Ten Lies That Shatter Lives (6):
Never Mind The Weak






A Sermon On:

Exodus 20: 13

Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 105-107






PREPARED BY

KEN GEHRELS

PASTOR

CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

NEPEAN, ONTARIO


"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It's been repeated over and over again through the years. We've all heard it. And we've all heard the phrases, and experienced the looks and actions which go with them that prove this phrase so horribly wrong.

Violet can tell you.
Jack Roeda, in the book Decisions, writes:
I met Violet when she was a junior in South High - and it didn't take long to see she had problems. There was certainly nothing about her appearance that would explain her sad life: she looked like an average high school student. But if you watched her nervously strut through the halls, frequently leaving disaster in her wake, you soon realized that Violet didn't fit in. Maybe it was because things were always happening to her: she fainted in Phys Ed class; she dropped her typewriter on the floor in typing class (probably a first in South High history); and she tripped and fell over the doormat at the main entrance to school.
A living calamity- that's what Violet was.
Once, while thirty grinning faces watched, nervous Violet chewed her pen so hard that ink spurted all over her face, hands and clothes.
Few students took violet seriously. Even in greetings she could hear the barely disguised mocking tone:
"Hi, Violet" - sounding more like "Hi, Fool."
She told me that sometimes boys would intentionally trip her and then howl with laughter as they kicked her books out of reach.

Once, on a class outing, Violet waded into a fast-flowing stream. About halfway across, she felt the sand shifting under her feet and began screaming for help. Her classmates, assuming she was just trying to be the centre of attention, began taunting her mercilessly. When she grabbed frantically at the rope they tossed her, they threw her the other end. Violet was terrified. Finally a teacher noticed the spectacle and rescued the shaking girl from the water. As the teacher scolded Violet for her foolishness, he classmates stood around shaking their heads:
"Violet, Violet," they said scornfully.

I got to know Violet quite well. She would burst into our house, stay for only a few minutes, and then leave. But in those short visits she said a great deal. She told me that no one loved her. I told her that wasn't so because WE loved her. She wouldn't hear of it. And when I tried to tell her God loved her, she angrily shouted, "Prove it - just prove it." I remember her standing by the stairway of our house and saying, "I'm nobody. I'm less than dirt." And she believed it.
Violet's parents tried to help. They took her to her pastor. They took her to a psychiatrist. But no one could seem to erase that deeply ingrained conclusion: "I'm less than dirt."

One day Violet disappeared. She had been gone more than a week before police found her wandering the streets of a large city hundreds of miles from home. And she had an ugly story to tell. Frightened, nervous Violet had allowed men to use her sexually. Why? Because the sweet nothings they whispered in her ear - even though she knew they were lies - were better than the ridicule she received in school.
Violet.
She was lonelier than any high school student ought to be. There was not one ounce of self-esteem in her. She even talked of suicide. So finally Violet was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
[J.Roeda, Decisions CRC Publications 1980]

There's a lie floating around out there somewhere which somehow tends to sink it's way into the subconscious will of many a life - a lie which tells us to be strong, act strong 'cause if you don't you won't survive. Don't take time for the weak - and don't be weak yourself. You don't need to.
Only the strong survive.
Only the strong get ahead.
In the end - really - only the strong matter.

That's the lie.
And how many have bought into that - perhaps we have, too, in some way.
Just a bit, anyway?

Challenging that lie, firing a broadside against it, is the truth of the 10 commandments which we have been studying here at Calvin Church over the last few weeks. Today, commandment #6: you shall not murder.
Don't trample on the Violets of the world.
Instead, treat them with tenderness. Handle them with care.
Bathe them with love and attention.
Human life is precious.
It may never be handled with contempt -
not our own life
not the life of anyone else.

"You shall not murder."
Notice that it does not say, as some older translations mistakenly have put it, "You shall not kill." The Hebrew in which this part of the bible was first written has two separate words for the taking of life:
It is the latter that the Bible is speaking of.

We don't have to spend a lot of time on the obvious forms of murder:
Most, if not all of us, can breathe easily for we are distant from such events.

But then there is Violet.
Trampled
ground into the dirt
breathing, but not living.
Violet, too, has been murdered, says Jesus in Matthew 5.
That kind of murder hits awfully close to home..... perhaps too close.

People, precious people, valuable people -
People made in the image of God
People like Violet - made for life, NOT for death.

"Choose life," commands God.
Choose it for yourself.
Choose it for others - no matter how weak or different or senile or mixed up.
Life is God's miracle. People belong to Him; they are His gift. God made people like Himself - in His image. He has no patience for those that squash the life out of other people, no matter who they are.

Violets must not be trampled on because God cares for them as if He had no one or nothing else to care for in the entire universe. And if a human life matters that much to God we certainly better respect, protect, and assist it.
[Roeda, ibid]



Murder - have you witnessed it.....
or committed it?
In the halls of Merivale or Redeemer High or Calvin CRC or your house?

A husband and wife visit with friends, and the one makes a vicious cutting remark about the other - the sort of thing you see in "Married With Children" or the cartoon strip "Harriet & Stanley Parker".
A senior citizen is placed in a nursing home and is left for hours in a solitary chair in a dark corner, at times in her own waste. She is treated like a child and all stimulation is removed. Slowly she wastes away the closing days of a once vigorous life.
The girl belittled and left out at school.
The boy on your block with no friends.
All these are victims of murder.

You shall not murder.
In His characteristic way God doesn't leave it there. He doesn't just command us to NOT destroy life. He calls us to build it up. Hear Him speak:
Which is where the catechism comes up with Q/A107, which we read together.

How do we do that? How do we live the positive flip side of the 6th commandment in the school halls and playgrounds, in the seniors' homes, the hospitals? How do we build life in a positive way for victims of domestic violence and abuse? How can we build life for those threatened with death even before they have a chance to live? How do we do that for the poor, the homeless, the handicapped? How do we do that in our family?

God gives us the example of Himself. "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life." [John 3.16]
Do you get that?
He permitted His son to be murdered in order to save His enemies, those who went against everything He was about. His great love, selfless love, costly love was poured out on people like you and I in order to give us life -
full life, eternal life - life in Jesus.

And as we consider the whole challenge of the 6th commandment we need to taste and experience that forgiving love again in a personal way.
For, if you are like me, as you begin to think about this topic, as pictures of Violet travel through your mind you can put a face on them:
And that has to be dealt with.
We cannot leave that stuff buried in some back closet.

Verses 25-26 of Matthew 5 speak of settling a debt with an adversary before going to court and being thrown in debtors prison. Jesus is using a metaphor of the eternal judgement that one day will face all of us.
"You and I are travelling through this world, and the standards of God are there making their demands. God, the judge, says 'What about that relationship between you and your brother? What about those things that are in your heart? You have not attended to them.' 'Settle at once says Christ. You may not have tomorrow morning and you are going to eternity like that...."
[Lloyd-Jones Sermon On the Mount p.230]

God has given us precious space this morning, my friends.
We are blessed to be here without other distractions tugging at us.
I'd like to challenge you to use a few moments here to examine your life.
- Is there hatred in there for a person, someone that you are not reconciled with, perhaps sitting in this same room right now?
- Is there someone that you belittle or hinder from a full, expressive life - a husband, wife, sister, brother, son, daughter, neighbour?

Then take a moment to do some serious business with Jesus before you go home. Acknowledge the situation to Him. Tell Him all about it. Confess it totally. And then ask for forgiveness.
Do it now.
Come, while there is still time.
The blood of Jesus, that was spilled onto the ground around the cross, was spilled out for an occasion just like this - to forgive murderers like us, tramplers of the Violets.

Believe that when you confess it, Jesus immediately will forgive it, wipe it off your record, and not hold it against you on the day when you appear in God's divine court.
All of it will be forgiven.

Christ's forgiving love - earned with his death on the cross. Love for murderers like you and me.
It's here for you today.
It's here, calling for you to come and be cleaned as only God can do.
It's here - also with a challenge.

For as we are cleaned and set free from the burdens of past horrors and genocides we've committed, we are then challenged to live in the same constructive, life-building love that Christ first demonstrates to us.

There is the challenge to go to one with whom we are at odds and try to set things right - maybe even at the expense of looking or feeling foolish, or going further than we think we have to go, or taking time we're not really sure we have.

And the challenge of supporting the weak - that's there, too. It's there in the midst of Ottawa's frenetic pace which seems to only have room for the strong and upwardly mobile. It's the challenge of stopping and listening for the weak, who may not even have the strength to call out above the din of the daily rat race; looking for them and bringing some positive, supportive dimension to their life that otherwise they'd never have.
It's the challenge of moving merely beyond not being a murderer to becoming an active haven of life-giving in today's blood-thirsty, life-sucking, hope-draining environment.

We all travel down the journey of life, a difficult and dangerous journey for the best of us. And the call of the Lord is for us to assist each other as best we can; to build each other up. So that, when the journey is finished no one may point to us and say, "I lived a miserable life because of him or her." Rather, may they say, "When I felt unwanted, he looked me up. When I thought life was not worth living, she treated me as a somebody." [Roeda, ibid].