So what is all this fuss over marriage about, anyway? And why shouldn’t any two people who love each other be given the blessing of church and state? Come to think of it, why should it be limited to two people? After all, David had any number of wives, at least 8 that we know of not counting the concubine Abishag when they were trying to warm him up on his deathbed And he was “a man after God’s own heart.” And Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines. What’s the big deal? After all, it’s natural for men to want to chase around; scientists tell us that our genetic code demands that we do everything in our power to maximize
the number of our offspring. And anything natural is good, right? Polygamy’s been practiced all over the world since the beginning of time. A couple of years ago, some feminists - believe it or not - were floating the idea of man-sharing as a way to “have it all” - with several wives, those with strong maternal instincts could take care of the children and those with careers wouldn’t have to feel guilty. And it’s not as if there were hordes of marriageable men out there, after all... Wouldn’t it be better to go shares on the best of the lot than to settle for a miserable unshaven layabout? It’s just another form of extended family, so to speak. And isn’t keeping the older wives kinder than casting them out into the streets -along with the children - off when a newer, more exciting one comes
along?
And why limit it to multiple wives, anyhow? Don’t women deserve equal treatment? Of course, there are usually more spare women about than men, which is why polyandry is so much rarer ... Although there are tribes in the Himalayas where women have more than one husband...
Or - let’s be really adventurous, really think outside the box so to speak - aren’t we being awfully species-ist? I read not too long ago where a man sued the hospital for refusing to give his dog visiting rights, after all, he’d listed her as his next of kin, and didn’t he have the right to choose who he wanted to be with? Well, I actually think that was a gag story. Not one intended to make people gag, you understand, but a joke...
Well, at least we’re no longer deluged in the daily news with screaming headlines about the infidelities of our national leaders. Not this week, at any rate.... Even if a reporter dug up a scandal, we probably wouldn’t pay much attention unless it was about someone the jackals wanted to bring down anyway. I think the public is suffering from adultery fatigue. But are we really in any better shape as a nation than we were a couple of years ago?
What has happened to us?
The recent Presbytery vote on same-sex unions was an interesting contrast to the one a few years ago on Amendment B - you know, the fidelity and chastity amendment. Our meeting last Tuesday evening was very eye-opening. At least this time we didn’t have people saying they didn’t know what chastity meant, and even those in favor of same-sex marriage believed that sex should take place within a context of “commitment.”
The chair of the Church and Society Committee said that he thought the whole issue of same-sex marriages was really irrelevant, since such a small percentage of our population would actually want to take that route. He thought we ought to deal with out-of-wedlock births and fatherless families. My answer to him was that the two problems are related. Both have to do with the fact that our society believes that we can make up our own rules for how to be in relationship with one
another... we can marry whom we like, as often as we like, and it doesn’t have to last any longer than we want it to. Even if we pay lip service to the idea of commitment, unless we get the whole picture of God’s intention for human sexuality right, we’re going to wind up with a mess.
And so this sermon on adultery has to start a whole lot farther back at the beginning. Because, you see, you can’t possibly talk about why God calls two people together - of opposite sexes but equal in value and status - to make a lifetime, exclusive commitment. We can’t understand why any of the variations on the theme, from polygamy to divorce to adultery - are wrong, without understanding what marriage is, and what sex is. So, folks, we’re are starting with the Biblical equivalent of the birds and the bees. That is to say, with the book of Genesis.
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” This is a mystery, as Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians. It is a mystery that is likened to two other mysteries, the mystery of Christ’s union with the church, and the mystery of the union of the three persons within the trinity.
It is a mystery, and it is a sacrament. Or almost a sacrament. Let me explain.
A sacrament is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. In baptism, the real water represents - is a sign of - the real washing from sin that takes place when we receive Christ and his spirit. In the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine represent - are signs of - the real nourishment that our spirits receive from trusting and resting on the Lord.
The union of a man and a woman in marriage, the gift of their bodies to one another in sexual activity, comes as close as human beings can get to the kind of union that exists between the three persons of the Trinity. This gift of intimate, open, committed relationship was designed for us by our Creator so that neither man nor woman would be alone, as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are never alone except for that dark hour on the cross. It is not a gift to be taken lightly. And the physical act is only the tip of the iceberg. Separating sexual activity from the whole spectrum of mutual obligation and allegiance which constitutes marriage is well below licking the icing off a piece of cake and throwing the rest in the trash. It’s a waste, it’s unhealthy, and it’s an insult to the cook.
And the third party in this union between man and wife is God, not another man or woman, whether temporarily as in adultery, or permanently in polygamy. Because the minute another person enters the picture, a relationship which is intended to be between equals becomes unbalanced. The intimacy and commitment becomes diluted, the spiritual union is compromised. The promise made is a promise for two people only. Once another person enters the picture, the promise is already broken.
But, many people say, things are different now. A lot of arguments have been made for revising the church’s traditional teachings on sexuality and marriage.
It is usually pointed out that advances in society, technology and psychology have rendered obsolete the old, simplistic black-and-white morality which insisted on exclusive, permanent commitment between a man and woman - or abstention. In the modern world, the progressives say, the long wait between puberty and marriage renders a demand for pre-marital abstention at least absurd, in most cases impossible, and in any event unhealthy. Many advocates for liberalization of the church's teaching point to the church's long equation of celibacy with holiness, and an identification of sin (especially original sin), with sexual activity. H. L. Mencken's old adage that "a Puritan is someone who is afraid that
someone somewhere might be having fun" is often quoted. Which actually isn’t at all true, the Puritans were a whole lot lustier than most people give ‘em credit for being. It’s the Victorians who were the villains,not the Pilgrim fathers. But we didn’t stop at just removing the stigma from sexual activity, we’ve actually managed to make unrestricted sexuality compulsory.
Michael Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, asserts that "Sexuality is a word that now serves a purpose like the word soul did in the Middle Ages. In that period, people believed that one's soul united the various aspects of human identity and gave significance to that identity. Today, the word sexuality serves a similar function... Sexuality, self and identity are so closely linked by present usage that at times they virtually merge into one another. ...It is easy to understand why more and more people believe that to deny a sexual relation to oneself or another simply on the basis of marital status .. is to deny the self in a destructive and morally insupportable way."
The point of most if not all social relations - not just sexual ones - has become the pursuit of private life plans... This pursuit is limited only by the principles of "no harm" and "no coercion." Some insist that fidelity is necessary, but not permanence. Others argue that permanence is necessary, but not necessarily fidelity. All demand something called "commitment," but allow each individual to
define what that means in terms of their own self-fulfillment. Basically, all of these arguments boil down to Polonius’ position on the world: remember Polonius, in Hamlet? The self-serving politician whose only allegiance is his own advancement? “To thine own self be true, and thou canst not then be false to any man.” It’s a comfortable philosophy, but it ain’t Biblical.
The problem is, that this is a moral code that begins with the self, and not with God. And a moral code which begins with the self cannot ever progress beyond the self, and a moral code which begins without God will end without God.
Where Polonius says, “to thine own self be true,” Jesus says, “He who finds his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” [Mt 10:39] It is to Jesus Christ that we are to be true, not to our own transient appetites.
A moral code which begins with God has room for the other, the second person within the circle. A moral code which begins with God has strength enough to hold up that sacramental relationship that we began with, the intimate union of body and soul that is God’s gift for us in our human aloneness.
And the system of sexual morality which begins with God - and obeys
God - and points toward God - is the only one strong enough to sustain an
entire society. This code operates on three levels, in three dimensions.
First it binds the individual, then the couple, and finally the entire society.
And each dimension reflects something of the nature of our Creator.
There is, believe it or not, someone besides the obvious participants who
has an interest in what goes on between consenting adults.
How does our understanding of the nature of the God who made us, who gave both this gift of sexuality and the commandment not to misuse it, impact our understanding of human sexual nature and relationships? I believe that the key word is integrity.
Integrity, as I hear it used most often, refers to honesty. A person of integrity keeps his or her word. But it may surprise you to know that this is Webster’s 3rd definition. The primary definition, however, is “the quality or state of being complete; wholeness; entireness; unbroken state.” It is almost axiomatic today that a person who is not sexually active is living an incomplete, unfulfilled life. So for me to propose that abstention from sexual activity is a matter of integrity - wholeness, completeness, or unbrokenness - must seem like an absurdity. But it is not.
A person whose word is good, whose word binds him or her to action, is a person of integrity. This is also a person who is the same on the inside and on the out, a person who does not change with the winds of circumstance, a person who follows through on promises, who can be counted on. This is particularly clearly seen in the Old Testament, in Hebrew, in describing God. In Hebrew the word DABAR means both "word" and "thing" or "event." What God speaks, IS. And God is the ultimate personification of integrity.
Now, just as a person loses integrity when words fail to match deeds, so also does a person lose integrity when body and soul act independently of one another. What I mean is, that the actions of the body MUST BE reflective of the actions of the soul in order for wholeness to be possible. So when the body engages in the most intimate of all possible activities without a corresponding involvement of the soul, the first step is taken towards the disintegration of the personality.
If you’ll think back for a moment to the Clinton scandals - I know, I know, you’d rather not - remember how some of the journalists referred to his ability to “compartmentalize.” I submit to you that this ability to compartmentalize, hailed as an asset, is, in fact, prima facie evidence of moral decay. And that tendency to separate, not to let the right hand know what the left is doing, to say that one thing has nothing to do with another, to deny connectedness and consequence, is the key characteristic of fallen humanity that led to the giving of the commandment.
Let me say that again.
When we compartmentalize, when we deny that our behavior in one area of life has any impact on another area of our life, we are showing a lack of integrity. When we remove sexuality from its proper context at the heart of a life-long commitment, we are showing a lack of integrity. When we pretend that our thoughts are somehow separate from our behavior and our relationships we are showing a lack of integrity. When we see ourselves or anyone else in terms of their bodies only, we are denying and damaging both our own integrity and theirs. In God, all things hold together, all things are connected. To deny or dilute our connectedness is to deny God.
Scripture teaches us that engaging in any sexual relationship implies a commitment. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 that if you lie with a prostitute the two of you become “one flesh”. Proverbs teaches that casual sexual activity leads to the soul’s destruction, because it is the practice of consciously separating your body from your soul. When you contemplate a man or a woman in terms of their sexual potential, you are trying to separate their bodies from their souls, licking off the frosting and throwing the rest away.
Marriage is about wholeness: a whole self, speaking a whole word, for a whole life. The promise that makes a marriage starts from within, from your own integrity, from your own ability to speak with one voice in all your parts. The promise that makes a marriage is made in word and deed, in body and soul. The promise that makes a marriage is the promise that reflects and is rooted in and grows toward the wholeness and unchangeableness of God.
The promise that makes a marriage starts from within. It grows to maturity between a couple, often with difficulty, and painful growth, and sharp edges and wounds and silences, but also with courage and honesty and a stubborn loyalty that is willing to see beyond the other person’s flaws to the promises of God. The promise that makes a marriage begins on the inside, grows in interaction with the other, but is fulfilled by God alone. God’s is the gift, God’s is the promise, and God’s is the completion. It is God’s promise, God’s word, that marriage keeps. Don’t break it.
