SERMON FOR JULY 25, 1999
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
HEBREW TESTAMENT: “Wages for a Kinsman” ~ Genesis 29:15-28
Leah's Tale
Do you not recognize me? Leah,
Laban's older daughter,
a bit battered, perhaps, by the
angst of deception
and so many birthings I scarce
remember them all.
And what part, you may ask,
did the God of Abraham have in
all of this?
I remember a day when teasing
winds
lifted grit from my father's
stubble fields,
I knew 'twas the Lord's
cheek that scoured my eyes--
his laughter
perverse as pa's humor.
In that season my poor eyes
were rheumy from the Lord's
doings--
but when my handmaids cloaked me
in my sister's marriage veils
it was she whose lids were
swollen,
her eyes veiny with weeping.
I say it was infatuation
that blinded the foolish girl to
our father's conniving.
Love, she called it.
We were confined together that
morning:
Rachel wept.
I sobbed in terror.
The maids worked with downcast
eyes.
How Pa must have smirked,
savoring yet another seven years
of Jacob's toil. Such a
pittance--
his hireling's only wage, the
bedding
of Pa's younger daughter.
How my husband roared when he
awoke from a drunken stupor
and discovered the betrayal
(ah, yes, Pa had plied the
bridegroom
with wine enough to cover
deception.)
I need not have feared being
beat,
my husband's anger was not
directed at me, never at me.
He never saw me for want of his
beloved.
He was not unkind, praising my
figs
or basket of ripened melons,
and at shearing time, carefully
weighing our portions
of wool equally.
I hid my sorrow well.
I had not thought to love Jacob,
but the Lord knew and opened my
womb.
When I conceived and bore a son
I named him Reuben.
Jacob loved all the children I
bore,
that and nothing more.
In my jealousy I gloated in the
naming
to distress my sister.
Her barren condition, surely
distress enough--
after my taunting she rarely
spoke.
I heard her whisper to Jacob,
"Give me a child or I shall die."
Her unhappiness, also Jacob's,
he roared, "Am I in the
place of God
who has withheld children from
you."
Rachel offered her maid to our
husband.
The girl bore a baby upon her
mistress' knees
to signify the boy belonged to
Rachel.
When a second child was born
in this way, Rachel was heard to
cry,
"I have wrestled with my
sister
and have prevailed." She
named the child
Niphtal, the wrestler.
Shall I be blamed for offering
my husband my maid then?
By Zilpah, I had two more sons.
It was in the time of harvest
when my Reuben
found mandrakes in the wheat
fields (the curvature
of root a surety of sons.)
Rachel broke the long silence
between us,
"Please, give me some of
your son's mandrakes."
Why should I? I said.
Is it a small matter that you
have taken away my husband?
Would you take the boy's roots,
as well?
To make a long story short,
she began to cry
and I began to cry.
She stopped her work of
threshing
and I felt her hand soothing the
ridge of my neck--
"Jacob visits you,"
she said. And I replied,
Not for years.
"Leah," she said,
"I'll give you nights
with Jacob, in exchange for the
roots."
The mandrake did not help her.
But after that time
Rachel became midwife to me
soothing me during the births
of two more sons
and a daughter, Dinah,
my last.
After so long a time
one would think the God of
Abraham
would have given ear to Rachel's
entreaties
(and mine). And he did.
"The Lord has taken my
reproach away,"
she said, and named
the child Joseph.
Sources:
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel by Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Genesis, Interpretation, A Bible Commentary : for Teaching and Preaching by Walter Brueggemann
Guest speaker
Barbara Thomas