Several conversations, of late, have circled around what I think about Christian marriage -- particularly in relation to divorce. In order to know what what's dying, I maintain, you have to know what's been living. Sadly, this just simply isn't true for lots of Christians. Having inherited some really sloppy philosophical commitments from Medieval Aristotelianism, we have a bad ontology of love and marriage. But I don't intend to wax academic here. Instead, I want to offer a reflection on what Christian marriage actually is.That said, this is a fine place to offer an article I submitted earlier this week for a publication.
Let me know what you think.
I've placed the article beneath the break.
Perhaps
one of the better joys as a minister is to bless and sanctify the
marriage of a couple before God. There are always reasons I find to
read St John’s story of Jesus at the wedding of Cana found in John
2.1-11. The first creation account in Genesis builds carefully
through the different pairs: Heaven and earth, light and dark, sun
and moon, sea and dry land, animals and plants, and finally humans,
part of creation yet standing over against the rest of creation as
God’s image-bearers, God’s under-gardeners – and themselves
divided, as are the animal and plant kingdoms, into the ultimate
complementary pairing, male and female. John’s gospel is all about
the marriage of heaven and earth in Jesus Christ. That is the final
purpose of God in creation – not the separation of heaven and earth
but their wonderfully fruitful combining. And it is that coming
together of the complementary God-given pairings that we celebrate in
the marriage of a man and a woman.
Right
off the top, we Christians must confess that the joyful and mutual
love of a man and a woman isn’t just some curious social
convention. Marriage is a sign of what God intends for the entire
creation.
Maybe
that’s why marriage seems so difficult, and yet so full of
potential. Make no doubt about it, John’s little story
demonstrates all the ways that a wedding can go wrong. The
awkwardness and embarrassment. But the embarrassment of that wedding
day mirrors the blushing of Adam and Eve, hiding from God in the
garden, a couple gone wrong, a fault symbolized by wrong eating now
being put right by a redemption symbolized by right drinking. Jesus’
changing of water into wine is designed to say, not just to this
couple whose day was about to be ruined but to the wider world, to
you and me, to the whole creation, It’s
all right! It’s going to be OK!
The
life-long self-giving that is a Christian marriage is meant to mirror
God’s unbreakable commitment to a creation that sees so many things
go wrong. This is why, at the end of John’s story, the bride got
the wine, the bridegroom got the compliments, and Jesus got the
glory. That’s how it should be. Christian marriage is the mystery
at the heart of creation itself, because it is nothing less than a
demonstration of the mystery of God’s love for that creation, a
mystery we see take form and live among us in Jesus Christ. Marriage
is a signpost for the rest of the world that God’s love may be
demonstrated in the largest endeavor we humans can make together.
The hour has come. God has kept the best wine till now. Marriage is
that time when we eat, drink, and take in that love with one another.