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Ave Maria*

December 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Christmas2014

 

 

 

 

The First Carols of Christmas – Ave Maria*
Sycamore Creek Church
Dec 7/8, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Friends!

What a way to start Christmas!  Right?  We are holding our first worship service in our new building!  Thank you God!  This building is a blessing to us, but as we will soon find out, a blessing is meant not to be held on to but to be given to others.  Thank you God for the blessing of this building.  Thank you God for the opportunity we have to use it to bless others too.

Today we begin a new series called The First Christmas Carols.  We all love Christmas carols and singing at Christmas.  We decorated our house this Thanksgiving weekend and put on our old favorites.  I noticed that some radio stations were even beginning to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving!

Throughout this series we’re going to look not at the classic Christmas carols we sing at Christmas but rather the first Christmas carols in the Bible.  Have you ever noticed that the story of Jesus’ birth in the book of Luke reads almost like a musical?  People are having normal conversations and then all of a sudden they’re singing.  There are four Christmas carols in Luke and one scene that has been made into a song.  Today we begin with that scene that was made into a song, the Ave Maria.  Let’s turn to the book of Luke and read.

Ave Maria: Luke 1:26-28, 39-42 NRSV
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgins name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings [ave], favored one [full of grace]! The Lord is with you.”

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

You may wonder where the phrase “Ave Maria” comes from.  The early church used a Latin translation of the Bible and the word “Greetings” is “Ave” in Latin.  Another way to translate Greetings or Ave is “Hail.”  Maria is of course Mary.  Thus, this is known as the Ave Maria.  So let’s see what there is to greet Mary about.

Mary holds a special place in some Christian traditions, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.  While we are not Roman Catholics (we are catholic in the original sense of the word which means “universal” or the “universal church”), we can learn from our Catholic brothers and sisters.  In the 2nd and 3rd century this phrase from Luke became part of the church’s liturgy (“liturgy” literally means “work of the people” although we generally understand it as the order of readings and prayers in worship).  The church would recite this phrase from Luke: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”

Later in the Medieval church, Mary became one who was deeply honored.  In the 1400s and 1500s a phrase was added to the one from Luke: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”  While we don’t generally pray to the saints, I don’t personally have a problem asking the saints in heaven to pray for us.  Thus the church began asking Mary to pray for us.  Today this prayer is called the “Hail Mary” or “Ave Maria.”

Mary was from a very small town called Nazareth.  It probably had a population of about 100.  Most people there probably lived in limestone caves.  Limestone was easy to dig into.  These caves were the ancient from of mobile homes.  They were the affordable housing of their day.  Nazareth was close to another better known town, Sepphoris.  Sepphoris was the cultural center of the region.  It was wealthy.  There were plenty of shopping opportunities.  It was kind of like the fashion mall of its day.  Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, called it the “ornament of all Galilee.”  And yet, God chose Nazareth, not Sepphoris.

Mary was probably about twelve or thirteen years old.  While that seems very young by today’s standards to get married, it was average for its day when the life expectancy was thirty or forty.  A girl was considered an adult when she had her first period and could conceive a child.  Boys married a little older around fourteen or fifteen so that they had a couple of years in their trade or career to support the family.

Gabriel shows up to deliver a message to Mary.  Gabriel literally means “Mighty One of God.”  He is an archangel, or chief angel among many.  In other words, he’s an important guy.  He greets Mary saying, “Greetings favored one.  The Lord is with you.” Mary “wonders what kind of greeting this might be.”  Let’s unpack that greeting a bit more.

Another way to translate “greeting” is “hail” or “hello” or in Latin it’s “ave.”  Thus, here’s where we get “Ave Maria.”  Gabriel goes on to call her “favored one.” In Greek, the language that Luke was written, the word Gabriel uses is from the root word “charitoo” which is where we get our word “charity” which   Thus, Gabriel is saying, “Greetings highly charitable one.”  Charity can also imply grace.  So Gabriel could be saying, “Greetings one full of grace.”  So now you see where the Ave Maria or Hail Mary gets the, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

What does it mean to be “full of grace”?  Well, let’s talk about what grace is.  Grace is getting or giving something undeserved or unearned.  Grace is in contrast with mercy (which we’re talking about next week) which is not getting something you did deserve.  So grace is showing kindness and expecting nothing in return.  Grace is my parents paying off my college debt when I did little to work on scholarships or pay for college myself.  Grace is Sue Trowbridge, a local artist and pastor, giving me a painting of hers after I mentioned that I liked it a lot.  Grace is the gift of cash in an envelope that we would get every year anonymously from someone at the church we worked at in Petoskey.  Grace is coming home from the hospital with a baby when no one gave you a parenting test.  Grace is charity, and not charity in the sense of giving to the poor, but in the sense that charity means Christian love, loving your neighbor as yourself.  Grace is a blessing, a gift.

Mary, then is “one full of grace.”  She is full of charity, full of blessing others, full of love for others.  God chose Mary, not just because she was poor, but because since being a little girl she was grace-filled, or graceful.  God has a tendency to use people who are graceful, or full of grace.  In fact, God’s solution to the problems of the world is for us to be grace-filled.  If someone is hungry, you give them food, not because they earned it but because it is a gift to them.  Marriages survive on grace.  We can’t expect to earn the love of our partner.  We must give and receive it freely.  People need basic toiletries and so SCC gives over 3700 items to Compassion Closet, a personal needs bank.

Each year as we look toward Christmas, we encourage you to be grace-filled.  Give away as much as you spend at Christmas.  For some of you this means rearranging your discretionary spending so that you just match what you spend.  For others it means spending half as much so you can give half away.  Remember, Christmas isn’t your birthday, Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.  Is there a gift to Jesus under your Christmas tree?

As usual, our church will be receiving a special Christmas offering this year.  What’s different this year is that we usually receive this offering only on Christmas Eve.  But this year we’ll be receiving this offering throughout all of December.  You can mark on your giving envelop if you want to designate a special offering above and beyond your tithe to the Christmas offering.  Then at our four Christmas Eve services (you heard me right, one church in two location over three days with four Christmas services!) all of the offerings those days will go to our special Christmas offering.  We will then give 100% of this offering away.  We’re going to give it to three different needs:

First, we have a long-term relationship and commitment to providing medical missions in Nicaragua.  This Christmas offering will help us continue to support our medical missions in Nicaragua.  Second, our conference (the United Methodist Churches in West Michigan) is focusing on the Imagine No Malaria campaign.  Together we can literally eradicate malaria!  Check it out here or watch this brief video.  Third, we’ll use the offering to help with local emergency needs when people in our community are looking for help with rent, utilities, getting a car fixed, etc.  This year and every year at SCC you have the chance to be grace-filled by giving to this special Christmas offering.

My family is taking this challenge to be grace-filled this Christmas pretty seriously.  We recently wrote a letter to our family telling them of our intentions to try to celebrate Christmas differently this year and in the years to come.  We asked them to give whatever they would spend on the adults (my wife and me) to our Christmas offering.  We asked them to limit their gifts to our children to one each.  In doing so, we invited them to participate with us in putting presents under the tree for Jesus.

All of this leads to one big question in my mind: Are you more “full of grace” than you were last year?  Would the people closest to you say you are someone full of grace?  If not, begin to pray that God would fill you with grace.  You see, our nature is to hold on to stuff.  Our nature is unwilling to give free gifts away.  Our nature is to look out only for me and my immediate family.  Our nature is a mixture of grace and self-interest.  But God’s nature is different.  God’s nature is to save.  We are saved by grace, through faith.  We don’t earn our salvation.  We cannot do enough good works to save ourselves.  And yet, our faith in God’s grace is expected to show itself in our good works to others.  God’s presence with us, God’s Holy Spirit, fills us with grace in the same way that God filled Mary with grace and blessed her.

One warning before we pray.  Being blessed often causes trouble.  When Mary was declared to be blessed, remember where she was?  She was at her cousin’s house, Elizabeth.  Why travel ten miles to her cousin Elizabeth’s, rather than talk to her mother?  Mary’s blessing meant that she was an unwed pregnant engaged teenager on the edge of losing her fiancé and being executed for her “unfaithfulness.”  Mary doesn’t feel blessed, she feels burdened.  Later on she ends up fleeing her hometown and becoming a refugee, alien, and immigrant in Egypt.  Thirty-three years later Mary has to watch her son die on a cross.  None of this sounds like a blessing.  William Barclay refers to it as the “paradox of blessedness.”  He says, “The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy…”  When you are full of grace and blessed, that blessing will require something of you.  You are blessed to be a blessing.  Your blessing is to be a “pass through blessing.”  You pass the blessing through to someone else.  The more you try to hold on to it yourself, the more the grace will slip away.

So let’s go back to that big question: Are you more full of grace than you were last year?

Prayer
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.

Amen.

 

*This message is based on a message originally given by Adam Hamilton

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Failing Forward

January 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment

samson

 

 

 

 

Samson – Failing Forward *
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
January 26/27, 2013

Peace friends!

Today we wrap up a series on the life of Samson.  Samson was a judge of Israel, a kind of tribal leader.  He was dedicated from before his birth to save God’s people from the Philistines.  Samson is one of the most frustrating characters in the Bible.  He was given so much from God, but messed up again and again and again.  We’ve learned over the last three weeks that Samson:

  1. Was an incredibly strong man with a destructively weak will;
  2. Was emotion driven, not Spirit-led;
  3. Ruined his life one step at a time.

In the end he had his eyes gouged out, was put in shackles, and was relegated to grinding a mill.  The question we want to wrestle with today is this:

What do you do when you realize you’ve blown it?

What do you do when you’ve done something you can’t undo, when you’ve hurt people you’ve loved, or when you’ve lost all your money?

In this series I’ve been speaking especially to the men in our church.  That’s not to say that women don’t blow it.  But there is something a little bigger that happens when a man blows it.  That’s because women receive value in relationships.  As long as the relationship is intact at the end of the day, all is well.  On the other hand, men tend to like being liked, but it’s not everything.  Men tend to receive value in accomplishments.  At times even relationships are considered “accomplishments.”  Men want respect.  Generally speaking, a man’s greatest fear is failure and his greatest pain is regret.

Men are told to measure up, be successful, live up to your own or others expectations.  And we don’t.  We hold regrets.  You have to tell your faithful wife about your online porn addiction or your office affair.  You are in a career that feels beneath you while your friends are doing better.  You regret not marrying someone, and now you’re alone years later.  Your marriage is pathetic, and you know it and are resigned to it and don’t do anything about it.  You’ve failed inwardly by not living up to a promise made to yourself or God: “I’ll never do it again”…until Thursday.  What regrets do you carry?

Here’s a truth to wrap your mind around: A failure is an event, never a person.  Samson failed over and over and over again, and God still accomplished his purposes through him.  Just because you’re down, doesn’t mean your out.  Let’s look and see what happens when Samson is down.

Judges 16:23-26 NRSV
Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon, and to rejoice; for they said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.” When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, “Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us.” 

And when their hearts were merry, they said, “Call Samson, and let him entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them. They made him stand between the pillars; and Samson said to the attendant who held him by the hand, “Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, so that I may lean against them.” 

Here’s the context.  The Philistines are gathered in a coliseum-like temple that holds between 3000 and 5000 people.  They’re there to worship their god Dagon, the god of the harvest who has a man head and fish body.  They’re recounting how Samson has caused them all kinds of problems remembering the foxes and jawbone incidents.  And now Samson is told to perform for their entertainment.  It doesn’t get any lower than this!  Samson is surely at the bottom of his life as a failure.

Remorse
There are two responses to failure I want to explore today. The natural response to failure is remorse: “I feel bad about what I did.”  Too often men stop here.  Inward they say, “I’m a failure.”  Outward they say, “I’m a victim.  It’s all someone else’s fault.”  There is a better response to failure than remorse.

Repentance
The better response to failure is repentance.  Repentance is one of those really churchy words, isn’t it?  It conjures images of street corner preachers on soap boxes with bull horns.  “Repent you sinners.  You’re going to burn and fry in hell!”  But that’s not necessarily what a biblical idea of repentance is.

There are two words in the Bible that get translated as repentance.  The first is the Greek word “metnoia.”  Metnoia means to change one’s heart and mind.  The second is the Hebrew word “shuv.”  Shuv means to turn.  So repentance can be understood as changing one’s heart and mind in a way that leads to turning ones life in a different direction.  It’s not just an intellectual or emotional thing.  Although it includes both.  It’s not just an action thing.  But it definitely includes action.  It is an inward change that results in an outward change.  It is being convinced that you are going the wrong way and turning around and going the other way.  It means owning your fault.  “It’s my fault.  I blew it.”  Then turning away from that which you did that was wrong and turning toward that which you know to be right.  You ruin your life one step at a time, but when you repent you turn around and point your life back in the right direction.

Repentance doesn’t always mean that everything gets better quick.  There are some things that are hard to undo.  There are even some things you can’t undo.  When Sarah and I had our first boy, Micah, I took lots of pictures during labor.  When I got home but before I caught up on sleep, I uploaded them to iPhoto on my iMac computer.  Now iPhoto has a feature where you can instantly upload pictures you choose to share on Facebook.  I thought I carefully selected some photos to share on Facebook but what I did instead was shared all the photos on Facebook!  I realized my mistake only when I got a notification from Facebook that one of the teenagers in our church had commented on the album saying, “Wow.  Thanks for sharing such intimate moments with us.”  I did  my best to quickly pull the photos off of Facebook, but to those of you who were subjected to my mistake, I apologize.  Actually, I should apologize to my wife!  Very few pictures were actually of me!

Thankfully I could undo that mistake for the most part.  But there are moments in our digital culture when you can’t undo it, like this commercial:

 

While you can’t “unsend,” you can repent.  You can be both motivated to change and actually change your behavior.  You can remember who you were created to be—you were created to honor and glorify God with your life—and you can choose to honor and glorify God with your life.  You can choose not to let what you did keep you from doing what God wants you to do now.  You cannot change the past, but you can change your future with God’s help.

Samson realizes that he’s blown it pretty hard, and he prays to God:

Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.”
Judges 16:28 NIV

Samson prays, “God, I only need one more chance.”  Is this prayer of Samson’s about Samson or about God?  It seems to me that it is still about Samson’s revenge.  Sometimes when we’re down and out and feel the remorse of failure, we pray to God out of desperation, but we don’t really want to live a new life.  We want God to make it all right.  We want our lives back.

Here’s the amazing moment of God’s grace.  Even in the mixed motives of Samson’s last prayer and in our own mixed motives, God is gracious and merciful.  Even in our failures, God can still accomplish his purposes.  God’s purpose in Samson’s life was to start to deliver Israel from the Philistines.  The Israelites had begun to so closely assimilate into Philistine culture that they were close to being indistinguishable.  God used Samson’s failures to save God’s people from being absorbed into the broader culture and lost forever.

God strengthened Samson again.  Friends, you have the same Spirit living in you that raised Christ from the dead!  Sure you messed up.  Sure you feel weak.  Sure you feel remorse.  But Jesus was dead.  No pulse.  Down and out.  There’s no coming back from that.  And God raised him from the dead!  So you messed up.  That’s makes your story even better!

Men, it’s time to push some pillars down.  What pillars do you need to push down? How are you going to do it?  You’ve got a pillar of pride in your life: I can handle it.  Push it down.  Say, “I need help. I’m alone. I messed up. I don’t know how to get out.”  Tell someone you need help!  You’ve got a pillar of anger in your life: I’m mad at the world;  I’m mad at myself.  Push it down.  Get a counselor.  Read a book about anger.  Find a mentor who has overcome their anger.  You’ve got a pillar of slacker spirituality in your life: you’re an occasional attender at worship.  Don’t just feel bad about it.  Turn around and get to worship regularly.  You’ve got a pillar of a dead marriage in your life.  So be honest about it and set up a good time to have an honest talk with your wife and recommit to new positive behaviors.  Find a couple you appreciate and have them mentor you.  Go to a marriage retreat.  Pick up a book or audio CD or listen to marriage sermons.  You’ve got a pillar of debt in your life.  Push it down!  Tighten the belt.  Set a budget.   Break greed by giving generously the full tithe or more. What pillar or pillars need to be pushed down in your life?

Now we can’t ignore one crucial fact about the end of Samson’s life.  It was a suicide.  Is that how you push down the pillar?  You just decide that you’re so far gone that this world would be better off without you?  Yes, Samson took his life, and God ended an age of judges ruling Israel.  He was the last.  God then brought in the age of the Kings.  But here’s the hitch.  Suicide is easy.  You give your life one time.  Here’s what’s hard: give your life daily.  They give their lives to God daily.  They give their lives to their wives daily.  They give their lives to their kids daily.  They give their lives to their church daily.  They give their lives to their community daily.  They give their lives to the job daily.  Real men give their lives daily so that God’s purposes might come true in their own lives and the lives of those around them.  Real men push down the pillars that get in the way of God’s purposes daily.  Are you pushing down pillars today?

Here’s the first pillar you need to push down: give up your life.  Give it up to the one who has already given up his life for you.  Give it up to the one who showed his love for us by dying not just for friends but for his enemies.  Give your life up to following Jesus and his way.  How do you do that?   You ask Jesus to be your forgiver and leader.  You give your failures to him and you say, “Jesus, forgive me for the things I have done wrong.”  Then you let him lead you.  You say, “Jesus, I give you my entire life to lead.  Do with me as it pleases you.”  Then you get in the adventure of the rescue mission that Jesus has begun here on this earth, helping others push down the pillars in their lives.  Are you ready?

God may it be true in the lives of the men at Sycamore Creek Church.  May you use the men in our church to push down the pillars daily in their own lives and the lives of others around us.  Push down the pillars that keep us from being fully committed to you.  In the name of Jesus and the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen!

* This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel

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Baggage Claim – Divorce Baggage, Week I

February 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment

baggage claim big

 

 

 

Baggage Claim – Divorce Baggage Week I
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
February 17/18, 2013

Peace friends!

Today we’re in week two of a four week Baggage Claim series.  We’re claiming our baggage, then we’re figuring out what to do with it.  We began with family baggage and today we turn toward divorce baggage.  We’re going to spend two weeks unpacking divorce baggage.  The first week—this message—we’ll claim the baggage.  The second week we’ll figure out what to do with it.

Before we dive in to divorce baggage specifically, let’s just spend a moment asking the question: what is baggage?  “Baggage” can probably mean a lot of things to a lot of people.  When I talk about baggage I mean one of three things and they all have something to do with sin, missing the mark of God’s plan for our lives.  Baggage can be un-confessed guilt from past sin.  Not all guilt is bad.  Guilt that leads to confession is good guilt, and you might even call it good baggage.  You deal with this kind of baggage by claiming it through confession and then doing everything in your power to make right the wrong you did.  The other two kinds of baggage are harder to deal with and best figured out on a case by case basis.

A second kind of baggage is persistent guilt left after confession of sin.  Here we’re talking about the inability to receive God’s forgiveness when we claim our baggage through confession.  A third kind of baggage is painful memories or scars created when someone sins against you.  These are memories you just can’t shake, feelings of worthlessness, or feeling alone, among many other things.

Here’s a truth: we all accumulate baggage.  Every saint has a past, but every sinner has a future.  You can’t change your past, but Christ can change your future.

During this series I want to help you not accumulate the baggage in the first place, but if you already have it, to know what to do with it.  I want you to be able to name clearly what the baggage is, and to have a clear path forward for how to receive God’s grace to dump it and live a new baggage-free life.  And that brings us back full circle to knowing what it is and not accumulating it in the first place.

This is not a series of condemnation and judgment, but it is a series of truth telling.  Truth telling and compassion, mercy, and grace are not mutually exclusive.  Actually there is no true compassion without truth telling.  Jesus models truth and mercy together when he encounters a woman caught in adultery:

Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
John 8:10-11 NRSV

Divorce Baggage: The Problem and the Point
So here’s the problem I want to deal with today: Marriage costs us something.  We think that the feelings of love we have when we get married will see us through our marriage, but marriage turns out to be hard.  Sometimes really hard!  And sometimes we find ourselves in a very long stretch in our marriage with little to no positive feelings and an accumulation of negative feelings.  Psychologists tell us that the healthy ratio of positive to negative feelings in a marriage is five positive for every one negative.  Some of us are experiencing five negatives for every one positive!

So here’s the point of today’s message: Marriage is a covenant.  It’s a covenant that teaches us something about following Jesus even when we don’t feel the positive emotions we once did.  Perhaps we learn the most about following Jesus when we no longer have those positive emotions.  Marriage is a discipleship covenant where we learn to practice love even when we don’t feel love.  That means that divorce deteriorates discipleship and we, and those around us, accumulate baggage (guilt, painful memories, feelings of worthlessness, and more) in the process.  Let’s unpack this idea of marriage as a covenant.

Marriage is a Covenant
Marriage is a covenant.  It is a commitment made before God.  When you said your vows, if you did so in a Christian marriage ceremony, then you made those vows not only to your loved one, but you also made those vows to God.  But the idea of marriage as a covenant goes even deeper than just the commitment you’re making to another individual.

Marriage expresses God’s love and commitment to God’s people.  The covenant to love one another through all the ups and downs is a symbol of God’s love and commitment for the community of God’s people.  This commitment that God makes goes so far as to remain even when God’s “spouse” is unfaithful.  We see this most clearly in the book of Hosea.  Hosea is told by God to marry Gomer, a woman who will be unfaithful to Hosea.  It’s a pretty crazy situation.  Here’s what we read right at the beginning of the book of Hosea:

When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (Hosea 1:2 NRSV).

But then later on we read this:

And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy (Hosea 2:19 NRSV).

God’s faithfulness to the covenant remains even when our faithfulness waivers.

Marriage also represents Christ’s covenantal love for the church.  In St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he uses the example of marriage to explain how much Jesus loves the church:

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ…Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:21, 24-25 NRSV).

Notice the command to submit to one another.  Marriage isn’t about the woman submitting to the man.  Marriage is a covenant of mutual submission.  That first sentence colors everything else Paul says in this passage.  Women already know something about this because it’s in our cultural background, but Paul has to explain it to husbands.  He says that husbands are to submit to the point of following in Jesus; footsteps: giving yourself up entirely for your wife, even to the point of death!  Notice here the connection of loving your wife as Christ loved the church.  Marriage is good in as much as both husband and wife represent and replay Christ’s deep unconditional self-sacrificial love for the church.

So marriage is probably best understood as an act of discipleship that is grounded not in feelings of love but the practice of love.  It can be hard.  Sometimes, maybe even often, you have to pick up your cross and carry it.  You may have to learn to love your enemy who sometimes shares a bed with you.  You will most certainly have to learn how to forgive.  If you want to learn how to follow Jesus, getting married is one way to learn.

Divorce is Covenant Breaking
So if marriage is a covenant with another person and with God and represents the covenant God has with God’s people and the love that Christ has for Christ’s church, what does it say when we break that covenant?

First, divorce breaks a covenant made with your spouse and with God.  Second, divorce breaks the sign of God’s covenant with God’s people.  Third, divorce breaks the covenant of discipleship that exists between Christ and the church.  Maybe this is why God says, “I hate divorce” (Malachi 2:16).  What was once a symbol of God’s unconditional love for God’s people becomes an expression of conditional love.

God’s Kingdom
At this point I think it is important to point out something that theologians call the “already and not yet” of God’s kingdom.  When we pray in the Lord’s Prayer that “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” we are recognizing that we live in a broken world.  The way that God designed the world has been damaged in so many ways.  We pray that God would heal that world and bring his kingdom and his reign here on earth in the same way that God fully reigns in heaven.  But implicit in that prayer is the idea that this is a process and we are not yet there.  Thus, God’s kingdom here on earth is already present, but it is not yet fully present.

Covenant Breaking
In a fully present kingdom, there would be no need to ever break the covenant of marriage.  But God’s kingdom is not yet fully here, and so the question arises, does the Bible ever think it is OK to break the covenant of marriage?  The answer to that question depends on where you look.

Moses seems to allow divorce for “something objectionable”:

Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife (Deuteronomy 24:1-2 NRSV).

What is “something objectionable”?  Maybe Jesus can clear this up for us.  Well, it depends on where you look for Jesus to clarify things.  In the book of Mark, Jesus interacts directly with this teaching from Moses, and says that Moses allowed divorce because we had hard hearts.  He erases the loophole for divorce when he says,

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11-12 NRSV).

In Mark, Jesus doesn’t seem to allow divorce for anything, whether “objectionable” or not.  When you get married you become “one flesh” as Genesis says, and you can’t “un-flesh” yourself.  (On a side note: Jesus raises the woman’s status to equal with a man in this teaching.  In Jesus’ day, adultery was technically a sin against a man, because a woman was a man’s property.  So when you sleep with a woman who is married, you commit adultery against her husband.  But Jesus says that you commit adultery against her.)  So when you seek guidance about divorce from Jesus in the book of Mark you seem to get this answer: divorce is never permissible.

But if you keep reading you will eventually come to Jesus’ teaching about divorce in the book of Matthew. Here Jesus seems to qualify his previous teaching saying,

“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity [porneia], and marries another commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9 NRSV).

What is translated as “unchastity” is the Greek word “porneia.”  That probably sounds familiar because it’s where we get our English word “pornography.”  Porneia or unchastity is a pretty broad term.  And perhaps like the Supreme Court, we can’t define it, but we know it when we see it.  There are a lot of sexual infidelities besides just sexual intercourse that would seem to fall under the umbrella of porneia.  Thus, in Matthew Jesus teaches that if your spouse is unfaithful in a variety of sexual ways, it is permissible to break the covenant of marriage.

St. Paul takes this a step further.  He says in his letter to the Corinthians,

“To the rest I say — I and not the Lord — that if any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him” (1 Corinthians 7:12-13 NRSV).

So Paul says that if you’re married to an unbeliever, and that unbelieving spouse wants to leave, then what can you do?  You let them go.  Perhaps the principle behind Paul’s direction is this: you can’t force discipleship on anyone.  God gives us the freedom to reject God’s love.  Discipleship and covenant keeping is never forced from God onto us.  Could this also apply to someone who considers themselves a believer but says they want to divorce you?  Again, you can’t make anyone follow Jesus.  You can’t make anyone keep a covenant, even if it was a commitment made to God.

An interesting point to notice in Paul’s teaching here is that he says, “I and not the Lord.”  Paul seems to be adding to Jesus’ teaching with some of his own.  Paul is practicing some continued pastoral discernment for his situation and the situation his churches find themselves in.  Maybe Paul is living into the same act of discernment that we see between Jesus’ answer in Mark and Jesus’ answer in Matthew.  As both Jesus and Paul encounter new situations and circumstances, they’re finding that God’s kingdom is already but not yet.

In this spirit, I would like to continue some discernment myself.  I, and not the Lord, want to suggest that sustained violent abuse (both physical and possibly verbal) is porenia.  It is sin against the “one-fleshness” of marriage.  You are not treating your spouse as “one-flesh” with yourself when you violently abuse him or her.  One problem here is that this kind of abuse is often kept secret rather than made known.  What would happen if your spouse hit you the first time or violently cursed you verbally and instead of keeping it a secret, you shared it appropriately with some of the community around you that witnessed the covenant you made together at your wedding?  What if that community then became a community of accountability to help a spouse who has trouble expressing his or her anger in healthy non-violent ways?

Something implied in all these teachings is that even if your spouse is unfaithful in one of these ways, and the Bible allows for divorce in that circumstance, it does not require it.  God’s grace is always interested in reconciliation even if the brokenness of the world makes that near impossible.  Remember, Hosea remained married to an unfaithful spouse to show that God’s love is faithful even when our love is not.

Remarriage?
If divorce is covenant breaking and sex after divorce is adultery, then several questions arise about remarriage.  First, is remarriage de facto adultery?  The Bible is not particularly optimistic about remarriage.  Except for the explicit situations we covered above, the Bible teaches that remarriage is adultery.  Please don’t shoot the messenger.

Second, if I’m remarried after divorce and the divorce wasn’t because of one of those explicit circumstances, should I get divorced from my second marriage?  No!  The Bible always speaks against this kind of ascetic idealism.  There is grace and salvation in the midst of brokenness!  As Richard Hays, a New Testament scholar, says, remarriage could “serve as a sign of God’s love in the world…A second marriage after divorce could serve as a sign of grace and redemption from the sin and brokenness in the past” (The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pg 373).

Third, what should I do now that I am remarried?  Here are several questions to ask yourself:

  1. Did you confess your role of sin in the divorce (if there was sin)?
  2. Did you confess your sin to your ex (if possible)? Or someone else?
  3. Are you doing all you can to live at peace now with your ex?
  4. Are you committed for life to your current covenantal marriage?

Fourth, should I remain single if I have been divorced?  Let me suggest that remarriage is best approached as a process of discernment.  The Bible isn’t very optimistic about remarriage, but it’s not the only one not optimistic about second marriages.  We all are familiar with the statistics about second marriages.  Don’t make this decision alone.  Include your friends and family.  Make sure you’ve got some friends who are providing guidance who aren’t “yes men.”  Make sure you’ve got some people asking you hard questions about your motivation and the timing of any particular commitment to a second marriage.  Run your previous marriage and any thoughts about a second marriage through the four questions above.  Perhaps then, a second marriage can serve as a new covenant that represents how God can and does redeem this broken world.

So today we’ve looked at claiming the baggage of divorce.  We’ve spent our time telling the truth about what marriage is, a covenant, and what divorce is, covenant breaking.  But this series isn’t just about claiming the baggage.  It’s also about knowing what to do with it once you’ve got it.  Doing both of those in one sermon was too much.  So next week we’ll be looking at what to do with the baggage of divorce once you’ve claimed it.  I hope you’ll join us as we seek to take the baggage and give it to God to work something new.  Because in the family of God, there are no carry-ons.

Prayer
God, help us to tell the truth about divorce.  Help us to claim the baggage divorce has created in our families.  And open our hearts to how you can continue to work in and through a broken and wounded world.  Help us to renew the covenants that we have made to others and to you.  Help those covenants be signs and symbols of your love for us.  In the name of Jesus and in the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

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Those Critical People

July 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Those People
Those Critical People*
Sycamore Creek Church
July 29, 2012
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Know any critical people?  Are they sitting beside you?  Don’t answer that last question!  Today we’re beginning a new series called “Those People.”  You know.  Those people.  The ones that you would rather do without.  The ones that drive you crazy.  The neighbor.  The co-worker.  The boss.  The student.  The family member.  Yeah.  Those people.

Over the next four weeks we’ll look at those manipulative people, those needy people, those hypocritical people, and today, those critical people.

Here’s the truth about criticism: all of us will be criticized.  Some of the big names in the Bible were criticized.  Moses was criticized by his brother and sister for marrying a foreign woman (Numbers).  If you read between the lines, you’ll see that St. Paul was probably criticized for not being a good speaker.  He certainly wasn’t succinct.  One time he preached until midnight and a guy named Eutychus fell asleep in a window and fell down three stories and died (Acts 20).  Paul went down with others to investigate and found out he wasn’t dead.  So what did they do?  Paul kept on preaching until sunrise!  Then there’s Jesus.  Among other things, he was criticized for eating with the wrong kind of people and working on the Sabbath.

I’ve experienced some criticism myself in life.  A husband and wife in a previous church didn’t ever think I did anything right, including my hair.  At the time I was wearing it shoulder length and Sarah was wearing her hair really short.  This woman said to me in a nasty sharp voice, “Don’t you know that the husband is supposed to have shorter hair than his wife?”  It was a slam on both of us!  I wonder what she would think about my hairdo for CRASH, our men’s retreat each summer?  One summer I wore a Mohawk.  The next summer I shaved it all off.  Who knows what I’ll do this summer!

I’m not alone when it comes to criticism.  I asked my friends on Facebook about when they are unjustly criticized.  I got a huge response!  One teenage friend is a nanny and is often seen in public with young children.  She will get nasty critical looks from people who think she’s too young to be a mom.  She’s not, but even if she was are the judgmental critical looks necessary?  Then there were a whole host of young parents who feel like their every parenting move is criticized by people around them, especially if they go against the grain of what’s “normal.”  One teacher friend of mine feels like teachers are often criticized, especially in today’s climate, by people who don’t know a lot about what really happens in a classroom.  Another friend who is a relatively new Christian feels like her non-Christian friends criticize her for her new interest in the spiritual life.  Then another friend talked about the critic she looks at every day in the mirror.  Yikes!  There’s a lot of criticism to go around.

Now let’s be sure to make a distinction here about criticism.  There’s unjust criticism and there’s just criticism.  Proverbs, the book of wise sayings, has this to say about criticism: If you listen to constructive criticism, you will be at home among the wise (15:31 NLT).

I used to work at a really nice Italian restaurant in Petoskey.  The owner described himself as “not fun, but fair.”  It was a true description.  One day he spent about fifteen minutes showing me exactly how he wanted me to mix the pizza cheese.  We had this big super huge grinder and he had a particular ratio of muenster to mozzarella he wanted grinded together in a particular way.  It really did make great pizza cheese.  I don’t remember the details but after he left, I decided there was a better way to do it, and I did.  He walked by shortly thereafter and saw that I had abandoned the way that he had spent fifteen minutes showing me.  He reamed me out.  My ego was hurt, but slowly I realized, he took the time to show me and he is paying me so I should do it exactly as he wants.  It was a just criticism even though it took me a while to realize it.

Do you know that if you ask for criticism you’ll be more likely willing and open to hear it?  I do a lot of asking for criticism these days.  We put twenty sermon and worship feedback forms in random bulletins.   I’ve connected with a sermon coach lately.  I also have a leadership coach.  We do a 360 evaluation of me every year.  I found out last year that one of my weakest traits was building extensive friendships in the community.  I’m basically an introvert.  But I learned from that criticism and over the last year I’ve gone to several social events and community events that you’ve invited me to (By the way…invite me to your kids’ games, recitals, and so on.  It always helps me to “go on the arm” of someone.)  I’ll also give you another tip about me and criticism.  If you can at all wait, don’t criticize me on Sunday morning, my mind and energy are elsewhere.  It’s the worst time.  Save it for another day of the week.  I’ll be more open to hearing what you have to say.

So let’s turn to unjust criticism.  I’d like to offer you three prayers this morning to help you with unjust criticism.  Here’s the first one:

  1. God, help me to know when to respond to criticism

Knowing when to respond is key.  And we’re talking here about responding, not reacting.  Don’t go putting some counter criticism up on Facebook or Tweeting about your anger.  Don’t do what I saw some dad do on YouTube.  His daughter had made some critical comments about him on Facebook.  She apparently had a history of doing so.  He had warned her not to do this again.  She did.  So he took her laptop out in the back forty and shot it about twenty times.  He video taped the whole thing and posted that video tape online so all her friends could see it.  He apparently didn’t learn the basic ethical premise: two wrongs don’t make a right.  He also didn’t learn that responding is different that reacting. 

Sometimes responding with a simple explanation can diffuse unjust criticism.  Gideon, one of the heroes of the Bible, runs into a situation like this.  We read in Judges:

Now the Ephraimites asked Gideon, “Why have you treated us like this? Why didn’t you call us when you went to fight Midian?” And they criticized him sharply…But he answered them…At this, their resentment against him subsided (Judges 8:1&3 NIV). 

One time I was counseling a couple.  They would come in and see me together.  Then throughout the week I would occasionally get calls from one of them asking what to do.  I would offer some thoughts and hang up.  Shortly after this I would get called from the other one who was now angry at what I had said.  They would repeat my words back to me in a slightly different fashion with a very different meaning than I had intended.  This happened both ways!  It usually took only a brief explanation that I didn’t mean for my words to be taken the way that they had to solve the issue.  I also learned that I had to speak to both of them at the same time or my words would inevitably be misrepresented!  In these instances a simple response diffused the criticism.  But this isn’t always the case, is it?  Here’s a second prayer: 

      2.  God, help me to know when to dismiss invalid criticism

Remember that there are two different kinds of criticism: just and unjust; legit and illegit.  You don’t want to dismiss just and legit criticism.  So discerning between the two is vital.  If twelve of fifteen people tell you the same thing: it’s probably constructive criticism you should listen to.  If you find yourself facing the same criticism at home and work, then it’s probably 2 Legit to Quit.  But if you only hear it from one or two people who are hypercritical of you, then you’re going to just have to learn to dismiss it with God’s help.

Dismissing criticism is rarely easy.   We focus on the one bad thing people said and ignore the twenty good things.  But Jesus gives us some direction on how to dismiss unjust criticism:  Jesus did not retaliate when he was insulted. When he suffered, he did not threaten to get even. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly (1 Peter 2:23 NLT). 

When I search my own heart after finding it hard to dismiss criticism, when I ask myself, Why do I take it so personally?, I find an ugly answer:  I elevate the opinions of people above those of God.  You can’t please everyone, but you can please God.  Be freed today from the prison of criticism.  Becoming obsessed with what people think is the quickest way to forget what God thinks!

If you want to make a difference in this world, you will be criticized.  Each of us is on a mission from God.  Don’t let criticism pull you off that mission.  I’d rather be doing something world-changing that people are picking apart than doing nothing significant.

God, help me to dismiss unjust criticism and stay on your mission. Here’s a third prayer for dealing with unjust criticism:

      3.   God, help me overcome my own critical nature.

We’re all one of “those people.”  We read in Proverbs, Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing (Proverbs 12:18 NRSV).  Anyone ever have some rash words?

In my own life I’ve found myself wrestling with overcoming significant judgmentalism and a kind of super ugly self-righteousness.   If you’re a guest here this morning, I’d like to apologize to you.  As a representative of the church, I’m one of the many of us who are recovering judgmental critics.  I’m one of the many in the church who are recovering self-righteous jerks.  Unfortunately, this community of spiritual friends who are seeking to follow Jesus and learn to love God and our neighbor more perfectly has too often become judgmental, self-righteous, and just plain critical of everyone else.  Please forgive us.  By God’s grace and mercy and your love, we’re learning to do life together differently.

One way this plays out for me is that when I visit another church I don’t end up worshiping, I end up being a worship critic.  I give them a grade on everything.  The music was a C.  The hospitality a D.  The message was a B-.  The building a C+.  The pastor’s shoes an F.  God, save me from my own criticism!

Then there’s your own church.  When pastors get together there can sometimes end up being a kind of pity party.  You think you’ve got it bad, let me tell you about Sally and Joe!  I was at a conference one time when the speaker asked us to introduce ourselves and describe our churches as if they were a child going to school.  What would we say to the teacher?  It deflated all the criticism.  What if we all described our workplace in that kind of a way?

Johnny Workplace is a little nervous today.  His dad hasn’t been around much and his mom is really overprotective.  She wants him to succeed but sometimes she gets in the way.  Then there’s the food allergy he’s got.  It’s kinda unique to him.  Not many people have it, but you just can’t feed him anything.  I love this kid, and I hope you’ll take really good care of him.

When I am critical, it shows the weakness, sin, insecurity, and pride in my own heart.  I’m right and everybody else is wrong.  I’m the superior human being, and I’d like to tell you how to be more like me.  Criticism never changes the world.  Criticism won’t fix your marriage.  Criticism won’t raise your children.  Criticism won’t make your workplace more productive and it certainly won’t make it more fun to work at.

If you have an overly critical nature, we’re going to take it to God and ask for forgiveness and healing.  I’d like to pray for you, and invite you to pray along with me silently.

God, you love me unconditionally.  I haven’t done anything to earn it.  You loved me so much that you sent your son, Jesus, to show me that love, a love that went so far as to die for me.  Help me to embrace that kind of love you have for me and to share it with others.  Help me to stop being critical of others and instead to be a highway for your love to travel into the lives of those around me.  And when criticism is turned against me, help me to remember that you love me, and in the end, what you think about me is all that really counts.  Amen.

 

Questions for Small Groups

Each week we provide discussion questions for small groups that meet regularly to discuss the message for the week.  Want to find a small group to join?  Email Mark Aupperlee – m_aupperlee@hotmail.com.

  1. When was a time you received just criticism?
  2. When was a time you responded to unjust criticism and the criticism subsided?
  3. When was a time you had a difficult time dismissing unjust criticism?
  4. Where do you find yourself currently being overcritical of those around you?
  5. How can we pray for each other in the midst of just or unjust criticism?

*This sermon is an adaptation of a sermon originally by Craig Groeschel.

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