Almighty God, heavenly Father, through the patriarch Isaac You preserved the seed of the Messiah and brought forth the new creation. Continue to preserve the Church as the Israel of God as she manifests the glory of Your holy Name by continuing to worship Your Son, the child of Mary; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Reflection: The enduring legacy of the Lord’s Word to the prophets is that His Word is given through marriage(s) and families, culminating in a Holy Family in Bethlehem. These families do have their moments! As when Rebekah schemes to have her favorite son Jacob receive Isaac’s blessing. Funny how the Lord works things out but after all it was the Lord who named the son of the promise to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Laughter (Genesis 17:19) Just think: Father and Mother calling to their son, “Dinner time, Laughter”.
One of the single longest chapters in Genesis is chapter 24 and it is all about the way the Lord arranged the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah. It is a moving love story. The main character is Abraham’s unnamed servant who acts as the Lord’s matchmaker. We are told he prayed as the chapter proceeds. This is significant because this is the first time in Genesis when someone else, besides Abraham, prays to the Lord of Abraham! It is easy to gloss over, but important. The servant’s prayer is for a wife for Isaac as the Lord wills for His creation. This long chapter is about marriage between man and woman and through marriage and family, His will of creation continues and so does redemption: the Son of Mary, the step-son of Joseph.Truly, Abraham is the father of faith. And faith comes by the promises of God fulfilled finally and fully in Jesus Christ, the promise fulfiled. The Lord fulfilled His promise to Abraham and Sarah in their son Isaac, and then in Isaac and Rebekah’s son, Jacob and unto us the Son is born, unto us the Child is given (cf. Isaiah 9: 6). Jesus Christ is the laughter of God overcoming sin and death as He is risen.
Today marriage is under assault as no other time but this is just the outworn post-enlightenment understanding of the so-called “new morality” of the ’60s, which is really the old immorality dressed up to look hot. It’s hot…hotter than hell. As C. S. Lewis wrote, you can no more make a new value than you can a new primary color. Luther said it well, “All heretics have denigrated matrimony and have sought for and begun some newfangled and bizarre way of life.” (Luther’s Sermon on John 2: 1—11, 1533, Luther’s House Postils, vol. 1) The commemoration of Isaac is another good day to remember that before the Fall, the Lord gave us marriage and family, it is part of His creation and in Christ, creation itself is renewed waiting for the new heavens and the new earth and the marriage feast of the Lamb (seeRevelation 19:9) .
Jesus, under the Law, Who needed no Law, yet loved the Word of the Law, went under the knife to begin shedding His blood, and one day His whole body would be under the knife, upon the Cross…He is risen. Circumcision is a bloody business, so is sin, so is our salvation and our Savior, who in His blood, has given us the “gift of eternal life”.
As He was given the Name above all names (Philippians 2:9), so that we are no longer children, but His Sons and Daughters through “adoption”, that is, Baptism, born from above, in the Name of the Lord (Matthew 28:19; John 3:5).
We can read Genesis chapters 3—11 every day, not only from the Holy Scriptures, but also in the so-called daily ‘news’, but it is really the ‘olds’: murder, vengeance, violence, drug abuse. It’s as “old as Adam”.
With the Lord’s Call to Abraham, what was violent, vengeful and idolatrous, is replaced by what is human and humane in Abraham. And it is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes! Not our doing! The Lord does something new beginning in chapter 12, verse 1: He calls Abram. Why is the Lord’s Call the beginning of humanity and humaneness? Here was a man, Abraham, who did not want to be like God. He had faith. He knew he was created and not the Creator: Abraham was truly a man by faith alone. How does faith come? It comes by preaching and teaching of the Word and the Word is Christ. The Lord was with Abram and he heard and he believed. Abraham never saw the fulfillment of his offspring as the stars in the sky: only one son, Isaac. One son is enough. Still Abraham did not see for he walked by faith and not by sight, as we all do. He did not found a new religion but Abraham is called the father of Faith. In fact, he was not a Jew, but a believer in the God Who called him. In fact, one of his descendants, Joseph, would also be a man of faith, not having faith in himself. After Joseph is reconciled with his 11 brothers, after 20 some years of bitter family envy, lies and estrangement, he declared to them: “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?” (Genesis 50: 19) I think Abraham could have asked that question as well.
I will go out on limb here. A couple of weeks ago a rough and tumble older guy said to me in the locker room at the “Y”, knowing I am a pastor: “I don’t think we were made to behave.” His statement took me aback but I wanted to agree. I did not say anything in response at that time. I think he was right. Behaving has to do with Law, after sin entered the world. The key verb in the guy’s statement was “made”, “created”, the Lord’s purpose for men and women, made in His image. We weren’t made to behave but we were made to believe. What the serpent sold Adam and Eve with was unbelief: “to be like God, knowing good and evil”, no longer trusting, hoping and loving their Lord, but only seeing themselves, and so separation from God and each other began, that is, sin which is death. Thus they were ashamed of their nakedness. Abraham believed. Abraham certainly did not behave too well! In order to insure a descendant, when Sarah could not conceive, she gave Abraham her slave Hagar with less than satisfactory results until the Lord intervened. As He has for us all, in the descendant of Abraham according to the flesh: Jesus. As the Lord crossed the chasm to Abraham, now in Jesus Christ He has crossed the chasm of sin and death by His death and resurrection by His promise or Gospel alone.