Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Genesis 29:1-14
February 15, 2004
When I was a kid in grade school, sending and receiving valentines was more about popularity than affection. Getting a bunch meant that you were the king or queen of the class. Getting a few meant that you were the dud or crud of the class. Reading them was fun. But counting them (assuming there were enough to cover your desk and spill onto the floor) was even more fun.
I don’t know what you do for Valentine’s Day currently….or what you did for Valentine’s Day yesterday….but any day devoted to shooting arrows into hearts for purposes of romance rather than murder can’t be a bad day. Besides, it leads to interesting features in newspapers the week prior to the event. This year’s stories included the ten most romantic movies to rent, the ten most romantic records to play, and the ten most romantic restaurants to reserve. Concerning the latter, take it from me, nothing beats the fireside tables at Café Cortina in Farmington Hills. Nothing.
But my favorite stories this year start with the husband who, walking through the mall with his three kids in tow, told the interviewer he was headed to Victoria’s Secret where he planned to spend $300 on his wife. (I found myself wondering how he wasgoing to explain his purchases to his kids: “What’s Mommy going to do with those things, Daddy?”) And, after reading the papers, if I had fourteen dollars to blow frivolously, I would have rushed to buy the book entitled Why Men Don’t Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes. The only discouraging note of the season came via the front page of Friday’s Free Press when I learned that, after 43 years of waiting for Ken to make her a married lady, Barbie’s movin’ on.
As I have told you on other occasions, I spend a lot of time with the star struck. For while I am no wiser than the average bloke about the sustaining of love, I am closing in on 1700 stories about the beginning of love. For the best way to spark conversation among those about to be married is to ask them where they met….how they met….how long ago they met….whether they felt anything (or even liked each other) when they met….and how they got from meeting to dating, dating to engaging, and engaging to committing. Such stories are icebreakers, given that very few couples really want to talk to preachers, but almost all couples love to talk about themselves.
I’ve bored you with statistics before, so I see no need to do so again. You know that couples coming to the altar (at least my couples coming to my altar) are considerably older than they used to be, and have been “an item” considerably longer than they used to be. Which should bode well for the future, although the numbers aren’t saying so yet. Or, to boil it down to something you can remember and talk about at lunch, the majority of my brides are 28, the length of most courtships is four years, and the greatest majority of about-to-be-weds were either introduced by friends or began as friends….often for a considerable period of time before somebody made a move that turned the friendship into something romantic.
Still, a few people tell of love at first sight. Two or three times a year, someone will say: “We met, and later that night I told my best friend, ‘I’ve just met the person I’m going to marry.’” I always like those stories, given that I was “hooked” in the fourth or fifth hour of our eleven-hour first date….which took place on a Sunday, mind you….and which started with church, mind you.
Which Jacob would have understood, given that he fell both early and hard….for Rachel, mind you. It happened when Jacob was on the run from his brother, Esau….who might have murdered him, had he caught up with him. But that’s another story for another day. This is our story for this day. And it may be one of the more lovely (and quite possibly, only) “boy meets girl” story in holy scripture.
Like I said, Jacob is on the run (heading east) when he comes upon a well with a few sheep and some shepherds hanging out around it. And while all of them are thirsting, nobody’s drinking. Because the well is covered, don’t you see….covered by a capstone that is so big and heavy that it takes a bevy of men to lift it. Now it’s possible that the capstone was large and heavy on purpose, because if it wasn’t, then one man could lift it. And if one man could lift it, a solitary shepherd (arriving alone) might take more than his fair share of precious water. So the tradition developed that nobody uncapped the well until all of the “locals” were at the well. Which is why Jacob is at the well when Rachel approaches with her father’s sheep.
Now Jacob doesn’t know Rachel. But he knows he has relatives back east, and is told by the loitering shepherds that Rachel is connected to his relatives. As to exactly how, we can’t be sure. There is a raging debate among scholars (growing out of the subtleties of Hebrew translation) as to how Jacob and Rachel are related….or through whom. But none of that matters at the moment. What matters is that sparks fly between them. Cue the violins, if you please.
Remember the stone that requires several men to move it? Well, Jacob rolls it away single- handedly. Whereupon he waters Rachel’s flocks, kisses Rachel’s lips, and breaks into tears. After which he waits seven years, followed by an additional seven years, to marry her….working all that time for her father. And the Bible says: “Those years seemed to him as but a few days, so great was his love for her.” Leading one of my favorite commentators on the book of Genesis to add: “In the whole story of Jacob’s career….which sometimes was far from beautiful….this relationship with Rachel shines as a shaft of sunlight through a cloudy sky, linking him with lovers of every age in the timeless wonder of the meeting of man and maid.” More violins, please….and maybe a sprinkling of Sinatra.
Jacob and Rachel met at a well….kissed at a well…and fell in love at a well (or a watering hole, if you will). And although everybody claims to hate such places (watering holes, I mean), you’d be surprised how many people actually meet at such places. Take away that possibility and Dick O’Dow’s might go out of business.
As concerns the meeting of lovers, it is fate? Well, when it works, it feels that way. Is it God? Again, when it works, it feels that way. When two people tell me they were “meant to be together,” I figure they are talking the language of ecstasy more than the language of theology. They are saying:
What we’ve found….what we feel….indeed, what we have is so deep, so moving, so profound, so life-affirming and life-redirecting (“I mean, I wasn’t looking for anybody at this point in my life”), it must have its origin in hands greater than ours and a Mind greater than mine.
Fifty years ago, we sat around the campfire and sang:
I really think that God above
created you for me to love,
He picked you out from all the rest
because God knew I’d love you best.
But I don’t think we were singing about how God was working so much as how we were feeling…. believing that since nothing could feel this good if it didn’t come from God, no one could feel this good if he(she) didn’t come from God. And while I am too much of a Wesleyan to believe in predestination, to whatever degree I believe God to be in the steering business (albeit with a lot of play in the steering wheel), I’ll gladly concede that heaven may have something to do with fluttering hearts and all that follows. Although a fifty percent divorce rate confounds such a philosophy, leading many to ask: “Does God mislead, or do we misread?”
Which is why many of us try to hedge our bets with science….most recently, computer science. I don’t know about you, but I hear at least twenty daily messages on WJR from people claiming to have met their soul mates on eharmony.com. In fact, just this past Friday, I talked to a fellow who met his fiancé on eharmony.com. What he described was a variation on the decades-old computer matching game, only this time using the internet. You know how it goes. You answer a bevy of questions. You list your likes and dislikes followed by your desires and needs. You identify the top five things that attract you. Then you add the top five things that repulse you. Somebody creates a profile. Then the profile is made part of a network. Truth be told, I was quite impressed with how sophisticated this whole process has become.
So I asked this fellow to describe his experience. Once his data was made available to the general public, he got eighty hits on his profile. From the eighty hits, he got twenty-two extended internet conversations with females. From the twenty-two extended conversations, he got ten first dates. From the ten first dates, he got one second date. And the second date failed to yield a third date. Which was when he decided to redo his profile. Starting from scratch, he was more successful in the second round. He met Wanda Wonderful. And they were married yesterday morning.
Which means that no matter how perfect the methodology, it can’t guarantee chemistry. “I don’t know why I love you like I do. I don’t know why, I just do.” Which sounded stupid when someone sang it half a century ago. But we haven’t gotten that far beyond it since. Or, as Ezio Pinza once sang after meeting Mary Martin:
Who can explain it? Who can tell us why?
Fools give us reasons, wise men seldom try?
Still, when it comes to meeting and mating, street wisdom has its place.
Do opposites attract?
Sure.
But should you also have something in common?
Sure.
Should you check out extended families?
Sure…you’re marrying the whole nine yards.
Will the same sterling quality or personality trait that makes someone else special occasionally drive you crazy?
Sure.
Is being the right person more important than finding the right person?
Sure.
But if there is one thing that has become clear to me across the years, it is this. Most mature people can, over time, learn to negotiate differences in their interests….even in their lifestyles. But very few, if any, can negotiate difference in their core values. So pay close attention to someone’s values.
I often ask: “So what drew the two of you to each other?” And were they to say, “Well, we both love to ski. We both love to watch Friends on Thursday nights. We both love the color purple, and (would you believe it) we both hate broccoli with equal intensity,” I’d have to put my hand over my mouth to keep from saying, “Big hairy deal.”
It is nice when lovers share more likes than dislikes. Common activities do bond. But I have also seen:
· Morning people work it out with night people.
· Skiers work it out with snow bunnies.
· Tent campers work it out with Holiday Inn(ers).
· Life-of-the-party types work it out with people who would rather go off and play chess in the corner.
· And, if my own marriage is any indication, I have learned that ESPN people can co-exist….even thrive….with HGTV people.
But, at the end of the day:
· If your core value is generosity, you are going to have a hard time living with a tightwad.
· If your core value is fidelity, you are going to have a hard time living with someone who winks at fidelity.
· If your core value is family, you are going to have a hard time living with someone who puts anything and everything ahead of family.
· If your core value involves a belief in the basic goodness and trustworthiness of humankind, you are going to have a hard time living with someone who believes that people are out to screw you every chance they get.
· And if your core value involves religious faith (or if Christian discipleship is the ultimate template for your personal journey), you are going to have a hard time living with someone who pays it little more than lip service or, worse yet, mocks it at every turn.
“You know, Bobby, we could go to the cabin every weekend if Mommy hadn’t told those ladies at the church that she would teach Sunday School.”
or
“You know, Harold, your feelings about tithing (which, for all the times you explained them, I have never understood) is the only thing that keeps us from upgrading to a bigger boat.”
The fact that you both like Seinfeld, snow crab and ski jumping may be great reasons for a second date. But in a marriage, most of us would take someone who honors our core commitments over someone who shares our favorite activities. Relationships are most likely to survive (and thrive) when the people in them are able to give similar answers to the question: “So how do you define the good life?” And by “the good life,” I mean both “the sweet life” and “the moral life.”
One of the nice things about my job is that I see people at all stages of love’s journey. Not long ago, I watched a couple put two hands to one knife and cut into a beautifully frosted cake that had the number “50” etched atop it in icing of a contrasting color. Children there. Grandchildren there. Old and dear friends there. Candles on the tables….white. Carnations in the vases….pink. Gifts in the corner. Video on the screen. Lots of laughter at the video. But tears, too, when faces appeared on the screen who are no longer on the scene.
Then the groom of fifty years….an intensely private man who hates to speak in public and resists anything that focuses attention upon himself….banged on his glass, looked at those present, thanked them for being there, and said simply: “This is the best day of my life. There’s no place I’d rather be tonight than here, and no people I’d rather be with than the people in this room.”
There was a time in my life when I would have written that off as so much schmaltz. But now his words ring true and deep. Thursday afternoon, knowing we had a slew of company for the weekend (plus a wedding, a funeral and three sermons), Kris said: “Let’s slip away for a late lunch, just the two of us. It will be the only time we have to celebrate Valentine’s Day.” So we went to 220 in downtown Birmingham and sat in one of those plush, half-circle booths (which allow you to slide close to each other). Whereupon Kris said: “It’s hard to believe that we’ve known each other almost forty years.” And I thought:
There’s no place I’d rather be today than here.
And no one I’d rather be with today than you.
Stephen Covey (author of the book Seven Habits for Highly Effective People) reminds us to begin with the end in mind. Now I don’t really know what end I had in mind when I first started going out with Tina Larson of Novi. Well, that’s not quite true. I do know what I had in mind, though I’m not about to tell you. But I know what I felt Thursday in that booth….and this morning in this church.
Gratitude. Pure gratitude.
