When God Doesn't Speak

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67:

When we began this series, we started at the beginning in Genesis 1:1, when we are told that God said “let there be light.” And what happened? There was light. And so, simply by speaking God was able to create. That means that words matter, especially the words of God. Indeed the beginning of the most important statement of faith within Judaism, known as the shema, begins “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” It doesn’t say speak O Israel or believe O Israel, but “hear O Israel…” Listen to this statement. For us as Christians speaking and language are just as important, because we are told that at the beginning of the Gospel of John, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And who is the Word?  Jesus.  So God speaking is important, and God talks a lot in Genesis.  God talks with Adam and Eve, God talks with Cain, God talks with Noah, God talks with Hagar and of course God talks with Abraham.  God talks a lot with Abraham.  In every step of Abraham’s story not only is God present and active, and yet in the passage we just heard, which is the last significant story of Abraham, God does not speak.  Now after the past two weeks in which we have heard God tell Abraham that he should listen to the voice of his wife Sarah and expel Ishmael and Hagar, and then last week when God calls for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac perhaps we are a little relieved that God is not talking or asking anything.

Today’s passage is a nice story.  A simple story.  It has a nice beginning, a good middle and even a happy ending because we are told that Isaac loves Rebekah.  But it’s not like this is an insignificant story.  This sets up the rest of the Book of Genesis and the creation of what will become the nation of Israel, and yet in striking contrast to everything that has come before, God is not a primary character.  In fact, God is not even there.  Abraham decides to send his chief servant back to his native land to find a wife for Isaac.  Why he is concerned about getting a wife from among his own country, versus those amongst whom he is living, is unknown.  God doesn’t tell him to do this. But, the steward sets off, along with other servants, many gifts and ten camels, which will become important, and as he approaches a well near the city of Nahor, he says a little prayer that God might help him find the right girl.

 Now, if we are familiar with the biblical stories, this set-up should sound off alarm bells because we know that meeting at a well is often how marriages happen. And sure enough, the first person the servant encounters is Rebekah, and not only does she offer him a drink from her jar, but she offers to water his camels as well, which is what the servant hoped would happen as a sign of finding the right woman.  And this is not an insignificant gesture. A camel can drink up to 52 gallons at a time, and the servant has ten camels, so Rebekah possibly draws up to 520 gallons of water.  This is a sign that she is worthy. And in this we should remember as well how Abraham, and even Lot, greeted strangers and welcomed them through their generous hospitality. We are being told something significant about Rebekah here.

But even though Rebekah does what the servant hopes will happen, the servant still does not assume that everything is just going to go according to some grand plan, because he begins to offer Rebekah gifts to win her favor, and later offers gifts to the family as well.  There is still the possibility that things could go wrong. After all Laban could say no, and it turns out that perhaps Rebekah could say no as well, a most unusual circumstance as far as we can tell. And although Laban, Rebekah’s brother, says in a portion we didn’t hear today that he sees God’s hand in these actions, God does not tell anyone here what they should or should not do.  God never speaks to any of the participants. Throughout this entirely long story, God does not speak.  Not once does God not become openly involved in the plot, not once does God utter anything to anyone to let them know that what they are doing is according to divine plan.  God is strangely silent.

Some of you have heard this story before, but I received my call to the ministry 25 years ago in June, which makes me feel old. I was working on my first master’s degree at the time at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, and I was in a religion and philosophy class in which we were reading Exodus and story of the golden calf, when I heard a voice in my head saying “this is where you belong.”  Those five words kind of reverberated in my head for a while, and I would sort of hear echoes for the next few months.  But, while I didn’t discount them altogether I can’t say that I took them all that seriously either.  After all, who was I to become a minister, I wasn’t even attending church.  But still, those five words were out there.  It took me another three years before I called up one of the local Methodist churches to talk with the pastor about entering the ministry, and began to attend church again.  Three years during which I never heard any other guidance or direction.  It took me more than another year before I was sort of finally pushed to make a decision about which way I was going to go, enter the ministry or do something else.

I had a job at the time that I loved, but a boss that I could not stand.  I was driving into work one Monday morning knowing that she and I were going to be having another argument about what I was and was not doing around the office, and who was responsible for all of the problems.  On my way in, I began to pray, which was not one of my normal activities at the time, and I said “okay God, you have to tell me what to do because I have no idea what I’m doing anymore.  If you want me to be doing something else, you need to tell me.”  That is, speak to me. When I got to work exactly what I thought would happened occurred and my boss and I got into another argument.  In the middle of it, I told her that I didn’t have any idea what she wanted from me or how I could make the situation any better, and asked her if she wanted my resignation.  She said she did and I walked out.  It is the only time in my life that I have left a job on those terms or in that type of situation.  And never once in that interchange did God speak to me, even though I had asked.

As it turned out, I ended up with a job interview that afternoon for a position which led me to move to Albuquerque, which is where I needed to go in order to put some of my other ducks in a row in order to go to seminary.  My brother, who had been living in North Carolina, decided to return to Albuquerque around the same time so we were able to move in together, and he ended up working with someone by the name of Marianna, who happened to have a twin sister by the name of Linda.  So within 10 1/2 months of asking God for help and walking out of my job, I had a new job, in a new city, living with my brother who had to move back across the country, and I had met the woman who would become my wife.  Within another 3 ½ years I was studying at Boston University in order to be here in front of you today, and the entire time God never said a word to me.  But I can see now that God was involved in my life the entire time.

Beyond those initial five words I heard in my head, I have never been spoken to directly by God.  Now those five words may be more than some of you have ever heard, but may be less than others, but there have certainly been times when I would have liked more guidance.  There have certainly been times when I wished that God would have said I want you to do this, or perhaps if you do this, this is what I will promise you, but God didn’t speak.  But does that mean that God was not present in my life?  Does God not speaking mean that God does not care what is happening to us?  Does God not speaking mean that God is still not trying to guide our actions to do what is right?

I’m sure that by now you have figured out that these are all leading questions, and the answer of course is no.  Just because we don’t hear God speaking does not mean that God is not interested in our activities or participating in our lives.  I suggest that there are a lot more of us who are like the unnamed servant then there are who are like Abraham.  That is we are out there in the world trying to do the right things, trying to follow the path of God and hoping to receive some response that we are on the right track.  I’m guessing that we are all much more like the servant in that very rarely do we have direct interactions with God. And I say that because by far the most common occurrence is something saying to me that they want God to talk with them, and they aren’t hearing anything, then it is for someone to say they have heard God speak and want some help with that.  

Sometimes I think this is because we are looking for the wrong thing.  We are looking for the big booming voice, or perhaps to see the burning bush, and when it doesn’t happen we’re disappointed.  But I think we’re more likely to experience God like Elijah does in the 19th chapter of 1 Kings, where we are told that Elijah saw a great wind, but God was not in the wind, then there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake there was a fire, but God was not in the fire, and then after the fire was the still small voice of God, or the NRSV says there was the sound of sheer silence, and there was God.  God was found in the silence.  And that statement should scare us, because we’re not good at silence.  We are surrounded by sound all the time.  Have you ever been sleeping and woken up suddenly wondering what woke you up and you realize that the power has gone out and the silence was so loud that it woke you up?  Can God be found in the loudness of the silence?  Not only can God be found there, but I think that is where we most often find God, and that is where the servant and Laban and Rebekah find God.  We should remember that silent and listen contain exactly the same letters, or as John Grossmann said “silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.”

We operate most often in our lives without hearing God speaking to us, and that is why this story should be meaningful for us.  We should see it as more than just as a transitional story taking place between two patriarchs, more than just a story that sets up how Isaac and Rebekah meet.  Instead, it is a story about how God operates in our lives. But to understand that we have to approach our lives the same way that the servant and the others do, and that is with the expectation that God is involved in our lives. They all assume that God is there, from the servant making a prayer of petition and of thanksgiving, to Laban saying in a section we didn’t hear, that this is all the work of God.  It’s not so much looking for that booming voice of God, or even for the still small voice, but instead looking for God’s actions that take place in our lives, and also seeing how God uses us to accomplish God’s will. And the way we do that is to start noticing it, it’s a skill and like all skills we get better at it by working it at.

We’ve started doing this in the weekly newsletter with God sightings, in which people are telling stories of how they have seen God moving in their, or someone else’s life. Hearing this stories helps us remember that God is active in our lives, even if we might never hear God speak.  We invite God’s participation into our lives through prayer and through action and listening.  The servant does not wait around for God to say something, he goes to God in prayer asking for what he needs, or hopes, trying his best to do what is right, and so it is with us.  Whether you have heard a whole five words from God as I have, or two thousand, or none at all, God is active in our lives.  God is participating in our lives even when we can’t feel God’s presence.  God is participating in our lives even when we feel like we are doing everything by ourselves.  God is participating in our lives even when we feel that everything we do is wrong and we are being counteracted at every turn.  And God is participating in our lives even when we never hear God speak.  Amen.