Acts 17:22-31 , Psalm 66:7-18 , 1 Peter 3:13-22 , John 14:15-21
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
“Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3.15).
As a relatively newly ordained priest, I was invited by the rector for whom I worked to sit in with him as he did premarital instruction for a couple.
Toward the end of the hour, Father Wise looked at each of them and asked, “Now, if you could change anything about the other person, what would it be?”
Each responded much the same way, “Oh, I wouldn’t change anything about him.” “I love her just the way she is.” Now I couldn’t help but wonder—thankfully to myself and not out loud—“Are you kidding me?! You’ve got to be on drugs!” I just assumed that they were lying to Father Wise, to each other, and, most problematically, to themselves.
By then Cindy and I had by been married for ten years, but I don’t think it took ten days to figure out that each other might benefit from at least some improvement! Isn’t it funny how opposite qualities which at first attract (she’s so smart and thoughtful and he’s so lively and talkative) can become such sore points (why won’t she say anything?! Won’t he ever just shut up?!).
No doubt such examples could be multiplied, but in the hope of avoiding divorce by the end of the morning, I’ve probably said quite enough already.
Perhaps that couple who could not give a single example of something that they would “change” in the other might have had more going for them than I at first thought. They were, after all, both significantly older, each entering a second marriage. Perhaps they actually had learned something from the first one, such as when to keep your mouth shut!
Any serious relationship, such as marriage, is rarely easy. Stanley Hauerwas, ethics professor at Duke, has questioned the notion that we should be able to find the “perfect spouse” to satisfy our needs and to fulfill our desires. Professor Hauerwas writes,
Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment necessary for us to become whole and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.
We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it awhile and he or she will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing it is, means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is…learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married. (Hauerwas, “Sex and Politics,” Christian Century, 19 April 1978).
You and I live in a society that bombards us with “have it your way”. . . not only with burgers but with people.
The founding pastor of New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Timothy Keller, picks up on what Hauerwas has said and takes it a step further:
The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because [marriage] is a reflection of the Gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The Gospel is [that] we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared to believe, and at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us.
Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.
God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us (love). . . .
The hard times of marriage drive us to experience more of this transforming love of God. But a good marriage [and we could add, any serious relationship] will also be a place where we experience more of this kind of transforming love at a human level. (The Meaning of Marriage. Keller. 2011).
But how do you and I do that? How do we experience more of this kind of transforming love? How do we enter more deeply into a love that is not sentiment and a truth that is not harsh?
Perhaps it comes through the intentional work of looking for signs of life that exist in the present. Eyes that search for what is life-giving, hearts yearning for that which gives life.
At dinner one night a man told the story of a little town that was to be flooded as part of a large lake for which a dam was being built. In the months before it was to be flooded, all improvements and repairs stopped. What was the use of painting a house if it were to be covered with water in six months? Why repair anything when the whole village was to be wiped out?
So, week-by-week, the whole town became more and more bedraggled, more gone to seed. Where there is no faith in the future, he said, there is no power in the present" (Halford E. Luccock, Unfinished Business).
When we look for what is missing, we experience the pain that comes from that which is not.
But when we look for what is going well, for what gives life, for what we can be thankful for now, we enter more and more into that fullness of life which God promises not just on the other side of the grave but now—“I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly!”
In his letter this morning, Peter urges us, “Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3.15).
May we be given eyes of faith to look at what is and find God in it, to seek signs of promise being fulfilled even now, to discover solid reasons for the hope that is in us.
What is Jesus doing in your life now?
What is Jesus doing through you now?
What is Jesus doing in this place now?
What is Jesus doing through us now?
“Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you.”