First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Isaiah 43 and John 16

“Abiding in Me”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

May 18, 2008

We have a rule in our house, or better put, in our marriage. The first four years are off limits. No matter how right the point may be, no matter how relevant the example, what happened then is just off limits.

It’s not that we have forgotten; we remember what it was like to be terribly young, terribly stupid, and terribly married. We remember, but we have forgiven.

Generally this rule comes into play when one of us has done something less than generous, something less than cool. Something happens and words must be spoken. Over the years we he have learned to communicate the party fouls without words. We do this so to lessen the likelihood of a grudge and unnecessary discontent. For the most part a word or a glance or, heaven help me, a look is offered. And for the most part this will suffice. But from time to time when a fault is pointed out, the interpretation is not quite well received.

Sometimes it takes more than one example for me to become convinced that I am listed as a synonym for “moron” in the dictionary. And on some occasions the depth of examples has to reach far back. Two, three, four examples of miscues can be, well, quite illuminating. But there is a limit we’ve imposed on this backward reach into our life together.

The reach cannot extend to the first four years we were married. Those mistakes are not allowed to be used as a means of convincing the other that their current mistake actually has a pattern. No matter how significant, the current misdeed cannot impose those truly early events so to convey a sense of gravity.

What we want to say is, “You do this.” And, that is a powerful claim. Such a claim stops me in my tracks; it makes me pause. It’s in such a moment where to be me is not a great thing. I don’t know of anyone who knows me more, better, or at the very least truly, without exception, than my wife. So for her to say, hey, not good. Well, that’s big. And, thanks be to God, I don’t hear this often.

I don’t hear this often. So for the most part, by and large, I am okay with being me. Let me put that a different way. For the most part I am so blessed and lucky that to think ill of my life, and thus myself, to feel less than joy about being me is a kind of insult to all those who make my life worth living. How can I have all that I have and not feel overwhelmed by a need to give thanks? I have a great family, a great job, more friends than any man has a right to have. I eat what I want, sing too loud, and can describe the smells of the spice bazaar of Istanbul and the way Mexico casts a magic spell and I am not talking about tequila. I have a great life.

And, yet, despite how profound and immense my blessings, in a heartbeat, they can all evaporate in the midst of my brokenness. I’m not quite sure why this is, but it happens. All that is good ever seems vulnerable.

No matter how many degrees earned, it just takes one little misstep and I am convinced that I am a dullard. I can hear my children say they love me, I can watch little David orate before a crowd of adults at the zoo how he nurtured caterpillars into butterflies and has his picture in the paper, but then he cries, then he has a look of disappointment and I am . . . I am the worst parent of all time.

I know I am not. I know rational thoughts will come again if the wind is right. But yet the vulnerability persists, the fragile spirit of joy is ever one moment away from flight. This is why the first four years of marriage are off limits. We learned then how vulnerable we need to be- must be- if our life was going to be good; we learned how much grace it takes if joy is going to stick around and become more than a stranger.

I will never forget the first time I said to Kathy: “I am not trying to do dumb things. It’s never my intent to hurt you.” We were not much more than twenty with one child, one on the way, standing in a small kitchen apartment where three burners out of four on the stove worked, and our big purchase of the week was a pound of bacon. But we could have been eating room service at the Ritz and having the same conversations. We could have because all the talk you have is just talk until you figure out how in the world you can offer grace to the ones you love and, this is scary, receive it with humility.

And so it was and is and hopefully ever will be that we look at the first four years of our marriage as one long conversation trying to figure out how in the world are we going to look at each other, see the other, treat the other. What does it mean to be kind? Have you really forgiven the other if you can’t look at them? What does it mean to be a husband, a wife, a father, a mother? (I truly admire the people who go to high school, go to college, begin their career, get married, and then a few years later have a child because they get to ask the questions of life one at a time.) All the questions of life: we asked these all at once for four years. So the first four years, they are off limits.

I mean: nothing terrible happened, really; it was just hard. It was confusing and conflicting and relentless. And given that . . . anything that was said or done or that was less than desirable should just be what it was. Just let it be and keep going. Don’t look back. The labor pain shouldn’t outweigh the glory of the birth, the life that came forth. And, what a great life we’ve been given.

*****

Before I say what I am about to say, I want to digress into a terrible memory. For there are terrible memories. It was close to decade ago. I was the chaplain on call for a hospital in a place called Silverdale. A nurse called me at eleven o’clock at night and said a mother is giving birth, but the child is dead. Could I come and be with them? Nothing in life had prepared me for this. No matter how many funerals, and I have buried enough children to know the scars you keep, no tragedy or accident comes close to what I saw when I walked in the door of the postpartum room.

The baby she held was too still, too perfect. The sight made me dizzy. All I could do was put one hand on the mother’s shoulder and place the other beside the child she would name but never see dance or run or play. I stood with them, wept with them, prayed with them, and then, anointed the child knowing that the kingdom of God gathers those we cannot keep. As I walked away I wanted to vomit; I wanted to find my children and just say, O God, thank you.

*****

Nothing really prepares you for love. I have met people who are prepared for challenges because they were disciplined as a child. Like the great claim of the golfer, Gary Player, the more I practice the luckier I get. There is so much truth in this. The more nine irons, where open the face and shorten the back swing, the more of these you hit day after day, the more likely you can stick a small plastic ball next to a hole in a well manicured lawn. It’s not magic; it’s practice.

But no matter how much you practice, love has a way of beating the living daylights out of you. No matter how many parenting books you read, you will still have no idea what to do with a five year old who looks you in the eye and thinks they can back you down. I will never forget Kathy getting a call from a friend who was having her first child. She read tons of books and was convinced by a faddish child rearing theory. Describing what our friend was going to do it just sat out there like an elephant in a room much smaller than Africa. Before the ten years we had just lived through and the four children in our house and the painful humility we’d gained, such thoughts might have been entertained. But at that moment, we didn’t know if we should laugh, cry, or just pray.

Nothing prepares you for love. Isaiah records this beautiful poem of God’s love for Israel. It’s hard for us today to really understand how bizarre this poem was to those who heard it. Up to this point God spoke in terms of the law and hoping for a good relationship, a sense of responsibility and care. But after all of Judah was carried away into slavery, when their children were discarded and the old abandoned, when it was just almost too late, then God says, I love you.

This is why you can’t understand our faith without the law and the psalms and the prophets. You can’t because you will never understand John 3:16 where it says, “God so loved the world,” you can’t understand this without the time when God tried to find us, guide us, redeem us without love. When Moses came down Mount Horeb, he wasn’t carrying a testament to God’s love; he brought commandments. Do this; be this; don’t do this. It’s hard to understand love before it overwhelms you.

I have abided in good times and bad. I have abided in a childhood home and sought to make one for my own. I have abided in chaos and been careful not to abide in chaos again- I have done this without much success. I have abided in moments of glory and moments of shame. I have abided in perfect joy and I have stood in moments where I hope Hell cannot surpass. But what I cannot do is abide in me. I can’t abide in me not because it’s so hard being me, or that I have made mistakes, or created a place that cannot be endured. I can’t abide in me because of love.

I cannot abide in myself because of love, and I blame God for this. Had he kept to the law, to a covenant, to a land, to a people that would be workable. If I break the law, then let the punishment be what it is. If I am unable to abide by my word, then I am liar or a failure. If I am in the wrong place, I will seek the right. If my blood is the wrong blood, then I am accursed and then it is what it is. (I have seen people who live with this blood, this sense of wrongness, and while I don’t wish it, I trust it.) But what I can’t understand is how love wipes all these places away, makes them off limits; they are no longer on the map; they are inadmissible in court. I don’t understand any of this.

I don’t understand until I hear my wife say, that doesn’t count; you can’t speak of the first four years of our marriage as if that is who we are. Then, and really, only then, do I get grace.

Grace is the moment where you know love and have no means of offering anything else, let alone anything less. I don’t think grace is just being forgiven, or being cared for, or even love itself. Grace is when you are loved and have no ability but to be or speak or live less than the same. You must offer the same or more. And there is always more. Grace is when you say, because he lives and I live, you also will live. That’s how it is.

When the people of Judah, the remnant of Israel, were in Babylon, what is today Iraq, when they were yet again slaves and forsaken and forgotten and dashed and destroyed and less than what is glorious, God said, you are my glory, you are precious in my sight . . . I love you. Just take a deep breath with me and know that the God we worship said, oh my, the one I love is you. You, who are broken, you who are misguided, and you are filled with faults and failures and whatever else you can add, but . . . you are the one I love and I can’t help it. My faith is that the God I worship said these words.

It is profoundly challenging, and perhaps this is the voice of our times to theology, but I can’t help but say that I find hope believing God, the one who is perfect and right and all that, God, this one woke up and said, I love you no matter what. For me that is what I heard and saw in that tiny kitchen twenty years ago. I looked and saw my wife say, okay. Okay.

Nothing really prepares you for love. And that is what makes it so hard for me to be me. Not that I am dumb or less than what I should be, or a man who has faults or failures. I can live with all of these. I can even revel in them in ways that makes me even more wrong. No. Love is what makes it hard. If we were just a man and woman who had to figure out a promise or a law or a plan . . . well we could do that. But love? Love makes it messy and wild and weird and so much more than I can abide.

Remember: to abide means to be in the midst of. That means you can’t be leaving or arriving. You have to be there. I am still confused by how long I can abide in love. Not because of me, but because of God. Jesus spoke of complete joy. I just don’t know if I can do it. A little bit of joy makes me nervous. Complete joy? Frightening! Who can abide in complete joy when there is nothing that prepares you for love? Oh, come quickly Jesus. I don’t know how long I can abide such joy. Amen.