A Lucky Marriage
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
This past Saturday -- 7/7/07 -- was an especially busy day for those in the wedding
business. With many couples of a numerological bent considering it to be the luckiest day
in a century to get married, banquet halls and other reception venues were heavily booked
for that date. But what does it really take to have a successful marriage? Is superstition an
important factor -- should couples focus on choosing an auspicious wedding date? In this
installment of The Immediate Word, team member Carlos Wilton notes that a
successful marriage is more than just having the good fortune to find one's "soul mate" --
practicing Jesus' teaching as outlined in Luke 10:27 is a vitally important factor. The key
to fulfilling marriages and other family relationships is not luck (as some suppose), but a
gritty determination, relying on the grace of God, to love one another come what may.
Team member Thom Shuman offers additional thoughts on the implications of following
Jesus' commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Thom
suggests that loving God with everything we have or are means loving those who have
nothing or are seen as nothing in the eyes of the world -- and that loving our neighbor as
ourselves means seeing ourselves in those who no one seems to recognize.
A Lucky Marriage
by Carlos Wilton
Luke 10:25-37
THE WORLD
You just might have missed what a special day this past Saturday was. July 7 is the birthday of Ringo Starr -- and baseball great Satchel Paige and painter Marc Chagall as well. It's Solomon Islands Independence Day. It's also the date the first woman -- Sandra Day O'Connor -- was nominated to the Supreme Court.
More than all these things, July 7, 2007, was special in quite another sense -- it was a date that comes around only once a century. This July 7th, you could write the date in triple sevens: 7/7/07.
Lots of people think 7 is a lucky number. When you combine that surfeit of sevens with a Saturday, do you know what you get? You get the luckiest day of the century for a couple to get married! For superstitious brides and grooms, last Saturday was brimful and overflowing with good luck.
That's if you believe in lucky numbers, of course.
Do you know who was the luckiest of all this July 7th? People in the catering business! According to the wedding website theknot.com, 38,000 couples got married this July 7th. That's more than three times as many couples as typically get married on that date. There are an awful lot of people out there, it seems, who pay attention to lucky numbers.
So, what does it take -- really -- to have a successful marriage, or to build strong family relationships of any kind? It's not lucky numbers, that's for sure. This week's scripture lesson contains words of Jesus that provide a much more reliable formula for marital success: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27).
THE WORD
Luke 10:25-37 stands out in many minds for the famous parable it contains: the story of the Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan has often been taken as a sort of morality fable: an "exemplary tale," as the scholars put it. "Go and do likewise," Jesus says at the end of it -- and from that ending we may be tempted to conclude that Jesus' purpose is to provide a sort of object lesson in how to behave toward others.
Yet there is much more to the parable of the Good Samaritan than that. To see it as merely an illustration, an example of ethical living, is to trivialize it. The first few words are absolutely crucial: "Just then a lawyer stood up to test him..."
A lawyer. Not a lawyer such as we know today -- a specialist in wills and estates, or bankruptcies, or criminal defense -- but an authority in religious law. Jesus tells this parable in response to the question posed in verse 25: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
It's far from an innocent question. This scholar of religious law is asking the question to trap Jesus in one of the interminable, divisive debates that characterized Judaism of that day.
Jesus brushes the question aside. He's too good a debater to allow himself to get trapped. He gives a textbook answer: pairing the Shema of ancient Israel (Deuteronomy 6:5) with the commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 18:5).
Then his questioner shows his true stripes: "And who is my neighbor?" Behind that question is volume upon volume of midrash, minute theological and legal wrangling over precisely where the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile ought to be constructed.
Jesus tells him the parable of the Good Samaritan: a story carefully constructed to overturn this legal scholar's smug self-confidence. Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh explain just how shocking the concept of the good Samaritan was:
In the Torah "map" of people, priests and Levites head the purity list... Samaritans are not even included. The priest and Levite would avoid contact with a naked and therefore presumably dead body. A priest could touch a corpse only to bury immediate family (cf. Ezekiel 44:25). The fact that the injured man had no clothes would make ascertaining his social status difficult.
A Samaritan traveling back and forth in Judean territory may have been a trader, a despised occupation. This is suggested by the fact that he possesses oil, wine, and considerable funds. Many traders were wealthy, having grown rich at the expense of others. They were therefore considered thieves. They frequented inns that were notoriously dirty and dangerous and run by persons whose public status was below even that of traders. Only people without family or social connections would ever risk staying at a public inn (see Oakman 1987).
Both the victim and the Samaritan were thus despised persons who would not have elicited initial sympathy from Jesus' peasant hearers. That sympathy would have gone to the bandits. They were frequently peasants who had lost their land to the elite lenders whom all peasants feared. The surprising twist in the story is thus the compassionate action of one stereotyped as a scurrilous thief.
-- Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress, 2003), pp. 270-271
CRAFTING THE SERMON
As preachers expounding on this text, we need to pull off a reversal that may seem just as shocking for people of our culture. We need to overturn the conventional wisdom that success in marriage is all about good luck: the good luck of finding the right person.
Most of our listeners will easily debunk the motivation of those superstitious engaged couples who a year or two ago rushed to book their reception hall for 7/7/07, purely because of that confluence of sevens. Sure, there are "good luck" traditions associated with weddings ("Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" comes to mind -- as does the old taboo about the bride and the groom not seeing each other on their wedding day, until the bride comes down the aisle). Most of our listeners find such traditions enjoyable, but wouldn't seriously consider them as determinative of a couple's future success.
That insistence on finding "the right person" is another matter. Somewhere out there -- so the conventional wisdom goes -- is that one person who's the perfect match for you. Find that person and you find bliss. Marry the wrong person and -- God help you -- you're going to have a tough road.
Yet how does that thinking jibe with Luke 10:27: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself"? That verse doesn't say a thing about loving "the right person." Luke 10:27 sounds like it's a blanket commandment to love God, and everyone else besides!
Which, of course, it is. Apply it to a married couple -- any married couple, or a person in any close family relationship -- and it immediately directs their attention more to God than to one another. The greater part of the commandment, in fact, is about loving God. Loving one's neighbor is almost an afterthought.
Something like 55-60% of divorces, according to Penn State sociologist Paul Amato, are what he calls "low-conflict divorces." These take place when one partner in a marriage simply wakes up one day and realizes that he or she wants out. There's no abuse or infidelity worth mentioning, no glaring personal betrayal -- just a soul-chilling weariness with day-to-day cares and conflicts, coupled with a lack of desire to do anything about it. The marriage has become bogged down in the sheer dailyness of life. As an Irish proverb puts it: "Marriages are all happy. It's having breakfast together that causes all the trouble."
Many of these distressed marriages, an increasing number of psychologists are saying, can be saved -- if only the partners will agree to work together in therapy, learning practical skills for communication and emotional support. Yes, marital therapy (if that should prove necessary) is a hard road, and it may lead to conflict at times; but that should come as no surprise to anyone. The leading indicator of divorce, the experts are telling us, is not conflict but habitual avoidance of conflict: an overwhelming despair and apathy that slowly saps the will to do the essential work of being married.
Loving one's neighbor on the other side of the bed is a decision, not an emotional state. The simple, seemingly paradoxical truth is that the way to find the sort of love everyone in a committed relationship truly wants is to practice loving behaviors.
We may not choose our feelings, but we do choose our behaviors. The trouble comes, in marriage, when one or both partners feel the quality of their relationship starting to slide, and begin practicing destructive behaviors. They withhold affection. They yell and intimidate. They pout. They storm out of the house. They play the blame game.
If even one partner is able, intentionally, to practice loving behaviors, the relationship can very often be transformed. Instead of criticizing, she listens. Instead of pouting, he learns to share his feelings. Instead of blaming, she accepts responsibility. Instead of taking his wife for granted, he practices gratitude. There's no guarantee, but it does happen more often than not: if you practice neighborly love in marriage, you will find it.
If you doubt the truth of this -- joining so many others today in believing that love simply happens at random, that it's something we "fall" into (or out of) -- then consider this statistic. Fully 60 percent of marriages throughout the world are arranged by persons other than the bride and groom (usually their parents). Men and women who hardly know each other are thrown together, usually for practical reasons, and the divorce rate for those marriages is no higher than it is in our society. In some places, it's actually lower. Even more remarkably, researchers have found that the same numbers apply to immigrant communities here in the U.S., where -- presumably -- divorce is readily available.
A very large percentage of husbands and wives in arranged marriages do somehow learn to love each other, over time. A man from India tried to explain to a foreign visitor how this works. Love, he said, is like a bowl of soup: "You Westerners put a hot bowl on a cold plate and slowly it grows cool. We Indians put a cold bowl on a hot plate and slowly it warms up."
East or West, success in marriage doesn't just happen. You have to work at loving God with everything that's in you, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
ANOTHER VIEW
by Thom M. Shuman
In this week's Gospel lesson, Jesus seems to make it all so easy. Want that life that will not only be good now, but will last forever? Just love God with everything you are and have, and love your neighbor as yourself. But as always, we have to look beyond the simple words from Jesus.
Because to love God with all that we have and are means, according to the witness of Scripture, and especially in the psalm for this week (Psalm 82), that we are going to have to be willing to love those people who have nothing and who are seen as having no value in our society. It has become too easy to say we love God with all our heart, while we harden them towards the homeless. It has become too easy to say we love God with all our soul, while we look at criminals as soulless human beings. It has become too easy to say we love God with all our strength, yet we won't lift a hand to lift up those who have fallen through the cracks of our world. It has become too easy for us to say we love God with all our mind, while we never give a thought to the fact that 3,000 children in Africa will die today (and every day) of malaria.
And it is all too easy to say we will love someone like Mr. Rogers in our neighborhood. But loving your neighbor as yourself means we need to be able to see ourselves in all those folks others refuse to recognize these days. The lesbian couple down the street who are raising two children. The single father who doesn't have a clue as to how his kids act while he is working two jobs a day. The immigrants from Africa who are trying to find English lessons, a job, a church. The 80-year-old next door who has just lost his wife after 60 years of marriage and can only growl when you say hello. The felon who just got released from prison and just wants to start life over, if possible.
The psalmist tells us that to love God, to love our neighbor, and to love ourselves is hard work. For we are to:
"Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked" (Psalm 82:3-4).
Can we love that way?
Some 20 years ago, I participated in an ecumenical worship service in a community in Virginia. It took place in an African-American church, the scripture text was the story of the Good Samaritan, and the preacher was the brand-new rabbi of the local synagogue. And what he did was to take to heart Jesus' radical words that the neighbor we should look for is someone we least expect -- for this Jewish rabbi proclaimed the idea that if Jesus was telling the story that day, the injured man would have been an Israeli soldier, and the Good Samaritan would have been a Palestinian refugee.
Needless to say, such a bold proclamation was costly -- it cost the rabbi his position at the synagogue. But such love -- of God, of neighbor, of self -- will indeed cost us something and will give us everything.
ILLUSTRATIONS
According to a July 7 article in the Asbury Park Press, seven couples were married, or renewed their vows that day, at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson, New Jersey. The ceremonies were, in the words of the article, "part of Thrilled Ever After: A Wedding to Remember, taking advantage of today's fortuitous date, 07/07/07, which many consider to be the luckiest ever."
The article continues: "The seven couples were married on six of the park's 13 roller coasters. One got married on Dare Devil Dive. After the pronouncement of husband and wife, the harnessed occupants were winched to the top and then released, sending them swinging in a wide and high arc. Talk about taking the plunge."
Mayor Mark Seda, who performed both a wedding and a vow renewal, remarked, "It works out for everyone. They get a wedding and a roller coaster ride afterward."
Following a breakfast buffet with Porky and Petunia Pig and Bugs Bunny, the couples participated in a Happily Ever After parade through the park.
As Dave Barry would say, "We are not making this up."
***
Some wedding superstitions, from a website dedicated to that topic
(http://www.weddings.co.uk/info/tradsupe.htm):
"Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue and a Silver Sixpence in her Shoe" -- The rhyme originated in Victorian times although some of customs referred in it are much older.
The "something old" represents the couple's friends who will hopefully remain close during the marriage. Traditionally this was an old garter which was given to the bride by a happily married woman in the hope that her happiness in marriage would be passed on to the new bride.
"Something new" symbolizes the newlyweds' happy and prosperous future.
The "something borrowed" is often lent by the bride's family and is an item much valued by the family. The bride must return the item to ensure good luck.
The custom of the bride wearing "something blue" originated in ancient Israel, where the bride wore a blue ribbon in her hair to represent fidelity.
The placing of a silver sixpence in the bride's shoe was to ensure wealth in the couple's married life. Today some brides substitute a penny in their shoe during the ceremony, as silver sixpences are less common.
Auspicious Months for Marriage -- The following rhyme expresses an old belief that certain months are better for weddings than others:
"Married when the year is new, he'll be loving, kind, and true.
When February birds do mate, You wed nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow, joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can, Joy for Maiden and for Man.
Marry in the month of May, and you'll surely rue the day.
Marry when June roses grow, over land and sea you'll go.
Those who in July do wed, must labor for their daily bread.
Whoever wed in August be, many a change is sure to see.
Marry in September's shrine, your living will be rich and fine.
If in October you do marry, love will come but riches tarry.
If you wed in bleak November, only joys will come, remember.
When December snows fall fast, marry and true love will last."
Because of the bleak outlook for May weddings, "In Pagan times the start of summer was when the festival of Beltane was celebrated with outdoor orgies. This was therefore thought to be an unsuitable time to start married life. In Roman times the Feast of the Dead and the festival of the goddess of chastity both occurred in May. The advice was taken more seriously in Victorian times than it is today. In most Churches the end of April was a busy time for weddings as couples wanted to avoid being married in May. Queen Victoria is thought to have forbidden her children from marrying in May."
Carried Over the Threshold -- "It is traditional for the groom to carry the bride over the threshold when they enter for the first time. The reason for this is uncertain. One explanation is that the bride will be visited by bad luck if she falls when entering. An alternative is that the bride will be unlucky if she steps into the new home with the left foot first. The bride can avoid both mishaps by being carried."
***
From an article in the June 7, 2007, issue of Time magazine on the rush to arrange weddings for 7/7/07
(http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1630320,00.html):
"Brides-to-be are ordering everything from casino-style receptions to dice-motif napkins and triple-seven lottery tickets as party favors for guests. They're serving up seven-course meals and choosing seven kinds of flowers for their bouquets. One wedding planner reserved a hotel room with seven on the door and requested a limo with a 777 license plate....
" 'This is the busiest day Las Vegas has ever seen,' says Whitney Lloyd, director of marketing for the Chapel of the Flowers. 'Everyone is panicked to get this day, thinking it will be a jump start for their marriage.'...
"Flamingo Las Vegas will host a record 77 weddings and so will the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino (three times their normal number), while the Mandalay Beach at Mandalay Bay is offering a full-scale wedding package for $1077.07. The Ritz Carlton in Lake Las Vegas has its 'Seven Ways of Wonderment' package that includes a deluxe room, seven hours of spa treatments for two, a seven-course meal, and a tour of Hoover Dam, one of the Seven Wonders -- for $7,707."
***
While it is common for couples to ask that 1 Corinthians 13 be read at their wedding, it is too quickly forgotten as a set of instructions for the marriage itself. In an age when people can wax romantic about love but fail to do the practical things that make for love, it is helpful to apply 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 to our relationships. Think about asking these questions about how you are relating to each other.
Are we patient and kind to each other? Are we able to resist being envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude in our interactions? Is each of us able to not insist on our own way? Can we refrain from being irritable or resentful? Do we rejoice in the truth? Through it all are we able to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things? If we are honest, the answer will at least be "not always" -- but it does give us a vision towards which we can all be committed. It is the way God loves us and the way we are invited to love each other.
***
Ephesians 5:22 is often misunderstood as instructions for a marriage because it is not read in the context of 5:21, which says: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." It is only in that context that verse 22 goes on to say, "Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord." Even then, most people fail to recognize the impact of that last phrase, "as you are to the Lord." Think of the impact of a wife being willing to be subject to a person who loves them so much that they are willing to lay down their life for them. This is made clear in verse 25, where husbands are admonished to "love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Just because Ephesians never reverses that and asks wives to love their husbands, I've never heard it said that wives don't also need to love their husbands.
***
William Sloane Coffin reminds us of the following about love: "Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself!" (Credo, p. 24)
He further suggests: "Love, and you are a success whether or not the world thinks so. The highest purpose of Christianity -- which is primarily a way of life, not a system of belief -- is to love one another. And the first fruit of love is joy, the joy that represents meaning and fulfillment." (Credo, p. 25)
***
If you're looking for numbers to help ensure a happy marriage, try the number 3 (three) -- because the best marriage is a marriage that is a threefold relationship between a man, a woman, and the Lord of All Creation.
Ecclesiastes 4:12 tells us: "A threefold cord is not quickly broken."
Like a strong cable that supports a great suspension bridge through even the most powerful, devastating tornados and hurricanes, this very special threefold cord can sustain a marriage through even the worst storms and turbulences of life, carrying the weight of whatever demands, whatever loads, are placed upon it.
***
In this week's Gospel lesson we hear the familiar story of the Good Samaritan, and we remember that the Lord is calling us to care about those around us -- and for those around us, as well as for those on even the far side of the globe -- who are in great need, as the Good Samaritan did.
Our Lord calls us to care for them as if they're our favorite neighbors. He even calls us to care for them as we would for one of our own family -- which they are, since we're all children of our one Heavenly Father.
And Jesus says that inasmuch as we have done a good thing for even the smallest, weakest person -- the person the rest of society might overlook -- we have actually done it for him (Matthew 25:40).
Mother Teresa taught us by her life, by her whole way of living, that we need to always see the face of Jesus in the face of our needy neighbor -- a neighbor being whoever needs our help.
***
Regarding the story of the Good Samaritan, we usually assume that Jesus is calling us to be the Good Samaritan to those around us who are in great need, and indeed he is.
But might he also be telling us a whole different thing? Might he also be telling us that God, his Father, is the Good Samaritan? And that we are the person, the person who's been beaten and left beside the road, battered and broken, left to die?
That you and I are the needy ones, and that if the Lord God hadn't stooped down to rescue us we'd be "goners"? And that therefore we're to be the Good Samaritan to others?
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by Thom M. Shuman
Call to Worship
Leader: Blessed is God, who created us and loves us beyond measure.
People: Blessed is God, who calls us to stop measuring out our love.
Leader: Blessed is God, who speaks and tells us stories about ourselves.
People: Blessed is God, who reveals to us who we are and who we could be.
Leader: Blessed is God, whose compassion is poured out on every single person.
People: Blessed is God, who gives us compassion to share with every single person,
even people we do not know or care about.
Prayer of the Day (and Our Lord's Prayer)
Eternal God, Rescuer of the weak:
given every reason to judge us, you seek justice for us.
You stand with the poor in the ditches where we have discarded them.
You plant your Word of truth in the One who gives us unexpected answers.
Jesus Christ, Word of Truth:
you will not pass us by, but stoop to lift us up and carry us out of our pain.
You love the faithful enough to tell us stories which will shatter our complacency
and send us forth to carry mercy to others.
Holy Spirit, Giver of mercy:
you carry hope in your mouth and breathe it into our souls.
You take us by the hand, leading us out of the ditches we have dug for ourselves
into the brightly lit streets of the kingdom.
You pray for us in every moment, especially when we are unable to pray for ourselves.
God in Community, Holy in One,
hear us as we pray as Jesus taught us, saying,
Our Father . . .
Call to Reconciliation
Are you in love with God?
Do you show it in your words, your thoughts, your actions?
Are you in love with your neighbor?
Do they know this by your presence, your grace, your friendship?
Or are you so obsessed with yourself that you have no time, no room, no pity for others,
or for God?
Let us confess the limits we place on our love,
so we might be filled with God's limitless mercy.
(Unison) Prayer of Confession
They may not be beaten down or lying by the road,
but there are people we pass by, Watching God.
Some are family and friends:
we take so much for granted
we cannot see how we have stripped them of our love and compassion.
Others are neighbors:
who have been left half-dead by crushing work;
who have fallen into the hands of despair;
who have been abandoned by all those who walked on by them.
Many are strangers, people we don't know, but quickly judge:
they are weak,
or poor,
or the enemy,
or because they remind us of who we once were, or could become.
Rescue us from the power of our sins, Righteous One of all generations.
Pour out your justice on us, rather than your judgment,
that we would be moved with pity,
and spurred to action;
that we would hear of the hope that is ours,
and share it with our sisters and brothers;
that we would shower mercy on all we meet,
even as we have received forgiveness for our sins through Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Savior.
(silent prayers may be offered)
Assurance of Pardon
Leader: Children of the Most High:
you are forgiven and brought into the kingdom.
Be filled with spiritual wisdom,
lead lives worthy of your inheritance,
bear fruit in all you say and do and think.
People: God has rescued us and redeemed us from our sins,
setting aside judgment to shower us with mercy.
We will go and do likewise.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Love Your Neighbor
Luke 10:25-37
Object: pictures of people from other countries in native dress
In the Gospel today we heard the parable of the "Good Samaritan." We heard about how this Samaritan man helped another man who had been beaten and robbed and left in a ditch. What do you think would have happened to that man if nobody had helped him? (Let them answer. They will probably say that he would have died, or you can lead them to this response.) That's right. The man would have died without the help of this Samaritan.
Jesus was telling this story to Jews, and the Jews didn't like Samaritans at all. They would not talk with them or have anything to do with them. So do you think these Jews would be surprised to hear how this Samaritan helped a Jewish man who was in trouble? (Let them answer.)
Yes, this story really surprised them, but Jesus was trying to tell them that everyone we meet in this world is a neighbor, and God wants us to love our neighbors.
I brought with me today some pictures of people that I want to show you. Look at this picture. (Show one of the pictures.) Now I ask you, does anybody in your neighborhood dress like that? (Let them answer.) Or how about like this? (Show more pictures and let them answer.) No, we don't dress like that and we don't even speak the same language these people do, but are these people our neighbors? (Let them answer.) Yes, all these people are our neighbors because God wants us to love all the people in the world and help them when we can.
So, children, when God tells us that we should love our neighbors, what is He saying to us? (Let them answer.) Yes, He is telling us that we need to love all the people of the world no matter how different they are, no matter what language they speak or what color their skin is. All the people of the world are our neighbors, and we should be willing to help them whenever we can, just as the Samaritan helped the Jewish man.
Prayer: Dear God: Help us to understand that everyone is our neighbor and that You want us to love all the people of this world and do whatever we can to help them. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, July 15, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
A Lucky Marriage
by Carlos Wilton
Luke 10:25-37
THE WORLD
You just might have missed what a special day this past Saturday was. July 7 is the birthday of Ringo Starr -- and baseball great Satchel Paige and painter Marc Chagall as well. It's Solomon Islands Independence Day. It's also the date the first woman -- Sandra Day O'Connor -- was nominated to the Supreme Court.
More than all these things, July 7, 2007, was special in quite another sense -- it was a date that comes around only once a century. This July 7th, you could write the date in triple sevens: 7/7/07.
Lots of people think 7 is a lucky number. When you combine that surfeit of sevens with a Saturday, do you know what you get? You get the luckiest day of the century for a couple to get married! For superstitious brides and grooms, last Saturday was brimful and overflowing with good luck.
That's if you believe in lucky numbers, of course.
Do you know who was the luckiest of all this July 7th? People in the catering business! According to the wedding website theknot.com, 38,000 couples got married this July 7th. That's more than three times as many couples as typically get married on that date. There are an awful lot of people out there, it seems, who pay attention to lucky numbers.
So, what does it take -- really -- to have a successful marriage, or to build strong family relationships of any kind? It's not lucky numbers, that's for sure. This week's scripture lesson contains words of Jesus that provide a much more reliable formula for marital success: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27).
THE WORD
Luke 10:25-37 stands out in many minds for the famous parable it contains: the story of the Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan has often been taken as a sort of morality fable: an "exemplary tale," as the scholars put it. "Go and do likewise," Jesus says at the end of it -- and from that ending we may be tempted to conclude that Jesus' purpose is to provide a sort of object lesson in how to behave toward others.
Yet there is much more to the parable of the Good Samaritan than that. To see it as merely an illustration, an example of ethical living, is to trivialize it. The first few words are absolutely crucial: "Just then a lawyer stood up to test him..."
A lawyer. Not a lawyer such as we know today -- a specialist in wills and estates, or bankruptcies, or criminal defense -- but an authority in religious law. Jesus tells this parable in response to the question posed in verse 25: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
It's far from an innocent question. This scholar of religious law is asking the question to trap Jesus in one of the interminable, divisive debates that characterized Judaism of that day.
Jesus brushes the question aside. He's too good a debater to allow himself to get trapped. He gives a textbook answer: pairing the Shema of ancient Israel (Deuteronomy 6:5) with the commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 18:5).
Then his questioner shows his true stripes: "And who is my neighbor?" Behind that question is volume upon volume of midrash, minute theological and legal wrangling over precisely where the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile ought to be constructed.
Jesus tells him the parable of the Good Samaritan: a story carefully constructed to overturn this legal scholar's smug self-confidence. Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh explain just how shocking the concept of the good Samaritan was:
In the Torah "map" of people, priests and Levites head the purity list... Samaritans are not even included. The priest and Levite would avoid contact with a naked and therefore presumably dead body. A priest could touch a corpse only to bury immediate family (cf. Ezekiel 44:25). The fact that the injured man had no clothes would make ascertaining his social status difficult.
A Samaritan traveling back and forth in Judean territory may have been a trader, a despised occupation. This is suggested by the fact that he possesses oil, wine, and considerable funds. Many traders were wealthy, having grown rich at the expense of others. They were therefore considered thieves. They frequented inns that were notoriously dirty and dangerous and run by persons whose public status was below even that of traders. Only people without family or social connections would ever risk staying at a public inn (see Oakman 1987).
Both the victim and the Samaritan were thus despised persons who would not have elicited initial sympathy from Jesus' peasant hearers. That sympathy would have gone to the bandits. They were frequently peasants who had lost their land to the elite lenders whom all peasants feared. The surprising twist in the story is thus the compassionate action of one stereotyped as a scurrilous thief.
-- Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress, 2003), pp. 270-271
CRAFTING THE SERMON
As preachers expounding on this text, we need to pull off a reversal that may seem just as shocking for people of our culture. We need to overturn the conventional wisdom that success in marriage is all about good luck: the good luck of finding the right person.
Most of our listeners will easily debunk the motivation of those superstitious engaged couples who a year or two ago rushed to book their reception hall for 7/7/07, purely because of that confluence of sevens. Sure, there are "good luck" traditions associated with weddings ("Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" comes to mind -- as does the old taboo about the bride and the groom not seeing each other on their wedding day, until the bride comes down the aisle). Most of our listeners find such traditions enjoyable, but wouldn't seriously consider them as determinative of a couple's future success.
That insistence on finding "the right person" is another matter. Somewhere out there -- so the conventional wisdom goes -- is that one person who's the perfect match for you. Find that person and you find bliss. Marry the wrong person and -- God help you -- you're going to have a tough road.
Yet how does that thinking jibe with Luke 10:27: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself"? That verse doesn't say a thing about loving "the right person." Luke 10:27 sounds like it's a blanket commandment to love God, and everyone else besides!
Which, of course, it is. Apply it to a married couple -- any married couple, or a person in any close family relationship -- and it immediately directs their attention more to God than to one another. The greater part of the commandment, in fact, is about loving God. Loving one's neighbor is almost an afterthought.
Something like 55-60% of divorces, according to Penn State sociologist Paul Amato, are what he calls "low-conflict divorces." These take place when one partner in a marriage simply wakes up one day and realizes that he or she wants out. There's no abuse or infidelity worth mentioning, no glaring personal betrayal -- just a soul-chilling weariness with day-to-day cares and conflicts, coupled with a lack of desire to do anything about it. The marriage has become bogged down in the sheer dailyness of life. As an Irish proverb puts it: "Marriages are all happy. It's having breakfast together that causes all the trouble."
Many of these distressed marriages, an increasing number of psychologists are saying, can be saved -- if only the partners will agree to work together in therapy, learning practical skills for communication and emotional support. Yes, marital therapy (if that should prove necessary) is a hard road, and it may lead to conflict at times; but that should come as no surprise to anyone. The leading indicator of divorce, the experts are telling us, is not conflict but habitual avoidance of conflict: an overwhelming despair and apathy that slowly saps the will to do the essential work of being married.
Loving one's neighbor on the other side of the bed is a decision, not an emotional state. The simple, seemingly paradoxical truth is that the way to find the sort of love everyone in a committed relationship truly wants is to practice loving behaviors.
We may not choose our feelings, but we do choose our behaviors. The trouble comes, in marriage, when one or both partners feel the quality of their relationship starting to slide, and begin practicing destructive behaviors. They withhold affection. They yell and intimidate. They pout. They storm out of the house. They play the blame game.
If even one partner is able, intentionally, to practice loving behaviors, the relationship can very often be transformed. Instead of criticizing, she listens. Instead of pouting, he learns to share his feelings. Instead of blaming, she accepts responsibility. Instead of taking his wife for granted, he practices gratitude. There's no guarantee, but it does happen more often than not: if you practice neighborly love in marriage, you will find it.
If you doubt the truth of this -- joining so many others today in believing that love simply happens at random, that it's something we "fall" into (or out of) -- then consider this statistic. Fully 60 percent of marriages throughout the world are arranged by persons other than the bride and groom (usually their parents). Men and women who hardly know each other are thrown together, usually for practical reasons, and the divorce rate for those marriages is no higher than it is in our society. In some places, it's actually lower. Even more remarkably, researchers have found that the same numbers apply to immigrant communities here in the U.S., where -- presumably -- divorce is readily available.
A very large percentage of husbands and wives in arranged marriages do somehow learn to love each other, over time. A man from India tried to explain to a foreign visitor how this works. Love, he said, is like a bowl of soup: "You Westerners put a hot bowl on a cold plate and slowly it grows cool. We Indians put a cold bowl on a hot plate and slowly it warms up."
East or West, success in marriage doesn't just happen. You have to work at loving God with everything that's in you, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
ANOTHER VIEW
by Thom M. Shuman
In this week's Gospel lesson, Jesus seems to make it all so easy. Want that life that will not only be good now, but will last forever? Just love God with everything you are and have, and love your neighbor as yourself. But as always, we have to look beyond the simple words from Jesus.
Because to love God with all that we have and are means, according to the witness of Scripture, and especially in the psalm for this week (Psalm 82), that we are going to have to be willing to love those people who have nothing and who are seen as having no value in our society. It has become too easy to say we love God with all our heart, while we harden them towards the homeless. It has become too easy to say we love God with all our soul, while we look at criminals as soulless human beings. It has become too easy to say we love God with all our strength, yet we won't lift a hand to lift up those who have fallen through the cracks of our world. It has become too easy for us to say we love God with all our mind, while we never give a thought to the fact that 3,000 children in Africa will die today (and every day) of malaria.
And it is all too easy to say we will love someone like Mr. Rogers in our neighborhood. But loving your neighbor as yourself means we need to be able to see ourselves in all those folks others refuse to recognize these days. The lesbian couple down the street who are raising two children. The single father who doesn't have a clue as to how his kids act while he is working two jobs a day. The immigrants from Africa who are trying to find English lessons, a job, a church. The 80-year-old next door who has just lost his wife after 60 years of marriage and can only growl when you say hello. The felon who just got released from prison and just wants to start life over, if possible.
The psalmist tells us that to love God, to love our neighbor, and to love ourselves is hard work. For we are to:
"Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked" (Psalm 82:3-4).
Can we love that way?
Some 20 years ago, I participated in an ecumenical worship service in a community in Virginia. It took place in an African-American church, the scripture text was the story of the Good Samaritan, and the preacher was the brand-new rabbi of the local synagogue. And what he did was to take to heart Jesus' radical words that the neighbor we should look for is someone we least expect -- for this Jewish rabbi proclaimed the idea that if Jesus was telling the story that day, the injured man would have been an Israeli soldier, and the Good Samaritan would have been a Palestinian refugee.
Needless to say, such a bold proclamation was costly -- it cost the rabbi his position at the synagogue. But such love -- of God, of neighbor, of self -- will indeed cost us something and will give us everything.
ILLUSTRATIONS
According to a July 7 article in the Asbury Park Press, seven couples were married, or renewed their vows that day, at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson, New Jersey. The ceremonies were, in the words of the article, "part of Thrilled Ever After: A Wedding to Remember, taking advantage of today's fortuitous date, 07/07/07, which many consider to be the luckiest ever."
The article continues: "The seven couples were married on six of the park's 13 roller coasters. One got married on Dare Devil Dive. After the pronouncement of husband and wife, the harnessed occupants were winched to the top and then released, sending them swinging in a wide and high arc. Talk about taking the plunge."
Mayor Mark Seda, who performed both a wedding and a vow renewal, remarked, "It works out for everyone. They get a wedding and a roller coaster ride afterward."
Following a breakfast buffet with Porky and Petunia Pig and Bugs Bunny, the couples participated in a Happily Ever After parade through the park.
As Dave Barry would say, "We are not making this up."
***
Some wedding superstitions, from a website dedicated to that topic
(http://www.weddings.co.uk/info/tradsupe.htm):
"Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue and a Silver Sixpence in her Shoe" -- The rhyme originated in Victorian times although some of customs referred in it are much older.
The "something old" represents the couple's friends who will hopefully remain close during the marriage. Traditionally this was an old garter which was given to the bride by a happily married woman in the hope that her happiness in marriage would be passed on to the new bride.
"Something new" symbolizes the newlyweds' happy and prosperous future.
The "something borrowed" is often lent by the bride's family and is an item much valued by the family. The bride must return the item to ensure good luck.
The custom of the bride wearing "something blue" originated in ancient Israel, where the bride wore a blue ribbon in her hair to represent fidelity.
The placing of a silver sixpence in the bride's shoe was to ensure wealth in the couple's married life. Today some brides substitute a penny in their shoe during the ceremony, as silver sixpences are less common.
Auspicious Months for Marriage -- The following rhyme expresses an old belief that certain months are better for weddings than others:
"Married when the year is new, he'll be loving, kind, and true.
When February birds do mate, You wed nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow, joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can, Joy for Maiden and for Man.
Marry in the month of May, and you'll surely rue the day.
Marry when June roses grow, over land and sea you'll go.
Those who in July do wed, must labor for their daily bread.
Whoever wed in August be, many a change is sure to see.
Marry in September's shrine, your living will be rich and fine.
If in October you do marry, love will come but riches tarry.
If you wed in bleak November, only joys will come, remember.
When December snows fall fast, marry and true love will last."
Because of the bleak outlook for May weddings, "In Pagan times the start of summer was when the festival of Beltane was celebrated with outdoor orgies. This was therefore thought to be an unsuitable time to start married life. In Roman times the Feast of the Dead and the festival of the goddess of chastity both occurred in May. The advice was taken more seriously in Victorian times than it is today. In most Churches the end of April was a busy time for weddings as couples wanted to avoid being married in May. Queen Victoria is thought to have forbidden her children from marrying in May."
Carried Over the Threshold -- "It is traditional for the groom to carry the bride over the threshold when they enter for the first time. The reason for this is uncertain. One explanation is that the bride will be visited by bad luck if she falls when entering. An alternative is that the bride will be unlucky if she steps into the new home with the left foot first. The bride can avoid both mishaps by being carried."
***
From an article in the June 7, 2007, issue of Time magazine on the rush to arrange weddings for 7/7/07
(http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1630320,00.html):
"Brides-to-be are ordering everything from casino-style receptions to dice-motif napkins and triple-seven lottery tickets as party favors for guests. They're serving up seven-course meals and choosing seven kinds of flowers for their bouquets. One wedding planner reserved a hotel room with seven on the door and requested a limo with a 777 license plate....
" 'This is the busiest day Las Vegas has ever seen,' says Whitney Lloyd, director of marketing for the Chapel of the Flowers. 'Everyone is panicked to get this day, thinking it will be a jump start for their marriage.'...
"Flamingo Las Vegas will host a record 77 weddings and so will the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino (three times their normal number), while the Mandalay Beach at Mandalay Bay is offering a full-scale wedding package for $1077.07. The Ritz Carlton in Lake Las Vegas has its 'Seven Ways of Wonderment' package that includes a deluxe room, seven hours of spa treatments for two, a seven-course meal, and a tour of Hoover Dam, one of the Seven Wonders -- for $7,707."
***
While it is common for couples to ask that 1 Corinthians 13 be read at their wedding, it is too quickly forgotten as a set of instructions for the marriage itself. In an age when people can wax romantic about love but fail to do the practical things that make for love, it is helpful to apply 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 to our relationships. Think about asking these questions about how you are relating to each other.
Are we patient and kind to each other? Are we able to resist being envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude in our interactions? Is each of us able to not insist on our own way? Can we refrain from being irritable or resentful? Do we rejoice in the truth? Through it all are we able to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things? If we are honest, the answer will at least be "not always" -- but it does give us a vision towards which we can all be committed. It is the way God loves us and the way we are invited to love each other.
***
Ephesians 5:22 is often misunderstood as instructions for a marriage because it is not read in the context of 5:21, which says: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." It is only in that context that verse 22 goes on to say, "Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord." Even then, most people fail to recognize the impact of that last phrase, "as you are to the Lord." Think of the impact of a wife being willing to be subject to a person who loves them so much that they are willing to lay down their life for them. This is made clear in verse 25, where husbands are admonished to "love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Just because Ephesians never reverses that and asks wives to love their husbands, I've never heard it said that wives don't also need to love their husbands.
***
William Sloane Coffin reminds us of the following about love: "Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself!" (Credo, p. 24)
He further suggests: "Love, and you are a success whether or not the world thinks so. The highest purpose of Christianity -- which is primarily a way of life, not a system of belief -- is to love one another. And the first fruit of love is joy, the joy that represents meaning and fulfillment." (Credo, p. 25)
***
If you're looking for numbers to help ensure a happy marriage, try the number 3 (three) -- because the best marriage is a marriage that is a threefold relationship between a man, a woman, and the Lord of All Creation.
Ecclesiastes 4:12 tells us: "A threefold cord is not quickly broken."
Like a strong cable that supports a great suspension bridge through even the most powerful, devastating tornados and hurricanes, this very special threefold cord can sustain a marriage through even the worst storms and turbulences of life, carrying the weight of whatever demands, whatever loads, are placed upon it.
***
In this week's Gospel lesson we hear the familiar story of the Good Samaritan, and we remember that the Lord is calling us to care about those around us -- and for those around us, as well as for those on even the far side of the globe -- who are in great need, as the Good Samaritan did.
Our Lord calls us to care for them as if they're our favorite neighbors. He even calls us to care for them as we would for one of our own family -- which they are, since we're all children of our one Heavenly Father.
And Jesus says that inasmuch as we have done a good thing for even the smallest, weakest person -- the person the rest of society might overlook -- we have actually done it for him (Matthew 25:40).
Mother Teresa taught us by her life, by her whole way of living, that we need to always see the face of Jesus in the face of our needy neighbor -- a neighbor being whoever needs our help.
***
Regarding the story of the Good Samaritan, we usually assume that Jesus is calling us to be the Good Samaritan to those around us who are in great need, and indeed he is.
But might he also be telling us a whole different thing? Might he also be telling us that God, his Father, is the Good Samaritan? And that we are the person, the person who's been beaten and left beside the road, battered and broken, left to die?
That you and I are the needy ones, and that if the Lord God hadn't stooped down to rescue us we'd be "goners"? And that therefore we're to be the Good Samaritan to others?
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by Thom M. Shuman
Call to Worship
Leader: Blessed is God, who created us and loves us beyond measure.
People: Blessed is God, who calls us to stop measuring out our love.
Leader: Blessed is God, who speaks and tells us stories about ourselves.
People: Blessed is God, who reveals to us who we are and who we could be.
Leader: Blessed is God, whose compassion is poured out on every single person.
People: Blessed is God, who gives us compassion to share with every single person,
even people we do not know or care about.
Prayer of the Day (and Our Lord's Prayer)
Eternal God, Rescuer of the weak:
given every reason to judge us, you seek justice for us.
You stand with the poor in the ditches where we have discarded them.
You plant your Word of truth in the One who gives us unexpected answers.
Jesus Christ, Word of Truth:
you will not pass us by, but stoop to lift us up and carry us out of our pain.
You love the faithful enough to tell us stories which will shatter our complacency
and send us forth to carry mercy to others.
Holy Spirit, Giver of mercy:
you carry hope in your mouth and breathe it into our souls.
You take us by the hand, leading us out of the ditches we have dug for ourselves
into the brightly lit streets of the kingdom.
You pray for us in every moment, especially when we are unable to pray for ourselves.
God in Community, Holy in One,
hear us as we pray as Jesus taught us, saying,
Our Father . . .
Call to Reconciliation
Are you in love with God?
Do you show it in your words, your thoughts, your actions?
Are you in love with your neighbor?
Do they know this by your presence, your grace, your friendship?
Or are you so obsessed with yourself that you have no time, no room, no pity for others,
or for God?
Let us confess the limits we place on our love,
so we might be filled with God's limitless mercy.
(Unison) Prayer of Confession
They may not be beaten down or lying by the road,
but there are people we pass by, Watching God.
Some are family and friends:
we take so much for granted
we cannot see how we have stripped them of our love and compassion.
Others are neighbors:
who have been left half-dead by crushing work;
who have fallen into the hands of despair;
who have been abandoned by all those who walked on by them.
Many are strangers, people we don't know, but quickly judge:
they are weak,
or poor,
or the enemy,
or because they remind us of who we once were, or could become.
Rescue us from the power of our sins, Righteous One of all generations.
Pour out your justice on us, rather than your judgment,
that we would be moved with pity,
and spurred to action;
that we would hear of the hope that is ours,
and share it with our sisters and brothers;
that we would shower mercy on all we meet,
even as we have received forgiveness for our sins through Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Savior.
(silent prayers may be offered)
Assurance of Pardon
Leader: Children of the Most High:
you are forgiven and brought into the kingdom.
Be filled with spiritual wisdom,
lead lives worthy of your inheritance,
bear fruit in all you say and do and think.
People: God has rescued us and redeemed us from our sins,
setting aside judgment to shower us with mercy.
We will go and do likewise.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Love Your Neighbor
Luke 10:25-37
Object: pictures of people from other countries in native dress
In the Gospel today we heard the parable of the "Good Samaritan." We heard about how this Samaritan man helped another man who had been beaten and robbed and left in a ditch. What do you think would have happened to that man if nobody had helped him? (Let them answer. They will probably say that he would have died, or you can lead them to this response.) That's right. The man would have died without the help of this Samaritan.
Jesus was telling this story to Jews, and the Jews didn't like Samaritans at all. They would not talk with them or have anything to do with them. So do you think these Jews would be surprised to hear how this Samaritan helped a Jewish man who was in trouble? (Let them answer.)
Yes, this story really surprised them, but Jesus was trying to tell them that everyone we meet in this world is a neighbor, and God wants us to love our neighbors.
I brought with me today some pictures of people that I want to show you. Look at this picture. (Show one of the pictures.) Now I ask you, does anybody in your neighborhood dress like that? (Let them answer.) Or how about like this? (Show more pictures and let them answer.) No, we don't dress like that and we don't even speak the same language these people do, but are these people our neighbors? (Let them answer.) Yes, all these people are our neighbors because God wants us to love all the people in the world and help them when we can.
So, children, when God tells us that we should love our neighbors, what is He saying to us? (Let them answer.) Yes, He is telling us that we need to love all the people of the world no matter how different they are, no matter what language they speak or what color their skin is. All the people of the world are our neighbors, and we should be willing to help them whenever we can, just as the Samaritan helped the Jewish man.
Prayer: Dear God: Help us to understand that everyone is our neighbor and that You want us to love all the people of this world and do whatever we can to help them. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, July 15, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
