Feb 3rd 2008 Working for your marriage Genesis 29.1-14a, 29.14b-30
Home Group Notes.
NB you’re very welcome to 6th Feb Ash Wednesday 7.30 service at St Peter’s Chailey (their parish church). Also Note that I won’t be writing HG notes for when the Bishop is here: Mondays, 11th , 25th Feb and 10th March. 7.30 for 8pm start, ending 9pm, ish.
PS for Next week Genesis 29.31 – 30.24 (for our last instalment of the Story of Jacob) and then we move on to Psalms. They’re good for you.
Welcome:
What’s the worst job you’ve ever been paid to do?
Have you ever been conned (or done the conning!)?
Worship: Psalm 38, its very festive.
Word:
1) Read Genesis 29.1-30
2) Can anyone remember anything James said? Not least as the All Age talk will have been quite different to this text.
3) A young man (over 40) is diddled into marrying the wrong woman. What’s the moral of this story? (I’d quite like to hear the answers to this one!)
4) I usually have a section in these sermons about Where’s God in all of this. So you do it this time! Where is God in this story?
5) How can we encourage people who see things in a fresh way to speak up?
6) Thank you for feedback, more please (esp re questions 3, 4)
Works:
Pray for the employed who struggle with their jobs.
Pray for your motivation in all that you do. Learn Col 3.23 as a memory verse for the week! (Col 3.17 might prove easier!)
The Talk
I am looking forward to the Sunday after Valentines day. We’ll be having a service of Renewal of Vows 4pm here & I’ve been encouraged by people who have nothing to do with the Church and by people who have not been married in this church, indeed one couple who never did get married in a Church, nonetheless they may be coming to the service.
And so I have been asking for your advice – what should I be telling the couples that I prepare? Please do let me know your advice. I’m not sure about this one, it might just be a special word for one husband here today:
‘Please put the seat lid down’. And from another person: ‘Always monitor your tone of voice when speaking to each other, not just the words said between you but the tone as well’.
After last week’s sermon in which I told you how my discerning wife can tell when I have been marriage counseling, after Sunday lunch she said – for the first time in 10 years - Darling I’d like to hoover out the car! My response was of course: Goodness me, have you been doing some marriage counseling!
Jacob has had to run away from home because he cheated his brother out of his father’s deathbed blessing. He has run away penniless into the desert, heading north and embarked on a 400 mile journey. That’s a huge journey for one man on his own. But after about 60 miles, he stops for the night and rests his head upon a stone for a pillow and has this dream of God’s Angels going up and down a great staircase. (Bethel nr Jerusalem)
And God reveals Himself to Jacob in the dream and makes a promise to him to give him this land and to make his family as numerous as the dust on the earth and through him to bless all people. I am with you and will watch over you where ever you go and will bring you back. And Jacob makes a vow If God will do this, then The Lord will be My God. And so he travels north and he has a lot to think about. When he arrives he sees this Well, and the gathering of the flocks and he meets with Rachel and falls in love and offers to work as the bride price for 7 years and then Laban his father in law does a dastardly thing and switches brides as they go into the tent in the dark, probably happy and quite drunk. And then makes Jacob to work another seven years in order to earn Rachel.That’s the story.
There are a couple of simple sermons that I could preach from this passage.
(1) The Benefit of a Fresh pair of eyes.
Jacob arrives after his long trek to find that there is this peculiar practice of gathering all the flocks together. There’s not much for the sheep to eat here because they meet here every day so, they must wait around under the baking sun rather than get on and drink and get back out there. Jacob sees this business inefficiency and does something about it.
We learn a couple of things about Jacob, firstly that he has some brains to him, that he knows something about rearing sheep. Secondly that he isn’t quite the weed that I’ve always thought he was. The stone is described as being Large, as if it would normally take more than one shepherd to roll the stone aside.
It’s always refreshing when new people join our church and say Why do you do it like that? In my previous church we used to do this … and so we are able to learn from people who come to us with fresh eyes.
I once did some work for a Venture Capitalist, the only reason why he brought me along on a project is because I would ask all those silly irritating questions that he hadn’t thought of. It is wonderful to have someone come and look at what we do with fresh eyes.
The same is for you and your business, the same is for you and your worries, to talk them through with someone else and to get a fresh perspective on them. It can be very liberating. So please do ask me from time to time: Why do you do this, why don’t you do that? There may be a good answer.
There may be a good reason why the shepherds work so inefficiently – perhaps because Rachel can’t manage the stone, perhaps because it is kinder to wait for others and help them water their sheep. So the benefits of a Fresh Pair of Eyes.
(2) Another sermon could be entitled: Read the Small Print.
You might think that Jacob with all his wily skills should not be so easily conned. But he falls for this one. Perhaps Laban has been trying to marry off Leah for the last Seven years and no one will take her.
I approve of the way that Leah’s beauty – or lack of it – is not emphasised. Rachel’s beauty is highly praised but Leah is merely described as having Weak eyes sometimes translated ‘Tender’ or ‘Gentle’ – that doesn’t sound too bad. It’s just that Rachel is the gal that has caught Jacob’s eye.
Jacob could do with some Cultural knowledge. Whenever we join other communities, let alone go to other parts of the world and live in other cultures, just to live with another family for a while and you will find that they all know the Right way of doing things.
I used to play a game when preparing couples for marriage called Christmas Day. It came from a Mother’s Union resource. And it invited each other to say what they thought was normal on Christmas day – do you eat Turkey or not? Do you have a Christmas stocking or a pillow case? Do you go to church on Christmas morning, listen to the queen and so on. All these traditions are so ingrained that they are absolutely right and everyone else is wrong and it can be a shock to the system to discover them.
In 7 years of living with this family, Jacob has not come across this marry-the-old-one-first rule. He is probably not comfortable with the idea of having more than one wife, his father didn’t and his grandfather didn’t (even if he did have a concubine at one stage and then marry a second time, that’s different). When Jacob left his brother Esau, Esau had two wives but since then he has married a third wife. So it’s not utterly unheard of, but not the sort of thing that Jacob had in mind.
You will notice that there is no church service at this wedding. It is instead a public feast. So on Monday, so to speak, the feast starts, Monday night Jacob goes to bed happy and probably drunk and then having slept with Leah all night, he will go on to party all week long, and each night take Leah to his tent. And then on the Saturday, at the end of the week, he will get Rachel. Though there is no talk of another week’s party. And Jacob will now have to work another seven years with both wives.
So you could have a sermon about bringing a Fresh Pair of Eyes to look at your worries.
You could have a sermon about Reading the Small Print – being clear with each other, especially with friends and relatives, about exactly what is expected.
You could even have a sermon about how emotional these people seem to be – they’re always kissing or crying and it’s always the men. We’re not used to this! We find it culturally peculiar. But I bet it’s a lot healthier: To cry with sadness or joy and to greet your male relatives with a kiss and a hug. But I like this simple lovely phrase that describes Jacob’s love: Jacob served seven years for Rachel but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. (LXX – agape!)
When I talk to you about your marriages - You say to me: My how the time has flown, it seems like yesterday – this is what happens to us when we are caught up with someone we love.
I’ve been married for 15 years! I’ve been a Dad for 10 years. This does not mean that everything has been easy peasy – there have been a lot of sleepless nights and a few scary moments but our love for each other has made all this seem so quick. I’ve been a Priest for almost 10 years (this July), I’ve been here for almost 7 years, and this Easter will be my 8th Easter. It has all gone by so quickly. I barely feel as if I have unpacked. Of course it might not feel like that to you!
It’s a great gift from God, to be able to say you love your Church – I have been to lots of other churches where that would not be a normal thing to say – much easier to spend your time - wearingly mocking the hypocrisy of the congregation or bashing the innovations of the minister and squashing his zeal. And it doesn’t mean that its all been a happy lovely time, it means that we have been so absorbed in what God has been doing amongst us.
Jacob served 7 years but it seemed like only a few days because of his love for Rachel.
Now that’s great for me. But it might not be great for you. If you find yourself in the kind of job where you dread going in each morning, where the repetitious tedium has gotten to you, where you feel your work or your work place to be sucking the life out of your soul.
We cope, we endure this work telling ourselves that we are doing it for the Wife, for the children, for the Mortgage and somehow that helps us through another week. Or we find ourselves living for the weekend, for the holidays.
Many years ago I worked in a sugar packing factory. By 9 in the morning my hands would be impossibly sticky and wet and they would never really recover until lunch time and then again until the end of the day. And so on. It was too noisy and busy to have any real social banter going on during this time. I tried to console myself saying: I’m doing this for the money – but that never really helped me. I tried to encourage myself saying I’m doing this for my dignity, for Lucy, even for the possibility of an evangelistic conversation! But no, that never really helped for long. In the end I could only sing worship songs quietly to myself and repeat St Paul: 23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, … It is the Lord Christ you are serving (Col3.23).
And that helped. But for those of you who are struggling to find your motivation for doing what you do – then take this verse as a memory verse. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord.
So you could have had a sermon about the Joys of bringing a fresh pair of eyes to a problem. That’s sort of thing is always welcome on our PCC and we’ll be recruiting over March. You could have had a sermon about the wisdom of Reading the Small Print.
But go home with this thought: How 7 years of sheep dipping and sheep shearing, of taking your flocks far into the desert to find pasture and fighting off wolves and bears, all the time knowing that none of these sheep are yours, all the time learning that your Employer has dodgy practices – how do you stay motivated in that sort of a job?
It is Jacob’s love for Rachel. It is your love for Jesus, your determination to make Him proud for everything you do – to say Lord I’m doing this for you, I hope you are proud of the hard work I am putting in because no one else is recognising my work, because I’m putting up with this work, because I’m not getting anything out of this job, I’m struggling Lord but I will do the best that I can because I’m wanting to please you.
Let your motivation be your love for Jesus and Work for the Lord then, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as one working for the Lord. Amen.