grows up in South Dakota. Her
parents left no converts, except for a young boy who brought them chickens.
That young boy grew up and eventually brought the village of Ndolera to faith
in Christ. Forty years later, Aggie learns of this church and visits her now-alcoholic
birth father in Sweden. She shares the story of the boy with the broken and
bitter old man, and he discovers that God was with them all along.
The story feels like hagiography, but it is taken from
the daughter’s own story: Aggie Hurst, A Girl Without a Country. You can
read from the story taken from the website: https://acsirevivals.wordpress.com/articles/a-sad-defeated-story-david-and-svea-flood/.
I have not seen the book, which is out of print, but use the story here for the
point made at the end of the sermon.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: the patriarchs or founding fathers
of the Jewish people. There are a number of stories in Genesis about Abraham
and a number about Jacob; Isaac has basically chapters 24 and 26. We think of
Isaac mostly as the child offered as a sacrifice in Genesis 22. Abraham agreed
to sacrifice his son, his only son Isaac, whom he loved; and God then showed
approval for Abraham’s faithfulness by providing a substitute. A strange and
difficult story. One wonders what Isaac thought of the whole thing!
Chapter 24 is the story of Isaac and Rebekah – very
romantic, with Rebekah described as “very fair to look upon.” It is also a
story of an arranged marriage in which Rebekah and Isaac had little say about
the whole matter. Chapter 26 contains four stories about Isaac. We heard three
of them in the reading, but we will look at all four.
Genesis 26
The first story was not in our Readers’ Theatre
presentation. It’s a strange scene in which Isaac and Rebekah find themselves
near what today is called Gaza. There was a famine, and Isaac moved his family
into a region under the authority of Abimelech, a Philistine ruler. Isaac is
worried that the men around them will be attracted to Rebekah – remember, she
was “very fair to look upon” – so he decided to pass her off as his sister.
Abimelech eventually found out that she was really his wife and rebuked Isaac
for his lie, and then he told his people to make sure they did not “touch this
man or his wife”.
A strange story, all the stranger because it parallels
Abraham’s actions on two other occasions. In Genesis 12, Abraham went to Egypt
looking for food and pulled the same trick with Sarah (Genesis 12), and in
Genesis 20, he went to the same area as Isaac in our passage and again passed
Sarah off as his sister. I won’t take any time to sort out the various
interpretations of this story, but we’ll come back to it and consider what makes the most sense to me.
In the second story, Isaac prospers in the land of Gerar, so
that his neighbours become jealous of his success. Abimelech now appears afraid
of Isaac and asks him to leave his territory. Isaac agrees and leaves.
He settles nearby in the third story and starts digging
wells, looking for water. The first two wells in which he found water led to
more problems. The people who lived there said, “That’s our water! Leave it
alone!” So Isaac did. He moved further away and dug a third well. This time
there was no quarrel. His neighbours left him alone and he named the well “Room
Enough” in honour of the occasion.
This story concludes with Isaac seeing God in a vision at a
place called Beer-Sheba. God reaffirmed the covenant he had made with Isaac’s
father, Abraham, and he stayed there for a while and dug another well. (All
these wells remind us that water is life!)
Finally, Abimelech reappears on the scene. He has his
military commander and his chief advisor with him, so Isaac is naturally
concerned that Abimelech may be announcing trouble. Instead, the two men make a
covenant to live at peace with each other. As our story might say, “They all
lived happily ever after.”
Patriarchal Narratives
What do we do with these stories? Well, we don’t say that
they show us what we should do in life, that’s for sure. I’m not about to
suggest that anyone should pretend that their wives are really their sister. I
can’t imagine a scenario in which that would be good advice!
In the same way, I can’t just say, “Look how peaceable Isaac
was! He avoided a fight and look how God blessed him!” I don’t know if he was
really a peacemaker. He may just have tended to avoid conflict. So, what do we
do with these stories? If they’re not in the text to tell us what to do, what
are they there for?
One thing they do is remind us how different the world of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was from our day. Consider his statement, “She’s my
sister.” In our culture, we know what that would mean. But different cultures
reckon kindship in different ways. For example, I grew up in Zimbabwe. In
Ndebele culture, my father is David, and Arthur, and Joel – and for that
matter, my father’s first cousins on his father’s side could also say they are
my father. We call this “the extended family.” It’s a lot more complicated than
we’re used to.
Further, in our culture, the acceptable marriage partner
never includes our biological sister. Again in Zimbabwe, I once asked my
students if a man could marry his mother’s brother’s daughter. They all agreed
strongly that they could not. Except for two students in the back who said, “In
our clan, your mother’s brother’s daughter is the preferred marriage partner.”
Okay. I don’t understand it, but I heard what they said.
So let these stories remind you that the world of the
patriarchs was different from ours, then remember that God came to these people
– however strange they seem to us, and God made his covenant with them. In the
same way, God comes to us today – to everyone, whether we like the way they
live or not, and God is ready to make them part of his family also.
But that is a side issue. More significantly, Isaac’s
actions make sense if you remember something important about the patriarchs.
They were immigrants, and in this chapter, Isaac was moving because of a famine
(and probably a drought). That would make him both an immigrant and a refugee
in our world. Refugees make choices that we may not approve of. They do
whatever it takes to keep out of trouble and feed their family. If they are
afraid their women might be taken, they might lie about them. If they are
afraid that they might be attacked, they move to the next place. They don’t act
like the people who have power in the land, because they know that their status
is uncertain. They keep their eyes open, checking for any threats to their
existence.
Consider the stories in Genesis 26. Isaac and his family
move, looking for food. They live in tents, moving from one place to another,
always on the alert for threats. When the people in their new home start asking
questions about their family, they conceal their true relationships until the
local people figure it out for themselves.
These are the actions of a family leader who does not trust
anyone outside of his immediate family. I think he makes a bad choice here, but
it’s an understandable choice. It reminds me of the refugee family we know,
living in Cape Town. The husband made a bad choice and moved to Germany, hoping
to find asylum for his family. Instead, he is stuck in Germany. He made a bad
choice, but refugees live with pressures we don’t know. I can understand that
he heard of a possible open door and took it.
The stories about Isaac digging wells also fit the pattern.
He and his men dig a well and find water. The local people say, “That’s ours!”
So Isaac moves away and tries again. Same thing happens. So he moves and tries
again. This time no one chases him from the good well he dug. Why didn’t he
stand up for himself and for his family? Well, migrants often have little
power. If you decide to fight for yourself, you can get in worse trouble
quickly. At one level, Isaac just acted prudently.
So, these stories fit a pattern that marks them as migrants
without a lot of power. The Children of Israel always remembered their origin
as a migrant powerless people. At the feast of the first fruits, recorded in
Deuteronomy 26, the priest recited the following words: “A
wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as
an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and
populous.” They became populous, but they started out as wandering nomads,
living in tents, moving from place to place like the people we sometimes call
gypsies.
What do We do with This?
So, what do we do with these stories? They do have lessons
for us, even if we realise that we don’t simply do what Isaac did. I suggest
two simple observations that may help us as we move forward in our lives
together.
The first is that Isaac faced difficult choices, and he may
have felt that he had no choice. But, in fact, he always had a choice of what
to do. Sometimes he chose wrongly – I think his choice to present Rebekah as
his sister was wrong. Sometimes he chose wisely – I think he did well to avoid
fighting over the wells he had dug. But each time he found that he did have a
way forward.
We also sometimes feel like we have no choice. We are facing
some hard decisions over the next few months – looking for a pastor; looking
for a building; figuring out who we are and who God wants us to be. At times in
the past month, I have felt as though we were trapped, with no way out of the situations
we were facing. But, in fact, we had choices and we have found a way to move
forward. We’ll get some of our choices right, and we’ll get some wrong; but
remember that we have possibilities ahead. In fact, we have a lot more ability
to choose than Isaac the migrant refugee did! We’re not stuck, and God will
make a way for us.
The second lesson is that God is the only one who can
actually give us success. We make our choices, and we do our best, but only God
can bring success. Isaac kept on refusing to fight. He kept on digging new
wells, and God honoured his efforts by giving him water for his immediate needs
and a covenant with Abimelech for his long-term needs.
As we make our choices, we trust in God for their success.
Trusting God in the process means that whether we grow or decrease, we are in
God’s hands. We pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us what we need for today,
physically and spiritually.” Then we make our choices, knowing that we are in
God’s hands.
A Concluding Thought
I know that we sometimes feel trapped, as though there is no
way to move forward. That feeling can lead us to make more bad choices, like
Isaac saying that Rebekah was his sister and not his wife. My word to you this
morning is that God can make a way where we see no way. That is why I began with the story of David and Svea Flood. David Flood saw no hope, but God used even their pathetic failure to plant a church in Ndolera.
While I was writing this sermon, we received news of Julie’s
application for refugee status in Canada. The Canadian High Commission in South
Africa has denied her application. We are grieving, and I acknowledge that I
feel trapped and don’t see how we can help her. So we turn to God, and we ask
God for a way forward.
We will make our choices as we stand with Julie and her
family. Our choices may work, and they may not. Far more important, we commit
Julie and ourselves into God’s care. Only God can make a way for us in this
world and in the next. We do not despair. We do not give up. We continue to
live as people of peace, digging new wells, looking for the next step God wants
us to take. And we trust God to build our house. We trust God to give us what
we need for today and for tomorrow.
Think again of David and Svea Flood.
Their experience illustrates our human inability to overcome the situations we
face, and it reminds us of God’s great ability to bring life through our
efforts, however weak we feel.
People in the world around us turn to violence and force to
get their way. We trust God instead. As the Psalmist puts it, “Some trust in
men; some trust in horses; but we trust in the Lord.”
13 August 2023
Steinbach Mennonite Church
Genesis 26: 12-33
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