The Amazing Disappearing Man!

When I was a kid, my older sisters would say, Hes useless.

No. Thats not quite right. They were exasperated, so theyd sigh, Hes use-less. MOM!

Thats better. No doubt I was the useless younger brother of two older sisters.

I probably still am. Both of them are nurses, who have spent hours upon hours actively helping people in need. Me? I teach and write and hang with studentsand quip, Im the wrong kind of doctor. Im the useless kind.

Well, today meet useless younger brother Isaac. Or, really, useless younger step-brother Isaac. Ishmaels younger brother.

In fact, Isaac isnt just useless. Hes more like the amazing disappearing patriarch.

The lectionary text for this week is Genesis 24the fascinating story of how Rebekah comes to marry Isaac. Its really about the amazing disappearing man. Just glance at key moments throughout Isaacs life:

• He doesnt even find himself his own wife. Abraham sends a servant instead. Isaac is nowhere to be seen.
• He carries wood up the mountain, lets himself be strapped in, and barely raises an eyebrow.
• When hes blind and nearly dead, where is he? Lying on his bed, giving the right blessing to the wrong son.

See? Isaac is the amazing disappearing ancestor.

Thank goodness his servant meets Rebekah in a story that cant really be paraphrased or summarized. Genesis 24 has to be readand read slowlyto be savored. It's full of twists and turns and plenty of laughs, if you know where to look.

When Isaacs servant meets her at a well, Rebekah runs to and fro, doing more than she is asked to do before she is asked to do it! Thenget thiswhen it comes time to decide if she will leave to be Isaacs wife, her mother doesnt decide. Her brother doesnt decide. They ask Rebekah! She decides.

So off she goes with Isaacs servant.

As she draws near to her new home, Isaac is out in the field one evening. He looks up and sees camels coming. Now Id expect him to do something, right? After all, his father Abraham would get up in the morning and do whatever needed to be done by dawn.

Not Isaac.

Isaac looked up, saw camels coming.

And ran to them? Nope.

And greeted them? No.

And at least wondered who was riding them? Not at all.

Isaac looked up, saw camels comingand the next verb belongs to Rebekah.

Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi, and was settled in the Negeb. Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel. (Genesis 24:62-63)

Slipped quickly is putting it mildly. This Hebrew word, when you first meet it in your introductory grammar, is translated, fall.

Rebekah dove off her camel.

And then she did what Isaac rarely did. Her curiosity piqued, she asked a question: Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us? (Shes giving Isaac more credit than he deservesor maybe he was, at last, walking toward them.)

Thats pretty much the gist of the relationship between Isaac and Rebekah. We learn in Sunday or Sabbath school about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and thats true enough when we are talking about Israels patriarchs. But look at the verbs, note the activity, how the story runs through Rebekah. The story-line is really Abraham-Rebekah-and Jacob.

Rebekah, whose brother deferred to her.

Rebekah, whose husband deferred to her.

Rebekah, whose sons deferred to her.

If you want to talk about womens roles or male leadership, then stay away from the stories about Rebekah in Genesis.

Don't touch them.

Don't even glance at them.

Because the story this week is about an amazing disappearing ancestor and his extraordinary wife.

Or, better yet, it's about Rebekah and her Amazing Disappearing Husband!

________________

For more insightlaughter, tooabout this surprising story, listen to my podcast with Tommy Williams, pastor of St. Pauls United Methodist Church in Houston.

Photo from Google Images: Johann Carl Loth, Elizarus and Rebekah at the Well (Germany, 1670s) https://www.arthermitage.org/Museum-of-the-Academy-of-Arts-Petrograd.html