The Rev. Canon Dr. Brett Cane, March 7, 2010
Lent 3: 8:30 a.m. Holy Communion and 10:00 a.m., Holy Communion
Learning to Love #3: “Commitment”
Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; Ephesians 5:21-33; Luke 14:25-33
Opening Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you gave yourself to us in total commitment; teach us now, by your Holy Spirit, how we can live out lives of commitment in all our relationships, especially in marriage, and so reflect and experience your love for us, your holy bride, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.
Introduction
During Lent, the theme of our sermons is “Learning to Love.” We have seen that having the security of God’s love is the foundation upon which all other love can develop. Last week we looked at intimacy as a dimension of love and saw how we can express God’s design for us to “belong” in a healthy and mature way. This week we move on to consider commitment as an element of love. To do so, we will be looking at marriage in particular as a God-designed relationship where love is expressed supremely as commitment. We will first look at the concept of marriage as covenant. Then we will look deeper at the nature of marriage and the challenge that brings to our contemporary view of marriage as contract. We will close by looking at marriage as a model for all of us in our relationship with God.
Now many of you may be thinking, “What does he know about marriage – he’s been a bachelor all these years!” You are right to question that as I do myself. But when I reflect on how much I have learned in my counselling experience with couples about why marriages go wrong, I do have a unique perspective on what makes marriages work! Plus, I have around me many examples of good marriages (and by that, I don’t mean problem-free – but rather worked-through) to enlighten me. Having said all that though, what I offer is not the latest word, but a tentative exploration of the biblical view of marriage from an onlooker’s perspective. I am open to correction and amplification of what I will share. For some of my thoughts, I want to acknowledge my debt to teaching given by Bernd Wannenwetsch in his course, “The Moral Fit,” which I took at Regent College while on sabbatical last summer.[1]
Marriage as Covenant
Covenant is a major theme in the Bible. In our Old Testament lesson, we heard God say, “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David” (Isaiah 55:3). This commitment God makes to us is part of a wider invitation to us requiring a response on our part: “Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live” (verse 3). A covenant is an expression of commitment from both sides and a biblical covenant is defined as an agreement “between God and his people in which God makes certain promises and requires certain behaviour from his people in return.”[2] Examples of Biblical covenants are those God made with Noah (Genesis 9), Abraham (Genesis 12, 15), Moses (Exodus 20), and David (2 Samuel 7; 1 Chronicles 17). Then there is a promise of a new covenant in Jeremiah 31:
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah….I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people….For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
This covenant is the one that Jesus refers to when he states at the Last Supper, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). God has made covenants with us to express his commitment to us.
In the Bibl, marriage is spoken of as a covenant and god uses the illustration of marriage as a picture of his commitment to us. In Hosea, where Israel is described as an adulterous wife, God says, “In that day I will make a covenant for them…I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord” (Hosea 2:18-20). In Malachi, marriage is spoken of as a covenant when he says, “The Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant” (Malachi 2:14). Jesus confirms marriage as a covenant when he is challenged about divorce; he goes right back to Genesis 2 and says, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:6-9). This solemn and binding agreement has the nature of a covenant.
There are three aspects to a covenant. They are:[3]
- First, a covenant establishes a bond between two parties, in marriage the husband and wife. At the heart of this bond is a promise, the promise of faithfulness.
- Second, a covenant establishes obligations. A primary obligation in marriage is fidelity. Ephesians 5 tells us that there is to be mutual submission, where the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church, and she is to submit to him as to the Lord. I do not have time to expand this passage which many see as contentious and refer you to my sermon, “God’s Blueprint for a Happy Marriage”[4] – copies of which are available at the back of the church.
- Third, a covenant is public. It is contracted before witnesses. There is an accountability to each other and society which shows that marriage is not simply a private affair but has implications beyond the couple themselves.
Marriage is a covenant in all these aspects.
The Nature of Marriage
Having established that marriage is a covenant and solemn commitment, let us now delve deeper into the nature of marriage and contrast it with what society – including many Christians – mistakenly think it is. I include myself as having had misconceptions. We begin back in Genesis 2 which we looked at a few weeks ago. God’s response to man’s need for companionship results in the creation of woman as a helper, which we saw didn’t mean “servant” but a “counterpoint” – to help the man become what he is meant to be and do what he is meant to do. Woman is co-regent in creation. But there is far more involved than accomplishing a task – there is a dynamic between man and woman that makes whole what has been separated and reflects the image of God more perfectly. When Adam cries out “At last! This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (verse 23) he recognizes himself as human through the other gender. In this passage, “‘Adam,’ the human creation from the ground (‘adama’) is literally dismembered. His side is split open in order to provide for him the companionship of a complementary being. Marriage between a man and a woman reunites these representatives of the two genders into ‘one flesh’ and is not simply the union of two individuals. The missing part of man is found in woman and vice-versa.”[5] Woman is not just a womb for the man and the setting in which he finds fulfilment and his needs met – but someone at a distance – someone “other” – and the union of the two creates a dynamic which is far more than just the sum of its parts. This is the starting point in looking at the nature of marriage.
Moving on from here, however, people over the years have tried to analyse what marriage is and have come up with scenarios that can be helpful but also have within them some danger. From Saint Augustine, we have inherited the description of the nature and function of marriage as the “three-fold good” of marriage. Using the Latin terms, these are:
- Proles – this represents the procreation of children and family life
- Fides – this encompasses faithfulness, companionship and sexual intimacy
- Sacramentum – this the spiritual dimension of marriage as a vehicle of God’s blessing to us and its character as a covenant.
Now I should say right off that I don’t think Augustine would have added “sexual intimacy” to “Fides.” Because of what appear to be unhealed issues in his life, Augustine saw sexual expression as primarily for procreation and not with the same perspective as Genesis 2 where becoming “one flesh” is related to expression of the companionship between man and woman and only later to procreation.
Now one positive thing Augustine did was to use the term “threefold good” rather than “goods.” But, what has happened is that through the centuries, people have isolated one or more of these elements from the others and stressed those to the detriment of the whole. In the Middle Ages, following Augustine and “natural law” from Aristotle, Proles – procreation – was held up as the highest good and for someone like Henry VIII, the chief purpose of marriage was to produce an heir. Moving into the modern era and romanticism, which still holds sway today, Fides - companionship and relationship – has been placed uppermost. But this highlighting of one aspect against the others puts too much pressure on marriage. Henry VIII kept changing wives until he had a male heir; today we change spouses if our needs for intimacy and self-fulfilment are not met. Not that these concerns are unimportant but they must be set in the context of the whole.
That “wholeness” is embraced when the third aspect of the “threefold good” – Sacramentum – is brought into play and here we have the unique Christian perspective on the nature of marriage as God designed it to be. Although I don’t like calling marriage a sacrament in the same way as baptism and communion are sacraments, marriage has a sacramental nature about it. A sacrament is a vehicle – physical or verbal or relational – through which God conveys his grace and blessings to us. Right away, we can see God using marriage to convey to us the nature of his being as Trinity – a union of individuals in self-giving love that produces a community far greater than the sum of its members. Looking the other way (earthward) marriage (and family) is a miniature version of the Church as the body of Christ and serves as a witness and encouragement for others to our calling as members of one body.
But there is far more. As a sacramental covenant, marriage provides the unconditional gift of time. Commitment in marriage provides each partner the space to grow into the person God designed them to be. What do I mean? It has been said that on their wedding day, men hope their wives will never change – that they will remain just as they are. Women, on the other hand, on their wedding day, hope that they will be able to change their husbands from what they are into what they want them to be. Either desire is idolatry. An idol is something that never changes – something I make in my image and which I control and manipulate. But when marriage is entered into as it was designed to be – a covenant – marriage gives you space within which change is possible. Marriage as life-long covenant prevents change from being a threat. In marriage, each partner gives the other the freedom and dignity to develop into the person God has designed them to be. Marriage is not falling in love with the “ideal or “idea of the person” but committing yourself in love to the real human being who is lying at your side. You are to experience together the joy of transformation. Stanley Hauerwas has said that “We always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being what it is, means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem morally is learning how to love and care for this stranger to whom you find yourself married.”[6] In this way, Christian marriage is an adventure – a life-long partnership of moving ahead together to become people capable of living the promises. The adventure of marriage is learning to love the one we have committed to.
This contrasts with the view of marriage current in our society that many Christians have bought into – the functionalist view of marriage as a contract and not a covenant. A contract puts the emphasis on what you can get out of something and is based on mistrust and fear and can be terminated from either side when your needs are not being met. In our age of self-fulfilment as the highest good, I have seen people approach marriage as if it would solve all their problems and meet all their needs. Such relationships are doomed from the start. Many of us have deep hurts that require healing and your partner can help – but they can not be the solution. In my experience, the two greatest enemies of marriage are seeking too much from your partner and unhealed individual issues. The solution is to seek your ultimate security in God before anyone else, start working on what needs healing, and free your partner to be who God is calling them to be, not what you want them to be.
The church is also part of the dimension of Sacramentum – God’s grace offered in marriage. The Church not only benefits from healthy marriages but is also designed to bless them by taking the pressure of seeking fulfilment of all your needs in marriage alone. The church is the place where the individual elements of the “three-fold good” of marriage can be supplemented:
- 1. Proles - in the Church, we see the family is not the sole horizon for your life – you are in your wider family, the body of Christ
- Fides – in the Church, private happiness is set in wider context of the community’s happiness – it provides space to allow the couple to experience both genuine distance and intimate embrace.
- Sacramentum – in the Church, marriage is not just seen as a means to an end (e.g. provides for a “stable society,” creates “family values”) but marriage is upheld as having value in itself as the place where the individual can flourish and grow in union with the other and the Lord.
The Church also gives encouragement by emphasizing that both celibacy and marriage are to be seen as a call. Neither is a “default position” – but a vocation from Christ. We encourage people to see both situations as not just meeting personal fulfilment and aims but as learning to be faithful to God’s call upon you. Finally the church is to be the place where we recognize we can not keep our calling and commitments – including our marriage vows – without God’s support and power. I always delight in telling couples that on their wedding day the first thing they will do in their married life – after I have declared them husband and wife – is to pray, not kiss. The kissing comes after you pray! (I suspect that if you keep them in that order, the kissing will be even better!) The church upholds the nature of marriage as a commitment of covenant love in all its dimensions.
Marriage as a Model for Our Relationship with God
We will close by looking briefly at marriage as a model for our relationship with God. I don’t think it is any mistake that the Bible continually pictures the relationship between God and his people as a marriage. Back in Hosea, we read “‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me “my husband;” you will no longer call me “my master.”‘“ (Hosea 2:16). Hosea shows us that God is aching for us as a loving husband and is trying to woo us back to him at great cost to himself. He doesn’t force us as “master” like the idolatrous religion of Baal with its misuse of sexuality and twisted versions of masculinity and femininity but invites us to return to him as “husband.”
The imagery in Ephesians 5 takes us even further. Amongst the admonitions to wives and husbands Paul speaks again and again about the relationship of us as a Church to Christ as his bride. Taking out the references to human marital relationships it reads:
Submit…out of reverence for Christ…Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour…the church submits to Christ…Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless…Christ feeds and cares for the church…for we are members of his body… and the two will become one…I am talking about Christ and the church (taken from verses 21-32).
Out of 221 words, 92 of them, or 40% of the passage, refer to Christ and his relationship to us! Although it doesn’t specifically say that the Church is the bride of Christ, as it does in the book of Revelation (e.g. 21:2), this is its obvious implication. We as the Church are the bride of Christ. The bond we have together with Christ is that of husband and wife, bridegroom and bride, lover and beloved. We have been reconciled, reunited to one from whom we have been separated.
How do we demonstrate this? In worship – personal and corporate, but especially corporate. These verses in Ephesians on marriage are an extension of a discussion about worship: “Be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:18-21). In worship we offer up all we are to God, including our alienation and brokenness and our need for healing and forgiveness. What’s more, in worship, we become vulnerable before our brothers and sisters. What do I mean? When we praise God, we affirm his trustworthiness and dependability. This implies we admit our vulnerability and dependence upon God to one another. I think this is one reason why men appear to find it more difficult to worship than women. We have found it hard to admit our vulnerability before God and others and so have been more restrained in worship (or even absent!). Then, out of that vulnerability, flows our mutual submission to one another – including as husband and wife. It is in worship where we demonstrate and experience the vulnerability and joy and security and love that God has for us as his bride.
To be the bride of Christ is our ultimate destiny as we see in Revelation 21: “And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). The gift of marriage as a covenant and commitment of love between man and woman at the beginning of the Bible is used as the picture of the consummation of all things in Christ at the end. Receive that picture and allow God’s loving faithfulness and commitment to you shape how you live now – in your marriages, in your relationships with one another and in your relationship with him.
[1] Bernd Wannenwetsch, “The Moral Fit,” summer course at Regent College, Vancouver, BC, July 13-24, ,2009
[2] Christiane Fellbaum (1998). WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. Bradford Books.
[3] Adapted from “Does God Really Consider Marriage to Be a Covenant Relationship?” found on http://preceptaustin.org/the_covenant_of_marriage.htm
[4] Preached by me at St. Aidan’s Church, Winnipeg, MB, March 26, 2006.
[5] Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice; Texts and Hermeneutics. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), pg. 194.
[6] Stanley Hauerwas, “The Family: Theological Reflections,” in A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) pg. 172.
