There is a powerful need within the human being to understand where we came from. Uniquely among the creatures of our world - as far as we can tell - we perceive time as a continuum, and consequently have a sense of history - and of our place in it. In the realm of science, we have done much to unravel the mysteries of genetics so that we can account with great accuracy for why we look, behave and even think like our forebears. We even entertain ourselves with television programs like 'Who do you think you are' in which celebrities look back through their family tree and - often quite movingly - understand themselves in new ways and with greater depth than when they started the research. We seem to have a deep-seated need to locate ourselves in both time and place and to understand the forces which influence our destinies.

When the various tribes of semitic peoples in the ancient Near East gathered together and told stories of how they came to be, where they came from, what their historical traditions revealed about their identity, they came to various conclusions about how things must have been in the past to bring them to how they were now.

And as their story began to be committed to writing, one factor which needed an explanation was why the broad federation of Hebrew peoples in the second and third millennia BC found themselves in 12 tribal divisions. So an explanation was devised and crafted out of the ancient oral tradition of the call of God to Abraham to found a new nation, and the continuation of the Hebrews' relationship with God through Abraham and Isaac, and onward to Jacob and his offspring.

In order to embed the 12 tribe tradition into Hebrew history, somehow, Jacob needed to become responsible for 12 sons to found the various tribes and serve as their patriarchs. And the tradition which ultimately found its way into the Hebrew record, involved a rather virile Jacob and four women - two of them were wives, and two were the wives' handmaids.

Wife number 1 was responsible for 6 sons and 1 daughter; each of the handmaids provided 2 sons; and wife number 2 eventually contributed a further 2 sons. So the first wife, senior in both age and productivity, may have earned her formal status as first lady of the family; but the human interest element of the story gives a twist to the plot as we learn very early that she was never the love of her husband's life. The first wife was Leah, and the second wife was Rachel. They were sisters. And today we look at Leah.

Jacob never wanted Leah as his wife. He fell in love at first sight with Rachel when he met her shepherding her father's sheep while he was travelling to get away an existing family feud with his brother. Jacob approached Rachel's father, Laban, and a deal was struck: Jacob would work for Laban for 7 years, and would then be given Rachel for his wife. But Laban deceived Jacob, and after the wedding, when Jacob saw his new wife's face, he discovered that Laban had performed a switch, and that he was now married to Leah, the elder daughter.

A rather angry Jacob then struck another deal with Laban which involved another 7 years' work in return for the second daughter, Rachel, as a second wife. But this time it was a hire purchase arrangement where Jacob got the goods straight away and was allowed to pay off the balance while enjoying the full benefits of his new acquisition. So, right from the start of his married life, Jacob had unlimited access to his beloved Rachel - and no real purpose for Leah.

It is left to our imagination to consider how Leah must have felt about all this. She had been used by her father as a pawn in a fraudulent marriage, and she found herself attached to a man who cared nothing for her and who could only think about her younger sister. Also, there is some confusion over a desription which the text applies to Leah. An ambiguous Hebrew word is used to describe Leah's eyes. It generally means soft: but it could mean soft in the sense of weak or lacking in power; or it could mean soft in the sense of sweet and appealing. But the context seems to be telling us that, even if Leah had appealing eyes (or possibly weak eyes), she really wasn't much to look at compared to her sister Rachel who seems to have been a stunner.

And when Rachel eventually joins the household as wife number 2, life could only have got worse for Leah. She seems destined to have become a baby factory in a loveless marriage, within a household driven by rivalry and jealousy.

Now, so far, we seem to have a fairly typical tribal story, based on a culture and morality of its own time, where the ends justify all the means and lives can be bought and sold. For an Old Testament saga, it's very much of its time and in keeping with its context.

But there is a hidden gem in this story. In this very early incident in the Hebrew tradition, we meet a God who sees, understands, and heals the tragedy of a human situation. The text says simply, 'God saw that Leah was unloved'.

Why would it matter to the God of this nomadic people if one of their number happened to be unloved? Weren't there bigger things to be bothered about. Wasn't this a God of flame and fury, of vengeance and retribution, of judgment and jealousy? Surely it was important to this God to get the tribe settled and fruitful, teach them obedience to the divine law, and encourage them towards growth and prosperity so that their worship and sacrifices would be more pleasing and impressive?

It seems not - because God sees someone is unloved, and intervenes.

Here is one of the earliest signs in our scriptural story that God cares for people and that love is important both to God and for God's people. It is one of the earliest indicators that the God of the Hebrews is more than just a tribal deity; and it is part of an understanding of God which, over many centuries, will make the Jewish Faith - in its purest, uncorrupted form - a faith of love, justice, and integrity.

The true message of Judaism, by the time a small offshoot of followers of a teacher from Nazareth began to form, was an amazingly humanitarian message. It had been beaten, battered and corrupted over the centuries by human greed and self-centredness; but at its heart were the foundations of what Jesus sought to uncover and teach to his followers in a radically new way. And for much of what Jesus said, it was the interpretation which was radical, not the core principles.

That belief system which wrote into the genesis of its scripture a simple episode where God responded to an unloved Leah, also brought forward the prophetic voices of Nathan, who told King David that he was basically a thief and a bully; Hosea, who made love the central meaning of God and drew his nation beyond the level of mere survival and into a life of serving and caring; Amos, who argued that human justice was in reality the worship of God being lived out among people, and that poor people must share in this justice; and Micah who captured in his writing the central elements of what God requires of God's people - to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.

We are the inheritors of a long, long tradition in which God sees and responds to the unloved. We also inherit a deep awareness that loving the unloved is a responsibility for those who would walk humbly with God.

There are parts of Leah's story which are not easily recognised as contemporary issues - yet much of it does still resonate in our modern life:

and yet, among all this, the story of Leah also tells us that it is in the nature of God to recognise and respond to the unloved and the unwanted in our towns, communities, families and social networks. We might recognise such a response as a particularly Christian insight, or even one that springs from our modern principles of social justice. Leah shows us that it is also a deeply Jewish one. In her way, she reminds us that our Christian Jesus was essentially a reforming voice proclaiming the best of the authentic Hebrew tradition.

Of course, our choice, as those who seek to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, is whether we might also feel called to recognise and respond to the unloved and unwanted, whom God always sees - even when others don't.

Amen.

(Philip Jones)

This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.