All the Small Things
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
It was the summer of 1997. July 19th. Next Sunday will mark twenty—nine years to the day. I was living in Hell’s Kitchen, on 39th St. near the corner of Ninth Ave., in a one-bedroom railroad apartment on the top floor of a five-story walk-up. The building was situated between the back entrance to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the main entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. In the evenings the small bus parking lot right next to the building was the scene of various illicit activities. What I’m trying to say is that the location was an unlikely setting for a love story to begin.
I shared that ramshackle one-bedroom apartment with my friend Jeff, one of my oldest friends going all the way back to first grade. In our senior year of high school we formed a band, and for the previous two years we had been making a go of it in New York, playing every dank and decrepit bar in the East Village that offered a stage and a 30-minute set.
We had a small but loyal following of friends and coworkers mostly. On this particular day, July 19, 1997, we decided to throw a fan-appreciation party in our humble abode. Actually, the party took place mostly on the roof of our building, not because we had so many fans but because our apartment was so small—and, frankly—the less time spent in there the better for all concerned.
The band practiced each week at a rehearsal space on 28th St. between Fifth and Madison Avenues called Tin Pan Alley Studios. On the ground floor of that building was a Korean-owned deli where we’d often pick up drinks and snacks for the two-hour practice. Behind the counter most evenings was a pretty Korean woman to whom I’d never said more than two words, usually just, “Thank you,” as I left the deli with my blueberry muffin and Gatorade.
A couple of weeks before the party, before band practice one day, Jeff asked me, “Should we invite the woman from the deli?” Neither of us knew her name, but I distinctly remember saying, “Why not?” However, the pretty Korean woman wasn’t working that evening, so I entrusted the flier for the party to her coworker.
I hadn’t given the invitation much thought until the following week when I once again found myself in the deli before band practice. For the first time, perhaps because I had a reason to talk to her, I decided to strike up a conversation with the pretty woman behind the counter. “Did you receive the party invitation?” I asked.
She had, but she told me that she would be working until 7 PM that evening, and the invitation said that the party would start at 3 PM.
I told her that she could come whenever she wanted because knowing my friends, no one would come at 3 PM anyway (they didn’t).
“Oh! In that case,” she said, “maybe I’ll come.”
On the day of the party, a few minutes after 7 PM there was a gentle knock at my door. The party was in full swing up on the roof, but I just happened to be the only one downstairs in that moment to hear the knocking. Upon opening the door I saw an incredibly attractive woman in a lavender miniskirt, five-inch platform shoes, and designer sunglasses—looking far too lovely for a rooftop keg party in Hell’s Kitchen—and all I could say was, “It’s the woman from the deli!”
Honestly, I’m amazed that she didn’t turn around straight away and leave, but she didn’t. She stayed. And we spent the next 11 hours talking and laughing and getting to know each other. We talked until 6:00 in the morning, when it was time for her to open the deli and work the morning shift.
There is more that I could say about this story. Much much more. There are so many details that remain emblazoned on the movie screen in my mind, details that I have replayed over and over. And as I look back on that day twenty-nine years later, and I consider everything that happened because of it—marriage, returning to the Church, then seminary, ordination, and serving a church in South Korea—what most amazes me is how no detail is too small for God. No music studio location, no party invitation, no brief encounter at a deli counter is too insignificant for God to work something wonderful from.
Today’s reading from Genesis 24 showcases that very idea. We tend to associate God’s presence in the Old Testament with something dramatic, something cinematic—the burning bush that is not consumed, the parting of the Red Sea, the thunder upon Mt. Sinai when God speaks. But where God’s presence is felt and found in this pastoral passage is not in the profound and extraordinary but in the quiet, ordinary moments of a father’s final request, a faithful servant’s prayer, and a chance meeting at a well.
As we’ve been working our way through the Abraham arc in Genesis for the past four weeks, the focus today shifts to his son Isaac. If you were here last week, you heard how Abraham was prepared to sacrifice the young Isaac in obedience to God’s command. But God provided a ram for an offering instead, sparing the boy, just as God had provided for Abraham’s other son Ishmael and his mother Hagar, who faced certain death in the wilderness.
As we meet him today, Isaac is a grown man of marrying age. Abraham, who is now a widower, wants to marry off his son before he joins his wife Sarah in the grave. But he has one concern. He doesn’t want Isaac to marry a local woman. He wants to find a wife for him from back home, from the land that Abraham left to come to Canaan. The reason for that is that Abraham remains an outsider in Canaan. He was the first of his people to immigrate there, and he was the first to trust in the Lord. He has made a covenant with God, one that he expects Isaac, his wife-to-be, and all future generations to honor. And so Abraham sends his servant back to Abraham’s homeland in search of a suitable wife for his son.
The unnamed servant departs with a caravan of camels all loaded with gifts galore. Imagine his task, though. Amid all the eligible women in Abraham’s homeland, how will the servant identify the right one? What criteria will he use? It’s not like he can log on to Match.com and select Isaac’s preferred characteristics. He’s stumbling in the dark here. And so he does the only sensible thing he can do in such a situation. He prays.
It’s nearly evening. The heat of the day is past, and the women of the town have come to the well to draw water. Observing them from a distance, he prays for God to make it easy for him. Let the woman whom he asks for a drink of water and who responds not only by offering her jar but also offering to water his camels, be the one.
As far as prayers go, that’s pretty darn specific. Just as amusing, though, is that before he’s even done praying, his eye alights on Rebekah. He approaches her and, unbeknownst to her, puts her to the test. “Please let me sip a little water from your jar,” he asks. She offers him her jar and then offers to provide water for his camels as well. He silently observes her, as if confirming his good fortune to have found the woman he was looking for so quickly, so easily, and in such ordinary fashion. Not with the light of heaven shining upon her like a spotlight, but in a casual conversation shared over a cup of water.
The family, including Rebekah’s father Bethuel, and her brother Laban, all seem to sense the hand of God at work as well, for they invite Abraham’s servant into their home. And this is actually the point at which today’s passage begins. All that has come before has been the servant describing his encounter with Rebekah to her father and brother, who happen to be Abraham’s kin. They agree to the servant’s proposal of marriage to Isaac on Rebekah’s behalf. But when the servant says that he wants to leave at once, they do something interesting. They put the question to her: “Will you go with this man?”
This is how God so often comes to us…not in peals of thunder and flashes of lightning but in the mundane, in the ordinary, in the quiet and casual moments that make up an otherwise uneventful day.
Rebekah is not without agency. Even in this settled arrangement, her voice matters. And she agrees to go. As the party approaches the home of Isaac and he comes out to meet them, there’s a moment of light comedy. Rebekah actually falls from her camel, as if instantly smitten by the sight of her husband-to-be. But this instant attraction comes at the end of a long sequence of ordinary events—a father’s request, a servant’s errand, a prayer at a well, a young woman’s kindness to a stranger.
This is how God so often comes to us…not in peals of thunder and flashes of lightning but in the mundane, in the ordinary, in the quiet and casual moments that make up an otherwise uneventful day. Not only in the grand gestures but in all the small things.
Every Sunday in the Psalm that calls us to worship.
In the assurance of pardon that reminds us that no power—not even death itself—can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
In the passing of the peace that compels us to leave our seats in order that we may extend Christ’s blessing.
In the words of the Scripture as it’s read, the sermon as it’s preached, and the hymns as they are sung.
And not only on Sunday and not only in worship, but on Tuesday mornings and Wednesday afternoons. While waiting in line at the checkout. While working in the garden. While sharing a meal with friends or family.
In the word of encouragement, the comforting embrace, the surprise visit. In all the mundane minutiae of any ordinary day.
This is wholly in keeping with how God chose to enter this world and live and move in it. As a baby born in a barn to parents of humble means. As a child who grew up in Nazareth, a town so unremarkable that it’s never even mentioned in the Old Testament. As the carpenter’s son whose first thirty years were lived in total anonymity. As the rabbi who called as his followers regular folk—fishermen and tax collectors.
Yes, you may find God in the mountaintop experience, in the miraculous intervention, in the divine deliverance. God is certainly there in those moments and in those places. But it should come as no surprise that for the God whose eye is on the sparrow and who has numbered the hairs of your head, no detail is too small and no moment too mundane…not even seemingly random invitations to fan-appreciation parties.