“Marriage: By Sacred Definition”

A Sermon Based Upon Genesis 2: 18-25, NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.  

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Pentecost +15,   September 6th, 2015

On the first day of June this year, we heard about an America woman, Katherine Chappell, mauled by lion while she was driving through a private wildlife park in Johannesburg, South Africa.    Even though warning signs were posted advising tourists to keep their doors locked and windows up, this 22 year old went against the rules meant to protect her, put her window ‘all the way down’ just so that she might snap a photo.  Suddenly, a lioness with cubs lunged and grabbed her through the open window.  The tour guide attempted to fight the lion off, but it was too late. She died due to her injuries. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-lion-attack-american-woman-20150601-story.html

Commenting on the incident a couple of days later, popular animal trainer Jack Hannah said, “This is why lions are called King of the Beasts”.   Still, “she would have been safe if she had only followed the rules…."  Ironically, Katherine Chappell went to South Africa as a volunteer to help protect wild animals. http://www.onenewspage.com/video/20150602/2934954/American-Tourist-Mauled-by-Lion-May-Have-Been.htm. 

I thought about this brazenly naïve and deadly dare, as I read a New York Times article about the ‘heavy weight’ upon the shoulders of the United States Supreme Court when it was deliberating the legal definition of marriage. 

The article reports that even Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who has favored the expanding of gay rights, send mixed signals as he reflected on what has always been the legal definition of marriage.  He said that he ‘was concerned about changing a conception of marriage that has persisted for thousands of years’ being reconsidered after less than ‘a decade’ of social change.  He went on: “This definition (of marriage) has been with us for millennia…I don’t even know how to count the decimals when we talk about millennia… It’s very difficult for the court to say,  “Oh, well, we know better.  The social science on the values and perils of same sex marriage---is too new…. You are not seeking to join the institution, but you’re seeking to change what the institution is….”  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0 .  

I find these to be interesting words from one who has often been considered a court ‘liberal’.   Why did these judges ‘roll down the window’ all the way down on the traditional definition of marriage?   Katherine Chappell knew the realities about lions but she still didn't realize how dangerous a lion is.  She must have said to herself; “Oh, well, I know better…Nothing bad will happen.”  Was that her last thought before the lights went out?

  

How do we see this lion called marriage?   When I was ordained to preach the gospel back in 1980, I was also authorized by the state to perform wedding ceremonies.   The ‘traditional’ marriage service used at that time began something like:  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony: which is an honorable estate, instituted of God, signifying unto us the mystical union between Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle in Cana of Galilee….”  (From Minister’s Marriage Manual, 1968, Baker Book House, p. 63).   

As a pastor, I gave couples the option of either following the language of a traditional wedding service or working with them to come up with a less traditional language.  The language and even some parts of the ceremony were always optional.  But I never dreamed, nor ever considered, ever for one moment, that the ‘institution’ itself could be redefined. 

“The times they are a changing…” Bob Dylan sings, but what will the legal redefining of a millennia-old institution mean for society?  Marriage has already been redefined in the Netherlands in 2001 and as it has already been redefined in 37 states, and even Catholic Ireland has recently redefined marriage too.  Because this is a free and democratic nation, our own federal government has now joined in this new definition.   

What is most troubling to me is not that our government may give legal rights to same-sex couples in this ‘free’, democratic, country.   As a peaceful, tax-paying, law-abiding, Christ-following minority in a secular state, it is the government’s job to grant and protect ‘legal’ and religious rights of everyone.  Even the apostle Paul reminded Christians living in Rome that they needed to ‘subject themselves to the ruling authorities’ (Roms 13:1ff).  This means, even when Christians don’t agree with the dictates of government.   I understand this, especially in a changing world.  I understand that Christians need to show love and compassion to those who struggle to fit into the “norms”.  I also understand that we should not be judgmental, nor should anyone ‘bully’ those who are different, weak, or even considered by us to be in the wrong.   

My major concern in this series of messages is not about the ‘hot-button” issues of granting people moral, religious or political freedoms.  I understand and can and should even cherish this.   Having the democratic ‘freedom’ to peacefully disagree, both in political and in religious matters, is part of what has made our country great.  I get that.  Indeed, I hope that the same freedom that has granted freedom for a new 'secular' definition of marriage, will continue to allow for the traditional, sacred, religious viewpoint that differs.

Freedom is not the issue, but the issue is precisely with this ‘lion’ of the sacred definition of marriage some justices knew they were dealing with.  British Theologian NT Wright is right to say that redefining words is exactly what national socialists (NAZIES) and communist did to support their own views.  If we dare to challenge this ‘lion’ we call marriage by redefining it, do we really know the ramifications and consequences?  In fact, can marriage be redefined when it is marriage that has already defined us?   To redefine it, seems to me, like changing drivers in a car that is already going 55 down a highway.  Furthermore, if you redefine this 'sacred' institution ‘instituted by God’, don’t you also ‘test’ or ‘tempt’ the same God who ‘instituted it?’  Giving rights to people is one thing.  Caring about and having compassion for a small percentage of people who struggle with sexual identity is important too, but daring to redefine part of the social fabric of the world, deciding to redefine ‘thousands of years’ of social and religious tradition, going up against common sense, against nature and biology, and against indisputable biblical theology, sounds too much like rolling down a window on a lion.

Am I being overly cautious?   Yes, of course.  Marriage is a lion.  Our society and human existence is based upon this time-tested sacred definition of marriage given in the ‘revealed’ biblical story and is provable and justifiable by nature.   To take traditional marriage seriously, as the Supreme Court Justice Kennedy suggested, is not meant as a bigoted, exclusive or oppressive political argument nor is it simply some, unrealistic, religious rhetoric.  To take seriously what 'sacred' marriage has been been for all these ‘millennia’ still makes sense, just as it makes sense to respect and reverence a lion.  

When I was a pastor in Europe, we clergy did not perform secular marriage ceremonies, nor did we have the authority to legally marry couples.  We could only hear religious 'vows' of marriage after the state had legalized the marriage.   It was the only the 'sacred' part of the wedding we were able to perform without any legal or state authority at all.   This 'sacred' definition of marriage is what I am only authorized to perform.  But what is that?  Why is that?  Today, in light of the Supreme Court, decision, we must learn to distinguish what is a sacred definition of marriage.

 COMPANIONSHIP not just passion

From our text in Genesis 2, we need to be reminded first and foremost, that a sacred definition of marriage is about companionship.  Marriage was never intended as some restrictive way to controlling human passions.   Of course, it could be, as Paul mentions to the Corinthians that it is ‘better to marry than to burn (with passion, that is).  But according to Genesis, when God looked down at his creation of the first man, Adam, God’s concern and intent was to care, to bless, to help and give mercy.  “It is not good that the man should be alone” God says.  “I will make him a helper as his partner.”  (2.18).   Even the “good” creation was ‘not good’ if the man had to live in it all alone.

Fred Craddock tells the story of the settling of Mattie Dixon’s estate.  Mattie Dixon loved her wedding ring.  While alive she wouldn’t have sold it for a million dollars. She was married for 56 years. But when she died—having no immediate family to inherit these types of things---they came to auction things off.  Her wedding ring was sold…going, going, gone!  All those years, all those memories, and all that love, and it do you know what it sold for?  Two dollars.

How do we value true love?  The value of love is not found in the things that fade or we give to ourselves, but the value of love is found in the loving purposes of the heart to share one’s life with another person.  Marriage is first and foremost about this kind of love and companionship.  Marriage has always been more than being physically attracted to someone and ‘getting hitched’ but it is about continuing to know the goodness of God the creator through a lasting, productive, caring companionship.  God does not established marriage in an attempt to control, to restrict, or to confine Adam, but God has mercy on Adam and does not want him to be ‘alone’. 

COMPLETION not only companionship

Finding companionship is what marriage is about, but it is not the only thing.  There are justifiable ways to find human companionship in life without marriage.  We even can imagine that marriage could have been ‘instituted’ in other ways too, perhaps making us all like angels, as Jesus says heaven will be, being neither male nor female, because we will be complete in and of ourselves.  But being ‘complete’ is what Adam cannot be on his own.  In the biblical narrative completion of the human person comes in ways that the man and woman complement each other and fulfill God’s purpose.  This kind of physical, emotional, and spiritual completeion, is also what marriage is about.

God wants to remedy Adam’s aloneness, but God makes a very important point first.  God creates all the animals for Adam to name.  But even this task is not just about giving animals their names.  It is to reveal that “there was no (fitting) helper as (Adam’s) partner found.”   So, God puts Adam into a deep sleep, as if he is performing surgery.  While Adam sleeps, God takes one of Adam’s ribs and creates woman.  She is ‘taken’ from Adam’s side and is not made ‘from the dust’ as Adam or the animals. The woman is created as the continuation and the completion of the man and together they make up the completion of God’s creation.   Without the woman as his partner in procreation, Adam cannot come into full partnership with God.  Woman is to be Adam’s only, lifelong partner.  As his ‘helper’ she is not to serve him, but she is ‘help’ Adam as they serve God and fulfill his purpose together.   She is to ‘help’ Adam create life just as God’s creates life.  The woman culminates God’s creation.

According to one of my Hebrew language professors, in response to God’s creation of woman the first words out of Adam’s mouth should be translated, “Wow!  That is how powerful and emotional these words are, as Adam continues: “At last, this one is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (2.23).  Seeing woman not only as the culmination of God’s creative acts, but as completion of himself,  Adam and all Adams after him, should now focus their life around her.   From now on, a man will not be alone, but will ‘leave his Father and Mother and cling to his wife, so that they become one flesh” (v. 24).  Being shaped out of the same flesh and bones, they are distinct partners for each other for the purpose of procreation, so that they will become joint ‘marriage’ partners with God in his creative purpose.  This is why the Jewish Talmud says that in the original Eden, marriage was monogamous, because anything else-- polygamy, promiscuity become a degradation from God’s creative purpose (See The Jewish Study Bible, The Tanakh Translation by the Jewish Publication Society, 1985, p. 16).     

Is there anything else to God’s purpose besides procreation?  Yes.  If you turn back to the ‘first’ version of the creation story in Genesis 1, you will read that both male and female are also created in the ‘image of God’ (1.27).   Interestingly, if you pay close attention, you will see these humans are not the complete image of God until they come together in physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual union.  The man does not bear the whole image, nor does the female, but it says that ‘’in the image of God he created them” (vs. 1.27).   Since only the male/female relationship completes God’s purpose---in other words, only when they come together in a marital union, do they

contain the full image of God.   This is why only a monogamous, life-long, male-female union should be reserved to be called ‘Holy Matrimony ‘or ‘sacred marriage’. 

In light of our changing culture, someone asked me recently whether I would perform a ‘same-sex’ marriage?  My answer was that in the Bible there is no such thing as a same sex marriage, and there is good reason.   My reason is not philosophical, nor personal, but it is theological.  As a pastor who preaches and promotes the biblical purposes of God, it is only my calling to bless and marry those who are marrying according to the divine purpose revealed in Scripture.  While I understand that we Christians should love and care for people who don’t measure up to God's call, because in reality, none of us measure up to them completely.   But to perform any other kind of ceremony is not an option for me, because this is not part of the biblical vision of marriage means.  Sacred marriage is only when a male and female intend to come together to fulfill their need for human companionship and to complete the divine purpose that reveals and reverences the image of God.  

COVENANT, more than other commitments

This brings us to the final reason marriage is defined as uniquely male and female.  Scripture says that when Adam and Eve came together in that very first union, as God intended, ‘the man and his wife were naked but not ashamed’. 

What makes a marriage relationship shameless is “nakedness”.   This ‘nakedness’ is depicted figuratively as having no clothes.  That is made clear in the very next chapter, after sin came into the world, when Adam realized that he was ‘naked and hid himself’ from God (3: 10).  We are also told that God had to take animal skins and ‘make clothes’ for them (3: 21) because after the fall, everything changed.  

When I read this text, I can’t forget what it was like to live in Eastern Germany where at one time, many, if not most people went swimming in the nude.  In western Germany it was different, men and women would sometimes swim topless, but never completely nude.  When the Germanys were reunited after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, there was quite a lot of cultural adjusting on both sides.  One day in the Berlin Newspaper, I read an editorial where an east German was complaining to a West German and it went something like this: “What’s wrong with you wessies,” he wrote.  What are you trying to hide?  Why won’t you take all your clothes off?  Are you trying to hide something?”  We “Ossies” (German for East Germans) are not hiding anything.  We are open, transparent, and honest about our bodies, but you are hidden and much too uptight.”

As silly as all this sounds, I think this ‘east’ German was on to something.  You cannot have the deepest relationship with another person if they are ‘hiding’ something.  This is how the marriage relationship becomes ‘shameless’.  We can only have the kind of relationship God intended when there is transparency, openness, and an obvious covenantal bond that exists between them so that nothing is hidden.  In other words, marriage is not just a commitment of two people who want to meet each other in physical or emotional needs.   Marriage may include this, but it is not God’s ultimate intent.  Marriage is also to be a spiritual covenant, not just a legal or relational commitment. 

In the biblical story, as in real life, a marriage only rises to the level of being a sacred and spiritual ‘covenant’ between two people when it is also invites a third person.   This ‘third’ person is the living presence, purpose and the unending promises of the creator God.   What does it mean to marry in a covenant that includes the purposes and blessings of God?  As the Bible reveals, God’s promise is in procreation, in raising children, and in human relationships where we live life in the fullness of the image of God as we intend to ‘promote’ God’s creative purposes.  This sacred marriage covenant that invites God’s presence without shame only exists between a man and a woman.  Even though I’m a Baptist, I must say that I agree with the Pope and the Catholic Church on this one. (http://www.foryourmarriage.org/catholic-marriage/church-teachings/between-man-and-woman/).   

In conclusion, we must remember however, that the greatest threat to the biblical definition of marriage is not "same sex-marriage", nor is it homosexuality in general, but it is adultery, unfaithfulness, and the failures of church and society to build and support strong marriages and strong family bonds.  Here I need to underscore something unique that happened at the last Southern Baptist Convention in 2014.  It was there it was noted that there was a different tone and spirit detected.  

For several years the SBC has been in a very open, negative, vocal ‘war’ with the culture, fighting hard often speaking out unkindly against homosexuality as the major sin threat to marriage.  But now, according those who were there, many among Southern Baptist are realizing they now that they have lost that war, that maybe this is not the main part of the struggle.  While most Southern Baptist still do not agree in substance with homosexuality as normal, and some don’t agree that even same-sex unions should have any civil rights, their tone has been noted to be changing with a new spirit of a ‘gentler opposition’.   The article suggest, that some in the SBC are finally realizing they need to move on to MORE IMPORTANT matters, because, there are even graver threats to marriage and family than the legalization of same-sex marriage.  

(http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/30/southern-baptists-change-tone-substance-homosexuality-commentary/).

One thing for certain, Southern Baptists nor any of us can save the culture, only God can.  As statistics point out, tolerance toward same-sex marriage is changing in our society, but the numbers of how many choose this kind of relationship or lifestyle has not changed that much, remaining at about 5%.  What has changed is tolerance for those who are different, and an openness to try to understand and show some form of acceptance.  This may prove to be a good thing for the culture and for Southern Baptists.   The sky has not fallen either and Southern Baptist may be discovering they have more important things to do, like preach the 'good news' of the gospel.  I recall what the pastor of the large Hillsong Church in New York City said while being interviewed by a reporter who knew of his biblical views, but having a church with many who have differing views.  He says,  "We are not the judge and we are not judgmental, but we still preach it like it says... We don't have a calling to hate, we only have a calling to preach and to love and to let God do the judging."  It might sound strange to some, but I kind of like the idea of preaching, loving and letting God do the judging  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/hillsong-church-gays_n_6002762.html).  

But at the same time, the Supreme Court is not the final Court, and I agree with Southern Baptists, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and many others, even some who are not religious at all who say that the social and legal definition of marriage did not need to change, nor should it be.  Marriage is a lion.  We didn't design marriage, nor can we redefine it.  While legal allowances should be made to protect others, it is the church’s business to witness to the truth of God's sacred purposes.   Marriage, as God has defined it is about companionship that procreates and completes the image of God in this world.  It is also about upholding a sacred covenant that invites God.  Marriage is not merely about human pleasure nor human will, but marriage is a physical, emotional and spiritual union that seeks to fulfill God’s will and purposes in the world.   So, after the human courts have done what they felt they had to do, let us become more serious about what God has called us to do: to uphold the sacred definition of marriage the only way we can, by protecting our own marriages and by following Christ as we live holy lives. Amen.