2022-10-17
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
October 16, 2022 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Jeremiah 31:31-34 The Federated Church, UCC
In the 2004 movie, Shall We Dance, starring Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon, and Richard Gere, a woman, played by Sarandon, gets suspicious about her husband when he starts coming home late at night and behaving erratically. She is so skeptical of his behavior that she hires a private detective to tail her husband and see what’s going on. As it happens, he has his own reasons for this unpredictable behavior, reasons I won’t give away here, because I think it’s a fine movie. What I’m struck by this morning, though, is what a minefield marriage can be.
With divorce rates as high as they are, this is no surprise. Samuel Johnson once said that “a second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience.” Marriages can be full of trials. Failure, unmet expectations, an inexplicable growing apart, or, probably worst of all, a betrayal that slices viciously through a union. A number of you have been through such a sundering. Or you have experienced it in your parents. Or you have known such break-ups in your family and friends.
Separation and divorce are, of course, among the most searing of human pains. Seldom, if ever, is there an easy fix. And while clearly one partner may bear the primary responsibility for the failure of the relationship, in most cases there is enough blame to go around.
Given all that, it’s striking that one of the more noteworthy biblical metaphors for the relationship people of faith have with God is that image of a marriage. In both testaments, images of brides and grooms and marital partnership have a distinctive place. In the passage we heard earlier from the prophet Jeremiah, the image is accompanied by some frustration. God talks lovingly about having established a covenant with the people Israel, and having brought them out of Egypt, and having led them “by the hand” into the promised land. There’s a wince that comes with that memory, though, because it’s “a covenant that they broke, though I was their spouse,” says God, though I was married to them (Jeremiah 31:32). You can hear the painful divine sigh as God recalls the bitter disappointment at the people’s betrayal. They couldn’t stay true to me? Really?
Even with that massive marital let-down, though, God says, ‘That’s not the end of the story. I’m going to try one more time. No matter what you’ve done before, Israel, no matter how disappointing you’ve been to me, I’m not giving up on you. I’m going to stay true to you. I’m essentially going to marry you again, or renew my vows to you.’ In God’s words: ‘I’m still going to be your God, and you’re still going to be my people.’ This endlessly forgiving God wants only to clean the slate and start over again. Against what we might think would be the logical way to treat the people—hold them accountable, make them suffer the consequences—God instead promises eternal affection. A new covenant is established in which only grace is operative: I’m still going to be your God, and you’re still going to be my people. No punishment. No conditional love. Just pure grace.
This sort of unconditional love that we see in God is, of course, what’s so difficult for us to embody in our own relationships. Don’t most of us have relatives we can barely stand to be around? Don’t we have neighbors we hope to God to avoid? A parent may have done something we see as unforgivable. A child, we may think, needs to be held responsible. People can’t be allowed to get away with their hurtful behavior. Standards matter.
And indeed, they do. And still, at every turn, the impossibly beautiful grace of the Holy One keeps nudging us and offering us another way of looking at things. And nowhere is this more true than in our marriages. Full of grace though a marriage may be, that same marriage may also bring out the worst in its partners. I remember some years ago Mary stepped on my glasses one day just as we were getting ready to leave on a vacation, and I was ticked! Of course, it might help to know that I was setting up to take a picture at the time, and I had, with not the greatest display of brilliance, put my glasses down on the lawn behind her, and Mary, unsurprisingly, just didn’t see the glasses. Of course, when she stepped on them, that didn’t stop me from stomping around in a snit! And Mary, showing her highly developed sense of sympathy, died laughing at my mangled glasses. Which made me even madder! Not our finest marital moment!
Samuel Wells, the rector of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, has written helpfully about how to approach a marriage so that it is rich and full and grace-filled. He tells couples there are three words that should be avoided in marriage, and three that can replace them.
“The first word to unlearn is if. It’s a word that pervades human arrangements. If you keep your side of the bargain, I’ll keep mine. If you weren’t so annoying, exasperating, and infuriating, I’d be kind, gentle, and understanding. On the wedding day the two people being married dispense with the word if—and replace it with the word always. . .. If is the language of contract; always is the language of covenant. If is provisional, always is unconditional.” In marriage, not if, but always.
“The second word to unlearn is for. For is the curse of a marriage. Do you know how many hours I’ve spent making a nice dinner for you? Have you any idea what it costs me to work so hard for you to have a comfortable future? For names the accumulation of unspoken resentment. . .. For is based on . . . a private sense of unrecognized moral superiority. The wedding day is the day quietly to put that word away and replace it with the word with. For is about entitlement; with is about sharing. [Accompanying someone in a partnership is] not a performance to make the world applaud; it’s a mystery to enter together more deeply.” In marriage, not for, but with.
“The third word to unlearn is ask. All the asking has been done already. Did you love someone before me? Did you ever do something you’re still ashamed of? Is there anything you haven’t told me? Asking is good, but the questioner sets the agenda. The wedding day is the time to cease asking and begin something deeper: wondering. . .. I wonder what you’re looking forward to. I wonder what you’re afraid of. I wonder who you most want to talk to. I wonder what you most need from me. A wondering . . . says dream with me, ponder with me, explore with me, discover with me. When you ask, you almost always have an idea of the right or desired answer. When you wonder, you’re opening your heart to something neither of you yet knows.
“Three little words. Always takes away the fear of the future. With means you’ll never be alone. Wonder means the future is an adventure.”
The covenant God establishes with all of us is not unlike that. As we travel in the Holy One’s orbit, we find a God who is always there, always paying attention, always abiding in the same room as we are. We find a Gracious One, as well, who is eternally with us, never leaving us for some other greener pasture, ever walking on the path next to us. The God we know in Christ is Emmanuel, God with us. And as we walk always together with that Fount of love, we wonder together at what could be, we wonder together how we might know the deepest peace, we wonder together where our vocation will lead us next. God is always there, walking with us, and wondering with us as we open ourselves to new and mysterious and grace-filled marvels.
The always, with, and wondering that are God’s very identity, and that are part of lively and fulfilling marriages, of course, are also at the root of all we’re to be, in every context, as human beings and as followers of Christ. In healthy friendships and family relationships and churches, the inherent pledge is that we are there for each other, not just when we feel like it, not just when things go our way, but always. A story that Judy Bagley-Bonner, our former colleague here at Federated, tells is of a time in an earlier church that she and her husband Brian served when the church was deciding whether to engage in a capital campaign. One of the members of their church was vociferously opposed to the campaign and argued against it at every turn. At a congregational meeting in which the issue was to be decided, the vote ended up being for the campaign and against this man’s views. As soon as the question was decided, though, he walked to the front of the church and placed his campaign pledge on the altar. That’s a lived-out covenant. Not if, but always.
The with is at least as crucial in our attempt to be true to the God of this new covenant. The temptation, in so many dimensions of life, is to do things for others, rather than to do those things with them. Sometimes the for is patently not a benefit to anyone else at all. The classic, “I’m doing this for your own good,” is probably seldom for anyone’s good. More often than not, it’s simply a justification for punishment or for asserting power. It’s clearly rarely for someone else’s actual good.
It gets hairier, though, when we start considering situations that may seem, on the surface, to be widely beneficial, but that, when we delve deeper, we find to be less with than for. Centuries of Christian mission work, for example, focused on providing goods and services and help for others who were perceived as somehow more needy. So the church sent food and medicine and supplies. These items went to more materially vulnerable areas and provided service and labor to accomplish tasks that seemed to be crucial. And in the meantime, the work done was often top-down. And actual relationships were at a premium. We sent these things, we thought, to improve conditions.
And that work has often had great value. Never should we belittle supplies sent to relieve victims of hurricanes or food contributed to others at Christmastime or work camps that have built ramps for accessibility or repaired roofs for those who don’t have the means to do it themselves. We at Federated are extremely responsive to need around the world, and it’s one of the things I love about this church, and I know it’s something you love, as well. At the same time, though, that sort of giving can easily fall short of a dimension of God’s love that is so fundamental. It can be work for, but not work with. And so this crucial element of covenant is missed. Rather than connect with others, the work is disembodied and done simply for its own sake.
What people of faith have come to realize is that the best sort of care sees not just people’s needs, but also and especially sees the people themselves. If a person is begging on a street corner, what really destroys their soul is not when we fail to put money in their basket. What batters them most is when we fail to look at them, to see them, to honor them with the sort of respect that is rightfully theirs as children of God.
So the wisdom of the church in recent decades has called us to pay attention. It has called us to be in ministry with rather than simply doing things for. We know how crucial this sort of doing-with is by looking at the relationships that are most dear to us. I can buy a car or pay off a loan for someone I love. But that’s nowhere near as fulfilling as playing golf with them or talking until late into the night with them or listening for how it is with their soul, what most matters to them now, what they hate and fear and hope for and love. A car ride or an evening spent with our children or grandchildren connecting about, and wondering together about, those depths is priceless. That sort of being-with—and that sort of wondering together about the marvel and beauty of life—that’s what’s richest and most enlivening.
A man I know several years ago had major life-threatening heart surgery. He’s doing quite well. But he also knows he’s living on borrowed time. Sometime after this heart incident, he said to his wife, ‘If my heart should suddenly take an irreversible turn for the worse, don’t rush for the phone to get a rescue unit here. Just lie down next to me and hold me while I die.’ Be with me. Be with me always. That’s the wonder of life together.
God’s covenant with us isn’t to make everything right. It’s not to solve every problem and airbrush every blemish and take away every grief. God’s promise to us is instead simply to be with us in every crisis, every challenge, every triumph, every joy. Always in our corner, walking with us, as together we wonder at the mysterious and astonishing beauty of life. And as Samuel Wells says, this is to be our way of life as well, toward God and toward each other. It’s how we dance with God. It’s how we dance with each other: Always. With. Wonder (cf. “Three Words That Can Unravel a Marriage,” The Christian Century, September 2022, pp. 32-3).