Welcome to the Well!

Genesis 24:42-49,57-67
Matthew 10:40-42

Years ago, when I was no more than six or seven, my father took me on a walk through the small town in western Pennsylvania where my great-grandparents had lived. As we walked, he told me stories that his grandfather, my great-grandfather, had told him as they had walked many years before. We walked to a place near the center of town where a metal pipe came out of the ground, and out of that pipe flowed a constant stream of cold, fresh water from a spring in the mountains above the town. That pipe was called “the spout,” my father said, and in my great-grandfather’s day, nearly everyone in that little town would come to the spout at one time or another during the day. Some would stop by for a drink. Others would fill a jug or two to carry home. Still others simply stopped to talk—it was the town’s version of Headline News Network.

Everyone was welcome at the spout. The mine owner and the mine workers alike made their trips for water early in the morning before the whistle blew to signal the start of the working day. Protestants and Catholics met together and talked at the spout, even though they were not welcome in each other’s churches. Even the prisoners in the town jail were represented, because each morning a trusty with a big galvanized bucket would come to carry the day’s water back to the jail. The wealthy who could afford membership in the country club and the poor who could barely afford shoes met and drank and talked at the spout, with its cold, fresh mountain water bubbling free for everyone. The ground around that pipe was the most democratic place in town. It was the one place where everyone came and mingled and talked and dropped their pretenses and their prejudices, even if for only a few minutes in the day. People of every walk and station in life enjoyed together the goodness of God in the form of a drink of cold water.

It was to just such a place that the servant of Abraham is said to have come in Genesis 24. He had journeyed from Canaan, the land to which Abraham had moved at the call of God in Genesis 12. He came, we are told, “to the well of water” outside “the city of Nahor.” Thousands of years removed from the origin of this story, we can’t be sure of some of its particulars. For example, we can’t be certain of the location of this particular city. Ancient texts from the city of Mari in Mesopotamia mention a city of na-hur in northern Syria, located east of Haran, where Abraham is said in Genesis 11 to have lived before he set out for Canaan. It is possible that the narrator is referring to that ancient city. But it is also possible, since this is a family story, that “the city of Nahor,” is not the actual name of a place at all, but simply refers to a city in which Abraham’s brother, whose name was Nahor, resided. “The city of Nahor,” then, might mean simply, “the city where Nahor lived.” Thousands of years removed from the origin of the story, it impossible for us to know for sure what city the narrator had in mind.

Many of the particulars of this story are lost to us, and some others, no doubt, have been added in, as happens to family stories as they are passed along. For example, the servant is said to have brought with him ten camels, a truly impressive entourage. But these camels pose a problem in the particulars. Everything we know about camels in the ancient Near East indicates that the camel was not domesticated until centuries after the time that Abraham is said in the Bible to have lived. So, either Abraham lived a lot later than the Bible suggests, or those camels trotted their way back into the story a lot later than Abraham. Several years ago I came across a sermon in which I had told that story of my walk with my father in the small town in western Pennsylvania where my great-grandparents had lived. And much to my surprise, in that particular sermon, as I had told the story, the “mill owner” and the “mill workers” came to the spout to draw water. But there were no mills in that little town. There were mines, but there were no mills. In the North Carolina town of my upbringing, there were no mines, there were mills. And so it happened that as I passed along this family story of mine, I inadvertently altered its particulars in relation to my own experience and the experience of the people to whom I was speaking. Genesis 24 is one of those family stories that was embellished and elaborated on as it was passed along. Thousands of years removed from its origin, many of the particulars are open to uncertainty and dispute, but there are universal lessons in the story that we can learn from, whatever we might make of its particulars.

One of those universals is the well, the most democratic place in town, a place where people can come and mingle and talk and drop their pretenses and prejudices, even if for only a few minutes in the day. Our physical need for water that the well satisfies is a sign and a symbol of social and spiritual needs that we all share as well. The well outside the city of Nahor is a free, unbounded space where friends and strangers, women and men, young and old, residents and travelers, rich and poor, lowly and powerful, meet and interact on the common ground of their shared human need. When people meet in the city square (or at a town hall, if I dare to mention such a thing these days!), their interactions are encumbered by social and political and economic protocols. But when they meet at the well, their shared need for water “levels the playing field” and alters the landscape of their interactions.

Wells are important places in the Bible’s stories. In Genesis 24, the young woman Rebekah provides water from the well for the stranger and his camels. In Genesis 29, it is the traveler Jacob who draws water from a well when he meets and falls in love the young woman Rachel there. In Exodus 2, it is the stranger named Moses who waters the flock of the daughters of the priest of Midian. And in the gospel of John in chapter 4, it is the stranger Jesus who asks a Samaritan woman for a drink at a well. The well that satisfies the physical reality of the shared human need for water is a sign and symbol of our mutual dependence on forces we cannot control. It is a sign and a symbol of our interdependence on each other for safe access to those essential things that we need most in life to survive. And it is a sign and symbol of the profoundly spiritual need for free, unbounded spaces where people of every walk and station in life can meet and interact, can extend hospitality like Rebekah, can fall in love like Jacob, or discover that they are loved like the Samaritan woman.

If I had to choose one and only one image from the Bible for the Christian church, I just might choose the image of the well, where everyone is welcome on the level playing field of human need, where pretenses and prejudices are set aside, the most democratic place in town, where hospitality is extended and received, and where to love and to be loved are the community rules. That would by my image of the church. Isaiah 12:3 says, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation,” and in John 4:14, Jesus says, “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will given them will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Welcome to the well!

A second universal in this story of uncertain particulars is that matriarchs matter. Matriarchs matter. For a long, long time, Old Testament scholars and teachers called the stories in Genesis 12-50 the “patriarchal narratives,” the stories of the fathers. But the truth of the matter is, as the book of Genesis tells it, the matriarchs of ancient Israel were at least as interesting and influential as the patriarchs. Genesis 24 is Rebekah’s story, not Abraham’s or Isaac’s. In Genesis 24, it is Rebekah on whom the blessing of innumerable offspring—and powerful ones capable of overcoming their foes—is pronounced (verse 60). When the servant of Abraham asks Rebekah’s family “to obtain the daughter of my master’s kinsman for his son,” look at what her family says: “We will call the girl, and ask her” (verse 57). It is Rebekah who decides how her life will turn at this crucial juncture of her story and the Bible’s the story. She is no shrinking violet, this woman. If you are looking for “the weaker sex,” don’t bother looking at Rebekah and her cohort, the matriarchs of Genesis.

In traditionalist preaching and teaching we hear plenty about Abraham and his faithfulness to answer God’s call to set out on a journey to an unknown destination. But his wife Sarah must have chosen to answer that call every bit as much as Abraham did because she went too! Sarah, in her own time and in her own way, must have answered the very same question that was put to Rebekah in Genesis 24:58, “Will you go with this man?” Rebekah answered, “I will.” It is the very same question that that the sisters Rachel and Leah must answer in chapter 31 after their scheming husband Jacob and their conniving father Laban have a falling out. Traditionalist preaching and teaching champion the patriarchs, but in the book of Genesis it is the matriarchs who answer in every generation the so-called “call of Abraham”: Sarah leaves her country and her kindred and her father’s house, and Rebekah leaves her country and her kindred and her father’s house, and Rachel leaves her country and her kindred and her father’s house. Abraham moves one time and gets all the attention, but if you look closely at the stories in the book of Genesis it is the women who every bit as much as the men exemplify Abraham’s faith in each successive generation.

Rebekah’s story in Genesis 24 reminds us that we must constantly be on guard against the selective and prejudicial memory of those authorities in the church, both ancient and modern, who continue to perpetuate the lie of subordination and domination and exploitation of women. I would call your attention to a curious rhetorical twist in this chapter that comes a little earlier in the chapter than the excerpts we heard read this morning. The stranger at the well asks of Rebekah, “Is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?” She answers, “We have plenty of straw and fodder and a place to spend the night.” Then, we are told, “the girl ran and told her mother’s household about these things” (verses 23,25,28). The old man asks about her “father’s house,” but the narrator is quite clear that it is her “mother’s household” in which the story plays out. That doesn’t leave too much question about who “wears the pants” in Rebekah’s family, does it? And lest you think this curious twist on things is an anomaly, notice that at the end of this story, when Isaac and Rebekah finally meet, we are told that Isaac brought Rebekah “into his mother Sarah’s tent. . . . she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death” (verse 67). It is not Abraham’s tent or Isaac’s tent but Sarah’s tent where the two became as one, and he loved her. Matriarchs matter. Welcome to the well!

A third universal lesson in this story of uncertain particulars is that everyday human activity shapes the future (Fretheim, NIB I.512). Every day of our lives in the everyday things we say and do we shape how the future will unfold. A young woman named Rebekah extended the simplest hospitality—a drink of water—to an old man, and by doing so she shaped his future and her future and the futures of innumerable others whom she would never meet, including us thousands of years later. She extended to him the hospitality of lodging, and she changed the unfolding future of the world. She said, “I will,” and she created the future of countless families to come. And the most remarkable thing about it is that there is nothing remarkable about it at all! A drink of water, overnight lodging, a decision to marry—it’s the stuff that happens every day in our world, and people’s lives are changed and their futures are altered and shaped.

Rebekah’s story in Genesis 24 reminds us that we must never underestimate the power and the importance of the everyday and ordinary things we say and do. Our words and our actions, even the everyday ones, have real power because they affect the way our lives and other people’s lives will play out. Bankers, realtors, retailers, physicians, accountants, attorneys, sales reps, retirees, teachers, secretaries, homemakers, college students, youth and children, people of every walk and station in life, all of us, create and limit futures every day. At work and at home and at school and at church and at play, even the routine things we say and do shape our own future and the futures of people we know and love and the futures of untold numbers of people we will never meet. Genesis 24 makes it very clear that God is present and active in the everyday of our lives and that the everyday activity of our lives makes a difference not only here and now but for the future also. Welcome to the well!

A fourth and final universal in this story of uncertain particulars is the importance of family stories. Genesis 24 shows us that the story of the gospel from its origin in the Old Testament to its birth in the New Testament all the way to its present expression in our worship this morning is a succession of one family story after another. Stories of children and parents, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, our family stories are the stories of God present and active in the everyday of our lives. Not all our family stories are happy ones or healthy ones, to be sure. Not all of them narrate triumph and success. But still we need to tell them, because beyond the particulars, all of them proclaim the universal of God’s constant care and provision for us in this life and in the life to come. Tell them, retell them, laugh at them, cry at them, embellish them, elaborate them, get them wrong, even (remember those camels in Genesis 24 and the mill owners and mill workers in my story!). Because even when the particulars are uncertain or in error, the universals will carry the day. The story of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the story of family after family after family who met God and each other on the common ground of shared human need and who shaped and continue to shape the future in the everyday and the ordinary of faithful living and faithful worship. Welcome to the well!


This material is Copyrighted © 2009 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.