1 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. 2 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 3 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. 4 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