Sermon for Sept 16, 2018

Rev. George Miller
Sept 16, 2018
Genesis 12:1-9

Love.
L-O-V-E.
Amor……..

Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Marriage counselors will tell you that there are many different languages of love.

There is the love language of Touch, which starts when we are a baby, and we are picked up, held, and fed.

As consenting adults, this language can be expressed through kisses, holding hands, and cuddling on the couch.

Acts of Service is another love language in which we do simple things like take out the garbage, run out to the store for their favorite ice cream, put air in their tires and fill the tank with gas.

There are Words of Affirmation, especially said in front of others, in which one says “Thanks”, or a text that says “You’re the best,” or a card of appreciation. Supposedly men thrive on Words of Affirmation, and the more they hear it, the more they want to do.

Then there’s the love language of Quality Time, which women are said to thrive on. Time in which we give someone our undivided attention, turn off the TV, put the newspaper down, and look into their eyes as they enter the room; time to talk, share their day, and to just be.

These are just 4 ways to say to a person “I love you.”

Love.

We’ve spent so much time over the past 40 years discussing love, especially as it pertains to marriage, divorce, cohabitation, who has and doesn’t have the right to legally marry, and just what is the traditional definition of marriage.

What makes this all even more interesting is that historically, marrying someone for love is a new phenomenon. In fact, for all of human history, including today, polygamy is the world’s most enduring, and traditional form of marriage.

It’s true. For thousands of years love was the last reason anyone got married. Spouses were workmates who struggled together to produce food, clothing and shelter.

Over the centuries people got married for many reasons- political alliances, to raise capital, and to build up the workforce by having babies.

In ancient Greece you did not get married for love, you got married for inheritance. In Rome marriage was a political move. In Europe, leaders acquired wives as a war strategy.

For eons love was not the point of marriage; getting families together, having children and producing heirs were.

The idea that couples wed for love was looked down upon, seen as anti-social, and, in France, a “derangement of the mind.”

Believe it or not, the idea of marrying for love did not begin until the 18th century, due mainly to the French and American Revolutions.

These wars promoted a person’s “right to personal happiness.” Then, as the Industrial Revolution swept across America and Europe, more and more people could meet their needs without getting married.

Less people lived on farms and were attached to the land, so they didn’t need as many children to do chores, and spouses didn’t have to be work-mates

Women didn’t have to depend on their parents for putting up a dowry; men didn’t have to wait for their inheritance.

Around 1850 for the 1st time ever, personal fulfillment became the primary goal of marriage and spouses looked for a soul-mate instead of a work-mate.

Now, studies are showing that contemporary families are falling apart faster and faster, and it’s not because women are in the work force or gays are getting married.

It’s because young lovers don’t have the skills, will and commitment to do things like clean up after the wife is sick, or listen to the husband’s endless fascination with football, stay by her side when she’s fired, or when he has Alzheimer’s.

Many couples today don’t know how to turn the initial spark of love into a deeper burning that lasts through all situations.

So, by now you’re probably asking: Why are we having this long history lesson on love and marriage?

Because today’s story is about Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of our faith.

Scripture tells us that Abraham was 75 when God called him to “Go!”, while chapter 11 vs. 30 tells us that his wife Sarah was barren, with no children.

We hear this information and wonder if he was really that old, but do we take the time to realize what it means to say they had no children?

Think of all that was just shared with you. Think of the culture and time they lived in.

The sole point of Abraham and Sarah being married was so that they could have children who could take care of the land, put food on their table, and carry on their name.

To not have any children at that time and in that culture would have been pointless, a shame, and an embarrassment.

Yet as old as Abraham was, he and his wife Sarah had no kids to their name.

Now, they would have had options.

Abraham and Sarah could have adopted.

He could’ve participated in polygyny, which is marrying someone of the same social status of Sarah, or polycoity, which is marrying a woman of a lower status in order to produce an heir.

In some cultures Sarah could have had sex with Abraham’s brother to see if she could conceive.

Or, Abraham simply could’ve divorced her, allowed her family to ostracize her for not producing any kin, and marry someone else.

And yet, at age 75, Abraham had done none of these things? Why not?

Why would he have stayed married to Sarah? Why would he have endured the questions, the skeptics, the judgments from others when he could have easily found someone else?

What would have kept them together for all those decades if the sole purpose of marriage was to have children and leave a legacy????

…Love?

Dare we say that it was love that kept these two together?

And if it was love, why does this matter?

Well, as we embark on this Narrative Lectionary and read through the Bible, we witness the people of God becoming recipients and bearers of the Covenant, and we begin to see the connections and the common threads.

People will talk about the faith of Father Abraham, or his patience and trust in the Lord.

People will talk about the mistakes both Abraham and Sarah make along the way, of how Sarah will laugh at God or mistreat her servant, or how Abraham came this close to sacrificing his son.

But how often have you ever heard people talk about just how much love Abraham and Sarah must have had for each other?

How much love these ancestors of our faith must have had:

Love that saw them through barren years.

Love that saw them through the leaving of their country, their home, and their people.

Love that would see them through strange lands with strange customs.

Love that would have seen them through trials, tribulations, threats and their son’s Terrible Twos.

Love, that no doubt, would have seen them through the dimming of their eyes, the loss of hearing, and the fading of their memories.

Love that would have taken them to that place of caring for one another even through sickness and loss.

If Abraham and Sarah were truly in love, then that means we are spiritual descendants of love.

If Abraham and Sarah were truly in love, that means our faith’s foundation is in love.

Perhaps we see no better example of this then in Genesis Chapter 23, in which an entire chapter is devoted to Sarah’s death and burial.

62 years after today’s reading, Sarah takes her final breath. Abraham is so full of grief that we see him weep and mourn. Wanting to do right by her, he goes to the locals and begs for property.

He offers to pay full price for a cave to place her body in. The people are so moved by his emotion that they offer him not just the cave, but the land it is on, and all the trees that surround it, for free.

But Abraham pays full price so he can properly, faithfully bury his wife.

If that is not love, what is???

In closing, we are not just people of the Resurrection. We are not just people of the Cross. We are not just people of the Commandments, or the Covenant.

We are not just the survivors of the Flood.

We are people born from love, made to love, called to not only love God, and to love neighbor, but to be love, through kindness, justice, and worship.

A final image to share. In chapter 12, v. 6, we have this mention of Abraham passing through the land, to the oak of Moreh.

Scholars have spent centuries wondering what this significance of this tree could be.

Here’s what I like to think. It’s kind of goofy and there is absolutely no proof, but…I like to think that at that tree, Abraham and Sarah, like two young lovers, got to take a moment in which they rested.

I like to think that at the tree of Moreh they got to speak the love languages of Touch, Affirmation, and Time; just the two of them.

And that afterwards, Abraham would have stood up and like a giddy teenager, he would have carved into that tree: “A & S 4ever”.

And if he so, then that tree would be part of our salvation story, just like the cypress wood that made Noah’s ark, just like the tree that made the Cross.

If so, that tree can be a reminder that the roots of our faith run deep, we are grounded in God’s love for us, and a reminder that we are remembered.

May today’s message be a blessing to us, and a reminder that we are children born out of cosmic love.

Amen.

(Info on Love/Marriage taken from
“Love and Marriage: A History That Challenges the Notion of ‘Traditional Marriage’” by Peggy Fletcher Stack (2014)

“The History of Marriage: Why Marrying for Love is a Newer Idea Than the Printing Press” by Logan Ury and Eli Funkel (2017)

“Marriage, A History” by PT Staff (2005)