Faith Working Through Love

I have recently been reviewing the lives of Leah and Rachel, the two sisters who both were wives of Jacob in the book of Genesis. I find it interesting that so few sermons are preached about Leah. Everyone wants to talk about the love story of Jacob falling in love with Rachel and working for her father, Laban, seven years in order to gain her hand in marriage only to be deceived into taking Leah and having to serve another seven years for Rachel (though he received her in marriage after one week with Leah). There is little mention of Leah in most sermons, and then it is to remark about her 'weak eyes' and how much less attractive she was than Rachel.

God apparently takes a different view. In Genesis 29:31 we see that God had compassion on Leah because she was unloved, and He opened her womb. What is almost never discussed in church is who those children turned out to be. In Genesis 29 and 30 it goes on to list her children. Among her children were both Levi, the ancestor through whom both Moses and the priesthood of Aaron would come, and Judah, the ancestor through whom both David and Jesus the Christ would come.  That is to say, both the Torah (the Old Covenant) and Messiah (the New Covenant) were descended through Leah. God's promise to Abraham involved all of Jacob's descendants, but the direct carriers of the promise to bless all nations through Abraham came through Leah.

The picture we have of Rachel, while limited, is not very pretty, though she is depicted as being physically pretty. Her jealousy of Leah's fertility is spoken of in Genesis 30; in Genesis 31 she steals her father's household idol when the time comes for Jacob to leave and return to Canaan. While Leah was worshipping God and seeking to win the favor of both God and her husband Rachel was worshipping idols and acting in jealousy.  God shows his favor on Leah, and His promise is carried to fulfillment by her sons, Levi and Judah.

By the time they die it seems that Jacob has finally figured this out: Leah is buried at the same site with Jacob where Isaac and Rebekkah as well as Abraham and Sarah are also buried (see Genesis 49:28-33). Rachel was buried alone at Bethlehem where she died after giving birth to Benjamin, which is about 15 miles from Hebron where Abraham and Sarah were buried. One would think he could have chosen to bury Rachel there since he insisted his own remains be carried there from Egypt.  Alternately, he could have asked to be buried with Rachel. It seems that in her burial Leah was recognized as bearer of the promise along with Sarah and Rebekkah. My suspicion is that Jacob had come to recognize that as well.

Of the two, it seems that Leah was the better wife. In our modern glorification of romance we tend to ignore that. In Galatians after a lengthy discussion of Abraham and Sarah, Paul comments that 'In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.' Marriage is always an act of faith but certainly Leah had to act in faith in order to seek the favor of her husband despite such clear disfavor at the start. As C. S. Lewis has pointed out in The Four Loves, romantic love is never enough to provide a firm foundation for marriage, especially in God's eyes.

  'Faith working through love'; I like that phrase. It reminds me of Leah.

Jesus Barabbas and Easter

I recently heard a Messianic rabbi, rabbi Baruch, teaching about the trial of Jesus. He pointed out something that I had not heard before, based on the Greek text of Matthew 27:17. In that text the Bible refers to Barabbas as 'Jesus the son of Abbas' when Pilate asks the crowd whom he should release to them, Jesus the son of Abbas or Jesus the one called Christ? In transliterated form, it reads as 'Iesoun ton Barabban e Iesoun ton legomenon Christon?'  'Iesoun' is the Greek for 'Jesus'. The rabbi went on to explain that this is in many manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, not all, but enough to seem to be authentic, at least in his view. Here is a link to a site that shows the Greek and English side by side:

http://interlinearbible.org/matthew/27-17.htm

It is quite interesting to me that this man was also named Jesus. The rabbi had a hypothesis on how this may have come about. Pilate's wife had warned him not to do anything bad to Christ because of a dream she had about Him; Pilate knew of the tradition of releasing to the Israelites a prisoner at Passover in honor of the redemption that is celebrated by Passover. Could he have intentionally chosen one with the same name so that if they called out just his name then Pilate could release either one? An interesting hypothesis!

We cannot know what Pilate's thinking may have been, though he declared that he found no fault in Christ. He certainly could have been looking for a way to release Him without appearing weak. But the response from the crowd made it clear which Jesus they wanted: the son of Abbas (Barabbas). Pilate lacked the strength of character to release the innocent one, bowing to the crowd pressure.

The passage raises another question in my mind, though. The crowd chose the Jesus that served their desires rather than the Jesus who is to be served by us. Which Jesus do we choose? The one we can use for our own purposes, or the One who created us to serve Him?  As Easter approaches that is the question this passage raises to me about us and our culture.

Biblical Marriage

Marriage is in the news again. France is preparing to vote on whether to legalize homosexual marriage, and so the chief rabbi of France has an article in the March 2013 issue of First Things to defend traditional marriage. I was interested to find that his chief Biblical argument has much in common with the arguments made by Pope John Paul II in his book Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body.  Both of them rest much of their case on the complementarity of the 2 sexes. The chief rabbi writes that 'the complementarity between man and woman is a fundamental principle in Judaism' as well as in many non-religious traditions and culture in general. The pope agrees, but goes on to ground that understanding in the creation story of Genesis 1 and the way that the Bible makes it clear that it takes both man and woman to fully demonstrate the image of God carried by mankind. The rabbi also goes on to ground his argument in Genesis 1 and to say that 'this suggests that the definition of a human being is perceptible only in the conjunction of the two sexes'. This sounds rather like the pope when he said 'the definitive creation of man consists in the creation of the unity of 2 beings'. Both make a strong case for the divine intention of marriage being a matter of completeness for carrying God's image and passing on that image in procreation. In that regard, 'homosexual marriage' is an oxymoron.

The pope goes on to make connections to marriage as an image of the relationship within the Trinity, which of course the rabbi does not do, but then both refer to the way in both the Old Testament (ie, the Jewish scripture) and the New Testament marriage is considered a reflection also of the relationship between God and mankind. The rabbi does a nice job in the article of showing how the opposite sex is always something of a mystery to us, as also is God, and yet the Bible urges us to find human completeness via union in marriage and spiritual completeness in union with God who is also something of  mystery to us. Both require faith and a commitment to seeking intimacy with that which is not fully known or knowable to us.

This is one of the articles posted online for free this month, so here is a link:
http://www.firstthings.com/

Our culture, in its insistence on individual happiness as the highest good, is losing its understanding of what it means to be fully human. To be fully human requires male and female, not just a collection of individuals. Our pursuit of individuality is rapidly coming to its illogical extreme. I think we who seek to follow Christ become part of the problem when we seek to make romantic love the heart of marriage as that is what the homosexual lobby is also promoting, albeit a dysfunctional version of romantic love. Nonetheless, the romance culture places our individual happiness above our created purpose; while our created purpose builds real love (the selfless kind) as well, it makes much more clear how marriage is for more than just personal happiness. I was encouraged to see such common ground on this issue between both the former pope and the chief rabbi of France.