"Love That Lasts" is based off the teachings of Rev. Adam Hamilton and his work "Love to Stay." This sermon uses his teachings as a framework, working my own stories into the mix. I'm grateful for Rev. Hamilton's work and hope you are as blessed as I am with this series.
A Love That Lasts May 27/28, 2016
Scripture: Colossians
3: 14-17, Matthew 22: 34-40
Reader’s Digest tells the story of
a man and woman who celebrated 60 years of marriage with no secrets between
them, except for one: The woman kept a shoebox in her closet and forbade her
husband to ever open it. But while she was on her deathbed, and with her
blessing, the husband opened the box and discovered a crocheted doll and
$95,000 in cash. “My mother told me that the secret to a happy marriage was to
never argue,” she explained. “Instead, I should keep quiet and crochet a doll.”
Her husband was touched. Only one doll was in the box—that meant she’d been
angry with him only once in 60 years. “But what about all this money?” he
asked. “Oh,” she said, “that’s the money I made from selling the dolls.” [1]
If only the secret to relational
success was to keep quiet and crochet dolls! For the past few weeks we’ve been
talking marriage and relationships and building a love that lasts and, quite
simply, the only secret is no secret at all- this is hard, messy work! And as
helpful as strategies and tips can be, it all really boils down to one word:
commitment. Building a love that lasts really is a choice we make. More than a
feeling and more than a piece, marriage is really about dedicating myself to
another person- and sticking by that commitment.
Like everything else, every
marriage and relationship will experience different seasons. What has been so
interesting about this series is that we have people all over the map when it
comes to marriage. Some are just beginning their journey, some our figuring out
how to keep going and others are remembering their own marriages and, I hope,
preparing to pass down your years of wisdom to others. Every relationship is
represented here.
The initial season of every
relationship is a time of bliss. When you see your spouse, you get butterflies
in your stomach and drop whatever you’re doing just to be with them. It’s the
honeymoon stage where everything seems perfect. You write notes, leave little
hints of your love all over the house, and make surprise dinner and movie
plans. But those initial seasons are often interrupted by life, which introduces
us to stressful seasons. These can begin to take a toll on the health of our
relationships. Kids enter the picture, jobs get stressful, paying down our
mortgage or taking a second job to pay off our student loans. We can’t escape
these stressful times, and it’s just a smart idea to acknowledge that they’ll
happen. But then there are stormy seasons. And stormy seasons have the
potential to wear us down. These are the times when feel as if we’ve “lost our
first love.” We don’t know how it happened, but over time we discover that we
feel different about our spouse. We might even find ourselves saying things
like, “I don’t I love him anymore” or “She’s like a complete stranger to me.”
Jesus reminds us that losing our first love is a very real possibility. In Rev.
2: 4-5, he tells the church in Ephesus, “You’ve forsaken your first love. Repent
and do the things you did at first.” That’s good advice. When we find ourselves
in stormy seasons, it’s best to go back to the beginning and do the things we
did when we first started.
There’s an old legend that pops up
on Facebook every now and then that drives this point home. It’s a story about
a couple on the verge of losing their marriage. The husband had allowed his
heart to be stolen by another woman and one night told his wife he wanted a
divorce. With hurt in her eyes, she asked softly, “Why?” but he avoided the
question. Quietly he drafted a divorce agreement, stating that she could have
the car, his house and 30% stake in his company. With tears she tore up the
paper and the next morning provided her own draft. She wanted nothing, except
for as much normalcy as possible for one month- just one month- because their
son had exams. But she also had one final request: She also asked me to recall
how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day, and requested
that I now carry her out of our bedroom to the front door every morning for the
month’s duration. I thought she was going crazy, but to make our last days
together bearable, I accepted her odd request.
We were both pretty clumsy about
it when I carried her out on the first day, but our son was joyfully clapping
his hands behind us, singing, “Daddy is holding mommy in his arms!” His words
triggered a sense of pain in me. I carried her from the bedroom to the living
room, and then to the door. She closed her eyes and softly said, “Don’t tell
our son about the divorce.” I nodded and put her down outside the door. We
weren’t as clumsy on the second day. She leaned on my chest, and I could smell
the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t really looked at this
woman for a long time. She was not young anymore. There were fine wrinkles on
her face, and her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For
a minute I wondered what I had done to her. On the fourth day, when I lifted
her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given
ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our
sense of intimacy was growing again. It became easier to carry her as the month
slipped by, and I suddenly realized that she was getting very thin.
One morning it hit me how she was
burying so much pain and bitterness in her heart, and without really thinking
about it, I reached out and touched her head. Our son came in at that moment
and said, “Dad, it’s time to carry mom out!” To him, seeing his father carry
his mother out had become an essential part of every morning. My wife gestured
to our son to come closer, and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away
because I was afraid I might start changing my mind. I carried her in my arms, and
her hand naturally wrapped around my neck. I held her body tightly, just like
on our wedding day
On the last day, when I held her
in my arms, I could hardly move a step. I knew what I had to do. I drove to
Jane’s place, walked upstairs and said, “I’m sorry, Jane, but I do not want to
divorce my wife anymore”. It all became very clear to me. I had carried my wife
into our home on our wedding day, and I am to hold her “until death do us
apart”. I bought a bouquet of flowers for my wife on my way home, and when the
salesgirl asked me what to write on the card, I smiled and said, “I’ll carry
you out every morning until death do us apart.”[2]
I wish this story were true,
because it’s just so powerful. And maybe it’s just too good to be true. But I
guess it really doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not we hear what the
story is trying to tell us. The story is
trying to tell us to do love until you feel love. We’ve
said that love is not a feeling, but an action. It’s a verb. In this story, as
the man did loving acts, that emotional love that he lost started coming back.
But in reality, he really didn’t lose it. He stopped trying. This is why Jesus
doesn’t just tell us how to love, he shows us how to do it. John Wesley was
once told by a mentor to “preach faith until you have it.” Sometimes we need to
show love until we have it, until we know it in the depths of our beings again.
This story is also trying to tell
us to hang on! Don’t give up in those stormy seasons because they don’t
last forever. If you commit to working hard, things will get better! The best
is yet to come. One way to do this is to go back to the mission of marriage.
Remember, this is not primarily about meeting your needs, but acting as a
partner or helper to another person. That’s why God has given you to someone
else! Sometimes that means we carry our spouse in times of trouble. Sometimes
we sacrifice our cravings and our needs to bless the other. This is your mission.
Finally, this story wants us to remember
that every relationship is ultimately a gift from God. What this means
is that you are not alone in the world. Whether it’s a marriage or a
friendship, God has given you a precious gift. And when you recognize your
spouse or friend as a gift from God, he or she is pretty hard to neglect or
ignore. Instead, you’ll find gratitude taking over your heart. You can’t take
for granted what you’re grateful for. We need to learn to say thank you. Over
and over again. Those are some of the most important words we can pray and proclaim.
Thank you! And if all else fails, we need to go back to the source of the gift
and fall back in love with God. Loving God helps us love our neighbor, and as
we love God, whose love never fails, we will find ourselves building a love
that endures, a love that perseveres and a love that lasts. Amen.
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