Connecting the Dots at Christmas(2011Nov27)

Series: Advent M1 11 11 27
Title: Connecting the Dots at Christmas
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Text: Galatians 4:4; Luke 1:26-38
BIG IDEA: We are called to entrust ourselves to the sovereign story of God.
Haddon Robinson, a professor of mine at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, who spoke here several years ago, tells the story about a married woman from the mid-west who decided to take a trip on her own around the world. She was planning to fly from North America east to London, then to Paris, on to Rome, Vienna, and so on. When she got to London, she phoned home to ask how their dog Lucky was doing. Her husband said, “Lucky died.” The man’s wife started weeping, then got angry. “You thoughtless, insensitive brute! Why did you have to tell me Lucky is dead!”
Her husband said, “What was I supposed to tell you?” She said, “Well, you could have told me that Lucky was walking around on the roof. When I got to Paris, you could have told me that Lucky fell down from the roof. When I got to Rome, you could have said that Lucky is not feeling very well. And when I got to Vienna, you could have said, ‘Lucky died’.” Then his wife asked, “How is mother doing?” “She is on the roof.” The woman thought that her husband’s timing in telling her the news about her dog being dead was bad.
Have you ever felt that something in your life had bad timing? Or some person or circumstance entered your life at the wrong time?
Today marks the first Sunday of Advent. And I wonder if Mary, who would go on to become the mother of Jesus, ever thought that the timing of her pregnancy was bad. Some of our best biblical scholars say that Mary was probably only 14-15 years old when the angel Gabriel approached her to tell her that the Most High would come upon her and that she would become pregnant with the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
Malcolm Muggeridge has pointed out that if Mary had become pregnant today the baby inside her womb would likely not have been allowed to live and experience birth. Mary was a teenager when she got pregnant. She was poor. The father was unknown. All of these factors would have made Mary an obvious candidate for an abortion today. People now would say, “Mary, you cannot raise a child. You are a teenager. You have no money. You have no education. Stop talking about being impregnated by the Holy Spirit or you are going to get a one-way trip to the psychiatric ward.”
As Kristen Rumary pointed out in her wonderful sharing a couple of a weeks ago, when we together addressed the theme of being single and spiritual, because Mary lived in a much more traditional time, and for her to become pregnant during her betrothal period when it would have been considered scandalous for her to be perceived to having had sex during that period would have mired her in an avalanche of shame, and if the letter of the law was followed exactly, even the death penalty. To make matters worse, Mary’s pregnancy occurred during a massive Roman census which required the Jewish people to travel to their places of birth to register. Even a pregnant woman would be required to travel. So Mary, who was expecting a child, and Joseph were forced to travel to Bethlehem to register as part of the census.
That trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been over 100 kilometers. It would have been a trip further than Vancouver to Whistler. Remember that is on foot, perhaps with the aid of a donkey.
You know the story in Bethlehem. Because there so many people crowded in the small town for the census, there was no room for them in any hotel or motel. They didn’t even have any friends or family with available floor space, and they were forced to find shelter in a cold cave, with the stench of the cattle and the sheep in their nostrils.
If we focus the lens of our camera on Mary alone, we can easily conclude that given her age, the fact that the census would force her as a pregnant woman to travel, the fact that she would find no suitable place to give birth once she got to Bethlehem, we can easily conclude that Mary’s pregnancy was ill-timed. Maybe at times Mary whispered, “God, are you sure about the timing of all this?”
Have you ever had an experience where you felt like saying, “God this is bad timing!”? When my friend Sam Rima who was staying with us last weekend sensed God calling him to attend seminary, he was in his early 20s, fairly recently married, without much money and no medical insurance and then three weeks before he was going to enroll seminary in Southern California where he and his wife new no one--his wife Sue announced, “I'm pregnant.” About three weeks before we were to leave for seminary, Sue found out she was pregnant! San cried, "How could you do this to me!!" Sue’s dad said to Sam, "Surely you won't be going down there now – you could probably get your old jobs back." Have you ever experienced something felt like bad timing?
As we focus the camera lens on Mary’s life, we could conclude from our human perspective that the timing was off. But when we read Galatians 4:4 and with the benefit of hindsight, we can understand: 4But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law (Galatians 4:4 KJV).
In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son. What does the expression “fullness of time” mean? It means that there was a perfect time for Christ, the Saviour of the world, to be born. Learning from the beginning of time, if you scroll way back to the first book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve, after they sinned in the Garden of Eden, “I am going to send you a Saviour.” Later in Genesis, Chapter 12, God approaches a Middle Eastern nomad named Abraham and tells him to leave his country, his relatives, everything that was familiar to him, and to go to a land that God would show him. God promised that through Abraham’s seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. The seed that God was referring to would be Jesus. God promised to one of Abraham’s great-great-great-great grandsons David that he would send a Saviour trhough his family line, and through the prophet Isaiah God promised that a Saviour would be born miraculously of a virgin. The prophet Micah foretold that the Messiah would be in Bethlehem.
From the very beginning of human history God had whispered that he would send someone who would fulfill “the hopes and dreams of all the years.” And God always knew when the fullness of time would be to send his Son, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.
As we look back from the perspective of history, we know that the timing of Jesus’ birth was perfect. It was the right time politically for Christ to be born. The Roman Empire in many ways was at its Zenith. The empire, of course, had many flaws. But it had some virtues too. One of its virtues was that it was fairly tolerant of other religions. The Roman Empire had conquered many different nations with people of different races and religions, and the Roman Empire for the most part was fairly tolerant of different religions as long as they would proclaim that Caesar was God. This worked for most of the ethnic groups, but there was one exception--the Jews. The Jews said, “We worship only Yahweh.” The Jews were so adamant about this that they would not change, even after decades of being intimidated and, in some cases, martyred. So the Roman Empire finally said, “We will grant an exemption for the Jewish people.” The Romans did not require the Jews to declare Caesar as God.
During this privileged position where they did not have to proclaim that Caesar is God, a freedom that was present at the time of Jesus’ birth, and was present in the world until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Roman Empire did not force the Jewish people or the Christians (they assumed that Christianity and Judaism were the same thing), they did not force Christians to proclaim that Caesar was God.
In this environment of freedom, Christianity, for this and many other factors, spread like wildfire.
Jesus was born into a time of relative peace. When the emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated there was great civil war in the Roman Empire. As his reign closed and Caesar Augustus came to the throne, which was about 25 years before the birth of Christ, peace broke out throughout the Roman Empire and there was relative peace for the next 200 years. Because of this time of peace, the Roman men were not tied up in battles, so they were free to build roads throughout the Roman Empire. Travel was safe. People could travel with ease. Hence, the expression was coined: “All roads lead to Rome.” In this environment the gospel was free to spread to the known world.
It was also the right time culturally. Because of the time, conquests of Alexander the Great before Christ was born, 350 BCE, many people spoke Greek. Greek language and culture brought an element of cohesion to society. More people were being educated and more people than ever were able to read than ever before. So when the New Testament was written, it was written in Konie Greek, the language the majority of the people understand. Because it was culturally oriented, the message of Jesus spread more quickly.
And it was the right time spiritually--there was the spiritual openness. Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had done a wonderful job raising questions about the meaning of life. Some people say that Greek philosophies plowed the fields and Christianity came and sowed the seeds of meaning.
The average Roman citizen was tired of the same old religions. The mythological gods of Greece and Rome were losing their grip on many people. Everyone was hungry for something more. It was a time when people were longing for a relationship with God that was real, and more than just about keeping certain rules.
So we see in the Christmas story the perfect timing of God, that in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son. Some of us may say, “Well, that may be true of Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God, the Saviour of the world, but would that be true for me?” Would God's timing be perfect in my own life?
In Proverbs 16 vs. 1 we read: In human beings belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the proper answer of the tongue (Proverbs 16:1).
Then in verse 9: In their hearts human beings plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps (Proverbs 16:9).
In Acts 17:26 we read: From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands (Acts 17:26).
This does not mean that our lives will be free of stress and suffering. As we just noted, Mary’s pregnancy as a poor, unwed teenager in a very traditional society would have brought great shame upon her, yet God was fulfilling his purpose in and through her.
For Jesus, the will of God meant going to the cross, serving as a sacrifice for our sins. And his destiny for us may be a cross as well, but as was true for Jesus God will create good out of it and find a way to bring glory to his name. We see this throughout Scripture.
In Genesis we read that Joseph’s brothers betrayed him and sold him into slavery. They told their father that Joseph had been killed by a wild beast. Joseph, who became a slave in Egypt, was unfairly accused for making a sexual advance toward the wife of his boss Potiphar and was thrown into prison. He was eventually released and worked with such wisdom and effectiveness that he became the prime minister of Egypt.
Then there was a great famine in the region. Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt to get food from Egypt. They ended up meeting with the prime minister, who was Joseph, but whom they did not recognize. When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, and said, “Look! I am your brother,” his brothers were deathly afraid. They were terrified. They thought Joseph would have them all executed. But Joseph said to them:
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you ( Genesis 45:4-5).
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis50:20).
In ways that we are not aware, God is guiding our lives.
If you read the book of Esther, even though the word “God” isn’t even mentioned once in this book of the Bible, we see God’s providential hand throughout. In a story similar to Joseph’s, Esther ended up being nominated and winning the Miss Persia contest. The king does not know that she is a Jew. Then one of the king’s evil pawns aspires to have all the Jewish people exterminated because one of them offends him. Esther as queen is urged by her uncle Mordecai to intervene and to plead on behalf of her people. And he says, “Who knows, perhaps you have been elevated to the position of queen for such a time as this.”
In ways that we may not be fully aware of, God is guiding our lives. As is true of Mary, as is true of Joseph and Esther, that doesn’t mean that we will be free of suffering, but it does mean that God is for us, even in the estranged and difficult times of our lives. As one pastor puts it, God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up, he is plotting the course of managing the troubles for far-reaching purposes, for our good and his glory.
It is a mystery how God uses our free choices to serve his eternal purposes. As esteemed theologian J. I. Packer puts it in his book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God: “The tension between our free choice and God’s sovereignty is a paradox and an apparent contradiction that our minds cannot fully comprehend.” Those of us who were raised in the West have a difficult time with paradoxes and seeming contradictions. But as people from Asia and developing world can fully appreciate, the Scriptures which affirm both-- as J. I. Packer puts it is an antinomy, a paradox, a seeming contradiction in terms. He points out that light has sometimes been observed as a "particle" and at other times as a "wave," yet we accept with this apparent paradox.
In God sovereignty gives us free choice and yet guides our lives to serve his purposes of history.
Last weekend as I mentioned my friend Sam Rima was staying at our house:
When Sam and Sue arrived in LA. Sue was hoping to work as a waitress (the only job she had ever had) to put them through seminary – not a promising prospect for someone who would soon be six months pregnant. They also were uninsured and realized that costs would likely be upwards of $7,000 in 1982. They were running out of money. It was during a recession and both of them had looked for over a month for work, but they received rejection after rejection. Sam says, “I remember Sue and I laying in one another's arms on our bed weeping uncontrollably...”

The next week Sue was out looking for work again and after numerous rejections she sought refuge from the August 100 degree heat by stepping into the lobby of a Home Savings of America to enjoy the air conditioning (their car didn't have any) and get a drink of water. While at the drinking fountain an older gentleman asked if she was a customer of the bank and she said no. He asked, "Well what are you doing here then?" She explained her husband Sam had come down to attend Talbot Seminary, and just needed to get out of the heat. He introduced himself as Mr. Oney, a Regional Sr. Vice President of the bank and a member of the Talbot Seminary Board of Directors. He told Sue if she needed a job, he would find her a job. He took her back to an office and began making calls to branch managers throughout southern California. After a few calls, he said the downtown LA branch would give her a job if she wanted it (heart of downtown at 7th and Figeuro). The branch manager told Sue if "Mr. Oney wants you to have a job, you have a job!" On the way home Sue began leafing through the personnel packet they gave her to check out the insurance coverage that the bank’s insurance company was the only insurance company in southern California that covered pre-existing pregnancy 100% after a three month waiting period.
Here’s a picture of Sam and Sue their daughter Jill in the middle who is now an adult and mother herself…



Even if you don’t believe in personal God I believe God can still guide us.

Steve Jobs didn't believe in a personal God, but believed that some good a powerful force was guiding his life:

In a graduation speech at Stanford he said:
“I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.”
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something.”
You have to trust something….
You have to trust something….

Why not trust in the living God?
God can even use world events to shape our individual story in powerful ways.
We see in this story of Mary, Joseph and Esther, and in the lives of countless people who have looked back thoughtfully over their lives, there is a force greater than ourselves, a personal being in the universe—God—who is shaping the course of history for our ultimate good and for the glory of God.
Paul says in Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Some of us want to be the general manager of the universe, or at least our universe. But, there is no way that our limited mind can do a better job than an all powerful God, who is running the universe. God calls us to do all that we can in our power, but then invites us to surrender or destiny to him.
Someone has said that when you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe that there will be earth to stand on, or that you will be given wings to fly.
When the angel Gabriel came to Mary, though she knew her life would be severely disrupted forever and never the same, she simply said, “Yes, may it be as you have said.”
That’s what God is calling us to. He is calling us to say “yes” to him and “May it be as you have said.”
The reason that we can do this is because of the One that Mary would give birth to—Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ was 33 years old, as a human being he died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.
The Apostle Paul says in the Book of Romans: He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all the things?(Romans 8:32).
God’s will is being revealed to us very day, sometimes through a surprise, sometimes through an inner nudging, sometimes through an ordinary circumstance, And as we say “Yes! Yes! Yes!” to God, he will weave something beautiful in our lives.
I close with a prayer of Thomas Merton:
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

Singleness and Spirituality(11Nov2011)

Series: Relationships M1 11 11 06
Speakers: Ken Shigematsu and Kirsten Rumary
Title: Singleness and Spirituality
Text: 1 Corinthians 7:25-35
BIG IDEA: Singleness offers a vacancy in our heart for the Lord and a unique freedom to serve him.

Connections Dinner announcement:

Introduction
In an episode of the popular TV show Friends, a crotchety neighbour named Mr. Heckles dies and leaves everything “to the two noisy girls in the apartment above mine, Monica and Rachel.” (Show photo)

As his friends go through his apartment they find memorabilia that includes Heckles’ old high school yearbook. They find out that Heckles was the class clown, played the clarinet in the band and was extremely picky about the women he dated—just like Chandler.

show photo of Chandler (next photo) only if the video does not work



(USE PHOTO OF CHANDLER ONLY IF VIDEO DOESN’T WORK).

Chandler goes into a personal crisis because he sees that Heckles’ finicky dating habits kept him alone all his life. Heckles had kept pictures of women he dated with comments about why he rejected them: “too tall,” “big gums,” “too smart,” “too loud,” “makes noise when she eats.”
“This is me!” Chandler exclaims. “This is what I do! I am going to end up alone, just like he did.” “Come on, Heckles was a nut case,” Joey reassures Chandler. “Our trains are on the same track. Okay?” Chandler responds. “Yeah, I am coming up 30 years behind him. All the stops are the same! Aloneville, Bittertown, Hermit Junction!” (show video) Chandler says, “And now I have to get a snake! I am going to be a lonely old man. I am going to need a thing! I’ll be the crazy man with the snake…crazy snakeman. And I’ll get more snakes and call them my babies. Kids won’t walk past my place. They will run away from crazy snakeman.”
For Chandler the worst that could possibly happen to him is to grow old and die alone.
While Chandler’s feelings are amusing to us because they are so extreme, many people resonate with his concerns. Am I going to die alone? What if I never find somebody or a community to become part of?
The Scriptures do NOT share Chandler’s feeling that being single is a catastrophe. In fact, the Scriptures, in the New Testament in particular, honour the single life. It is really clear from the teaching of the New Testament that we have the freedom to remain single. We have the freedom to marry if we have desire and the opportunity to do so. But we also have the freedom to choose stay single.
Many people in ancient Israel, who lived who lived in what we would call Old Testament part of the Bible, did not feel free to remain single. Singleness for them in a real way felt synonymous with death and extinction. But now through the teaching of Jesus the unique son of God on the reality of a world to come, we are now truly free to be married, but we are also truly free to choose singleness.
Most of the people at Tenth Church, like most of the people in Vancouver and most of the people in North America, as of a few years ago, according to the New York Times, are single. And for those of us here who are married, the chances are that one day we will be single again, either through a possible divorce as much as we would not want that to happen about half of all marriages end in divorce, or through the death of our spouse. Occasionally a couple dies at exactly the same time—plane crash—but that is rare.
Jesus clearly taught that in the world to come people will not be married to each other – there is only a marriage between God and his people. This is hard to hear for people who are happily married to hear. But in the world to come I won't be Sakiko's husband; she won’t be my wife – we will be married to God. According to the Scriptures, the most enduring relationships that we have are not husband and wife but as brother and sister – as siblings in Christ.
And so I believe this message on singleness and spirituality as we begin the three-week series on relationships has relevance for all of us.
If you married and/or if you have children, we would like to invite you to our conference two weekends from now with Paul and Virginia Friesen.
The New Testament not only affirms our freedom to remain single in a way that wasn’t as true in the Old Testament times, but ennobles the single life. When God became a human being in Jesus Christ, he chose to remain single. One of the greatest people of history, the Apostle Paul, was a single man.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to 1 Corinthians 7: 25:
25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27 Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.
29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who are married should live as if they were not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
In verse 25 when Paul talks about virgins, he is referring to single people who have not been married. In their culture, unlike ours, people, particularly women who were not married, were virgins (and this is why the term virgin and unmarried were used interchangeably Paul's world).
Paul prefaces his comments in verse 26 by talking about this present crisis. Paul, along with many Jewish people of his day, anticipated a time of great suffering. They expected the world, at least as they knew it, to end. And of course with the siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D., the Roman army led by the future emperor Titus besieged and conquered the city of Jerusalem. The siege led to the destruction of the famous temple in Jerusalem.
In the light of this, and in times of great periods of suffering in general, for example in wartime, when it was very possible to lose your spouse and children, the same kind of bias toward singleness and not having children applies. That’s why Paul says, “Because of this present crisis I think that it is good if a man or a woman is single to remain as they are.” He counsels people, “In this present crisis do not look for a spouse.” But he also says in verse 28: “But if you do not marry, you have not sinned.”
Then in verse 32, Paul says:
An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband.
Clearing Paul is honoring the choice people might make to remain single – particularly given the present crisis that was facing his world.
Choosing to remain single is an honorable choice before God.
During spring break in my first year of undergrad, I went on a mission trip to South Carolina. We were there to help build a school for some underprivileged children in the African-American part of the community. One night around the fire pit, I noticed how the pastor who was leading the mission trip, a person whom I really admired, was unable to interact with the students on the mission trip because he had to look after two of his toddlers who were with him on the trip. He obviously had to attend to them. I remember watching this and praying “Lord, if you want me to remain single, I am open to that. If this would be best, lead me in that direction. Or if you want me to be married but to not have any children of our own, please lead me in that direction.” I wasn't consciously thinking of First Corinthians 7 at the time, but I intuited that as a single person or as a person without children of my own I might be freer to serve the Lord.
I was briefly engaged in my late 20s, but we broke up – she didn't feel led to move our relationship toward marriage and I didn't feel I wanted to keep dating her. When I became pastor here is a single person, as you might imagine, I knew that it would be difficult and complicated to date given my role. This is still back in the mid-1990s when eHarmony didn't exist. So I thought well maybe I will be single. And though there were struggles at times of loneliness, there was also great freedom (freedom that I can more fully appreciate looking back).
Then I got married. Just over year into our marriage Sakiko became pregnant and experienced a pregnancy complication which made us think that it would be difficult for us to have a child. It was hard at first, but then we embraced what we thought was our destiny and enjoyed the intimacy and the freedom of a married couple without children.
(And then to our great surprise along came Joey. And while parenting is rich in its own way, who also lost some of the freedoms we had before and while our marriages blessed. We’ve missed some of the unique closeness that a couple can have when they don't have children or are empty-nesters).
And speaking as one who is happily married and grateful to be a parent, I can also see why certain people choose to remain single, or married but not have kids. There are gifts and those stations of life.
A woman from our community here at Tenth named Beth Allinger served as a single missionary in India and Nepal for nearly 40 years. She has shared with me personally but also in public settings how as a younger woman here in Vancouver she had several suitors – young man who wanted to marry her, but who didn't share her vision to serve the Lord in South Asia. So she chose to remain single.
John Stott was a very respected pastor in England who recently died. His writings, teaching and a couple of personal conversations with him have had a great impact on my life. John Stott remained single throughout his life. According to a friend who asked him about his singleness, Stott never felt a particular call to singleness, but he never felt called to be married either.
John Stott also said, “The liberty of singleness is that single people experience the great joy of being able to devote themselves, with concentration and without distraction, to the work of the LORD.”
Single people have a special freedom to serve God and other people in a much more focused way. So if you're single, are you using your freedom in this way?
As will be true in the life to come, single people now have a special vacancy in their heart for God.
I recently read a beautiful book entitled The Long Retreat by Andrew Krivak. (Show jacket cover and photo)




Andrew Krivak was a poet, and an ocean lifeguard, who felt led to pursue the long retreat of entering into a process to become a Catholic priest and to join the order of the Jesuits. Near the end of his 8-year training, rather inconveniently, but rather naturally and beautifully, while he was studying at a seminary in Boston, he met a young woman named Amelia who had recently completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard and to whom he became attracted, and she like Andrew was deeply devoted to God.
In his memoir he writes: “Maybe it was her willingness to listen. Maybe it was the fact that she was so cute, with her silky ponytail, green eyes and wide grin. I began to test caution and let myself feel the desire that I had for so long pushed down inside, a feeling that I was being handed something I was certain I had lost forever, a loss of my own making. I committed it to prayer every day.”
As their friendship grew through their cautious gestures of friendship, a mutual affection was clearly deepening.
One day they were sitting on a stone bench and Andrew asked the question, “What is this we are feeling? Is it love?” She breathed out a prayer-like sigh. “It is,” she said, “at least for me.” And they watched swans float like white schooners across the lake.
And one day as they were standing along the banks of the inky Charles River which runs along Harvard College, Andrew looked into the river, took a breath and said nothing. And then he said this: “I think I never believed that anyone could love me without one day walking away,” Andrew said, looking into the water. “Not because of any great trauma. I guess because of those collective moments we have all had. After enough time, priesthood seemed like the best guarantee.” Then he turned to her, “I belong to somewhere or to someone, and that someone would be God. Love would be my love to Christ and you have to admit it’s a pull that’s pretty compelling.”
We have the freedom to choose singleness.
If you are unmarried, or if you are married without children, in some cases those are chosen states. In other cases they are not voluntarily chosen but are the result of circumstances. My friend Catherine from seminary shared with that from the time she was a young girl she wanted to remain single, to not become a biological mother, so that like Mother Teresa every child could become her child.
But, there can be real disappointment around these circumstances for some single or married people without children who didn’t choose these stations in life. But these states, whether voluntary or not, also provide a freedom with which to love and to serve God and others.
It’s different if you have chosen that particular path versus being on that path through circumstance you have not. But as Jesus and Paul affirm there are unique freedoms and gifts on that path.
KIRSTEN RUMARY:
At this time I am going to invite Kirsten Rumary to come forward. Kirsten is a long-time member of the Tenth community and she is going to share part of her journey with us today.

Singles Talk at Tenth – November 2011
My story:
_ Singleness
o Talk at Tenth on Freedom and Loneliness
_ Three years ago, I had the opportunity to speak on singleness here at Tenth. I had been thinking about the topic for a while, and decided to do a “survey” of other singles for fun, to find out what was the “best and worst” things about being single. After sorting through hundreds of replies, I distilled that the best thing single people enjoyed was freedom in all areas of life, and the worst thing was perceived loneliness. POWERPOINT.
_ So I decided to explore how Jesus dealt with the freedom and loneliness he would have known, being a single man in ancient peasant Hebrew society, and I spoke about how it helped me to embrace my singleness and the call to discipleship in a greater way - to choose to let Jesus' life inform HOW I live in my singleness. That is a pretty broad topic, there's so much more I could and did say three years ago, so if you'd enjoy reading that you can find it on Ken's Message Blog in the month of November 2008.
_ Today Ken has shared about the benefits of choosing singleness, I want to talk about my experience of NOT choosing it.

_ Engagement
o Craig

_ Since that time three years ago, I started dating a man I had known for a number of years through work connections. I really liked him. He really liked me! The way he communicated his affection for me was so extravagant I felt like being a plant being watered – it affirmed me in a way I had never experienced in relationship to a man before.
_ Christmas of 2009 we got engaged, and the whirlwind of wedding planning and pre-marital counseling sessions began. Three months after our engagement, my fiancé and friend that I loved, panicked and broke off our engagement very suddenly with little warning (two phone calls in a 24-hour period), and then refused to speak to me.
_ As you can imagine, this sudden and unexpected break was a terrible shock. In trying to explain that time in my life, it was as though I was in a boxing ring and someone hit me with a knockout punch. For a while I was just down for the count, I couldn’t even get up, and thank God for my family and friends who rallied around me and loved and supported me until I could feel and believe that I was on firm enough footing again.

_ Singleness
o This current undesired state of affairs
_ So here I find myself, a year-and-a-half later, in a position that not only did I not choose for myself but that I do not want to be in. This was NOT where I thought my life would be today. I’m supposed to be living in another country, doing work I love with someone I love, building a life together. The opportunity has been thrust upon me to think about my life and my singleness in an even deeper way (the same truths about freedom and loneliness and how Jesus' life informs how I choose to live still applies – but the questions I’m asking now are closer to my heart).

_ Am I significant? Do I matter?

_ Am I lovable? The man who said he couldn’t imagine being with anyone but me, walked away from me - is there something wrong with me?
_ Would it make a difference if I decided to be with just anyone now, so that I wouldn't have to be alone?
o Transition:
_ Now, I realize my story is singular in that it’s an extreme situation that not everyone would have experienced, but I think it is universal in that at the core of it, many of us who are single find ourselves so without necessarily wanting to be there, and we are faced with some of the questions I’ve posed, among others
_ Even though New Testament writers (like Paul) commend the state of singleness, it would seem that few are called to a life of celibacy in the modern-day church. (Celibacy as defined as the calling to choose never to marry in order to devote one’s life to God, as opposed to the calling to all believers to abstinence while unmarried, according to the scriptures). So I would make that distinction.
_ So for those of us who are undesirably single, how do we embrace God’s call on our lives while single – not assuming we are called to singleness for life?
_ (I want to be clear about one thing - I’m not saying God broke up my engagement because His call is for me to be single. Sometimes circumstances of life ambush us and it can be difficult to understand why things happen. Well-meaning people can default to saying “you know, Kirsten maybe it’s just God’s will that you be single.” (Or that this or that happened to you) I don’t equate what happened as God’s will for my life. I think a decision was made out of fear that impacted my life and placed me in the situation I now find myself in.)

_ Tragedy happens. Disappointment happens. It’s not necessarily God’s will, but can I still choose to respond to him in the midst of this place I find myself in?
_

The Comfort of Mary’s Story
_ As I was thinking about speaking today, a friend suggested that I read the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her experience of having her “life interrupted”. His words: go for coffee and “take time” with Mary. As I did that I found her story strangely comforting.
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
_ Mary finds herself in these circumstances that are “strange and troubling”, enough so that the angel takes the time to reassure her.
_ Then the angel gives her this news about what is going to happen to her, this miraculous work of God. We have the advantage of looking back 2000 years and seeing the whole story of Jesus’ life and the outcome that we all benefit from, but for Mary in that moment, her life has just been interrupted with an invitation she didn’t ask for, with circumstances she couldn’t have foreseen, an interruption that would have had significant consequences for her life:

o Some she would have known
_ The social backlash to getting pregnant in the “betrothal period” (technically married for one year, but not yet having sex) – the cultural shame and potential punishment
_ Fiancé had the right to leave her and there was the possibility of severe punishment

o Some she wouldn’t have known
_ Couldn’t have known they would have to flee for their lives when Herod ordered all babies under 2 to die
_ Couldn’t have known that she would watch her son die


_ Still, Mary chooses to open herself to the invitation to let God’s plan be carried out through her
o Opens up her emptiness (womb) to be filled by God
o Her choice to embrace the circumstances and possible consequences of this offer changes the whole world – mother of the Savior
o Her response to the angel seems so simple, but I can’t imagine that it was just a naïve response of a young girl who didn’t know better. This is what comforts me: that she chose a difficult thing for her own life that we get to know the wonderful outcome of. She didn’t run from the circumstances she found herself in, she didn’t curl up in fear and hide; she didn’t complain and worry and fret. She chose to be open.
_ In light of her response, I am wondering: can I be responsive to God’s call in my life as I find it now and be open to Him in the troubling circumstances I find myself in? This is not something I have perfected by any stretch of the imagination. I’m doing my best as I go.

_ 3 areas where I sense God calling to me right now are:
o Choosing a more intimate love-relationship with Him.
o Choosing what kind of work I will do in the second half of my life

o Choosing to build on the relationships I will have

_ Choosing to build intimacy with him: I’ve been seeing a spiritual director, someone who is helping me to look/listen for God’s “movements” in my life, and how to be responsive to that movement.
o For example, I am a very tactile person, so she is teaching me how to respond physically when I sense God’s presence close to me by creating something with my hands. I'm not this fabulous artist, by any stretch, but there is something about using my hands that helps me feel like I am talking to God, just not using words, and I experience it as being very intimate between Him and I.

_ I’ve also chosen to see a counselor to look at how the loss of my fiancé has affected me, so that my intimacy with God isn’t clouded or impeded by the trauma of that. Our experiences of hurt from the past can carry over into the way we relate to God, (if we perceive that God arbitrarily allowed the situation to happen or that it's His will that we only know loss), and I want to keep making sure that I don’t see God through that distorted lens of human hurt.
_ These two things are a means of building intimacy with him that are easier for me to devote my time to, because I am single

_ In terms of my vocational calling, in light of the fact that I won’t have my own children and the legacy of a family, the value of what I choose to do is taking on an even greater importance to me.
_ This isn’t to say that married people don’t do valuable work or have that desire – but sometimes they don’t have the freedom because they have to take into account what their spouse wants to do and they have to provide for their children (my parents).
_ I have tremendous freedom to choose what I want to do and respond to God calling me to a particular kind of work.


o For example, in the last year I got an offer to take a particular career path that would guarantee an increase in income, but I actually feel called to the work I'm doing now and it gives me the opportunity to contribute to others in a way that feels more significant.
o Again, if I had a family, I might not have as much freedom to choose in this way.

_ Lastly, in choosing to build relationships, I can find that difficult or disappointing as an aging single person. I choose to be in a small group where I can grow and be challenged in my walk with God, and I do have a few close friendships, but I struggle with feeling my “aloneness”. I can get caught up in feeling that only a marriage relationship is going to meet my need to not be alone. How I see my relationships as a single person must shift or I am in danger of becoming embittered by what I don’t have. Any time I choose to live as a “have not” the enemy has access to tempt me to choose less than God’s best for me, to try to meet my needs outside of God’s provision for my life. (I think of Adam and Eve, and the enemy tempts them with the one thing they can’t have, making them feel as if they were “have nots”, that God was holding out on them).
_ I have to choose to build on what I do have, the relationships I do have, and not let bitterness and envy take over in my heart, or I'm in danger of becoming a bitter, shriveled-up old lady. God in His tenderness invites me to choose to come close to Him if I start to travel down "Bitterness Road" and let HIM water and affirm me.
_ I believe that for every single person here today, God is wanting to draw close to you and water you

So In Closing – Come Back to the Angel’s First Words to Mary:
_ It’s significant that his first words are words of affirmation, reassurance, and then affirmation again

o We know that every human being needs to know the depth of their value – everyone here needs to know that they are prized possessions in the eyes of God.
o But I believe for the purposes of today's talk that the single people here need to know at a core gut-level, as people who stand alone, that they are "enough" and that they are "chosen".
o I have to know in my core that the answer to my question: “Am I lovable?” is YES. I have to own that YES from God alone. (My family and friends were a huge part of my recovery after the breakup - I felt their love in a very tangible way) but that deeper knowing of my worth must come in relationship to God alone or my tendency will be to find my core value, my identity, in other places in my life (like work and relationships to men)
o Before Mary hears anything about what is to come, she is affirmed, reassured, and affirmed again. Even Jesus at his baptism is affirmed by God, before scripture records him doing anything of great significance. If God felt it important to affirm Mary and Jesus, how much more would He know that I need to hear those words, know them in my gut, particularly if I am going to choose to follow him with integrity as a single person, and invite deeper intimacy with Him in these circumstances I didn't choose for my life.
PRAYER