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SERMON
SECOND
PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH
460 East Main Street
Lexington, Kentucky 40507
Reality Family
February 15, 2015
Deuteronomy 29: 10-14; 1 Corinthians 13: 1-7
Rev. Dr. Daniel T. Hans
Something we all share in common on this Valentine’s Day weekend is our longing for love.
Love is a strangely-complex word that is as superficially misunderstood as it is deeply
sought. This morning I want to talk about love in the context of the family. Each of us has
been part of a family. It may not have been the best family. It may not have been a family
where both parents were present. It may not have been a family where siblings got along. It
may not have been the family we would choose if we had a choice. Nevertheless, it was a
family – a real family. But, what is a real family?
A cartoon from The Detroit News presents a family of four watching TV in their living room.
The parents sit on the couch while the two elementary-age children lie on the floor with eyes
glued to the TV. The mom asks the dad, “Do you ever wonder if all the reality TV they
watch is why our children never seem to recognize reality when they see it?” To catch a
glimpse of “a real family”, we don’t need the TV. We need the Bible with its picture of the
love in, what I am calling, reality family.
I
If 1 Corinthians 13 tells us anything it tells us that the character of love transcends the
emotions of love. Too quickly, we replace the reality of love with the fantasy of love. The
difference between fantasy and reality is the difference between infatuation and love.
Infatuation is thinking he’s as sexy as Brad Pitt, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as
Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen and as athletic as Kobe Bryant. Love is realizing
he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Kobe Bryant, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic
as Henry Kissinger and nothing at all like Brad Pitt but you’ll take him anyway!
Unfortunately, the predominant influences on our understanding of love and family come not
from the Bible but from the media. The media focuses on immediacy and emotion in
relationships. The Bible speaks of relationships in terms of future and commitment.
Immediacy and emotion verses future and commitment: that’s the tension in love and in
families.
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The media and the Bible each have their definitive words for love. For the media, the word is
pleasure. For the Bible the word is covenant. The meaning of pleasure, we know both from
observation and experience. The meaning of covenant is illusive to us. Covenant is the word
used throughout the Old Testament to define the relationship between God and his people
Israel and in the New Testament to define the relationship between Christ and his church.
Pleasure and emotion are wonderful human experiences; but pleasurable feelings are not
adequate to express and to sustain the meaning and magnitude of love needed for the family.
Love within a family is understood in the context of covenant.
Covenant recognizes that relationships have value and purpose beyond the feelings and the
lives of those immediately involved. A covenant is a serious promise made by a binding
oath with the intention of permanency. Let’s unpack this definition of covenant in looking
at reality family.
II
First is the serious promise or the well thought-out commitment.
Part of the problem with the covenants we make, be they marriages or baptisms or business
contracts or political treaties, is that we make our decisions based on what the agreement will
give to us now rather than what it will require of us later.
We focus on what we can get rather than on what we must give. A pro athlete signs a multimillion dollar contract with a huge upfront bonus, only to break the contract later when the
demands of the agreement take shape and the athlete must produce results. A couple stands at
the wedding altar, each hoping the words “I do” will bring instant stability to their individual
lives; but later, each becomes confused when the one to whom they look to give their life
meaning looks to them for the same need. A husband and wife conceive a child and thus
declare their desire to bring a new life into the world. Subconsciously, each hopes the birth
will bring new life to their dying marriage. But, the demands of parenting use up any time
and energy they might have given to strengthen their fragile bond. As the distance between
them grows, they wonder why their little bundle of joy did not renew their marriage.
Too often, we make commitments considering only what I can get and not what I must give.
The covenant love, needed for reality family, begins with a serious promise that takes into
account both the benefits and the obligations.
III
The second part of covenant is the binding oath. In a day in which “liberation” is the holy
word, talk of anything “binding”, especially a binding oath, sounds heretical to those who
worship at the altar of the liberated individual. And yet, a binding oath offers an essential
ingredient for family – that being accountability. We must be accountable for the degree to
which we fulfill or fail the oaths we make.
Somewhere a father is telling him self: I wish my daughter would just pack up and leave
home. At least then our house might have some peace. Then he remembers the oath he made
when she was baptized and he determines to work with her in struggling love, believing that
struggling love can achieve reconciliation. Somewhere a wife is telling her self: I want to get
out of this marriage and start over with someone who loves me as I am and doesn’t try to
make me something I am not. Then she remembers the vow she made when she married him
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and she determines to work with him in struggling love, believing that struggling love can
bring new life. Somewhere a minister is telling her self: I’ve got to chuck this job and get
away from all the petty fighting in this congregation before I burnout and lose what faith I
still have. Then she remembers the promise she made when she was ordained and installed as
pastor and she determines to work with the congregation in struggling love, believing that
struggling love is where God is present and where God is encountered.
Three times I mentioned struggling love. Love does not seek struggle but real love endures
struggle, learns from it and works through it. Such is the character of love’s binding oath, an
oath made by both spouses in marriage and by both parents in family, an oath essential for
reality family.
IV
The third part of a covenant’s serious promise made by a binding oath is that it is pursued
with the intention of permanency. Within our families, we need the persistence spoken of in
an ad for a dry cleaning business: 38 years on the same spot! The marriage covenant is
intended to be permanent. Problems arise if we enter into that relationship with thoughts like:
Well, if it isn’t all I hoped it would be, I’ll just get out of it; or: If this spouse doesn’t meet my
needs, I’ll just seek another!
The movie “Strangers and Other Lovers” contains a scene in which a son tries to tell his
Italian father that he and his wife have decided to get a divorce because, as he puts it, “We
feel there must be something more out there.” The father, not understanding what that line of
argument has to do with anything, answers, “We all feel there must be something more out
there!” The son asks, “Then, why don’t you leave Mom and get out there and find it, Dad?”
The older man replies: “Because, there isn’t something more!”
The meaning of love is not illusively hiding out there behind some tree in the forest of all
possible relationships. Love is a seed planted in the relationship we do have right now. The
freedom and peace that permanency offers and that reality family needs occur when we shift
from immediate pleasure to continued covenant. Only in the safety and security of
permanent commitments can we find the freedom to be who we are and find the strength to
become who God wants us to be. We can only be true gifts to each other when we have
confidence that the other person will be there to receive the full gift of our self.
V
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and
endures all things. Paul is saying that: love puts up with circumstances we wish were
different; love has tenacity in the present born from confidence in the future; and love never
ceases to have faith and never loses hope. That is why love can endure.
Paul implies a word in each descriptive statement about love that needs to be heard clearly in
order to understand rightly what he means. Love bears all things that ought to be borne. Love
believes all things that ought to be believed. Love hopes all things that ought to be hoped
for. Love endures all things that ought to be endured. Hearing the word ought in each
statement spares us from thinking that love calls for a belief in nonsense and a toleration of
abuse.
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Reality family is not a relationship that passively accepts manipulation, abuse, cruelty or
addiction. Rather, reality family is a relationship that actively practices encouragement,
endurance, honesty and accountability. Reality family bears, believes, and endures all things
by respecting each other’s differences, by celebrating each other’s uniqueness, and by
recognizing that each of us has a life journey that no one else can make for us.
VI
Questions remain such as: How can we achieve the covenant love on which reality family is
built? How can we love a person whose love for us is uncertain? How can we stick by a child
who takes so much and gives so little? How can we experience covenant love with an
imperfect human being and how can anyone experience covenant love with us?
Truthfully? We can’t love like that – not by our own power. We don’t possess that
magnitude to love. Therefore, in order to sustain and fulfill our covenants, we need a love
greater than our own; we need a power greater than our own. We need the One who made an
eternal covenant with us through eternal love for us. Know that: when our love is mistreated,
when our covenants are cracked, and when our reserves are drained, there is One to whom
we can reach out for help and for love.
She was 32-years-old, the mother of three elementary age children and divorced from a man
who never sent her a penny for child support. She had a full-time job outside the home to
support her family and a full-time job inside the home to raise her family. She was angrily
independent and proudly self-sufficient. She was out to prove to the world she could survive
and succeed. Burning the candle at both ends, she was burning out. She didn’t have the
energy to take her daughter shopping or to throw the ball with her sons in the backyard. Her
parents lived only across town, but she rarely saw them because, in her words, “I just don’t
have time.”
Exhausted from trying to be both mom and dad to her kids, one day in a phone conversation
with her mother, she admitted, “I can’t do it anymore! I have nothing left to give to my
kids!”
“Sure you can do it!” encouraged her mom.
“No, I can’t, Mom.”
“Have you given your children all of your love?” asked her mom.
“Yes, all of it!”
“Honey, I don’t think you have given them all of your love.”
“Mom, believe me, I have. I’m empty. I’ve nothing left. Besides, you don’t know what it is
to be a single parent.”
“You’re right, Dear, I don’t know what it’s like to be a single parent but I do know that you
haven’t given all the love you have to give. I know that because you haven’t asked your dad
and me to help you.”
The love we need and want for reality family is a love greater than anything we possess
alone. The love we need and want is God’s love that involves others’ love. We cannot create
that love but we can receive it as open our lives and our families to God’s loving presence.
Only God’s love, present in us and working through us, can bear all things, believe all
things, hope all things and endure all things. Some may call it fantasy; but those who know
God’s love call it reality