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Foundry United Rev. |
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“Why Marriage Matters” Sunday, October 11,
2009 |
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Genesis 2: 18-25
Rev. |
He said to me, “What,
are you a college professor?” I said, “No, I’m a
preacher?” He asked me what I was
studying. I said that this coming weekend was the march for gay equality and
that I wanted to talk this coming Sunday about marriage equality for gay
people. He said, “But isn’t the
Bible against that?” I said that the Bible
has some verses that could be interpreted as condemning homosexuality, but I
told him that I believe this is because the biblical writers didn’t know that
same-gender love was natural for some people. I told him that I believe that
what is important in the Bible is not its understanding of biology about
which it has no special knowledge but its understanding of the quality of the
relationship between people – love, caring, equality, compassion, justice —that
the Bible teaches. He told me he’d never
heard it explained that way before but what I said made sense to him. I said lots of people
have a hard time understanding it that way. He said that if I just
explained it this morning the way I did to him at Starbucks Sunday people
would get it. So I’m going to trust he
is right. The word of God in the Bible is not about biology or anatomy but
about the quality of the relationship. The word of God in the Bible is not
about the gender of the persons who marry but about the quality of the
relationship that defines the Christian understanding of marriage. I’m going to assume that
the young man in Starbucks was right that if I said it this simply you all
would get it and we can move on. I want to suggest this
morning that the greatest threat to marriage in our time is not the movement
for marriage equality, which is not a threat to marriage at all, but an
endorsement of marriage. The greatest potential undermining of marriage that
we are facing in our time is the church’s opposition and resistance to
marriage equality. The church has
historically taught three basic things about marriage: Dee and I repeat them
every time we do a wedding. The church teaches that
marriage is established by God…that it is part of the natural order of
creation. The Genesis two account of creation teaches that marriage as part
of creation accomplishes two things. Did you hear them? Genesis 2: 24 says:
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and
they become one flesh.” Marriage creates new
families and it creates companionship. It allows a new generation to leave
their father and mother and establish a new family unit, and thus makes room
in the world for change. Marriage is a means of bringing new ideas, new
commitments, new possibilities into the world. Marriage is an instrument of
history, which includes both continuity and change. One of the purposes of
marriage is to allow room for history. And marriage makes two
separate persons into one flesh. It creates community. It is a basic unit of
community and society. According to Genesis
Two, these are the purposes for which God has established marriage. Neither
of these purposes, by the way, precludes same gender marriage. So the church has
consistently taught that marriage is established by God for the purposes of
creating history from generation to generation and for the purpose of
community. Marriage is part of the natural order of creation. Secondly, the church has
consistently taught that marriage is sacramental. Marriage is a human
reflection of the quality of the relationship between Christ and the church.
It is faithful; it is inviolate; it is eternal. No matter how often we
fail to live up to the high ideals of what marriage is meant to be, it
doesn’t change the ideal. No matter how often we fail and our marriages end
up in divorce or worse, it doesn’t change the ideal that marriage is meant to
be until death do us part. No matter how often we fail to be faithful in spirit
and deed, it does not change the ideal that marriage is meant reflect the
faithfulness of Christ to us. The church teaches that
marriage is sacramental – that it is a human reflection of the love of
Christ. The third of the
church’s teachings is that marriage is covenantal. Marriage is a holy
contract between two persons and then between those persons and the larger
community. If a couple came to me
and said they had 60 seconds to get married, all that would be required for
me to conduct their wedding would be for them to say the vows to each other
in the presence of two witnesses. The rest of the ceremony is to enrich the
experience. Marriage is a holy
covenant between two people and between them and the larger society of which
they are a part and between them and God. The Enlightenment
understanding of marriage, which began to develop in the 18th
century, was different. The Enlightenment taught that marriage was a human
invention. That it was not established by God but by humanity. It was not
sacramental but merely human, and it was not a covenant but merely a
contract. Read John Locke. Marriage is merely an agreement between two
people; it is merely a status. It does not have its own ontology. It is
merely functional. The Enlightenment
philosophy of marriage may be the least successful of all the Enlightenment
teachings. Something about marriage resists us reducing it to merely a
practical or human institution. Here is what is amazing
to me. The latest statistics I’ve heard say that on any given weekend only 14
percent of Americans will be in a house of worship. Church-going, or
synagogue-going, or mosque attendance, is no longer the norm for Americans,
if it ever really was. It is a minority activity. We who are in church this
morning are part of a relatively small minority in Yet, here is the really
amazing statistic. According to the latest statistics I could find in the
book Choices in Relationships:
Introduction to Marriage and Family by David Knox and Caroline Schacht
published in 2004 (p. 212), the weddings of 80 percent of Americans are
conducted by clergy. Think about it. While
only 14 percent of Americans go to church on a average Sunday, 80 percent of
Americans choose to have a religious wedding ceremony. According to David
Knox and Caroline Schacht, many of the 20 percent of the population who
choose to have civil ceremonies are divorced Catholics being married for a
second time and they choose a civil ceremony only because their priests will
not do their weddings. See, even though you can
be just as legally married by going to a justice of the peace, I think
Americans choose religious ceremonies because they understand their marriages
to be more than just a civil legality, more than just a human contract. I
think Americans choose religious ceremonies because they understand their
marriages to be sacramental, a part of God’s created order and a holy
covenant. Yes, lots of marriages
fail for lots of reasons, but that doesn’t change what we understand marriage
to be and what we want it be. We want our marriages to be faithful, and
life-long, and holy. Let me predict what will
happen if the churches refuse to celebrate the marriages of all people who
desire to make their promises and commitments in the presence of God.
Marriage will increasingly be seen as merely a civil ceremony, merely a
legality, merely a convention. The almost inevitable
consequence of the direction we are headed is the diminishment of marriage to
a merely civil institution, to merely a legal status. And the responsibility
for this lies not with those seeking access to marriage but with the churches
that are denying Christian marriage to those who are seeking it. So I believe the
struggle for marriage equality within the churches is as important as the
struggle for marriage equality within the civil society, actually more
important. Part of the wonder of
marriage is that it has been unique in our society, maybe in our world.
Marriage transcends all sorts of boundaries.
It is where the most
intimate aspects of life intersect with the interests of the larger society.
It is where boundaries between the religious and the civil become
porous. It is where private
relationships and the public agenda become one. Stable, caring,
committed relationships are good for us as individuals; they are good for our
communities; they are good for the world. We had a student intern
here several years ago who, as part of his pursuit of ordination, needed to
preach a trial sermon. He asked if Dee and I would listen to the sermon before
he preached it. He was trying to preach
a sermon about the Methodist idea of free will as opposed to the Calvinist
idea of predestination. He used as an illustration a movie he had seen in
which a couple was fated to marry and no matter what they did, fate just kept
bringing them together again. He said that he didn’t believe this was true.
He didn’t believe that he was the only one for his wife or that she was the
only one for him. I sat there trying to
figure out how to tell him his theology may be right but, if he actually used
that illustration in public, he ought to have his head examined. There is something
mystical and mysterious about the events of our lives that bring us together.
There is something mystical and mysterious about marriage. There is something
within us that resists reducing marriage to status and legality. We have not wanted this
most intimate and most public part of our lives to become merely secular.
Even people who are not very religiously active have understood this
commitment to be holy. Marriage is a reality that transcends church and
state. The churches and
synagogues and mosques are called to teach and practice marriage equality
because those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder. We are
called to teach and practice marriage equality because marriage is
established by God, not by us. We are called to teach and practice marriage
equality because wherever a relationship sacramentally reflects the love of
Christ, we are obligated to honor it. We are called to teach and preach
marriage equality because what God has made clean we can not call unclean. This is a prophecy not
for the larger society but for the church. In the days ahead we will either
honor marriage by affirming the loving commitments of all people or we will
diminish marriage by defining it biologically rather than spiritually.
Whatever the society does, the future of the holiness of marriage rests in
our hands. www.foundryumc.org |
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