Sermon: "Til Death"

7th in the "Stone Tablets in a Wireless World" series.
Delivered July 26, 2009 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Sermon Text: Exodus 20:14

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And then we thank you for this time now that we come into your Word, and we pray that you'll open our eyes and open our hearts that we might respond to you and please you in all of who we are. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

I'm married to someone who reads Ask Amy every day in the morning paper, and occasionally something comes up that strikes Debbie. And she pointed this out yesterday, as I was making final preparations on the sermon, she pointed out this article, and I'd like to read it to you... most of it.

"Dear Amy, Recently several of my girlfriends and I were discussing divorce. Two in our group got a divorce because their husbands ran off with married women. We couldn't understand why people who had affairs didn't seem to care about the hurt they caused. Not only to the wives of 20 or more years, but also to their children, families and even grandchildren. Both the husbands and the married women they ran off with acted as if it's not a big deal. The question we had is why don't those people have even a small conscience? Both husbands seemed to be family men. Both of them basically left their families, including children and grandchildren as if they weren't that important anyway. Is this just the new norm?"

This is her answer:

"Dear Divorced, Your letter prompted me to read Time magazine's recent cover story on infidelity, wherein the following line was quoted, attributed to writer Leonard Michaels. 'Adultery is not about sex or romance, ultimately it is about how little we mean to one another.' Also divorce matters to everyone; people who tell themselves the kids are resilient and they'll get over it are kidding themselves. Children are resilient, but when parents choose to leave, it changes everything for the children, and they'll respond to this event in a variety of ways for the rest of their lives."

"Adultery is not about sex or romance, ultimately it's about how little we mean to one another."

Today we're resuming our series on the Ten Commandments... Stone Tablets in a Wireless World, and this week we're focusing in on the seventh commandment, Exodus 20, verse 14, "You shall not commit adultery." And this commandment is ultimately about how much or how little we mean to one another. Looked at positively, this commandment shows us that God's people are supposed to be people who value and honor one another. And this begins in the fifth commandment when it says we're supposed to honor our parents, it goes to the next commandment when it says we're supposed to honor life. "You shall not kill." And then it comes to the seventh commandment where we're to honor marriage.

Now this rule is not something that's intended to make us super moral people, as if God's people have some kind of extra expectation upon them. This commandment is a natural expression for any society, for any people. It's a good expectation for all marriages; it grows out of who we are as human beings. People in love have a natural desire to bind themselves to each other with promises. Comes up all the time, it's the theme of countless poems and songs. In the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament, we have evidence of this that's 3,000 years old. We see it in music, no matter what culture we're a part of.

And almost every culture has recognized the importance of marriage and has built in expectations around marriage that are intended to help married people stay together. And that's because a good marriage is a blessing to the couple. A good marriage is a blessing to other people and a good marriage needs boundaries to protect that blessing and those blessings apart, those boundaries apart from the blessing. So I'd like to touch each one of those things: blessing to the couple, blessing to others and the importance of those boundaries.

Marriage is intended to be a blessing to the couple. Marriage is intended to be a safe place where an individual is able to have children, to age well, and to develop as a person. Now we don't have to be married to be safe, to age well and develop as a person. That's available to all of us, whether we're married, divorced, widowed or single. No matter what our state in life, we are loved by God intimately and personally. We are loved enough that Christ died for us and if God has taken our place and has redeemed us, bought us back and brought us into his family, then we can reach our full potential, we can have the full joys of life no matter what our marital status is. What's important is what God is doing.

But marriage is intended to be the best place to raise children and it's intended to be an excellent place for all those other things to happen in us personally. And marriage can be this sort of blessing to us because it's intended to be a safe, enduring relationship in the middle of all the craziness of life. And that's why we vow at the start of a marriage, in the wedding. We talk about being together for richer or poorer; in sickness and in health; in joy and in sorrow until death do us part. When we do that, make those vows, we are committing ourselves to making our marriage a safe place to face life.

What we're saying to each other is hard economic times aren't going to change this. If we get into hard economic times, we're going to face it together. We're also saying that good times won't end this marriage. You don't have to worry about trophy wives. You don't have to worry about a divorce of convenience, if we happen to be financially independent. Sickness won't change my commitment. Hard knocks and disappointments won't end this relationship. You are safe, I am safe, we're safe to have children, and we're safe to age without a fear of being discarded. We're safe to develop all the potential we have as a person.

And so what gives marriage its safety, what we profess in these vows is agape love. Agape is the word that Christians use to describe the special love of God that accepts us for who we are. So romantic love, love that's focused on the beauty and wonderful qualities of the one's love, maybe there is where a relationship gets started. But agape love is the love that keeps it going. Agape love is love that is like God's love. Agape love doesn't love someone because they are worthy or beautiful. Agape helps make them healthy, worthy and beautiful.

In the book of Romans, the apostle wrote this about God's love: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5, verse 8. While we are still enemies, God's love acts first. God's love sees worth in us. God's love accepts us where we are and yet God's love is not willing to tolerate the damage that sin is doing to us and the distance that that has put between us and him and so God does something decisive to deal with that and restore the relationship with himself and loves us into a better future. God takes enemies and makes them children. God takes dead people and makes them alive.

Marital love is intended, like God's love, to love a person into a better future. It's supposed to be a place where inspiring words are shared. It's supposed to be a place where a person is affirmed for all the good things they are and all of what they can become. And even while this love accepts them where they are at the moment, this love does not want them to stay there but wants them to continue to develop. This love loves them into a better future. This is important stuff in life.

I was called to be a pastor, not to be in ministry, I was called to be in ministry back when I was a college student. I've been in ministry my whole working life. But I was called specifically in my heart to be a pastor of a church 10 full years before I was able to do it. Those were tough years. Week after week of going to church and watching someone else as pastor and not being able to do it myself, 500 plus weeks of doing things that didn't fit, as well as I thought that would fit. Casting a vision for what it could be. I started to pull together a database for sermon illustrations in about 1990. I wasn't able to use them until 1998.

Now during that time, I could have been torn down as I complained, as I wrestled with my sense of identity. I could have gone home and Debbie could have said, "You know John, God doesn't seem to be opening this door to you. Buck up, you've read it wrong, get on with life." But instead I'd go home, sometimes almost in tears with frustration, with a vision of what could be and a heart that was on fire for that possibility. And in that home, I found someone that was willing to say "I believe God is with you. I see the calling, I see the gifts. I'm with you as we wait on God for that future."

Marriage is intended to be a blessing as we live with one another and love them into a better future. So marriage is to be protected because it's intended to be that kind of blessing to the couple. But it's not just the blessing to the couple; it's a blessing to other people as well. Most importantly, it's a blessing to the children. It doesn't matter whether you're a Christian or not, almost everybody agrees that children are nurtured better and do better in a stable marriage, and that the greatest gift you can give your child is to love that child's mother or father.

Jimmy Long, our Regional Director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, with over 25 years experience in campus ministry, wrote about the impact of divorce on students and young adults. And this is what he says:

"The dysfunctional family certainly takes a toll on children. While eighty percent of divorced parents profess to being happier after divorce, only twenty percent of children said that they are happier after divorce."

A sociological study entitled Second Chances, Men, Women and Children in a Decade After Divorce found that one-third of men and women between the ages of 19 and 29 have little or no ambition 10 years after their parents divorced. A stable, healthy marriage is good for children.

But it's also a blessing to other people. There's more wealth in stable families, so fewer of these families are dependent on others or on the government for help, and that's a blessing to everybody. And then the love and energy that a healthy couple has can wash over other people and be a blessing to them. We all have some kind of couple in our minds that have been a blessing to us, usually an older couple. We've seen their hospitality and experienced it. Maybe it's their generosity that's been such a blessing to us.

And then there's this thing that happens when you're with a couple that's grown older together and loves each other more and respects and honors each other even better after the years have passed. There's something about being with them that just blesses us, it just makes us feel good because we're created that way and when we see the fruit of that, it's a blessing to us, and so for all of these reasons and more, the law of God protects marriage.

And part of that protection then is a boundary, and these boundaries are also intended to be a part of that blessing. When we hear about boundaries, we often think that they're confining, that they're constricting, that the boundaries are there to keep us from having fun. It's a typical human reaction, certainly a typical American reaction. But you know, boundaries can be good, if you've ever forgotten to put the lid on a blender before turning it on, you realize how important a boundary can be.

You can make a real mess when you don't have good boundaries. It's the same with the sexual boundary in marriage. Without these boundaries, something good can become a real mess and that's because the intimacy and vulnerability represented in sex has much more meaning than just the physical act. It's an expression of the intimacy and vulnerability of our whole relationship. It represents the giving of everything we have and are to another person, opening up our soul to someone, our thoughts and fears, our hopes and dreams, revealing our weaknesses and actually linking together our future with the future of another person.

It's a profound thing. Sex represents all of that. And when you protect the sexual relationship, you protect or at least help protect all of the rest. All the variety of things that form an intimate relationship requires the safety of knowing that what I'm now going to reveal to you is just between us. Being deeply known is an extremely vulnerable thing, and it's vulnerable on every level. And that vulnerability can only happen when we feel safe.

And so when husbands and wives in the wedding vows commit themselves only to each other, as some of the vows say, "forsaking all others," when we commit ourselves only to each other, the person is honored and deeper pleasure is possible together. But when that is violated, it's not just the sexual relationship that suffers, the whole person is dishonored and nothing in the relationship is safe anymore. As Amy quoted in the paper, "Adultery is not about sex or romance, ultimately it's about how little we mean to one another." But when the boundaries are protected, not only are we secure in the relationship, but other people are safe as well.

If the boundaries are clear and everybody is respecting them, a married couple can be a safe place for relationships with other married people and a safe place for relationship with single friends. For single people, a relationship with a married couple can be a safe place because you don't have to worry about impressing them. You don't have to worry about somebody hitting on you. You don't have to wonder constantly... where is this relationship going? Am I giving the right signals? All of that is dealt with. It's a relationship where with much less fear you can get a perspective from a member of the other sex.

And if these boundaries are respected then we can be male and female, in relationships, comfortable with ourselves, comfortable for what it means to be male or to be female and to express that all without the fear that by expressing that in some way, you're somehow pushing it toward a sexual and physical expression. Many scenic places have a certain amount of danger about them. And the railing is a very important part of being able to enjoy the beauty. If you don't have a railing, then a sane person at least, gets very concerned when they get close to the edge.

And so what happens is, the closer you get to the edge, the more and more you have to be concerned about "how close am I to the edge" and you're less and less able to enjoy the actual beauty of what's there. But you put a good rail up, a good boundary, and you can walk up just about to that boundary, you can relax and you can enjoy the beauty of that moment because you know you're secure. Boundaries are important. With good boundaries, we can relax and we can enjoy the moment and we can enjoy the relationships that we have.

Now God's intention at giving us boundaries like this is not to cut into our fun. God's intention was to give us what we need, the boundaries we need, in order to create not only strong marriages but the bigger picture, in order to create a strong community around us. We need these boundaries to be explicit and honored and secure in order for all of our relationships to work better and to be more at peace and to be more fruitful.

Imagine what a blessing it would be if people came to a church like Central and found a community where marriages were secure, where children had solid families surrounding them, where people were aging gracefully together, loving each other more and more, the people who are now single had wholesome and deep relationships with each other and with couples of all ages, a community where people were close to one another, affirmed as male and female, and a place where all people are accepted and those people are loved into a better future.

In other words, if they came into a church community and found people living as God created them to be. Now I believe that at Central, we already have a taste of some of these good things. But there's still a challenge in front of us all, and that challenge requires us to obey and honor some basic rules that make it possible. And so the responsibility that grows out of this commandment begins with us who are in married relationships. This is the Word of the Lord, "You shall not commit adultery."

Expressing it another way, we need to do everything we can to show how much we mean to one another. So this is the specific exhortation I want to give to those who are married, and that's what we'll end on. To those who are married, commit yourself today. Commit yourself to loving your spouse into the future that God has for them. If you do that, the blessing will spill upon us all.

Let's pray: God, wherever we are in life, married or not, Lord we know that you have good things for us. Good, healthy and affirming relationships for us. And so we pray now that the basics of what keeps that healthy and growing would happen right now in our midst, strengthen now our marriages as a part of strengthening the whole community that we experience here. For we ask it Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2009, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org