Sermon 2 of Love Stories Sermon
Series
February 9, 2014
Genesis 29-31
In one of the most iconic scenes in
movie history, a young Dustin Hoffman, as Ben Braddock, charges up the stairs
of the contemporary, white stucco church in Santa Barbara, California. Sweaty from running for blocks, his clothes
torn and his hair disheveled, he arrives in the glass enclosed balcony to
witness the wedding below. As he stares
out over the assembled family, his sweating palms and forehead pressed into the
glass willing the proceedings to stop, the groom leans down and kisses his new
bride robed in a laced, white bridal gown.
He’s too late. Elaine has married Carl at the of the Graduate. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson watch the
kiss with relief and duty. Ben Braddock
rests on the large window deciding what he will do. Then, from deep inside his soul, Ben releases
Elaine’s name in a wail. Elaine. Elaine.
Over and over again. He has
everyone’s attention.
The
Robinson’s grow anger. Carl asks who this
man is and why is he here. The camera
leaves the rest of the wedding party and settles on Elaine’s face – moving
closer and closer in as she ponders in the few seconds what she will do. Will she choose the path of her parents
making or forge ahead and make her own?
She decides with a guttural scream
of her own – BEN!! She runs for the
doors, fights her way out, and the two rush for the exit. Luckily, a municipal bus passes by the church;
they board, pay their fare and walk to the back – the bus stunned by a woman in
her wedding gown. Simon and Garfunkle’s The Sound of Silence begins playing in
the background as the adrenalin wears off and the two stare forward, their
smiles and giggles disappear as the reality of this new journey settles.
Imagine someone at your wedding knowing
your future - all of the challenges and obstacles, the miscarriages and the job
losses, the hospital stays and the depression, the family conflicts,
disappointments and failures - that lay ahead.
What would you do, if they stood up in the balcony, called your name,
and said, “Wait! “Don’t do it. The
future is too hard. This love will be
surrounded by suffering.”
Would you want to be warned that
loving someone might be hard or difficult or changing?
I wonder if young, brass Jacob would
have been scared off if someone had told him his future when the beautiful,
graceful Rachel swept him off his feet as she herded her father’s sheep to the
community well. Would he risk life back
in Canaan with Esau if he knew how conniving and devious her father, Laban, would
be? Would he look for another uncle if
he knew the family conflicts that would arise between Rachel and her sister? Or
maybe, just maybe, he would say her love was enough.
We get the sense Jacob was stay with
Rachel when we see how smitten he was with her.
When v.18 says that Jacob loved Rachel – we really see a man head over heels
in love.
This
is a love story for the ages – not a simple Hollywood love story where it all
ends up happy in the end. Rather, the
love story between Jacob and Rachel reveals the kind of love Paul talks about
in 1 Corinthians 13 – Love is patient.
When
I think of patience, I imagine myself in the Walmart line during Christmas or sitting
parked in Atlanta traffic. When Paul says
love is patient, he is getting at something much deeper.
Our
English word for patience comes from
the Latin word patient which means suffering. The Greek word used in 1 Corinthians 13 has
the same connotation – something like “long wrath.” The King James Version gets at both of these
meanings when it translates this verse – Love suffers long. Rather than a short fuse – this is love expressed
with a long fuse.
Patience
has the same qualities as perseverance. Patience, more than perseverance though,
relates to people. We persevere through
circumstances – we are patient with people because we love them.
After
Jacob fell in love for Laban’s beautiful second daughter, Rachel, he offered
Laban 7 years work as his dowry. Jacob
had arrived in his family’s ancestral home in Haran in modern Iraq with little
more than the clothes on his back. He
barely escaped the wrath of his brother Esau after he stole his brother’s
birthright from his blind old father, Isaac.
Seven years of labor for the hand of the daughter of a wealthy shepherd
seemed a fair wage.
For
7 years, Jacob woke up with the eyes of his beautiful Rachel racing through his
head. For seven years, he put his
strength of back and mind into helping Laban grow his flocks and his influence
in the region. The scripture says: Those 7 years “seemed
to him but a few days because of the love Jacob had for Rachel.” Love
is patient in anticipation.
When
we anticipate something we can barely hold back our excitement and our enthusiasm. Recently, I had a friend with young children
pack their kids up for school. Instead
of school, they drove out of town to Disney world. Not too far on their journey, they unveiled
their true, magical destination. The
children could barely hold back their joy and excitement. I asked my friend if they would ever do this
again. “No,” he said, “surprising them
like this took out of the anticipation. We
learned the anticipation is as much fun as the trip itself.”
Love
is patient in anticipation is what we experience in the days before our
wedding. This aspect of love intensifies
our love with flutters of joy and makes us desire each other, wondering if we
can ever be apart from one another. Love
is patient in anticipation builds a foundation for the future of love in our
life.
If
only life could stay this way, right? If
only, our experiences matched our anticipation. I’m sure Jacob thought the same
thing after his wedding night. Good ole,
uncle Laban, the man who welcomed his penniless nephew until his household
promising him his beautiful second daughter failed to show Jacob the fine print
in the covenant. It seems the local
tradition states that a second daughter cannot be married before her older
sister. Laban knew, Leah with her weak
eyes, wasn’t about to snag a suitor, so he planned a switcheroo on Jacob’s
wedding night. He got poor Jacob liquored
up and placed Leah in a veil in the dark wedding tent. It wasn’t until the morning when Jacob
emerged from the tent yelling for Laban – that he knew this was Leah – not
Rachel.
Smooth
Laban came out of his tent and explained the fine print he failed to reveal to
Jacob 7 years earlier. Like a great used
car salesman, Laban says, “Sure, you can still have Rachel as your wife. It
will just require another 7 years of labor.”
Jacob learned another aspect of love – love is patient in
frustration.
A
week later, Jacob married the love of his life, Rachel. The deceiver of his blind father had been
deceived. Some might say he deserved it
– I’m sure Esau would have a given a good chuckle. In spite of the deception, though, Jacob
loved Rachel and he worked another 7 years.
The scriptures don’t record how fast these 7 years felt. I’m betting, though, they dragged on a lot
slower than the first 7.
Love
is patient in frustration reminds us that life never goes according to
plan. There will always be frustrations,
roadblocks, and challenges that force us to readjust life. Love is patient in frustration chooses to
deal with the frustration in life without getting upset.
Last
night, I experienced this kind of love.
Yesterday, I had this incredibly frustration moment – I misplaced my
phone somewhere between my house and the church. My frustrations built and built – I wasn’t a
really fun person to be around. In spite
of this frustration – Marcia loved me – patiently. Her words brought salve to my
frustration. Her playfulness reminded me
of the things of true value in our lives. Her encouragement kept me looking
until I found the phone in the bushes at the church.
Love
is patient in frustration calms our emotions and points us to the true source
of our faith and strength in our lives.
The
next seven years and more contained more than frustration for Jacob and
Rachel. The deceptions of Laban filled
the household with a Dowton Abby level of family conflict. Needless to say, being given in marriage to
your sisters betrothed is not exactly the way to a man’s heart. Leah never felt loved in the household and
took it out on Jacob and Rachel. “I am
hated,” she prayed to God, who heard her prayer and gave her 4 sons in rapid
succession.
Children
and especially sons in the ancient rural world represented the hand of
God. Leah could produce them – and
Rachel could not. Barren and torn by
jealousy of her older sister, Rachel gave her maid servant, Bilhah, to
Jacob. She bore Jacob two more sons,
making Rachel even angrier. It kept going. Leah, kept from Jacob’s bed chamber, gave him
her maid, Zilpah, who bore 2 more sons.
Before all of the one up-man-ships were done – Leah had born 7 children,
the two maids had born 4 and Rachel was still barren. Can you imagine the conflict and anger and
disappointed in the relationship with Rachel and Jacob. At one point in all of these births, Jacob
angrily rebuffed Rachel by saying, “Am I in the place of God?”
Finally,
though, God remembered Rachel and she conceived and bore a son – Joseph.
In
the whirlwind of all of the conflict, Jacob and Rachel’s love is tested. While it is battered and beaten what we
witness is love is patient in conflict.
Conflict
is where the patience of love is truly tested.
To show love to someone when we do not feel like it, when our hearts are
beating rapidly in anger, when our faces are flushed red and we can barely talk
is an act of will more than a deep emotion.
Love suffers long – the KJV reminds us.
Love
is patient in conflict demonstrates just because we fight doesn’t mean we can’t
love and respect and honor the other person.
We show love to others in conflict by watching our language and
realizing that words may not break bones but they also can never be taken back.
Once they are freed they live a life on their own. We also show love in conflict when we place
the others person’s needs and wants before our anger. Submit yourselves one to another the Apostle
Paul says. Love is patient even in
conflict.
When
the time came for Jacob to leave Haran, Laban had grown too dependent on him
and didn’t want to release him. Jacob
spent over 20 years working for his father in law making him an even wealthier
man. After trying to deceive each other,
Jacob realized his only escape was to just leave. With the encouragement of his wives he pulled
apart his flocks and left for Canaan while Laban was away.
But
Laban caught up with them – pulling his best victim act – wondering why Jacob
would kidnap his daughters and leave without at least a goodbye. The two men face off – both angry at the
other, neither willing to give ground.
With
no love lost, the two men settled on a covenant. They lowered their swords, kissed their
family and released the other. Throughout
this tense exchange Jacob stayed focused on his task of bringing his family to
Canaan. His two wives came together as a
unified front for the sake of their family – releasing even their
conflicts.
In
the end, we see Love is patient for completion.
Patient love plugs along, fights for the other person, and sees the
other through to the end.
We
miss this aspect of patient love too often in our world. This requires hard work, dedication, and
perseverance. Love is patient for
completion means that we don’t give up when times get hard. Love is patient for completion has lots of
room for grace. Love is patient for
completion often has long roots of history, grey hair, and wrinkled eyes before
the final chapter is written.
I
had a minister friend in South Carolina leave a comfortable associate pastor
position in an established church to become a church planter in the same
community. He started the new church
just as his children were growing into teenagers. The new church required much from him – his
time, his energy, and his attention. The
family risked their financial lives to see this new church birthed. Along the way, they have faced many struggles
– a daughter’s illness and a son’s addiction.
Throughout it all, my friend and his way wife just kept moving forward
dedicated to the vocation God gave them.
Today, the church is one of largest in the community. When I think about this couple – I see
patient love for completion. They have
persevered together for a common cause.
I doubt Old Jacob as he looked back
on his life with Rachel with a mixture
of joy and sadness would have ever imagined not loving this woman. Because, in the end, this is the exact love Yahweh shed on him. In all of Jacob’s deviousness, God remained
long suffering and slow to anger. God
loved Jacob enough to know that who he was in the beginning was not who he
would become at the end of his life.
This
is also how God loves us. God’s long
suffering love looks at anticipation to the kind of people we will become. God’s long fused love pulls for us when we
face frustrations and fail to live to our standards. God’s patient love gives grace in our
conflict. God’s patient love knows that
we are a mosaic in process and stays with us to the end.
This is the kind of love those
around us need to experience as well – our spouses, our children, our inlaws, our
grandchildren, our friends, even those we are just beginning to know. As we experience the patient love of God – We
give this love to those around us. We
write our own love stories with those around us. When we are formed by the patient love of God,
it shapes us to face the many challenges of our own lives together.
In the end, none of us know the
future. We each have our own lives to
live with many joys and challenges on the way.
God knows that life can only best be lived when his patient love is
experienced and share around us. When it
is, life takes on the greatest meaning and purpose.
None of us can go back and do it all
again – but we can choose today to be shaped and formed by the patient love of
God and choose to share this love with those around us. Thanks be to God! Amen
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