Hungover

Our scripture reading comes from the book of Genesis.

We will be reading an abridged form of the story from the twenty-fourth chapter, the story of how Rebekah came to marry Isaac. We pick up the story as Abraham’s servant tells Laban, Rebekah’s brother, about his quest. A reading from the book of Genesis:

Let us pray:

May these words be a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path. Amen.

Just over a decade ago Bradley Cooper, who is apparently 24 days my senior, had his break-out role as Todd Phillips in the Hangover. I am not sure how many of you saw the movies, or liked the movies. I had a few colleagues at the time who appreciated them, and so got drug along to watch one of the sequels.

The thing is, that as I kept thinking about July 5, it was to this metaphor I kept coming back. On July 4th, we celebrate, stay up late, light off the firecrackers, and sometimes drink too much. On July 5th we wake up a little hung over — I know this year is different, but maybe some of you are a little groggy. Glad you made it here.

On July 4th we celebrate the glory and promise of America. On July 5th, our headache reminds us that we have not kept that promise, and the mess reminds us that we are responsible and have a lot to clean up.

Certainly much of news right now bombards us with images that could come from the hangover, and we are trying to piece together what happened from a few pictures. Why are the monuments being torn down and thrown in the lake?

On July 4th we can be drunk and drink up the glory of America. But on July 5th we wake up to our responsibility and face the hangover, and wish that we were a little more responsible all along.

This metaphor, is not just applicable to the holiday weekend. I think it presses and pulls on our text as well. The book of Genesis moves through a couple of narrative arcs. The first arc is the primeval history which runs from the creation narratives through the flood to the tower of Babel and takes up what are now the first eleven chapters of the book. The remaining 39 chapters, which take up three times as much space and time, tell the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is the story of the patriarchs — and yes, that means it is also in some ways the story of the patriarchy, and we will allude to that more shortly.

Throughout the rest of the scriptures, we will find that God is named as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yet, in this narrative, Isaac’s story is but a coda. He is the son promised to Abraham and taken to the altar on mount Moriah. He is the father of Jacob and Esau, but his story is very brief, and in some ways just allows him to repeat in miniature the narrative of Abraham. Even in our text today, the story is really about Rebekah.

Abraham turns to his servant and says, “swear to me that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live.” Full stop. A little while later, after Isaac is married Jacob and Esau have grown up and Jacob has stolen Esau’s blessing, Isaac will call Jacob to him and say “you will not marry one of the Canaanite women.” As Isaac’s brief story transitions to the story of Jacob, we find him exiting the scene the same way his father did.

Who are the Canaanites? On July 5th . . . with monuments being torn down . . . who are the Canaanites? In Israel . . . where plans are being made to annex the West Bank . . . who are the Canaanites? In a polarized country, and a polarized world . . . who are the Canaanites and the daughters of the Canaanites?

Just the other week I was talking to a colleague whose daughter was dating a young man whose parents were forbidding him to date her. She isn’t . . . I don’t know, smart enough, good enough . . . for their son . . . They remind us that sometimes the difference between us and the Canaanites is no different than difference between the Sneetches.

There is a lot here, especially when people are looking to remove any credit from those with problematic histories. Can we think of God as the God of Abraham and Isaac if they are so opposed to having their sons marry one of the daughters of the Canaanites? Does it matter what happened on mount Moriah, if the daughters of the Canaanites are despised?

Let us be clear: all of our heroes have been imperfect and for all they have gotten right, have gotten some things horribly wrong.

There is a lot here, but I want us to hold it for just a moment and look at Rebekah’s story.

The servant is concerned with his oath. What if she will not come? If she will not come, Abraham promises that the servant will be free of his oath. Before we rejoice at the autonomy and subjectivity given to an unknown woman, when the servant meets Rebekah, he meets her brother Laban and he comes in tells him his story, which is what we read today, in our abridged version of the story. Then Laban says to the servant that he can take Rebekah. Whatever agency we thought Rebekah might find, we see the forces of patriarchy asserting themselves.

Then Laban seeks to delay Abraham’s servant. Maybe there is some ulterior motive here, and the servant asks to go with haste. So they say, “we will call the girl, and ask her.”

“Will you go with the man?”

“I will.”

Maybe she wasn’t supposed to agree. Maybe she was supposed to support her brother. Maybe she didn’t like long goodbyes. Did she know she was being chosen to reject another tribe, or race of people? Did she take control of her own story here?

All we know is that she agreed to go. We could even say that in this moment she chose to go, into the unknown.

Life is not simple. There are not simple binaries or dichotomies, and yet Isaac and Rebekah in this moment seem to offer us two choices — two different ways of being in the world. Isaac represents a perpetuation of the past, the claim of the past on the present. Rebekah chooses a different path, the new way, the future. Maybe that is pushing it a bit much. Her actions do not destabilize the patriarchy, and she will reveal that her own heart harbors its own racism and classism.

Later in the story, after she has been married for many years and raised her sons, we will read that Rebekah says to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women such as these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” So, Isaac called Jacob and charged him “You shall not marry one of the Canaanite women . . .”

Maybe it was a ruse, to subvert the patriarchy, to save Jacob from his brother. Maybe she was trading on Isaac’s feelings. Or maybe, she too thought she was better than the women of the land. Either way she traffics in the same dehumanization of other people because they are the wrong kind of people. Maybe Rebekah and Isaac don’t offer us two different ways of being in the world. Maybe it is one more example of the same way of being in the world.

We have read the story as if it were July 5th, and we are a little hungover. On July 4th, Abraham is the hero of faith, Isaac is the son of the promise, the boy who lived, and Rachel says, yes, I will go. On July 5th, everything looks a little different and our heroes have lost their shine. Their shiny clothes are covered in vomit an there is a tiger in the bathroom. On July 5th, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.

Let me close with this. Whether you are comfortable worshipping the same God as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or whether you would like to tear down the monuments; whether you are a little drunk with the glory, or a little hungover from all that we have done to get us here — the one God we have come to know in and through Jesus as the Christ, has promised to bring freedom to the captives and liberation to the oppressed. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also the God of Hannah’s song who promises to raise the poor and needy up from the ash heap of history and cause them to inherit seats of honor. Which is to say, that whether the heroes of our faith have understood it, the God we have come to understand through stories like the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the conversion of Zacchaeus, has always tried to tell us that Canaanite lives matter — and you can probably translate that in more than one way today, not the least of which would be: “Black Lives Matter.” To that we could add the words of Nelson Mandela: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” In the words of Malala Yousafzai: “We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.”

Amen.

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