Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

July 9, 2023

 

“Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.

Find me a find.

Catch me a catch.

Bring me a ring, cause I’m longing to be

The envy of all I see.

For Papa make him a scholar,

For mama make him rich as a king.

For me, well I wouldn’t holler

If he were as handsome as anything!”

            You get the idea. This week I read a commentary about our passage from Genesis entitled something like, “Does God Have Time to Be a Matchmaker?” If that’s not quite right, it was something along those lines. Anyway, it was referring to a question asked by a rabbi about God being a matchmaker between Rebekah and Isaac. And the point of it is, with all God’s responsibilities, should matchmaking be on the to-do list?

            I read this essay. It was good food for thought, but when I hear the word matchmaker, I can’t help but think about this song. And if I think about this song, I can’t help but sing it. And when I sing it, I not only think about the musical of it is origin, Fiddler on the Roof, one of my favorites, but I can’t also help but think about that classic moment in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. If you know the moment I’m referring to, then you know. If you don’t, you should.

            But aside from the fact that I love this song and this musical and the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, when you read the actual story that is before us, it’s challenging to see God as matchmaker because God is not overtly in the story at all. In our previous stories, God has been a key player in the action. God spoke directly to Abraham about the covenant he was making. When Hagar ran away to the wilderness to escape Sarah, God came to her and reassured her. When Sarah had Abraham cast Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness, God spoke to Abraham about what he should do. God has been audibly present in these previous stories. But in this story God seems to be the object of prayer only. How is God acting as matchmaker when God does not seem to have an obvious presence in the tale? Who is doing the matchmaking?

            Chapter 24 is 67 verses long, and it is all based around the story of finding a wife for Isaac. The designers of the lectionary realized that including all 67 verses would be a lot, so they distilled it down to the verses that have been read this morning. That makes this story a little easier to manage, but it is still helpful to know the larger context around the verses that we read.

            One thing we need to know is that Sarah has died. The story of her death and burial was told in chapter 23. God has kept God’s promise with Abraham and Sarah about them having a child and that child is Isaac. There was a question as to whether the promise would continue with the binding of Isaac, the story that we read last week, but Isaac was spared from being a sacrifice and he is now a grown man. He needs a wife, and with Sarah gone, it is up to Abraham to ensure that he has one.

            Abraham calls his servant, a servant whose name we never know, and makes him swear to the Lord God that he will not get a wife for Isaac from the women in the land where they are living but will go back to Abraham’s homeland and find a wife for Isaac there from Abraham’s kindred. The servant makes this promise to Abraham, but he is worried and nervous. How will he know the right woman to choose? What if she will not return with him? What if he cannot fulfill the promise he has made to Abraham?

            But the servant does not let his fears stop him from doing what he has sworn to do. He takes ten camels and a slew of the finest gifts a girl could want, and he sets out. He travels to just outside the city of Nahor, and there on the outskirts he makes the camels kneel by the well. The well is where the women of the city go in the evening to draw water for their households. It is by this well where the servant prays to the God of Abraham. He prays that God will grant him success in his quest for a wife for Isaac. He prays that the girl to whom he says,

            “Please offer your jar that I may drink, and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’ – let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”

            And that is what happens. Before the servant had finished his amen, Rebekah comes to the well with a water jar on her shoulder. She filled her jar with water from the well, and the servant ran up to her, asking for a drink. She gladly gave him a drink of water and then offered to water his camels as well. Genesis tells us that while Rebekah did this, the servant stared at her in silence, trying to determine if this young woman was the answer to his prayer.

            She was! Rebekah was not only a pretty young woman who graciously offered him and his camels water, she was kinfolk! She was the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah. This was Abraham’s family! This was the wife for Isaac.

            Our part of the story begins with the servant telling all of this to Laban, Rebekah’s brother. We’ll hear more about Laban later. But in this moment, this unnamed servant will not eat or rest until he has told them why he has come to them. After hearing his story, Rebekah’s family agrees that she should be Isaac’s wife. Even more importantly, Rebekah agrees that she will be Isaac’s wife. She leaves with the servant to travel to a strange country and meet her husband, a man she has never met before, an arranged marriage to be sure.

            Isaac had settled in the Negeb, and he was out walking in the fields in the evening when the servant and Rebekah approached. When Rebekah looked up and saw him, she slipped quickly off her camel and asked the servant who that man was walking to meet them. When she hears that it is Isaac, her intended husband, she does what any proper young bride-to-be would do. She covers her face with her veil.

            As a quick aside, our translation tells us that Rebekah slipped quickly off her camel. One commentator pointed out, however, that the Hebrew is clear that she fell of her camel not gracefully slipped off as we might imagine. Maybe when Rebekah saw Isaac, she felt that rush that comes when you see someone that you know is going to be important in your life, that rush of first attraction and even first love that makes you clumsy and nervous and uncoordinated.

            I suspect that Isaac was not immune to this rush either. When he hears the servant’s tale, he takes Rebekah for his wife. It may have been an arranged marriage, a match made for them, but at the end of today’s story, we learn that Isaac loved Rebekah. He loved her. They moved into Sarah’s tent, and Rebekah gave him comfort, comfort in his grief over his mother, the comfort that comes from a good marriage, the comfort that we seek when the world becomes too much to bear, the comfort that brings true rest for body and for soul.

            So, there it is. This is the story of how Isaac and Rebekah met and got married. It was an arranged marriage, true, but it was also a love match. You might even call it a meet cute. And if you’re like me, it’s always nice to hear how two people find one another. But was God the matchmaker? Yes, I think God was.

            God certainly answered the prayers of the unnamed servant. God certainly showed his steadfast love to Abraham, and with the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah the promise God made to Abraham would continue in its long, generation spanning fulfillment.

            But does God really have time to be a matchmaker? The rabbi who asked the question in the first place seemed to think so. He seemed to believe that matchmaking was some of God’s most important work. I think the rabbi was right. I think God is all about the business of matchmaking, not necessarily romantic matchmaking, but bringing people together into relationships. And why shouldn’t God bring us into relationships? God is a God of relationship. The Trinity is a doctrine of relationship, God in community, God in relationship. What did Jesus do but build relationships, especially with people living on the margins of society, people who had been left out of relationship.

            God’s promise to Abraham was not just about the birthing of babies and new generations being born in one family line, but about the whole world being blessed through relationship. God is the great matchmaker, matching us with others, matching others with us. God brings people into our lives for reasons we cannot always fathom, and in turn, we are brought into others’ lives in the same way.

            Not every relationship is about true love, and not every relationship lasts, but it doesn’t mean that God did not do the matchmaking behind the scenes. God created the world and us for relationship – relationship with God, relationship with each other, relationship with creation. How much better would our world, would our lives be, if we could just remember this and act accordingly. But just as God showed steadfast love to Abraham, God shows that steadfast love to us, matchmaking, relationship building, continuing the promise from generation to generation.

            “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.”

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.