SCRIPTURE: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
TEXT: 67b He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. THEME: God’s ways are for our living in ordinary time. INTRODUCTION Pentecost is the longest season in the church calendar, taking us from roughly the end of May all the way to the end of November. It is so long, that it is also called Ordinary Time. There are no Holidays in this season for us to look forward towards or to prepare for. In this season we concentrate on how we live our ordinary lives with God and the stories of faith. Have you ever asked your parents how they met? Was it a story of romance, of chance meetings, of things coming together against all odds, about right timing, attraction, valiant gestures, commitment and devotion? So many things could have gone wrong but everything went right. SCRIPTURE Today’s passage is a story of romance. God loves a good love story. The setting is in a different cultural and time, Rebekah is living her ordinary life, waking up in the morning, doing her chores, going to the well as she does every day to get water, when God, through Abraham’s servant, intersects her life. In order for the Promise made to Abraham to continue, the next part of the story needs participants for another next generation. Isaac needs a wife, but not on from Canaan. He needs to marry someone like himself, from where Abraham and Sarah hailed from in Haran. Where their values, traditions, culture, and wrestle with the Holy is much more like his own, and not like the inhabitants of where they presently lives. Then, his descendants will be more than the stars in the sky. Mission meets Rebekah at the watering hole. The well was and the Ancient singles bar. Everybody needed water, and so everybody met at the well. Locals as well as strangers. Abraham’s servant knew this and begins his day with a prayer, “God of Abraham, if you do this, then I will know”. If I ask for water, and the girl will give it to me and offer to water my camels also, that will be the sign, that this is the one for my master’s son. A woman of extreme hospitality towards a stranger, kind thinks about others, strong, not lazy, self-sacrificing and humble. Before he could put an “Amen” on that prayer, up comes Rebekah, doing what she always does. As she gets her daily portion of water, this stranger asks her for a drink. She graciously, sets aside her own needs, lowers the water jug to give, someone she has no obligation to be nice to, who will probably never see her again, but has thirst, a drink of water. Her generosity doesn’t end there as she offers to water his camels too. She does what she would ordinarily do for anyone. An ordinary life is met with by the Missional God. Immediately, Abraham’s servant makes his intentions known with a dowry We may not like how Rebekah is not given a choice in this marriage or in how she is not treated as an equal partner in the negotiations. There are times when our faith stories do not challenge the cultural norms of the day but God is able to operate within the circumstances that we are in, to accomplish what God desires. God will help us in horrible relationship as well as orchestrate a match where a couple will endure, work together, and be lifelong partners in life. Approaching the foreign land that will be her new home, Rebekah sees a striking figure in the distance. She fell off her camel. It was Isaac; they were married and fall in love. APPLICATION Our ordinary lives show God's providence and God's will, even though we don't hear God's voice addressing us directly. How can our ordinary practice of kindness open communities to radical compassion, courage and trust in God? At our last Zoom Conference Call with our Conference Minister, David Popham, he read portions of David Kinnaman’s book, from the Barna Study Group. Kinnaman wrote about how Christianity is perceived by the younger generation. This is what the church’s ordinary life looks like to them; we are out of touch, irrelevant, judgmental, homophobic, political, old fashion and only interested in others to evangelize them. At first's hearing, the fur at the back of the neck stood up. This maybe how we are perceived, but that is not what we are like. Then I started explaining why we were the way we were. Making excuses. And finally I had to grapple with the fact, that although we may not be irrelevant, judgmental, homophobic, political, old fashion, or insensitive, we are missing young adults and youth in our congregation. I know that this is not what our ordinary lives are like, but this is how we are being perceived. Trying to change popular opinion is really hard. This is part of the problem we are having in our nation right now with the how one segment of the population is treated by law enforcement, while another segment of our population gets different treated just because of a perceived bias. What changes bias, is speaking up against it and positive one on one interaction that destroy our ill-informed stereo types. This is why Wanda Sykes on Netflix says, “you gotta make black friends”. This is the story of a White Nationalist and Orthodox Jew university students who got to know each other through Friday Night Sabot dinners. This is the hope that when people get to know us, and know that we go to Wailuku Union Church, they have a chance to change their perception of the what we are like, who we are, and who God is. This is why we like selling soda at the county fair with our preschool parents. This is why we like the work of our Food Pantry. This why we like the coordination for the Rummage sale in Dodge Hall to have clothes and things available for people to purchase at a really great price. This is why we like to do our COVID-19 Facebook and limited seating worship services. This why we like our preschool reopening in August. This is why we like the Wailuku Mission Housing project we are doing. Wailuku Union Church’s ordinary life is filled with extreme hospitality, kindness, mindfulness, strength, energy, self-sacrificing, and humble service of others. We just have to be willing to let people get to know us, for the wonderful, funny, happy, hardworking, compassionate, faithful, praying people that we are. We tend to be introverted but, our acts of evangelism, can be as simple as to let the Holy Spirit guide us to listen to someone else’s story and by doing so, have them learn a little bit about ourselves and the church. There are all kinds of stories out there about how COVID-19 is affecting our lives. As we listen to the stories, we can identify where God has been present to the storyteller. What are the stories of where the Spirit has been active? What might these stories be telling our about what God is doing? Something our ordinary life can do. CONCLUSION Our relationship with God gives us the hope for chance and a transformed life. With God in our lives, what is ordinary to us, can be seen is extraordinary by others. We want people to get to know us for who we are and not for what their bias tells them. They can only change their bias of us, as we are willing to listen to their stories first, and by doing so, have their ordinary lives intersected our missional God. It’s a great love story.
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