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let us again pray. Yeah. zero Lord! Uphold Me that I'm a uplift the yeah. Amen now there was a famine in the land. Yeah . This is the sentence which begins this chapter of

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genesis from which our text is taken tonight. There was a famine in the land much like the famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. But now these were the days of Isaac. Abraham's son

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. A famine just naturally calls for dislocation relocation. And Isaac was surely thinking about where to go and God appeared to Isaac and said don't go down to Egypt settle instead in the land that I shall show

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you and reside in this land as an alien and I will be with you and bless you. So Isaac did as God commanded. And our text for tonight begins with Isaac settling in bihar. It was

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the land of the Philistines. And there was some negative history between those people and Isaac's people. There had been an earlier time when Isaac's father Abraham and his wife, Sarah had sojourn through Karar and Abraham

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, for whatever reason had passed off Sarah as his sister and king. Abdelmalek had therefore made a play for Sarah because he thought she was cute. He had sent for her. He had taken her maybe

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to the crown and anchor or maybe to the Alamo drafthouse. Who knows? Ultimately God intervened with Abdelmalek and everything got sorted out. But it was awkward thereafter between Abdelmalek and Abraham. It takes a while

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to get over something like that. And now, years later here was Isaac so journeying to Grr and playing the sister wife card again. He was there in Bahar dar are posing as Rebecca's brother, not

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her husband. He was afraid that since his wife Rebecca was so very attractive the Philistines might kill him in order to take her. And truth be known that might have happened had not been Malek once burned

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twice, shy noticed over time that Isaac and Rebecca behaved more like husband and wife than like brother and sister. And so um Emelec, who in spite of the god he worshipped was apparently a man of

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character confronted Isaac and cleared the air and told his people to lay off of Isaac and Rebecca. So Isaac and Rebecca stayed there and prospered and became wealthy with lots of flocks and herds. Until it got

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to that point where Bin Malek said, go somewhere else, you're too powerful. Who knew by the way that Isaac was powerful, that he had it in him to be a decision maker, a person

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of agency. Prior to this one chapter, in the entire book of genesis, the most significant thing we know about Isaac was that he was practically powerless , practically helpless, practically faceless. The little boy

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dragged up the hill to watch his dad built a fire upon which, for reasons not entirely clear, he would be the sacrifice. And then because of another last minute intervention from God, his life was

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spared. The figure in this long patriarchal saga who is hardly ever an actor, but rather always being someone acted upon. Yet, here in this one solitary chapter in Genesis, we learn as much as

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we will ever know about Isaac. We get this new angle on Isaac in this one brief window of Genesis 26, we see a deeper glimpse into him into his seldom notice, but thoroughgoing decency. As

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for once, even though he is still the least trumpeted of the patriarchs. Isaac is a man of agency. Yeah, there was a famine in the land and everybody not just Isaac needed water. Mhm

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. Incidentally, we know what that's like here in the southwest in these years when there has been a famine in this land, there have been arguments and fights and lawsuits over the matter of who gets that

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diminished resource water. People here say that water is the new oil, the Colorado River rolls its way toward the gulf of Mexico and cities like this one . And rice farmers on the coast and Frackers in

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south texas and ranchers in the hill country squabble over who is standing first in line for this water made more precious by its scarcity. It was like that for Isaac in this new place where he settled the

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valley of garage are because the Philistines had gone ahead of him and had stopped up some of the wells that Abraham had dug back during his time there. We don't know why they did that. But as

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far as the Philistines were concerned that wasn't Abraham's water anymore, it was theirs. And they decided they'd rather not enjoy the wells themselves then imagine Isaac profiting from them. People can get that meaning or to

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put it less judgmentally, they can get that certain about what they believe. Oh yeah, yeah. This could have been a conflict over water rights or perhaps to dig a little deeper. This could have

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been a conflict over different memories of the same real estate after all. When you think about it, that's what most wars are about. Different memories of the same real estate and friends, there is a

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famine in this land too many of us figured this out a long time ago and others of us finally got it earlier this summer when Dylann roof with different memories of the same ideological real estate Slipped into a

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prayer service in Charleston to slaughter nine people. The real estate that he was remembering did not have room for people of color. The flag that in his mind properly flew over his world was the battle flag

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for one side of the biggest war over real estate that we, as americans have ever fought, a war, accenting differences that we have never resolved. That we have in fact deferred talking about in redemptive

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ways for far too long long enough, in fact , to enable us to establish our own monuments to our different memories of the same real estate. Back in july, when kate and I were on vacation

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, we spent a couple of weeks on a beach near charleston, and one day we drove into charleston to pay our respects at the Mother Emanuel Ame Church there. Mhm. That church is elegant, neo

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gothic facade presides over that portion of calhoun street there in the central city, the flowers and the notes and the stuffed animals and the Mementos covered the width of that church and spilled out onto the sidewalk.

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There was never a moment when there weren't people there and this procession of Mourners, people of all shades and hues, people from all over the world had been going on nonstop for weeks. It's probably still

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going on. We noticed appreciative lee the memorials that bore the names of the non martyrs and particularly the name of ethel Lance, a faithful member of that church and the mother of one of our recent alums

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, Sharon Risher, hospital chaplain, now in Dallas . And then after a while we walked on up calhoun street a block or two to notice the monument for the man for whom that street is named,

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john C calhoun, The early 19th century senator from South Carolina and the 7th vice president of the United States. Calhoun was one of the most vigorous proponents of slavery in his time. And he asserted that

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it was not just a necessary evil, but rather a positive good. There has never yet existed a civilized society, he said, in which one portion of the community did not live on the labor of

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the other. His monument Prominent there on that city square rises over 80 ft and looks down on the city of Charleston and certainly on that monument of resistance about a block away, Mother Emanuel Church, virtually

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the same real estate and yet such different monuments. Two different memories. Yeah, It blew my mind , to be honest with you when in the wake of the massacre of the mother Emanuel nine, the

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south Carolina Legislature finally summoned the courage to do something that I thought would never happen. They voted overwhelmingly to take down the confederate flag from flying over any state property. Now we all know that this gesture

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by itself is not enough. Not even beginning to be enough, but for the record, I didn't see that one coming in my lifetime. I'm a resident, a native of south Carolina, so I

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know what I'm talking about. Not surprisingly, there was in the grand scheme of things, a small whimper of a backlash. It amounted to a few pitifully looking, grim faced men driving pickups around their

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towns and counties from the beds of which fluttered large confederate flags like Dylann roof. They were expecting an uprising, but there was none. But it is a dangerous thing, isn't it? When we so

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monumental eyes are memories that there is ultimately such little room left for us to imagine anything deeper, larger and more redemptive. It is a dangerous thing when we construe our monuments as idols of ultimate truth rather

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than his son post perhaps of various moments from the past where we might have stood once, but by the grace of God, it is a blessed thing to imagine something more and thus to not dwell there

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forever. Isaac encountered a moment like this there in the valley of bihar and here we get such insight into his faithful wisdom, the Philistines with their different memories of the same real estate, watched Isaac and

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his servants dig out two wells that Abraham's father had dug and they had covered up and he rededicated those wells with the names his father had given those wells originally. And then they watched him dig three more

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wells new wells and they quarreled over the first two . This water is ours, they said. And so Isaac conceded their point and gave those wells names that memorialized the fact that they had contended over these

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two wells. But the turning point in this story is seen in the moral energy that is preserved for that third well, the new well that Isaac dug , the one they didn't quarrel over this will was

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dug not in what they thought was their ground or what Isaac thought was his ground. Rather it was dug and what they all saw as common ground. And so he named that well Rehoboth, which is

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hebrew for broad places. Now the Lord has made room for us, said Isaac and we shall be fruitful in the land. Broad places, room to be fruitful. God knows that in this nation,

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in our world we live in a time in which we have monumental ized our differences over all sorts of ideological real estate. To the point that so often it seems impossible to imagine what it would look like

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to carve out broad spaces for common ground, and surely, in terms of race, in terms of economic inequities, in terms of power differentials, in terms of the global South, in terms of contentions

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around gender and sexual orientation, there is not just one civil rights issue. Now, there are multiple ones and we have staked out claims which are profoundly important and need to be taken seriously so seriously that

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we do not preempt important conversation to rush toward a premature conclusion. That avoids the hard, uncomfortable work and satisfies no one yet. Yet. Yet. Yet. Yet. Yet what the world yearns for

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? What we yearn for more deeply still, is Rehobeth that broad place where we remember that the Lord has made room for us for all of us, that place where are different memories of the same real

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estate are redeemed by a deeper memory still and friends . It is the cultivation of and preoccupation with that deeper memory that this place is all about always has been. And we gather tonight to feast in the

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mystery of that deeper memory which God has given us through jesus christ our Lord and my hope for us is that empowered by that feast, which we celebrate regularly. We will set up time and space across

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this academic year and the years ahead in classrooms, in small groups and large groups, at tables in the refectory which are big and hospitable enough to allow for difference in public lectures and in seasons of prayer

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and worship to have some frank and serious conversations about the wells that we have dug, which are still under contention. Mhm. And it's also my hope that we do all of that, ultimately, ultimately

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, with an eye toward Rehobeth, that broad place that deepest of wells, that largest of tables where God has created room and is forever waiting to receive us and welcome us and embrace us as God's own

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in the name of God creator, son and holy