26/7/26
Love Has No Transaction Fees.
Today’s first lesson about Rachel and Leah is one of my favourites. It raises several questions, has lots to teach us and is just a jolly good romping story.
Here’s the go.
Laban has two daughters. The older one is Leah, and Leah has weak eyes. Rachel, on the other hand, has a lovely figure and is beautiful.
Young, handsome Jacob is a relative of Laban, recently returned home and back to his family. So Laban gives Jacob a job looking after the livestock. After a month, two things happen. Jacob has not only noticed Rachel; he has become besotted with her. The second thing that happens is that Laban offers Jacob a job.
“Because you are a relative of mine, you shouldn’t work for me for nothing. Tell me what your wages should be.”
Well,… Jacob knows exactly what he would like, and we hope Rachel had similar feelings. He asks for Rachel to be his wages.
“I’ll work for you for seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.”
Laban is only too obliging. It’s better that you, a kinsman of mine, should marry her than some other man.
Jolly good. The deal is sealed. Jacob works faithfully for seven years for Rachel, and we have a rather exquisite line
‘But the seven years seemed like only a few days to Jacob because of his love for Rachel’
At the end of seven years Jacob calls in the favour.
“Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to express my love for her.” My sanitised version.
So Laban brings together all the people of the place, gives a feast and then does something rather mischievous. In fact ‘mischievous’ is me dressing it up a bit.
Instead of sending the lovely, younger, comely Rachel into the honeymoon suite, he sends the older, squinty-eyed Leah.
It’s not until the next morning that Jacob realises what his devious father-in-law has done. He has woken up beside Leah… not his lovely Rachel. ‘Oh no!’ Or words to that effect.
Now there is a serious and obvious question.
How come Jacob didn’t realise who it was that was in the honeymoon suite with him? Was it that dark, were the sisters so alike, had he had a few too many wedding pan galactic gargle blasters or …
Whatever the answer, we will never know, and I’m pretty sure that in such a personal space and moment, it’s none of our jolly business much, and all as we are tempted to muse and speculate.
When Jacob confronts his father-in-law Laban about the trickery, we get a very glib, inadequate reply.
Laban just trots out the standard traditional family line: ‘Oh well, it’s not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one, but tell you what I’m going to do. Finish this daughter’s bridal celebration week; then I will give you the younger Rachel also,…… in return for another seven years of work.”
And there’s another question here about the whole employer/employee, workplace agreement, minimum wage, enterprise bargaining, fair work commission thing.
Jacob is so entranced with Rachel that he jumps at Laban’s offer and works for another seven years.
Presumably this second lot of seven years was just like the first, and he could say again
‘the seven years seemed like only a few days because of his love for Rachel.
You see,…for Jacob it is not a transaction but a process. Authentic love at its finest has no transaction fees.
Wedding couples sign blank cheques to each other with their lives. Here, write whatever cost you like.
We also see this principle in the gospel parables.
Both gentlemen sell everything so that they might have the treasure or the precious pearl. The cost is irrelevant and matters not whether it is a pomegranate or a fig.
The only difference in the parables is that the first gentleman finds the treasure by accident whilst the second gentleman is on a specific quest, knows exactly what he is looking for and finally finds it.
And that is true of many of us here today. Sometimes we know the yearning, that craving, that aching God space in our lives and we go searching until we find him, usually in the most obvious places after all.
Others of us almost bump accidentally into God, or we realise that God has been gently nudging and bumping into us all along. Eventually we think. OH. It’s you! And we discover our new friend, our persistent annoying and loving God.
The same one who will give up everything, empty himself on the cross, not as a transaction fee, but to live out the process of love in betrayal through denial, upon the cross, into a sealed tomb and into magnificent resurrection. Similarly, we cannot buy grace, or His love, or friendship. They are freely given, as we must always give to him out of the finest love we can offer, with no transaction fees.