Abimelech, Ahuzzath,
Phicol, Gerar, Esek, Sitnah, Gerar, Shibah – names like those can
so easily flow together into one big, messy jumble. It's hard to
follow what's going on. And what a strange story to share for
Father's Day.
But actually, I'd like to suggest that this chapter of
the Bible – Genesis 26 – is all about negotiating the legacies of our fathers. What
we see here is Isaac navigating the complexities of dealing with
what's left behind when his father is done. Three chapters earlier,
Isaac's mother Sarah passed away (Genesis 23:2). Two chapters
earlier, Isaac's father helped to arrange his marriage to Rebekah
(Genesis 24:27). And in the last chapter before this one, Isaac's
father Abraham finally passed away (Genesis 25:8) – an event that
at last, if only briefly, united Isaac with his notorious
half-brother Ishmael (Genesis 25:9), whose twelve princely sons are
then recorded (Genesis 25:13-16). Isaac, meanwhile, had just two
sons, Jacob and Esau, a pair of twins fated for conflict – conflict
reflecting the favoritism Rebekah showed for Jacob and Isaac showed
for Esau (Genesis 25:28).
And now we come to the
present chapter. The first full chapter where Isaac has no living
parents. They're gone. From dust they came, and now to dust they've
returned. Isaac is left to stand on his own two feet now. He's the
head of the household. He's the chief of the clan. He's in charge
of his own life – not his mom, not his dad. Because they're gone –
or are they? Because for someone absent from the narrative,
Abraham's name sure keeps cropping up over and over again in this
chapter. That's why I'd like to suggest that this chapter is all
about figuring out what to do with a father's legacy. And there are
a few things Isaac has inherited from his father, each dealt with in
turn.
First, Isaac has
inherited his father's perks.
Let's start exploring what the story says. The chapter opens by
announcing that a famine has struck the land, making life difficult
there. There's no food bank. There are no grocery stores. Isaac
raises livestock and farms. That's where he gets food for his body
and his family and all the people in his service, his employ. If
there's a famine, that means things aren't growing, and his flock
ain't doing so hot either. Times are tough. But notice the words we
hear to describe all this: “Now
there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in
the days of Abraham”
(Genesis 26:1). We're meant to remember that Abraham was in this
situation also. During tough times before, Isaac could lean on his
father. His father was in charge. Now, Isaac has to figure out what
to do – and that's not always easy.
At the same time, Isaac is in a parallel situation. Isaac is
repeating scenes from his father's life (cf. Genesis 12:10). Isaac stays
for a while in Gerar with the Philistine king Abimelech. The whole
scene is a bit odd, since the people we know as the Philistines
didn't show up in the land for a couple hundred years. Moses is
foreshadowing. The name 'Abimelech' means “my father is king,”
and it was a frequent throne-name taken among Canaanites and even
Israelites during the days of the judges – Gideon's son Abimelech
proclaims himself king of Israel (Judges 9:6), which does not end
well (Judges 9:53-55). And the name 'Gerar' means “lodging-place,”
best as we can tell, and that's exactly how Isaac means to use it:
it's a hotel on his journey out of this dried-up land. Abraham
stayed there six chapters ago and met the king then – also called
Abimelech (Genesis 20:3).
Isaac's
learning from what his father did. On the move? Take a break at
Gerar. Famine in the land? Plan for Egypt. That's what Abraham
did. But here in this story, God steps in. God tells Isaac not to
go to Egypt, to stick with the promised land. And God repeats a
bunch of things he said to Abraham, and even tells Isaac, “I
will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. I will
multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give your
offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of
the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham
obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and
my laws”
(Genesis 26:3-5).
Hear that? It has nothing to do with what Isaac has earned or
merited on his own. It doesn't rest on Isaac's credit – his great
faith, or his wonderful works, or his noble character. He's supposed
to respond that way, but it doesn't depend on that. It's just
because Abraham had a working faith – and God passes that credit on
to Isaac, with all the perks and promises and privileges that come
with it. And we see that Isaac responds. He doesn't go to Egypt,
passes the rest of his life without seeing Egypt; he settles down in
Gerar and never, for all his days, leaves the land God commanded him
to settle (Genesis 26:6). He aims to make the best of his father's
perks.
And you know, this is something we inherit from our fathers as well,
perhaps. Now, in our congregation, we have a wide variety of
experiences with fathers. Throughout history, there have been good
fathers, bad fathers, in-between fathers, distant fathers,
controlling fathers, inspiring fathers, you name it. But throughout
most of history, one common theme was that a father would teach his
son the family trade. A son inherited his father's vocation as the
chief perk. Some of us here have followed our father's vocation.
But all of us have inherited a big pile of DNA that helps set the
baseline for who we are. That's about the sum total of what I got
from my father. If I've got any intellectual gifts, a lot of that
came to me through him. I'm far from the smartest person in my
family – but that perk got passed on. And I suppose you could say
I follow my father's vocation as a traveler of the world – he was
always on trips, spent much of his time managing factories in Central
America or visiting Italy with his church choir to sing for the pope.
I'm not sure what you think of when you think of what got passed
down to you – maybe the color of your hair, the shape of your face,
your height; maybe a love for some hobby, a passion for some
interest; maybe some skill; maybe wealth, maybe a good place in
society, maybe a strong reputation.
Second,
Isaac inherited his father's pitfalls.
For all the later lionization of Abraham throughout the Bible as the
father of the faithful, the ancestor of Israel, Genesis sure is
honest about what a struggle it was for him to live in faith. He had
his share of flaws – maybe even more than his share. One of those
was a tendency to manipulate the situation with half-truths and
trickery, trying to protect himself at everyone else's expense –
all because he couldn't shake the thought that God needed his help to
get things done. Abraham spent most of his life as a weakling in
faith.
And Isaac internalized that side of him. Isaac inherited his
father's pitfalls, problems, mistakes, dysfunctional behaviors. It's
not just that Isaac learned from his father how to play favorites and
mess up his children's lives – though there sure is that. Isaac
also learned dysfunctional ways to cope with stress and fear. When
Abraham faced famine, he went to Egypt and passed his wife off as
available for the Pharoah's harem – and there were consequences
(Genesis 12:11-17). Years later, Abraham went to Gerar and proved
how little he'd learned, when he pulled the same trick on his
generation's Abimelech (Genesis 20:2). For a guy whose vocation was
to bless the nations, Abraham sure did have a penchant for trying to
save his own hide and turn a profit by luring them into sin (Genesis
20:9). And now Isaac pulls the same stunt – lies that Rebekah is
his sister, so that no one would kill him to get her (Genesis 26:7).
Isaac might follow God's instructions on where to live, but he hasn't
caught God's vision for how to live – not yet.
But it's a common story. People learn from their parents. A
father's patterns of behavior, for good or for ill, get imprinted on
his sons and daughters as being 'normal,' being inevitable. We
internalize those lessons and, even without thinking about it or
recognizing it, we repeat those behaviors – or we spend our lives
reacting against them to the point of letting them control us by
contrast. We obsess so much over the harm our fathers did that we
define ourselves as their opposite, or we emulate our fathers as
inevitable role-models, even in their errors, maybe even in the
things they themselves wish we hadn't caught. That's Isaac's story,
and I'd be willing to bet there are more than one or two of you for
whom that hits home this morning.
Third,
Isaac inherits his father's problems.
After things take a nice turn in Isaac's life – he gets rich, he
gets lots of resources, he gains influence and power – well, the
locals get jealous (Genesis 26:12-14). And the dominant theme of the
next scene is that the locals keep stealing the wells Isaac sends his
men to dig. Now, wells were important – wells were vital –
because in a desert land, you've got to have somewhere to get water.
But time and again, Moses reminds us that, out of sheer spite, these
locals had actually undug – filled up, stopped, clogged – the
wells that Isaac's father Abraham dug (Genesis 26:15). Isaac had to
repeat the work – he “dug
again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his
father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham.
And he”
– Isaac – “gave
them the names that his father had given them”
(Genesis 26:18).
Here's some background. For a time, Abraham and his clan stayed in
the fields around Gerar. This is actually, in fact, where Isaac was
born – this is his homecoming, in a way (Genesis 21:3). But then
Abraham complains to Abimelech about a stolen well. Abimelech swears
he knows nothing about it, so the two of them make a covenant, and
that marks the well at Beersheba out as permanently Abraham's –
never to be messed with or altered by Abimelech's people (Genesis
21:25-32). But when Abraham left, that covenant wasn't honored –
not by the people, and apparently the king didn't enforce it. The
people didn't even use the wells; they clogged them out of spite. So
Isaac has to repeat the whole process. He has to dig more wells. He
has to deal with the fighting, the conflict. He has to wonder each
time, “Do I get to keep this one, or will they take it away too?”
In other words, Isaac inherits his father's network of broken
relationships. And sometimes that's what we get left with as well,
isn't it? We often inherit relationships, good or bad. People see
our father in us, for good or ill; we project our fathers onto other
people – again, for good or ill. We carry our father's baggage, in
our own eyes and the eyes of those around us. Or, we enjoy our
father's prestige and station, in our own eyes and the eyes of those
around us.
The
truth is, there are many things we inherit from our fathers. Some
are good, some... not quite so much, at times. It can be so
overwhelming that sometimes, it's hard to really find room for
ourselves – hard to see where we fit in as individuals, to stand on
our own two feet and flourish in our own right. How do we do that?
How do we both
appreciate our father's legacy, stand in continuity with family
tradition... and
have room to flourish, grow, be ourselves, make our own commitments,
act as ourselves and not extensions of our fathers? We need room.
That's the lesson Isaac learns here. His father's network of broken
relationships – broken, in this case, not through his father's
fault – well, it makes life in the land very crowded. The locals
quarrel with his people over one well – Isaac calls it Esek,
“contention.” It happens again over another well – Isaac calls
it Sitnah,
“enmity.” He keeps having to move away. He's trying to find a
place to be himself – not defining himself against his father, not
rejecting his father, but to live out the Abrahamic promise without
all of Abraham's leftover baggage piling up and toppling over on him.
And
finally, he builds a well, and there's no quarrel. He calls it
Rehoboth,
“broad places,” and says, “For
now the LORD
has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land”
(Genesis 26:22). That's all he wanted. He wanted room – room to
be fruitful. Even “exceedingly fruitful,” as Isaac's father was
supposed to be (Genesis 17:6). We all need that kind of room –
room to be fruitful.
There are many things in this life that crowd
around us. There are many pressures that try to dictate the course
of our lives and pressure us into simply following blindly and
inevitably the path our father walked. And one of the tragic things
in life is how many sons and daughters think they have to flee to
Egypt to find that room. Isaac knows better. He wants room, but he
won't stray from the promised land to find it. And neither should
we. When Isaac finds room, finds a place broad enough for Isaac to
be Isaac, then he can be refreshed by this well and be fruitful.
So
in the end, Isaac ascends from Rehoboth to Beersheba – Beersheba,
where Abraham made a covenant with Abimelech (Genesis 26:23). And
here, Isaac realizes the fourth reality he's inherited from his
father. He couldn't see this clearly until he found room. But it
was true all along.
Fourth
and most important, Isaac inherits his father's God.
The LORD
appears to him that night and says, “I
am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, I am with you and will
bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake”
(Genesis 26:24).
If
you can hear God say to you, “I am the God of your father,” do
you realize how blessed you are? In the words of Abimelech, “You
are now the blessed of the LORD”
(Genesis 26:29). When Isaac encounters the LORD
as the God of his father, a God who is now his God also, a God who
blesses him – that's when Isaac is really able to make peace with
his neighbors. Isaac eats and drinks, enjoys fellowship, with
Abimelech and his retinue. Isaac renews the covenant – makes a
sworn pact of peace and good will – exchanges promises with them,
and they with him. Never again is there a problem between Isaac and
the Philistine herdsmen. Isaac lives out the rest of his life at
peace with his neighbors, and finally is buried alongside his parents
at Kiriath-arba.
Isaac
doesn't rebel against his father's legacy. He embraces it and honors
it. But he overcomes parts of it – the sin, the brokenness, the
failures and missteps and dysfunctional behaviors and lapses of
faith. Not entirely, alas but of course. But while Isaac isn't perfect, he does
become somewhat of a success story – after he finds room, and after
he builds his first altar to worship the God of his father. If the
LORD
was the God of your
father, you can find the same thing. You, too, can be “the blessed
of the LORD.”
You can draw on a rich legacy of spiritual instruction and
nourishment; you can find room to navigate your father's legacy,
bringing it all before the LORD
and letting him guide you in sifting it; and you can find peace and a
healthy life. Thank God for fathers like that!
But
maybe your father didn't teach you to know this God. Maybe the LORD
wasn't the God of your father. Maybe your father had a different god
– himself, his work, his wealth, his pleasure, or any of the good
things we so incessantly insist on raising beyond their place. Maybe your father was like my father – simply an absence from your life. Maybe
your father was like my grandfather – a totally godless man, an
abusive drunk, a petty tyrant over his sad little kingdom. Or maybe
your father was a decent man, even a virtuous man (after the virtue
of this world), a man who taught you much... just not that. And
maybe you're wondering what you can get out of a sermon titled, “The
God of Your Father.”
In
much of the world, it's hard for societies to make room for children
to break away from their father's gods and meet the one true God.
But it can be done – Abraham himself had to do it. And here's what
the scriptures say. “If
you are of Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according
to promise”
(Galatians 3:29). That's right: if you belong to Christ, then you
are a child of Abraham. Because the offspring off Abraham is “the
one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all”
(Romans 4:16). “It
is those of faith who are the children of Abraham”
(Galatians 3:7).
Not all who physically descend from Abraham can really claim him as a
father, because Abraham's real children are those who inherit the
faith he matured into (Romans 9:7). Abraham is the father of the
faithful – those who look to God as the one who can pull fullness
out of emptiness, fruit off a barren branch, and life out of the
grave (Romans 4:17).
If you have that kind of faith, faith enough to
believe that the crucified Jesus is by God's hand the living Lord –
if you commit yourself so as to belong to Christ – then you can
call Abraham your father. And in inheriting his faith, you inherit
his God – and that's a good thing, because God adopts Abraham's
family as his own through Jesus Christ, Abraham's true Seed. Praise
be to the God of Abraham our father, for sending his Son to bring us
home to our Father above. Amen.