Sermon of July 24, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Genesis 29:15-28

“Know the Details”

It’s kind of fun to reading these stories. If you haven’t read these before, it’s really something, isn’t it? It’s like a soap opera is going on! Last week, we read about Jacob putting his head down on a pillow and having a dream, as he’s making his way to the place where Laban is in Hebron . During the time he’s sleeping with his head on the rock, he has a dream about angels going up and down a ladder, and a couple of different agreements are made. And last week’s sermon was about some agreements can be contracts, some can be covenants, and some can be unconditional promises.

Well, now he has made his way from Bethel , and reached Hebron where Laban is. And Laban is part of the extended family of Jacob’s family, which includes Isaac and Abraham, and he’s been sent there to go find a wife for himself from the old country. And he has arrived at Laban’s place, and enters into this deal or agreement, apparently with Laban, that he will work for him for free for seven years, in return for the hand of his daughter, Rachel, in marriage. And then what happens? He works those seven years and at the end of it he’s deceived; he is tricked by Laban. Instead of Rachel as his wife, he finds out he is married to Leah. And he gets told that he has to work another seven years if he wants Rachel to be his wife. Seems like he got tricked, doesn’t it? Well, if you read it very carefully, Laban doesn’t exactly promise, or at least you can interpret it that way.

But another thing about this story I want to say is don’t feel too sorry for Jacob. Because he missed this little detail here, that the eldest daughter goes before the youngest daughter, and that’s why he didn’t know that or catch that or remember it from some tradition. So that’s why he has to work for fourteen years instead of just seven. Don’t feel too bad for him, because remember this is about the difference between the youngest daughter and the eldest daughter. And Jacob, remember, had a twin named Esau who actually was born before him. And before he left to go to Hebron , Jacob had tricked Esau, the older brother, out of his birthright as the eldest son, and out of his father’s death bed blessing, both of which were due to Esau but Jacob got them. So Jacob has done his own trickery getting the benefits of the eldest son. So, when you get to this point and you think, oh poor Jacob- no, what are those phrases? Turn about is fair play, or what goes around comes around. That’s what is really going on here; not poor Jacob – he deserves it. It all comes about because Jacob misses this detail, no matter what’s agreed upon the younger daughter doesn’t get married before the elder daughter.

This got me thinking about details, and how important they are. Some of us are good detail people, and others of us don’t pay as much attention to detail – but they are important.

One of the things about details is that details, if we are careful about them, help us to conserve resources. If we are careful about following the details and knowing the details, we generally spend less time and energy and effort trying to get something done, then if we missed an important detail. And that’s really what happened to Jacob here. Somewhere along the line, he didn’t get this detail. You’d think his father would have told him on the way somewhere along the way. Jacob – go to the old country, find our family, and find yourself a wife. And oh, by the way, if there’s more than one girl in the family, you have to marry the older one first. Maybe he did tell him that, and Jacob just wasn’t paying attention. I don’t know if that happens in other families, but yes it did in here – that the son didn’t listen to the father that well.  Or else he heard it and forgot it. Or maybe Laban should have told him that. But, if you read that carefully…Jacob said I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel. Sounds clear. Laban says, it is better that I give her to you then I should give her to any other man stay with me. He says it is better for you that she is your wife then somebody else’s wife, but he doesn’t say after seven years you get her. Maybe. Jacob didn’t catch these details. And so Jacob worked twice as long as he probably should have.  He worked fourteen years instead of seven to get Rachel’s hand in marriage; seven more years. Seven more years, when he could have been maybe working somewhere for some kind of compensation, instead of working free again for Laban. Seven years of his toil and energy, seven years of his life. And then after that, after the fourteen years, he’s got two wives. Yes, they did that back in Bible times. Now he’s got two wives, each of which are going to want his attention, his help with things, his ear to listen to things. So his resources, as a result of not knowing this detail, are depleted. Seven years of his life, seven years of his energy, and the rest of his life having to be in a relationship with two people, really are going to deplete his resources.

Not knowing the complete details can wear us down and deplete us of our personal resources.  I was encouraged not to use this example in the sermon, but I’m going to anyway. Earlier in the week I was sharing with someone that this might be a good illustration. If you rent cars, there are little details you have to pay attention to. Jane and I were supposed to go St. John a few weeks ago, and I was planning to rent a car. You rent the car at the airport in St. Thomas , but then we were going to use it in St. John , and that’s how you would do that.  So I had these American Express rewards points that you can get a $200 certificate for – for Hertz, Avis or Enterprise . I thought, well, Hertz – good reputation. I called up and the rental car for the week was going to cost $210 for the week, and I said that’s for me – I want a car that’s going to end up costing me ten bucks. I checked out every little thing in that long line of the small print, and I had the right length of time to keep the car, the right size car that was covered by this certificate, and the number of drivers right. I had everything right all the way down. A few weeks before I called and just went through everything and said I’ve got this car I’m renting at the airport in St. Thomas and I’m going to use it down in St. John and I….whoa. What? You can’t take this car on a ferry. Well you can’t get it to St. John unless you go on a ferry. Then you can’t rent this car. I didn’t catch that detail before. So I called Avis, first question – can I take this car on a ferry? Yup – all right, excellent. But you can’t rent it in St. Thomas . They had details that St. Thomas was one of the excluded airports. So, the last one was Enterprise , and Enterprise didn’t have a branch in the airport in St. Thomas . So, had I ordered that certificate, I would have had it but it would have been useless. Except I didn’t order it, so I didn’t lose the $200 value of that coupon. I wouldn’t have been able to use it very much – I would have rented a Cadillac or something like that. Not knowing the details, if you don’t get them in time, can cost you money, but probably more importantly, time, energy, frustration; your resources can get depleted.

Well another thing about knowing the details is that if you know the details, it helps to promote hospitality in a lot of situations. Jacob got a nice welcome when he arrived at Laban’s house, and he was invited to stay there. He probably got, while he was working there, free food and a place to sleep. And it was very hospitable for awhile until he was told, no, it’s not Rachel that’s going to be your wife – it’s going to be Leah. All of a sudden, this place that he thought was hospitable must have seemed very inhospitable. These people have tricked me, they’ve deceived me; they’re not very nice people, he must have thought. Not knowing that detail again, created the problem that made the environment suddenly become inhospitable to Jacob. It wouldn’t be a very good place to live anymore; he went on and did his extra work, but it must not have seemed quite as friendly as it did when he thought everything was going to go the way he intended.

I’ve got a better example than this one. People ask once in a while, about why do we have all these details in the Sunday program? I’ve highlighted some of them on mine; yours aren’t highlighted – it’s just to help me. Like at the very end, under the last hymn in the exchange of friendly greetings, it says – those who are able may stand (next to the asterisk).  That’s to help somebody know that we stand up for hymns. Now if you’re here every week or you’ve been a member of our church for a long time and you worship regularly, you know that we stand up for the hymns. But somebody who’s just visiting, maybe if you brought a friend or a guest or a relative with you who isn’t familiar with our worship, they’ll know that as people are standing up – they’ll know “ooh, it’s time to stand up.” That’s a sign of hospitality, to let somebody know what our customs are so they’ll feel at home here.  The very beginning of it says in parentheses, please seek God’s presence silently as the prelude leads us into worship. And when worship concludes with the benediction, go out and serve rejoicing. That came after a discussion at the Deacons meeting, about how people get very friendly when they first get here to worship, but there comes a time when it’s good for us to be silent and to be led into a more thoughtful time of worship – and the time for talking should subside.  So this is just a way, instead of somebody getting up and pounding on the pulpit and saying “Be Quiet! Be Quiet! Be Quiet!”; this is a way of letting everybody know that this is the time to start worship. And then when you go outside, you can shake hands and talk and be loud and boisterous again. But hymns at the end of them say Blue or Red. It might be better to say Blue or Maroon. That’s to let people know what hymnal to use. That’s another detail to help people know they’re picking up the right book.

Now we get into something really good. Our Lord’s Prayer – debts. That’s to let a visitor or guest or someone who’s here for the first time know that that’s how we say The Lord’s Prayer. You know, you can say trespasses or debts.  Some churches now say, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. If you don’t know and you get to that point here, it’s tough. Because when we’re all doing debts and debtors, the trespasses keep going and the trespass against us. And suddenly if we say forgive us our debts, and somebody else says forgive us our trespasses, they know everybody else has stopped and they’re still talking and they feel conspicuous and people are looking at them. So this helps people to feel comfortable and know what to say, so they don’t feel embarrassed at worship. It also says Red 57 on the red hymnal and selection 57 in the back; that’s the Lord’s Prayer as we say it. So if you don’t know it, you can find it there; and the same with the Gloria.  Now the last one is the Pew Bibles. In the Pew Bibles, Genesis 29:15-28 is on page 25. Now if you’ve been to Sunday School here, or somewhere, or you’ve been to church for a long time, you can probably open up your bible and find Genesis and work through the big numbers until you get to Genesis 29. But if somebody’s coming to church for the first time, or first time in a long time, and it’s somebody who isn’t a member – who’s a visitor, who’s probably struggling with something in life (and this happens pretty frequently, probably more than you realize) and deciding I want to get back in touch with God. I think I should go to a church and start to build my spiritual life, and they walk in the doors here and there are details that help them to feel comfortable in worship – it’s going to promote hospitality for that person. And one of the key things is, if they decide they want to read along with the scripture passage if they haven’t ever been taught, that would make them feel inhospitable if they’re thumbing through and they don’t know where Genesis is. But if you say it’s on page 25, it’s pretty easy to find so if they want to read along, they can.

Knowing the details can help us be more hospitable, but it can also help avoid controversy. It wasn’t just inhospitable for Jacob when he found out the details that he had missed that caused him to be married to Leah first instead of Rachel; it was also a great controversy. Now when I read Jacob’s reaction, I read it kind of even-toned. Jacob arises in the morning and finds out he’s married to Leah, and he says to Laban ( I read before), “What is this you’ve done to me? What is this? I was expecting Rachel, got Leah…What is this?” Controversy between Jacob and Laban. Feelings of anger and being betrayed in this covenant he thought he had. Controversy, because he didn’t know that little detail that you can’t make an agreement to marry the younger daughter before you marry the older daughter.

I got thinking about this and I was thinking about recently our United Church of Christ had a General Synod. It’s like the national version of our state annual meetings of the Connecticut conference, which are like our January annual meetings here at our church. There are some common things that happen at those meetings – there are budgets that are passed, there are officers elected, there are reports made, there’s the General Synod and the Connecticut Conference often have very, very high energy worship, with extra special music and instruments and singers and great preachers. But there’s also controversy – resolutions come up and are voted on at the General Synod and the Connecticut conference. And a lot of times the resolutions or pronouncements have to do with things like: war and peace issues which are very controversial for people – people have very different feelings about those issues; issues about sexuality and gender identity; issues that touch on areas of politics. All things that can be very controversial, and they do touch people sometimes in a very negative way. Sometimes, they touch people in a very positive way. It really depends on how you feel about it.

But there are some important details that don’t get reported in the newspaper that are important for us to know, when those issues get announced or covered in the newspaper. One of them is when delegates go to the General Synod or the Connecticut Conference meeting, delegates go as delegates and not representatives – and there’s a distinction there. A delegate goes to listen to things and make a vote, yes or no on something, based on the discussions they hear and how they believe God is speaking to them. But they’re not meant to represent us or any other church; they can’t. I mean if we started talking about these things, we would find out that we have at least two, maybe more, positions on most of those controversial issues. And all of us here are good Christian people, all come at our decisions out of faith, but we come to different conclusions sometimes. So the people who go to those meetings are not going to represent us, because they can’t, they’re going to consider an issue and vote on it. When it’s all said and done and an issue has been decided and it’s reported in the paper, it’s not binding on us either. It’s not a binding resolution or pronouncement that churches must agree with, that individual members must go along with. It’s probably good for us to be aware of them and to listen to them and sometimes talk about them civilly and share ideas.  And we learn from each other by talking about those things. But they don’t come to us as binding. It is so very different from the big model that we all know, the Roman Catholic Church, where if the College of Cardinals says something or the Pope says something – everybody is supposed to agree with it, and everybody’s supposed to go along and every church is supposed to do it.

Even in the Episcopal church we’ve seen this year, unfortunately, decisions made by the bishops and their councils that have caused recently a priest to be removed, because you aren’t free to disagree in that system. So those are important details for us to know when the General Synod meets and when the Connecticut conference meets, is that some things get reported that might touch off controversy, but in reality it isn’t intended to representative what any of us feels necessarily, or us as a church certainly couldn’t, and isn’t binding on us when it’s all said and done. We don’t have to agree with it; we don’t have to go along with it; we don’t have to say that’s how I feel about it. Maybe some of us do, some of us don’t. But the important thing is we don’t.  There’s no perfect system. And I get very frustrated with ours sometimes, and I get very frustrated with some of the things that come out; resolutions and pronouncements that Julia and I have to deal with! But when you think of all those other alternatives, it’s pretty good to have one where people aren’t going to represent us, and they’re not coming back with papers and reams of resolutions that we have to go along with.

So knowing those two details, that they’re not representatives and that what happens is not binding – those are important details to minimize controversy. It doesn’t mean we won’t disagree, but we don’t have to be contentious about it, because we don’t necessarily have to agree or disagree.

And, the good news today is that details really are important. Sometimes we skip over them. I’m probably one of the worst offenders. I have trouble with details sometimes. And there are details that are petty. There are a lot of details that are important, very important, especially in terms of relationships. The rental car thing isn’t really that big in the scope of life. But details about how we enter into relationships with each other, how we are in relationships with our family, with our churches, with our denominations. Those are important to know those details, so that we don’t have misunderstandings, so that we don’t waste our own resources, so that we promote hospitality. So "pLeahse" join me in having new respect for details in our life of faith. Let us pray.

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