Part III of “Redeeming Sex”
Texts: Matthew 22:23-33; I Corinthians 7:25-35
Ask most pastors which they would rather do, a funeral or a wedding, and most will tell you that they would prefer to do the funeral every time. It seems counterintuitive—funerals are “sad” and weddings are supposed to be “happy,” so why prefer the downer?
For me, it’s a theological thing. At a funeral, people are generally focused on God and on eternal things. One cannot sit at a funeral without thinking about one’s own mortality, about ultimate things, about the mystery of death and eternal life. At a wedding, on the other hand, people—in particular the bride and groom and families—are generally more focused on themselves as the center of attention. Practically speaking, God is an interesting addition, if he is there at all.
It’s like the bride who called our church in Utah and said, “Your church is so pretty and we’d like to have our wedding there, but is all that ‘God stuff’ really necessary?” I explained to her in terms that she could understand—it’s part of the package. I didn’t do the wedding. I have seen a lot of bad behavior at weddings because everyone is focused on themselves—breaking up fights between the mother of the bride and the wedding coordinator; a couple who talked to each other all through the ceremony as though neither I nor anybody else was in the room; another where the bridal party stopped at a bar on the way to the reception, leaving the guests waiting for two hours before the meal, which largely had to be abandoned.
I could go on and on. There’s a book there waiting to be written, actually. As I think about it, however, a lot of these weddings are not necessarily the fault of the participants, but rather the result of the way that our culture views marriage (and sex, by extension). For most people today, marriage is a private contract between two individuals that is based on mutual love and attraction, wherein each party finds a sense of personal fulfillment. People get married because they “fall in love,” which means they feel love toward one another. Marriage is an important societal institution, but what happens in the marriage largely remains a private affair.
But this definition (which is really only about a hundred years old or so) isn’t working very well. High divorce rates, debates over marriage, the common practice of cohabitation—all of these point to the fact that this view of marriage is inadequate. When it’s all about feelings and fulfillment, what happens when those things fade?
This morning I want to offer a very different perspective—a specifically Christian perspective on marriage and sex. It’s a perspective that is not grounded in feelings, in attraction, or in personal fulfillment. Rather, it is a perspective grounded in mission—specifically, the mission of God.
In week one, we talked about God creating humans, male and female, in his image—that in their two-become-one-flesh union they were to reflect God’s own nature, the Trinity, as unity and diversity. But we also said that, like God, they, too, had a mission—to reflect God’s glory, love, and care for the creation. Last week we talked about what happens when human sexuality is detached from that image and that mission—it becomes idolatry leading to sin, which leads to brokenness and creation running backwards. But God does not give up on us—indeed, God’s mission, throughout the rest of the Bible and continuing today, is to make all things good again—starting with broken humanity. It’s there that we need to begin to reconstruct a theology of marriage as part of God’s mission.
Throughout the New Testament, the mission of God is characterized as an inbreaking kingdom. The Kingdom of God was a major theme of Jesus’ preaching—indeed, it’s his first sermon in Mark and Matthew—“Repent [turn around] because the kingdom of God is at hand.” The phrase refers not to some distant heavenly kingdom, but to the reign and rule of God in creation. Jesus said that God’s reign and rule was already here—embodied in his ministry—but it was also yet to come in all its fullness. Jesus urged his followers to live in the present with the future of the kingdom in mind—to live as though it was already here in its fullness. They were to be a kingdom community—a foretaste of the reign and rule of God to come.
So, where does marriage fit into that kingdom paradigm? For Jesus, marriage and family (and sexuality) is a sign pointing beyond itself. His teaching on divorce and adultery, which we sampled last week, is grounded in the kingdom vision—what God has joined together, let no one separate, he says. Marriage is a foretaste of the intimate relationship we are to have with God in the kingdom. But here’s the thing—it’s a temporary sign—a placeholder, if you will. Notice today’s Gospel text: the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, come to Jesus with a question designed to trap him. A woman’s husband dies—by Jewish law that meant she was to become the wife of his brother. But this woman buries seven husbands. When the resurrection comes (and the full revelation of God’s kingdom), whose wife will she be?
Jesus corrects them—“You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures or God’s power. At the resurrection, people won’t marry or be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like angels from God” [note: like angels—not angels. They will be given new bodies, suited for life in God’s kingdom—while heaven and earth come together]. In other words, there is no marriage when God’s kingdom comes in its fullness because it is no longer needed. The future that the sign of marriage has pointed to will be the reality. We will have full intimacy with God which transcends the intimacy we have in the present—we will be fully with God and fully with one another in ways that we cannot imagine.
See, for Jesus, marriage and family was not the ultimate value, but a sign of the kingdom under which all of our relationships are subsumed. In fact, the Gospels are not exactly a bastion of family values as we know them—Jesus himself comes from an odd parental circumstance; he never marries; he chooses 12 disciples, who leave behind their own families to follow him, and then points to them as his family; he told kingdom parables like the one in which there was a banquet to which many people were invited, but one man said, “I just got married, so I can’t come.” It was a parable about following him and allowing marriage to get in the way of the kingdom results in missing out. For Jesus, marriage and family were always seen through the lens of the kingdom mission, which always comes first for his followers.
Paul picks up this theme in I Corinthians 7 where he advises the church on marriage. Saying it’s his opinion, Paul outlines an argument that those who are married should stay married, but those who aren’t married or who are widows should avoid getting married “because this world in its present form is passing away.” In other words, Paul believed that remaining unmarried gave people more opportunity to serve God’s kingdom mission in the present in light of the future. Those who are married, on the other hand, “will have a hard time” because it’s easy for loyalties to become divided. We can become so focused on pleasing ourselves and each other that we do not focus on God’s mission. Paul wasn’t against marriage, per se, but rather saw it for what it was—a sign pointing to something much greater. It wasn’t necessary to be married, however. In fact, it’s an opportunity for greater service to the kingdom.
That the two greatest figures in Christian history were not married should give us pause when we try to make marriage the ultimate good. For Jesus and for Paul, marriage was a good thing but, as always, in needs to be kept in its proper place. It is best expressed, understood, and experienced in the context of God’s kingdom. Feelings of love, attraction, and fulfillment are nice byproducts of a good marriage—but marriage is primarily designed as part of a larger mission that isn’t about us—it’s about full intimacy with God and service in God’s kingdom. As Will Willimon puts it, love is the result of marriage, not the cause of it!
To put it another way, marriage is actually an aspect of discipleship. The marriage relationship is an opportunity to live out the way of Jesus in community with one another, with children, and in relationship to the wider world. We might think of it as a rehearsal, a proving ground, for our relationship with God. It’s here where we have our most intimate human relationships and it’s here that we can learn and experience love that goes beyond feelings, attraction that goes beyond physical features, and fulfillment that is best expressed in meeting the needs of others. It’s not the only place where we can experience these things—as Paul will say, you can experience community in singleness as well, which is why Jesus gives us the church; more on that in a couple of weeks—but marriage is a relationship in which Christian theology can move from theory to practice in a day-to-day way.
Community, Cross, and New Creation
Richard Hays, in his great book The Moral Vision of the New Testament, says that there are three lenses through which Christian marriage reflects the kingdom of God—community, cross, and new creation:
Community. Marriage is never simply a private pursuit—it is vital to the witness of the whole Christian community. Paul’s teaching on marriage and Jesus’ teaching on divorce are all concerned with galvanizing the Christian community in a way that it will reflect the kingdom to the world. Marriage is an aspect of our discipleship, a vocation of service to each other and to the wider community. In this way, the church becomes central to the practice of marriage—a community of families who are all bearing witness to the kingdom in our homes and our gatherings. As Paul says, “We are all members of one another.” We are all part of the kingdom community, an advanced outpost of God’s coming reign and rule.
Cross. The New Testament does not give us a hearts and flowers view of marriage. Rather, we learn that it can be difficult and costly. Rather than seek our own gratification and fulfillment, Christian marriage requires sacrificial service toward the needs of the other. We are to be faithful to one another, forgiving one another; faithful even to the point of death as Jesus was faithful to us all the way to the cross. This is faithfulness not driven by feelings, but by deep faith in God and dedication to one another regardless of the circumstances. Marriage is a cross-bearing vocation that requires perseverance and even suffering at times in order to maintain. So is singleness, for that matter. Some will bear the cross in a marriage, while others may be called to bear it in celibacy and singleness. When we demonstrate cross-bearing faithfulness to each other, instead of taking the easy way out, then our marriages and relationships begin to truly reflect the way of Jesus and the kingdom.
New Creation. Says Hays, “If marriage may lead us to the cross, the way of suffering service, it is also a sign of the…redemption of all things. It figuratively foreshadows, even in the ambiguities of the present time, God’s unbreakable covenant faithfulness which will finally bring healing to the world.” When our marriages are healthy, they reflect the reality of God’s future kingdom in the present. We rehearse life in that kingdom with its faithfulness, sacrificial love, healing, worship, and praise. We can raise children who will give their lives to the kingdom cause, and we can reach the end of life knowing that we have, in our own households, advanced the kingdom one step closer to reality. We will have been, together, a sign pointing beyond ourselves. That’s the mission of marriage!
You don’t see much of this theology in most American weddings. That needs to change, in my opinion. In fact, I think the church ought to get out of the wedding business as we know it and instead get into the marriage business. We need to prepare couples for kingdom life, which is the only “real happily ever after” they will experience. We need to prepare them for marriage as a mission, to bring Christian marriage fully into the ministry of the church—not just for a wedding. Let the culture define marriage the way it wants to. We have a far greater agenda in mind!
I’ve been reading some Eastern Orthodox theology lately, and it’s fascinating to me. I think they have a far greater understanding of the kingdom theology of marriage than we have previously known. The late Orthodox theologian Alexander Schemann said that the Orthodox understand marriage as a sacrament pointing to the kingdom and their marriage rites reinforce this.
In an Orthodox church, the formal wedding, with the exchange of vows and rings, actually takes place in the vestibule of the church—like our Great Room. After that, the priest and the parties move into the church for the actual sacrament. The symbolism is that the wedding, the act of marriage, is a foretaste, a sign of the kingdom signified by the mystery of the eucharist (communion). It is there that the marriage actually takes on its mission as a foretaste of the kingdom.
During the ceremony inside the church, the couple have crowns placed on their heads, symbolizing the mission God gave the first couple in Genesis 1—“Be fruitful and multiply, subdue and have dominion over the earth.” The crowns are a sign of their mission. Says Schmemann—“Each family is indeed a kingdom, a little church, and therefore a sacrament of and a way to the kingdom… This is what the marriage crowns express: that here is is the beginning of a small kingdom which can be something like the true Kingdom. The chance will be lost, perhaps even in one night; but at this moment it is still a possibility. Yet even when it has been lost, and lost again a thousand times, still if two people stay together, they are in a real sense king and queen to each other. And after forty odd years, Adam can still turn and see Eve standing beside him, in unity with himself, which in some small way at least proclaims the love of God’s kingdom.”
But the crowns also symbolize something else. They are the martyrs’ crowns. “For the way to the kingdom is the martyria—bearing witness to Christ. And this means crucifixion and suffering. A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not ‘die to itself’ that it may point beyond itself is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of adjustment or mental cruelty. It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the kingdom of God.”
That’s powerful stuff, friends. That’s the kind of wedding I could get behind. It reveals the truth that can redeem our brokenness and build marriages that not only last, but that have a kingdom mission.
Whether you are married, or looking to be married someday, what is God saying to you today? What is the mission of your marriage? Have you considered your household as an outpost of the kingdom of God? How does your marriage reflect God’s kingdom to the world? If you’re single, what does the truth that you have an equal opportunity to engage the kingdom mission mean to you? How will you use your situation to live it out? And if your marriage is struggling today, how might this knowledge change things? How might you move past feelings and work together on the reality that God brought you together for a mission? How might you learn together the truth that true love is the result of marriage, not the cause of it?
I hope you’ll think about these questions and talk about them together this week. After all, it’s all about the “God stuff!”
Sources:
Hays, Richard. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation. HarperOne, 1996. pp. 347-376.
Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World:Sacraments and Orthodoxy. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press (rev. ed.), 1973. pp. 81-91.
