I received a letter the other day from someone very close to me. His letter was written hurriedly, because I had written him asking some questions. He felt he needed to answer those right away. He had a conviction he wanted me to hear immediately.
I had asked him if he was going to leave his work. You see, he is teaching in a professional school at the graduate level, the kind of place you expect to be calm and peaceful and bookish. But this place has been anything but quiet in recent years. It has a board of trustees who regularly erupt in anger and in accusations. This board of trustees is not in the least impressed by all of the careful, painstaking work that has been done to build up this school. They have their own plans. They are going to have their way, no matter what. I just didn’t think he would want to teach there any more.
His letter set me straight in a hurry. He said, "Sometimes I do feel totally misunderstood, as if someone were literally looking over my shoulder, just waiting for me to make some mistake he can pounce on. I feel abused. And sometimes I also feel like a pawn in the hands of the administration; our president puts me in the awkward position of using me to do things he is afraid to do himself. So, no, it’s not very happy working here. But ... but .. ," said my letter writer, "do not look for me to leave. Do not expect me to shop around for another job. I’m not going anywhere until I have finished what the Lord put me here to do."
I don’t know about you, but that revives me. Here is somebody who has been given the marvelous gift of knowing who he is and what he is about. And no power on earth, however vicious, however negative, is going to shake him.
"I’m not going anywhere until I have finished what the Lord put me here to do."
Sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances and relationships which are very uncomfortable, very painful -- abusive relationships which just seem to hammer at us and attack our vitality. Or we may discover that we are in using relationships, using relationships, where someone just wants to take and take and take and never give anything in return. But here’s the point: if those are relationships where God wants us to be, then we may be abused and we may be used, but we are not used up. We don’t have to give up on what God has called us to be. We need not and must not abandon the place where God has put us.
"I’m not going anywhere until I have finished what the Lord put me here to do." Abused and used, but not used up.
I
Reminisce with me about some of the discoveries we have made this month concerning family life. As from Sunday to Sunday during May we have moved along, thinking about marriage, about children, about senior citizens, about family life in general, what have we learned?
We have learned some very sordid things. We have learned that family life can be terribly damaging. We have learned that if in our homes we do not grow together in love, we will destroy each other. We will neglect each other, throw away each other abandon each other. We have learned that though our God has put the solitary in families, it is often Satan who is running things in our homes. We have learned that in too many contemporary families, somebody is abused, somebody is used. Family joy seems to have been all used up.
I suppose it will make the poet Robert Browning turn over in his grave, but I will ask, "How do we hurt thee? Let me count the ways"!
II
First, we learned this month that we are abusing and using marriage. The most intimate and powerful of all human ties is today being abused and misused. Marriage for some is in danger of becoming little more than a financial arrangement, a tax convenience, in which two people agree to live separately together. The tensions of life in this very city, where it is not uncommon for both husband and wife to work at their separate jobs ten and twelve and fourteen hours a day and then come home either to fall asleep in a weary stupor or to bury themselves in the things all that work and money can buy ... those tensions destroy marriage. But if you believe that your marriage is God’s will, you will work at growing it. Abused and used but not used up.
I’ve listened to quite a few of you on this theme over the past several weeks. I know that many are hurting. My heart goes out to those whose marriages are not what you thought they would be when you entered into them. My wife and I have had occasion to reflect on our own 32 years of married life and the tensions we’ve felt. In these last few years our own responsibilities have escalated. We know that a good marriage is an elusive thing; we also know that it has to be grown. It has to be worked at. A husband and wife must first determine that God wants them to be together. This is the place where the Spirit of God has led them to be. And then they must decide that they are going to work at marriage, they are going to work at learning how to love another.
Marriage is not perfected, you know, the moment the minister says, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." That’s just the beginning. One of these days I think I will change the wedding service, and instead of ending by declaring that this starry-eyed young couple are husband and wife, I’m going to say, "Today we are issuing you a learner’s permit. Do not speed into your professional lives; do not cross the yellow line into mountains of debt; and wherever you are going, give your spouse a signal first so that he or she can go there too or can at least get out of the way."
Marriage has been abused and badly used, but it is not used up if you will determine that marriage is where God wants you to be and then you determine to make it grow.
III
What else have we learned this month? We have learned that we are also using and abusing children. As a society we are taking a terrible toll on the lives of children. The way back from the use and abuse of children is, once again, to recognize that this is a God-given relationship and responsibility. There is no walking away from it. But it can be redeemed.
Anyone with any sensitivity at all to what is happening has to be horrified at our society’s irresponsibility toward children. Have you seen the news stories about several recent murders, in which not only are adults being blown away, but helpless children are also being destroyed? I mean literally tortured and disemboweled, bombed and raped! Incredible! And in Baltimore, almost all of the deaths by fire in recent months have been the deaths of children left alone in firetrap houses.
Men and women, have we become so self-centered, so filled with me-ism that we will do whatever we feel like doing for ourselves and just leave the children out on a limb?
I am very much afraid that this is the end product of the me decades, in which the fashion was to do your own thing, whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it.
I have heard a little about Dr. Chapman’s message this past Sunday. Speaking to a group of us to explain why the Children’s Home she heads no longer confines its interest to orphans, children without living parents, Dr. Chapman said, "In fact, worse than being a child whose parents are dead is being a child whose parents are alive but either cannot or will not be responsible parents."
We are using and abusing children. But you know, if once you decide that children are God’s gift, that that young life is precious and sacred, you find out that you are not used up. You find out that you have more energy for the children than you thought possible.
Oh, church, I just wish I had all day to speak about this. I wish I could stop the clock this morning. This thing goes beyond individual parents. I’m thinking about what it means to be a Christian and a church in a society which abuses and uses children. Can we just start with the premise that these children are put here by our God and that therefore our responsibility for them is a given? It’s not negotiable? It’s not something we can dodge? Children may be used and abused, but if we decide that we and they are bound together by the will of God, then our energy for them will not be used up.
We will dig down a little deeper yet as taxpayers and pay the freight for a quality school system. We will make time for that PTA or that school board meeting or whatever it takes for children to receive a priority.
And if we really believe that they are here, given to us by the will of God, then we as a church belonging to the one who said, "Let the children come to me," we will really get serious about Sunday School and Children’s Worship and Children’s Choir and Scouts and Bible School and Day Camp. You see, we are building some opportunities for children, but we do not yet have enough adult commitment to get this job done.
Now, I know, you may feel tired and distracted and busy and bothered and bewildered. But if you decide that children are here because God wills them to be here and wills them to grow up in a positive way, then you and I will find the energy to do what can be done. Abused and used, but not used up. "I’m not going anywhere until I have finished what the Lord put me here to do."
IV
I could go on and on speaking about the things we’ve learned this month. I could continue with quite a litany of the ways in which our society has abused and used people.
Time does not permit me to remind you of the abuse of senior citizens, shelved and forgotten, devalued and ridiculed. Working for the needs of senior citizens is tiring. It’s possible to get burnt out. But if you believe that God wills us to be there for seniors, then we will not be used up. Not as long as we are in the relationship God has willed.
Nor does my energy this morning allow me to develop the idea that parents too are abused and used …not just children but parents, who are launched into parenting with no preparation, no thought, not even worthy models, just expected to learn it as they go. No wonder so many young parents walk away from it all. They just feel drained. But if we hear God’s call to do it, we can teach parenting skills, and they will not be used up. They will not be abandoned.
V
You see, what it comes down to is this. When we abuse and use each other, we are abusing and misusing our God. We are slapping our creator in the face, we are grieving his Holy Spirit. We’re doing our dead level best to push God out of our lives, out of our way.
And yet, everything I know about the gospel says that though our God be abused and used, He is not used up. He does not give up on us. He does not stop loving us.
In fact, all the more He works to bring us back to Himself. Listen: "[In Jesus Christ] he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God .... [In Christ] the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple."
Christ’s work is to proclaim peace and hope for people who misuse each other. Christ’s work is to bring abused and alienated and tired and weary people together in the Spirit, so that they might grow together. All that fundamentally matters is that we know we do belong together. We know that we are where God wants us to be. And then He will supply our needs.
No matter how tired you are of your marriage; no matter how weary that child makes you; no matter how abused you feel as a parent; no matter how used you feel as a child, still you are not used up. Still there is energy to grow. Still there is the power to grow together.
Because Christ, who is himself our peace, went to a cruel cross outside a city wall, alienated, pushed aside, tortured, extinguished. He was abused, yet he opened not his mouth. He was used, yet he offered no complaint.
And when our God raised him from the dead, it guaranteed that He would never be used up. He is there for us. He empowers us. He strengthens us. If we know that we are where He wants us to be; if we know that He has given us our families; then we may feel abused, and we may be used, but we will never, never be used up.
"I’m not going anywhere until I have finished what the Lord put me here to do."
