The Faithful Deceit of Laughter's Wife

Genesis 25.19-28

Tom Radney was an Atticus Finch like fixture of Alabama politics during the crucible of the Civil Rights movement. Upon graduating from the University of Alabama Law School, Radney first served as an Army JAG officer during the conflict in Korea. After the war, Radney returned to Alabama. He married the daughter of a prominent state legislator, and he opened a law practice in Alexandria City, the seat of Tallapoosa County where he also became a lifelong member of First Methodist Church.

The trouble started when, through his civil and criminal work, Radney became better acquainted with the injustices of the Jim Crow status quo. Radney then realized he’d been on the wrong side of the race issue. The threats and attacks, though, began when Radney volunteered to run for the Alabama Senate a year after Selma’s Bloody Sunday. In response to his advocacy, the Klan called his wife and made death threats. They burned crosses on his front yard for his children to see.

They intimidated his secretary before fire-bombing his law office.

Shortly before his death, Radney told the story of how, sometime during those frightening days, he was at work on a case in his office when his secretary knocked softly on his door.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “I told him you were busy and didn’t wish to see anyone but he insisted “He’ll see me.””

Radney said, “Alright, let him in.”

An imposing man with a square head and horn-rimmed glasses and hair parted down the middle stepped into the office and stood over the mahogany desk.

“Mr. Radney,” he said in a North Carolina drawl, “I am your bishop, Kenneth Goodson.”

Radney stood up and offered his hand.

“Of course, pleased to meet you. What can I do for you?”

The bishop stood there, not taking the hand, like he was there for too important a purpose for mere pleasantries.

“I believe I’m here to do something for you.”

Radney sat back down at his desk and stared at the strange, serious man.

“When I was consecrated as bishop and sent to Alabama,” he said, “the Lord told me— the Lord promised me— that I was being sent here to bless those doing his righteous work to undo Jim Crow. And when I heard about your work and the hardships that have come upon you in the course of it, I knew I’d been sent here to bless you.”

“They threatened my children,” Radney said, his voice caught in his throat.

The bishop nodded but then asked a non sequitur, as though such dangers, toils, and snares are simply part and parcel with following a Jesus Christ.

“Can I assume,” the bishop asked the attorney, “The Methodist Church is responsible for the work you do?”

Radney chewed on the question— he’d never reflected upon the cause of his conversion— and answered, “I suppose probably so; I’ve been a Methodist my whole life. Of course, George Wallace and Bull Connor are both Methodists too so maybe my change of heart owes more to miracle than to Methodism.”

As though he had already arrived at exactly the same conclusion, Bishop Goodson said to him, “Rise.”

“And I stood up immediately,” Radney said.

“Come here,” the bishop ordered him, “Stand before me.”

“And I did as I was told. He laid these heavy hands on my head and looked at me intensely and said, “I’m going to bless you— that’s why I’ve been sent here, to you. Kneel.”

And Radney recalled, “So I got down on my knees there on the carpet at his feet.”

“Tom Radney,” the bishop prayed, “In the name of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I bless you with the strength and protection of the Almighty Father; so that, you will remain steadfast and never shrink from the holy task he has set before you.”

“And then he said, “Amen,” and he left,” Radney remembered, “My secretary wondered what in holy hell had happened because when she came into my office, she found me curled up in a fetal position on the floor, weeping like a baby. It was one of the most pivotal moments in my life. Somehow he knew to be there, right then, for me, with that promise from the Lord.”

As a way of avoiding the Bible’s authority and downplaying its coherence, critics often will insist that the Bible is not one, unitary book but, in fact, a library of books. And within that library called the Bible, critics will point out, there are many literary genres: histories, legal codes, gospels, liturgical prayers, primeval myths. There’s even a steamy, erotic poem.

The Bible, such critics contend, is like your Amazon Kindle; it’s a device with many different, possibly unrelated books on it.

Such a comparison is as common as it is incorrect.

By adding the story of Jesus Christ (the Gospels) and their story with Jesus Christ (the Epistles) to Israel’s scriptures, the ancient church made the assertion that the now Christian Bible tells a fundamentally connected and coherent story.

Lengthwise, from beginning to end, the Bible hangs together christologically; that is, according to Christ, who, before he is Mary’s baby, is the second person of the Trinity, eternal and pre-existent, by whom all things were made.

The Bible hangs together as a single christological story or it does not hang together at all.

Therefore, Jesus Christ is the hermeneutic— the interpretative lens— by which all the Bible can be read.

Take, for example, the opening of the Jacob narrative in the Book of Genesis.

Like her mother-in-law, Sarah, Isaac’s wife does not become a mother until she is an old woman. For twenty years, the text tells us, Rebekah’s husband “prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren.” Isaac— his name means “Laughter,” remember— pleaded with God for two decades, so long that his desire for a child went from no laughing matter in the beginning to what must’ve felt like a joke near the end. No one shops for maternity dresses or packs a hospital go-bag after they’ve received their AARP card in the mail.

The Israelites, whom God rescued from slavery in Egypt only after they had cried out to the Lord for generations, were the ones to write down these memories of their patriarchs and matriarchs. Surely they could resonate with Rebekah’s and Isaac’s prayers receiving a reply on such a tarried timetable. Not for nothing is the most common prayer uttered in the psalms, “How long, O Lord?”

Laughter is sixty years old when Rebekah conceives.

Rather than a normal quickening, the Hebrew says the children “clashed together within her womb.” Only, Rebekah knows that she’s pregnant with twins. Rebekah knows only that something is amiss. At her age, it would be odd not to fret.

The wife of Laughter grows afraid.

And so she prays. She prays maybe the most common prayer ever prayed by absolutely everybody, “Why?”

“Why is this happening to me?”

And the Lord answers her!

Deus Dixit— And God spoke.

First, God gives Rebekah an explanation, “Two nations are in your womb.” But explanations are not what makes scripture hang together, and if you’ve come here today looking for answers you’ve come to the wrong place.

God gives her an explanation for the commotion in her belly.

Notice, the Lord also gives her a word about the future; that is, the Lord gives her a promise. A promise that offends an ancient people’s sense of justice. A promise that turns the kin and kingdoms of their world upside down. A promise that surely sounded like foolishness and a stumbling, for it is a promise that contradicts the eternal, natural law of primogeniture.

“The elder shall serve the younger,” the Lord promises Rebekah.

You know the story.

The twins are delivered from her, one after the other, the younger clutching his hairy elder’s heel. Just so they name them, Hairy (Esau) and Heel (Jacob). But long after Rebekah last held her boys in her arms, she still held onto this promise from God, “The elder will serve the younger.” According to the text, at least forty years pass. Her children are grown men. Esau’s a married man. And everything remains as the world would have it, according to the law.

Rebekah’s an old woman, still with this promise from God socked away like a ball of rubber bands or a cigar box of old movie stubs.

Then one day, Genesis 27 remembers for us, Laughter is a very old man and very blind and very much dying. Isaac summons Esau. It’s time. Isaac must put the law into action; the eldest will not assume the father’s place.

When Laughter’s wife hears her husband aims to bless Esau, suddenly she knows.

She recognizes the time has arrived for her to apply the promise.

She sees God gave her the promise all that time ago— forty years— in order for her to apply that promise now.

Rebekah realizes that the promise isn’t simply a word God gave.

Rebekah realizes it’s a word that needs giving.

No matter how much it will upset and offend.

Even though it will violate the law. Despite the cost.

So she conscripts her youngest into a scheme to fool Isaac into blessing him, insisting to the skeptical Jacob, “Let your curse be on me, my son…” She takes on to herself the scorn and punishment that will justly fall upon the child for his transgression because she knows— by faith, she knows— the promise God had spoken was now seeking its moment of application. Surely she knows too that it’s a promise Jacob in no way merits. Actually he’s already earned the opposite of such a promise.

The Bible hangs together christologically.

A month ago in Paradise, Texas, Tanner Lynn Horner was charged with kidnapping and murder. A FedEx driver, Horner snatched seven year old Athena Strand, who was in the care of her stepmother. He kidnapped her while he delivered packages to their address. Her body was found two days later. The justifiable rage in the community is such that his trial likely will be moved to another county or district.

Yet—

Athena’s grandfather, Mark Strand, acknowledging his anguish and what he would want to do were he allowed five minutes alone with his granddaughter’s murderer, issued a public declaration of forgiveness:

“This flesh, this man that I am, is bitterly angry, but there’s a gentle voice that continues to tell me I need to forgive him…if you stood that man before me right now…I would probably kill him…there’s not an ounce of me that wants to do this or say this but there is mercy in Jesus Christ even for him, even for him or not for any of us. Either we live by the grace of God in Jesus Christ and his shed blood or we do not live at all. I don’t want to do this or say this, but my spirit has heard God’s voice so right now I declare publicly that I forgive— and I will work on forgiving— this man, this monster. I pray that by my public declaration others will hold me accountable to my pledge. I do this to honor our precious Athena who knew no hate…”

Quite understandably, Mark Strand’s declaration of forgiveness offended and outraged members of his community as well as his own family. When asked how he could possibly offer forgiveness to a man who manifestly does not deserve it, Mark Strand replied:

“I’ve been hearing the Lord’s promise of the forgiveness of sins and the justification of the ungodly my whole life. I think now I was being prepared— the Lord was preparing me— to put that promise into action in just this terrible circumstance.”

The promise given to Rebekah in Genesis 25 leads to Rebekah’s deceit of her husband two chapters later. Rebekah’s deceit has long preoccupied interpreters. Can the covenant rely upon a lie? What about bearing false witness? Honoring thy husband? Does this mean we’re free from the obligation to truthfulness? The Protestant Reformers, however, were untroubled by this text.

Luther called it “the faithful deceit.”

Faithful because faith follows the promise not the law.

You obey a command. You trust a promise.

You can keep a rule without having any relationship with the rule-giver.

You can keep the sabbath. You can give to the poor. You can avoid cheating on your spouse. But it doesn’t make you a Christian. It makes you obedient. Or worse, “good.”

You can keep a law without having any relationship with the law-giver.

You cannot trust a promise without having trust in the promise-maker.

And you can only trust one whom you know and love.

Faithful deceit.

Faith follows the promise not the law.

Faith follows the promise.

Even when, precisely when, it conflicts with the command.

Faith follows the promise.

Even when, particularly when, it offends: “How could you forgive that monster?!”

Faith follows the promise.

Even when, especially when, it upends: “The elder will serve the younger?! Our entire society is built on the first being first and the last being last.”

Faith follows the promise.

Even when, exactly when, it makes no sense whatsoever: “What do you mean because one man died to sin, all have died? Not only are we very much alive, we’re also still very much sinners.”

Faith follows the promise.

Rebekah puts the promise (“The elder shall serve the younger…”) above the law (“The elder will be served by the younger…”).

Day by day by day, year after year, for four decades, she clings to the promise until its moment of application arrives.

Says Luther:

“Rebekah gave thought to how she might be able to deceive her husband Isaac; her son Esau, and all who were in the house; for now she not obeying the rule or the law. Now she is obeying God, who transfers and dispenses contrary to the law. Therefore, Rebekah did not sin.”

Indeed, under the promise, the lie that would be sin becomes faith. Exactly because faith follows God’s promise and not the law, faithfulness can sometimes appear as a strange obedience.

Faith attaches itself to a thing (a promise— in word, water, wine, and bread).

Faith attaches itself to a thing that is still yet an utter nothing (word, water, wine and bread).

And faith WAITS.

Until everything promised comes about.

This is precisely what it means to walk by faith and not by sight or sense or commonsense. To walk by faith is to be carried through the present, by means of a graspable promise, towards a future that is yet hidden but nevertheless certain.

To walk by faith is to be carried through the present by a promise towards a future that is as good as guaranteed.

Many months after that afternoon when the bishop paid him a visit, Tom Radney was climbing up the courthouse steps for a civil rights case in which he was the advocate. Racists and rabble rousers crowded the stairs. They taunted and jeered and threatened him.

“Tom Radney we’re going to get you!”

“Tom Radney we’re going to make you pay!”

“Tom Radney we’re going to make you wish you’d never done this!”

Radney stopped on the courthouse steps, in the midst of them, and he remembered the promise the bishop had prayed over him, the promise of the Lord’s strength and protection.

“Tom Radney, we’re going to kill you!”

Tom Radney remembered the promise, and he turned to the mob.

“No, you ain’t. I’m going to be fine.”

Then he walked into the courthouse. And into an unseen but assured future.

Faith follows the promise.

To walk by faith is to grab ahold of God’s promise and let it carry you through your present days towards a certain future you cannot see.

And you’re no different than Rebekah.

There is no distinction between the world of the Bible and our world. There’s just the world and the God who from before the creation of the world elected not to be God without the world. There is no distinction between the world of the Bible and this world.

Like Rebekah, God speaks promises to you too.

We said just a bit ago, “This is the Word of God for the People of God.”

We don’t mean that as, like, a metaphor.

The Almighty Father who spoke a promise to Rebekah still speaks, by his Holy Spirit, through the Son who is his Word. The Living Lord is loquacious, and he loves to speak promises. To Rebekah and Jacob. To Tom Radney and Mark Strand. To you.

Based on his word in Genesis, the Lord’s promise to you today might be:

Yes, you have prayed for weeks upon weeks or years upon years, you have prayed holes in the carpet, you have prayed for healing or reconciliation, for sobriety or children or faith, to no apparent avail.

To you, today, the promise may be that, no, the Lord’s ears are not shut to you. The Lord who heard Laughter’s prayers for forty years hears your prayers too and likewise he will heed them. He is just waiting for you to let go; so that, he is the only solution to your problem.

Or, based on this word, the Lord’s promise might be:

Like Rebekah, you’ve committed some deception. Maybe even, like Rebekah, that lie was against your spouse. And perhaps, like Rebekah, you caught your children up in it too. But unlike Rebekah, yours was not a faithful deceit.

To you, today, the promise may be that if God chose Jacob in utero for salvation, before Jacob could do any bad (or any good) then it’s true indeed that in the God of Jesus Christ there is no condemnation.

Or, based on this word, God’s promise today could be:

Like Laughter and his wife, you’re old. The life you’ve had is not the life you wanted. You’re worse than past your prime, you fear. You’re past your purpose.

To you, today, the promise is that God loves to commandeer people like you just as much as he likes to call sinners. And the good news for you is that you’re both. So, more so than anyone, you should watch out.

Or quite possibly, you don’t think this business has anything to do with you.

Well, neither did Esau.

Therefore, the promise is that even you— unbelieving, unwilling you— are a necessary character in God’s drama of salvation.

Faith follows the promise.

To walk by faith is to grab ahold of God’s promise and let it carry you into the future, free and unafraid.

And today, as with every day, the promise the Lord speaks to every last one of us, whether we are old or unbelieving, the promise he makes tangible so that we can grasp ahold of it and take it and eat it and drink it— the promise from God, today, to you, for you: your sins are forgiven.

All of them.

Even that one.

So come to the table.

Grab onto a pardon that is better even than the promise of the Lord’s protection. But before you come to the table, beware. The Lord doesn’t give you a promise without expecting you to apply it when the time presents itself.

Even as you come forward to the Lord with hands held out, be ready.

The Lord is surely coming with the moment for you to say, “I forgive you.”