Portraits of Betrayals
This is one of the occasions where I had a full-outline but developed up to "half-a-sermon" before the delievery... Here's the raw shape of the message:
[Page 1]
Have you ever feel betrayed?
A husband goes home to discover his wife had moved out and emptied the house in the process. A lover found out that she had been cheated on. A closed friend went behind your back just when you needed them most. Family members backstab each others.
You know the feeling. The feeling of shock, of denial, of anger, of extreme hurt and sadness, anxiety, withdrawal… All rolling in one.
Why does it hurt so much? It hurts because it violates the trust we have in the person. Strangers can break their promises and I couldn’t careless. But if the one we so love and so trust let us down, in the time we needed them most, it becomes so disappointing. And the closer we are to them, the deeper it hurts.
And it’s not only hurt, it leaves scars. Some people could not trust in people again, some become selfish, some would settle for shallow relationship so they can’t be betrayed again. But the scars often couldn’t heal too well. Most divorced couple would end up divorce again after re-marriage, some even multiple times. Many victims in relationship end up victimize others.
One fateful day in 1985, I was going through a stack of letters in an empty master bedroom. I was living with my aunt, who sponsored me to the US at the time. The letters were from my mom, writing to my aunt and uncle. And she was expressing her hurts and pains to them, while asking them not letting me and my younger brother know anything about the situation. I was discovering that my dad was having an affair and abandoning my mom shortly after we left Vietnam! The anger, the hurt, and the pain were so great that I’ve conditioned myself to block them from my memory for a long time. The betrayal effected me a great deal, even I was just a son, and not even directly witness the horrible turmoil at the time.
Fast forward twenty years. Not so long ago there was a reality TV show called “Temptation Island”, where a few couples were compete with each others to seduce the other couple’s partner to infidelity. What irony! A few hundred years ago we made adulterers wearing a scarlet letter A on their clothes to shame them. And now we are watching betrayal take place on Temptation Island as a national passtime?
Oh, only if we could go back in the yesteryears!
[Page 2]
If we could go back, we would find that betrayal was there too. It is as old as history.
In the Bible today we found the story of an adulterer. This is the story Mel Gibson referred to in the movie the “Passion of the Christ” when he had Jesus crossed a line on the sand, causing the mob drop the stones in their hands, and the gypsy woman reaching out for His feet.
The text read, “Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.”
Eventhough there were some debates about if this story was supposed to belong here in the middle of chapter 7 and 8 of the book of John or not; virtually all scholars who have studied this believe that it was an authentic portray of Jesus and His life. We see the backdrop of the story here: it was early in the morning, Jesus was sitting down, perhaps on the steps looking down the temple court, and many people gathered around to hear him teach. That’s when the religious leaders dragged a woman infront of Him and start accusing her of betrayal.
She betrayed her husband. She was caught cheating. Back then there was neither video nor camera, so it’s not that easy to convict someone of adultery. You will need to have atleast two witnesses to accuse someone of it. But here, she was caught red-handed, “in the [very] act of adultery” as the text said!
Nobody who get married would have thought that they will commit adultery someday. When people were in love, they want to share their lives with each other forever. That’s why people get married. But then disillusion set in, fights were fought bitterly, feelings were hurted. The woman perhaps began to feel dissatisfied with the relationship, she just wanted someone to understand her. She started day dreaming, asking “What if…” And one day she found someone who was willing to listen, who is caring. At first, perhaps she was struggling with her conscience about what’s right and what’s wrong (she knew clearly that God commanded, “Thou shall not commit adultery”), but eventually the excuses got stronger, and the affair got the best of her.
And that is a typical portray of sins. God didn’t create moral laws just because He likes it, He gave us the rules for our protection. You break them at your own risk. In fact in these days, you can die from promiscuity with HIV and other STDs.[1] And sin tend to be very sneaky, at first it seems so harmless at the little things, but eventually it controls us and we can no longer control it. Finally sin destroyed our life with its consequences.
To this woman here, she started out with betraying her husband to be with her lover; and now her lover betrayed her…
Wait a minute, how would you know that her lover betrayed her, you may’ve asked. In verse 5, the religious leaders said as they accuse her, “In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women…” As we checked back in the Law of Moses, we found it actually said, “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife (with the wife of his neighbor) both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.” [Lev.20:10] The Law said “both”, and here was only the woman. Where is the man, especially if she was caught “in the very act of adultery” (actually found sleeping with the guy)?
It is unlikely that they would let the man go and just charge the woman for it would weaken the case. So there are only two other possibilities, and both pointed toward the betrayal of her lover. The first possibility is that he escaped and ran away, leaving her to fend off herself. Some men tend to abandon their mates in time of trouble and distress.
The second possibility suggested an even more treacherous path. Some scholars observed that Jesus was just came to Jerusalem for only a few days, and started stiring up the people with his teaching. It was only a matters of days and the religious leaders have gotten a sinful woman, caught in the act, to use her to entrap Jesus. How convenience! Ofcourse unless they have one of their men stalking the weak-willed women, and lure a vulnerable one into the forbidden relationship. Ofcourse, when the sting operation was planned, it’s not too hard to prearrange for the witness to be there and trap her.
So, no matter which way it happened, there is a fair chance that she was betrayed by her lover. And such is the condition of sin: we might have hurt others with our sins, but at the end we are also hurted by sin.
But she was not the only one who were betrayed in this story; Jesus was betrayed too. The religious leaders were betraying God as well. They did not carryout their duties as God expected them to be, but worse, they slso betrayed God in setting trap for Jesus. The Bible said that they came “and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.”
What were the trap that they set for him? If Jesus responded, “execute her by stoning!” then not only they succeed in discredit Him and His teaching on the Loving God, but they can also accuse Him before the Romans, because only the Romans can excute capital punishment. On the other hand, if he said “let her go” then they can also discredit Him for not upholding the Law of God. This is just one of the first few attempts of the religious leaders to kill Jesus (which they finally succeeded).
But there’s one more portraits of betrayl. The religious people was also betraying the woman. This is may be a stretch, but should broken people be able to find comforts under the shadow of the religious wing? If some of the religious leaders were the witness of her sins, why did they not stop her for sinning, rather just wait for the crime to happen and then persecuted her? Here, her personal shame was exposed to all; they made her a public spectacle instead of offer any healing, care or concern.
Many of us also feel betrayed by religious people, or by the churches. Sometimes we already feel bad about our own sinful life, and to coming to church we feel even more condemned for what we have done. Granted, some corrections are expected from the church people, for patients would expect it will “sting a little” when they come to the hospital. But some times, the judgement and the criticism are more than what we are able to bear!
There were betrayals then, there were betrals now. Churches are littered with broken lives…………
{Closure}We are found crying out, “Oh God, do you know what I am going through?”
The full-outline was as followed
Partial Footnotes:
[1]Shelley, M. 1995. Changing lives through preaching and worship: 30 strategies for powerful communication. "Was previously published in Leadership, by Christianity Today, Inc."--T.p. verso. (1st ed.). Library of Christian leadership. Moorings: Nashville, Tenn.
[Page 1]
Have you ever feel betrayed?
A husband goes home to discover his wife had moved out and emptied the house in the process. A lover found out that she had been cheated on. A closed friend went behind your back just when you needed them most. Family members backstab each others.
You know the feeling. The feeling of shock, of denial, of anger, of extreme hurt and sadness, anxiety, withdrawal… All rolling in one.
Why does it hurt so much? It hurts because it violates the trust we have in the person. Strangers can break their promises and I couldn’t careless. But if the one we so love and so trust let us down, in the time we needed them most, it becomes so disappointing. And the closer we are to them, the deeper it hurts.
And it’s not only hurt, it leaves scars. Some people could not trust in people again, some become selfish, some would settle for shallow relationship so they can’t be betrayed again. But the scars often couldn’t heal too well. Most divorced couple would end up divorce again after re-marriage, some even multiple times. Many victims in relationship end up victimize others.
One fateful day in 1985, I was going through a stack of letters in an empty master bedroom. I was living with my aunt, who sponsored me to the US at the time. The letters were from my mom, writing to my aunt and uncle. And she was expressing her hurts and pains to them, while asking them not letting me and my younger brother know anything about the situation. I was discovering that my dad was having an affair and abandoning my mom shortly after we left Vietnam! The anger, the hurt, and the pain were so great that I’ve conditioned myself to block them from my memory for a long time. The betrayal effected me a great deal, even I was just a son, and not even directly witness the horrible turmoil at the time.
Fast forward twenty years. Not so long ago there was a reality TV show called “Temptation Island”, where a few couples were compete with each others to seduce the other couple’s partner to infidelity. What irony! A few hundred years ago we made adulterers wearing a scarlet letter A on their clothes to shame them. And now we are watching betrayal take place on Temptation Island as a national passtime?
Oh, only if we could go back in the yesteryears!
[Page 2]
If we could go back, we would find that betrayal was there too. It is as old as history.
In the Bible today we found the story of an adulterer. This is the story Mel Gibson referred to in the movie the “Passion of the Christ” when he had Jesus crossed a line on the sand, causing the mob drop the stones in their hands, and the gypsy woman reaching out for His feet.
The text read, “Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.”
Eventhough there were some debates about if this story was supposed to belong here in the middle of chapter 7 and 8 of the book of John or not; virtually all scholars who have studied this believe that it was an authentic portray of Jesus and His life. We see the backdrop of the story here: it was early in the morning, Jesus was sitting down, perhaps on the steps looking down the temple court, and many people gathered around to hear him teach. That’s when the religious leaders dragged a woman infront of Him and start accusing her of betrayal.
She betrayed her husband. She was caught cheating. Back then there was neither video nor camera, so it’s not that easy to convict someone of adultery. You will need to have atleast two witnesses to accuse someone of it. But here, she was caught red-handed, “in the [very] act of adultery” as the text said!
Nobody who get married would have thought that they will commit adultery someday. When people were in love, they want to share their lives with each other forever. That’s why people get married. But then disillusion set in, fights were fought bitterly, feelings were hurted. The woman perhaps began to feel dissatisfied with the relationship, she just wanted someone to understand her. She started day dreaming, asking “What if…” And one day she found someone who was willing to listen, who is caring. At first, perhaps she was struggling with her conscience about what’s right and what’s wrong (she knew clearly that God commanded, “Thou shall not commit adultery”), but eventually the excuses got stronger, and the affair got the best of her.
And that is a typical portray of sins. God didn’t create moral laws just because He likes it, He gave us the rules for our protection. You break them at your own risk. In fact in these days, you can die from promiscuity with HIV and other STDs.[1] And sin tend to be very sneaky, at first it seems so harmless at the little things, but eventually it controls us and we can no longer control it. Finally sin destroyed our life with its consequences.
To this woman here, she started out with betraying her husband to be with her lover; and now her lover betrayed her…
Wait a minute, how would you know that her lover betrayed her, you may’ve asked. In verse 5, the religious leaders said as they accuse her, “In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women…” As we checked back in the Law of Moses, we found it actually said, “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife (with the wife of his neighbor) both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.” [Lev.20:10] The Law said “both”, and here was only the woman. Where is the man, especially if she was caught “in the very act of adultery” (actually found sleeping with the guy)?
It is unlikely that they would let the man go and just charge the woman for it would weaken the case. So there are only two other possibilities, and both pointed toward the betrayal of her lover. The first possibility is that he escaped and ran away, leaving her to fend off herself. Some men tend to abandon their mates in time of trouble and distress.
The second possibility suggested an even more treacherous path. Some scholars observed that Jesus was just came to Jerusalem for only a few days, and started stiring up the people with his teaching. It was only a matters of days and the religious leaders have gotten a sinful woman, caught in the act, to use her to entrap Jesus. How convenience! Ofcourse unless they have one of their men stalking the weak-willed women, and lure a vulnerable one into the forbidden relationship. Ofcourse, when the sting operation was planned, it’s not too hard to prearrange for the witness to be there and trap her.
So, no matter which way it happened, there is a fair chance that she was betrayed by her lover. And such is the condition of sin: we might have hurt others with our sins, but at the end we are also hurted by sin.
But she was not the only one who were betrayed in this story; Jesus was betrayed too. The religious leaders were betraying God as well. They did not carryout their duties as God expected them to be, but worse, they slso betrayed God in setting trap for Jesus. The Bible said that they came “and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.”
What were the trap that they set for him? If Jesus responded, “execute her by stoning!” then not only they succeed in discredit Him and His teaching on the Loving God, but they can also accuse Him before the Romans, because only the Romans can excute capital punishment. On the other hand, if he said “let her go” then they can also discredit Him for not upholding the Law of God. This is just one of the first few attempts of the religious leaders to kill Jesus (which they finally succeeded).
But there’s one more portraits of betrayl. The religious people was also betraying the woman. This is may be a stretch, but should broken people be able to find comforts under the shadow of the religious wing? If some of the religious leaders were the witness of her sins, why did they not stop her for sinning, rather just wait for the crime to happen and then persecuted her? Here, her personal shame was exposed to all; they made her a public spectacle instead of offer any healing, care or concern.
Many of us also feel betrayed by religious people, or by the churches. Sometimes we already feel bad about our own sinful life, and to coming to church we feel even more condemned for what we have done. Granted, some corrections are expected from the church people, for patients would expect it will “sting a little” when they come to the hospital. But some times, the judgement and the criticism are more than what we are able to bear!
There were betrayals then, there were betrals now. Churches are littered with broken lives…………
{Closure}We are found crying out, “Oh God, do you know what I am going through?”
The full-outline was as followed
- [Page 1: Sins in the World]
- {Statement}: Have ever you feel betrayed?
{Development}
- - Describing the feelings
- Why betrayals hurt so much
- Results of betrayals
{Closure}: Was it better to live in the good old day?
- [Page 2: Sins in the Text]
- {Statement}: Betrayal is as old as history…
{Development}
- - She betrayed her husband…
- She was betrayed by her lover…
- The religious people betrayed her…
- They also betrayed God in setting traps…
{Closure}: We are crying out, "Oh God, do you know what I am going through?"
- [Page 3: Grace in the Text]
- {Statement}: He knows, He was there
{Development}
- - Silence, writing: He was deeply hurt/offended:
- He came along side sinners
- Flashback: the writing of the fingers of God (in Ex. & Dan.): judgment
- Not this time: "Where are they? No one condemn you?... Neither do I"
{Closure}: Invitation: "Whoever thirst, come to me" (from a few verses earlier)
- [Page 4: Grace in the World]
- {Statement}: He will never leave you the same
{Development}
- - "Go and sin no more"
- From Jesus, we received grace to heal our broken life (like BigTim)
- From Jesus, we learned how to handle life
- Church is the place we come together to follow Jesus
{Closure}
Partial Footnotes:
[1]Shelley, M. 1995. Changing lives through preaching and worship: 30 strategies for powerful communication. "Was previously published in Leadership, by Christianity Today, Inc."--T.p. verso. (1st ed.). Library of Christian leadership. Moorings: Nashville, Tenn.
posted by mar13 at
9:50 AM
1 Comments:
This was a post message reflection I sent out to my prayer-supporters the day after the message:
Thanks for your prayer. I trust in the work of God even though it might seem to be invisible to our own assessment.
From the visible perspective, it didn't turn out as well as we had hope. The unexpected gloomy rain in the morning cast the day in a melancholy mood. Kirk went to New York for training, so the junior members of the Worship team could not carry the weight of the worship. When I started speaking, the slides was shot (it won't advance, and when Philip tried to adjust it, it got worst), so I asked him to turn off the slide and start speaking from my mental outline; (so much for waking up early trying to finish the slides).
From the invisible perspective, God's grace prevailed as I expected. Karen brought her boyfriend, Johnson brought his cousin, and from the ushering team perhaps we have another non-Christian in our midst. Jenny's friend stood her up (again), and a few others were missing.
As I spoke, (trying not to work my voice too much, afraid that I may cough), I shared about my own experience about being betrayal as I discovered my dad's affair. I identified with the congregations in their own pain and hurt, helped them to see that Jesus was there the whole time with them (even though he might seem silence, writing on the dust). I know there are people in our group who were recovery from abortion, some had broken relationship and are on their second or even third marriage. There are young people who grew up experience the tragic of their own parents cheating on each other. There are people who felt betrayed by the church because all we did were judging and condemning, and not much of caring and healing. So I spoke for the congregation, on their behalf.
Then I invited them to look at the grace and love of Jesus, of His trust in us that we could go and sin no more. I invited them to look at the scars of the brokenness in our congregation, and see a restoration and healing process that God had started in our life. I pointed to the communion table, where both the one who had done the sinning as well as the one who had sins done to them can share the fellowship at the table of God. I told them about my dad had recently asked my mom for forgiveness, and to come back and live with him, even after 20 years of broken relationship with each others. (God had restored His relationship with each of them in the past 10 years, but they haven't been able to reconcile to each other). And that was it.
We could have done "better", but somehow God has His own way of working on it.
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mar13, at 11:10 AM
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