God’s Gift of Marriage

August 12, 2007                                                                        Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Marriage is under a lot of pressure these days.  There is a pressure of time – so people are so busy.  According to Family Circle Magazine, a survey of 35,000 women, the time crunch of work and family is hard on a marriage.  Fifty percent say there are never enough hours in a day; another thirty-three percent say there are only sometimes enough hours.  When asked what they had to put on the back burner to squeeze everything in, fifty-one percent said friends and twenty-five said husbands.  Seventy-five percent of women said the time factors were negatively affecting their intimacy with their spouses.  Then there are expectations.  We expect the best.  We expect greatness in everything.  One man was riding his bicycle across a university campus.  A passer-by saw that the message on the front of his t-shirt pronounced his occupational goal, which said, “I’m going to be a doctor.”  But as the cyclist rode on, the passer-by noticed also another sign on the rear of his bicycle that said, “I’m going to be a Mercedes.”  I know it’s early and it takes a while to get jokes….  Then there is hedonism.  Every time you turn on T.V. or go to the movies, the Playboy philosophy of pleasure, more than one spouse, you know.  HBO, if you watch it, there’s Big Love, about bigamy, and the philosophy of getting as many girlfriends or boyfriends as you want to, Desperate Housewives, you name it.  Then there is just the cynicism about marriage.  I have a list of things I pulled out of a book, we’ve all heard these things before, like:

-Marriage is not a word; it is a sentence, a life sentence.

-Marriage is much like a violin.  After the sweet music is over, the strings are attached.

-Marriage is love. Love is blind.  Marriage is an institution; therefore, marriage is an institution for the blind.

-Marriage is an institution in which a man loses his bachelors degree and the woman gets her masters.

-A husband is living proof that a wife can take a joke.

-Marriages are made in heaven, but so again, are thunder and lightning.

And on and on it goes.  I could do this for hours.

But seriously, marriage is under a great deal of pressure.  Today I’m continuing a series of sermons on what I’m calling “housekeeping” style sermons, things that we talk about and we believe in and we don’t talk about as much as we should.  We’ve talked about baptism, we’ve talked about the Lord’s Supper, and next week we’ll talk about memorial services or funerals.  Today it is marriage.  Now I realize that this sermon may not apply to everybody here.  Some of you have been married so long that you know more about it than most of us and your marriages are great.  Some of you have lost your precious spouse.  Some of you are single.  I’m hoping what I will say will be in general about relationships that might help you.  I’m hoping for those of us who are married it will be very helpful.  For those of you who may be married some day, I’m hoping it will be very helpful.  For those of you who are older and may not need all of what I will say, I’m hoping it will give you ammunition for your children or your grand children or your friends because we all know people who are going through trouble.  Today I want to read you a couple scripture verses from Matthew and it is a quote from Genesis, and in this short passage, it says so much about marriage.  It tells us that God made it; that it was good; it was for our benefit; that it was to be for a lifetime; that it is to be between male and female.  Jesus is answering the Pharisees and he says:  (Matthew 19:4-6)

“Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one.  Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!

Would you pray with me?

Father I ask that you will help us now as we listen to something most of us know about already.  Help us hear again your plan and your intent for this institution you have created.  Help our marriages be better.  Help us to help others.  We pray that in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Now talking about marriage, I’ll draw your attention to the devotions I have been putting in the bulletin, and Buck has been putting in the bulletin when he preaches.  These devotions serve as extra information, if you will; you’ll hear some of it but it will be more of a filling out of what I’ll say.  I normally put notes in but we were gone all week and my excuse is I didn’t have time for that; but if you like to take notes, put stuff in the margin and I’m going to tell you my outline so you will be able to follow along pretty well.  What I’m going to talk about as an outline are four myths about marriage, four myths about marriage.

The first myth is what I call the myth of incompatibility.  There is a question that goes along with this myth that people are trying to answer, and that is:  How are we going to get along?  It’s a great question.  Over the years this idea of compatibility has risen up so that it is part of our language; it is part of how we think of marriage, after all, everybody needs to be compatible.  But how it originated is very interesting.  Paul Tournier, a Christian psychiatrist, said this in a book called To Understand Each Other.  He said, “So-called incompatibility is a myth invented by jurists, that is, lawyers, in order to plead for divorce; in other words, it was invented to give a category to think in in order to make divorces easier.  It is likewise just a common excuse for people to hide their own failings.  Misunderstandings and mistakes can be corrected when there is willingness to do so.  The problem is a lack of complete frankness.  What is not being said is we shouldn’t take into account differences.  We should.  Sometimes differences between people are so vast and so real that they shouldn’t get married.  You know, it still astounds me that some of these gentlemen in their fifties get married to women who are in their twenties, and actually these women want to marry them.  Talk about incompatibility.  Or some people from different cultures; but you know what, it doesn’t matter whether you’re from a different culture or not, or even age.  If you marry someone else, you’re going to be different.  The differences start at male and female.  You know, we rightly talk about equality, but sometimes equality is defined as “oh, we are all the same.”  That’s hogwash.  Male and female think differently, not one better than the other; but we are different.  We don’t have to think about that too long to figure that out.  You know, I say all the time that my wife will ask after we’ve visited somebody else’s house, “did you notice the color of the curtains?” “Or the pattern?”  And I’m kind of going, “curtains?”  “They had curtains.”  “Oh yes, now I remember. O.K.”  And it’s true, right ladies?  Now, it doesn’t mean that some males don’t notice curtains, many do, and there is no problem with that.  But there are differences.  If I were to ask my wife what cubic displacement of the engine of the car she was driving, she would go “huh.”  And I would know that.  Some women would know that and some don’t; but there are differences.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a Norwegian marrying a Norwegian or a Norwegian and a Swede, as were my grandparents.  I’m not sure how that worked; but it obviously did.  I’m here.  We all have differences.  The idea is that we have to overcome differences.  Usually we don’t find out about them until we are, in fact, married.  Someone wrote down a list, he said, “Well one of you is an early riser; the other is a night owl.  One is daring and impulsive; the other cautious and reserved.  One of you says I play by the rules; the other says forget the rules.  One of you loves to talk; the other’s a bump on the log.  One of you loves to spend money; the other is a tight wad.  One of you loves to cuddle; the other is a porcupine.  All kinds of differences; and that’s just you and your spouse.  You married into families.  That’s another whole issue we won’t get into.  The point is that anybody really can get along if they want to and overcome these differences.  The whole issue, really, is whether we are other-centered or not.  You see, asking about compatibility or incompatibility often is more about trying to find someone who will suit me, and do what I want to do, than it is about anything else.  The number one problem in marriages is really selfishness.  Let’s say it.  Now when people come to me for counseling sometimes there are other kinds of issues; sometimes there are serious issues of abuse, or this, that, and the other, all kinds of things.  I’m not saying there aren’t.  But the number one issue is I want my way.  She’s not doing this for me.  He’s not doing that.  And the list goes on, and they may very well be doing all those things.  Normally it’s this massive ego thing.  The first thing we have to remember if we are going to get along with anyone, not just our spouses, is that God has made it so that we are to serve.  One of my favorite passages I didn’t read is listed in the bulletin, just for time, is the one about James and John, asking Jesus if they can be on his right and or his left hand and their whole idea, their secret desires were to be rulers, to be served.  That was their, as I heard one author call it at the conference, their shadow reality, deep in their hearts.  Jesus said, “No it won’t be that way with you.  If anyone wants to be great he needs to be servant of all for the Son of Man came to serve not to be served.”  That’s marriage my friend.  It’s marriage.  It’s meeting the other person’s need first.  We are not wired that way.

I read a cute story about a girl named Liz who was sure that her boyfriend Martin would make the best husband, especially when she met his parents.  “They’re so nice to each other” she remarked, “It’s great how your dad brings your mom coffee in bed every morning.”  Eventually Martin and Liz got married.  As they were heading for their honeymoon destination, Liz spoke of the loving home they would have and mentioned once again Martin’s father’s habit of bringing his wife coffee in bed each morning.  Liz asked, “Does this trait run in the family?”  “It sure does” answered Martin “and I take after my mom.” 

The second myth is the myth of the test drive, and the question that is trying to be answered here is: What will keep us together?  And the answer is a test drive, that is, we are going to live together.  It is the answer of the age.  I was so disappointed.  I watched a great show the other day with Cyndi.  We were watching, and it is kind of old fashioned, it was Miss Marple, an Agatha Christie thing. It was a cute story and in the end two of the characters met and fell in love.  The woman comes over to Miss Marple and says “He’s asked me to go away with him, but not get married”  And she says, “After all, in our modern times that’s how we should do it now.”  Bummer.  Kind of disappointing.  You’ve heard me say it before.  I’ll say it again until I’m blue in the face.  The research is showing and the statistics are showing that people who live together first have a higher degree of divorce than those who don’t.  Actually the research is showing that people who live together and get married later have more problems.  Hard data, hard data.  Well, why is that true?  It seems illogical that we ought to try something out first. Right?  Well let me give you an analogy.  Pretend you are going to buy a new car and you take the test drive.  Well what is that test drive?  You get into a car and you drive it maybe for a mile or two and that makes up your mind about this car.  But what’s gone on before you’re test drive.  Well these people have detailed the car, so it is immaculately clean, no dust, no dirt anywhere, and it smells wonderful.  It has that new car smell, doesn’t it?  That’s actually spray, by the way, it’s not the real thing.  You know when people live together they really don’t let their hair down because they are always afraid someone’s going to leave.  There is no commitment there.  There is no commitment.  That’s the problem.  You know, people say “but we love each other.”  Now those of you who have been married know very well what I’m going to say.  I want everybody to hear it.  I want everybody to hear this, if you walk out with nothing else.  There is a huge difference between love and commitment.  They are different things.  Commitment can come from love and love from commitment.  But they are different things.  We in our society now believe that love is mostly a feeling, mostly something we fall into like a big pit; we can’t help it, it just comes upon us.  Now it’s true, feelings just come.  You can be walking down the road and a woman walks by and you go “Whoa” and the tongue hangs out and the drool comes.  It’s like Pavlov’s dog, you know, sometimes.  Feelings come.  And they are great, they are God given, they really are.  I believe that.  But the analogy of the train is a good one.  If you try to drive the train with feelings it’s not going to happen. It has to be driven by commitment and the feelings come after.  Because we all know feelings come and go.  I like to say that every one wakes up with bad breath in the morning.  What I mean by that is that none of us are pretty all the time.  None of us have feelings for each other all the time.  You know when you wake up next to your spouse in the morning and you kind of look at them and they look at you, it’s not pretty sometimes.  But you still love them.  It takes commitment to even want to kiss them at that moment.  I’m just speaking for myself; my wife toward me, not me toward her.  It is showing also that the reason people stay together is that “till death do us part” thing.  In secular magazines the research is showing that people stay together because of commitment; and the couples with a low level of commitment tend to have more problems; tend to have more divorce.  The bible says it is a lifetime commitment and that no matter what, no matter what, you stay together.  Now I realize there are instances of abuse or different reasons that, yes, o.k.  But we are far too lenient with this idea.

The third thing is the myth of what we can call true love.  The idea is again what will make the marriage last? What gives it pizzazz?  One of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride.  If you’ve ever seen The Princess Bride, toward the end, the bad guy is trying to force Buttercup to marry him.  There is a priest, it’s very sarcastic in many ways, he’s doing a marriage ceremony and he has a lisp.  I’ve always wanted to do this at a marriage, always.  It’s like, “Mawwidge, beautiful awaingment” and he goes on and talks about “a dweam within a dweam.”  And then he talks about “twue love”.  I admittedly am performing for you; but when I get to that true love part, it’s kind of the way I think of love in our time, that we really do think it is mostly a feeling that we fall into.  True love is something that we actually can choose, particularly if we think of biblical love, the agape love.  If you read the bible, this kind of love, there are many kinds, but this kind of love has no emotion in it.  It is all about doing good for someone in an unconditional way.  It is about making the choice to do good even when you don’t want to or if someone has actually done something bad to you.  It is a God love that we aspire too with God’s help. I read a story about a man named Alexander Papaderos.  It is one that Robert Fulghum tells.  This man is the director of the Orthodox Academy of Crete.  In Crete, the custom of the arranged marriage is still practiced.  As he was reading over some western literature, Papaderos stumbled over a phase called “making love” and he asked Fulghum about it.  He asked what it meant and Fulghum explained that it was a popular euphemism for having sex.  Papaderos replied that for Cretans making love is a serious notion.  He said that when two families agreed that a son and a daughter would suit one another, it is expected that over time the man and the woman will work at becoming compatible partners in the same spirit that one might work at achieving competence in a life vocation.  This is making love.  Time and experience, mistakes and difficulties are all part of the equation whose sum is a lasting relationship.  “Love is not something you fall into,” Papaderos said, “love and marriage are made.” Thus in Cretan terms when a married couple have been overheard arguing or fighting, the Cretans smile knowingly and say, “ah, they are making love.”  The point is that love, romance, which is necessary for a marriage, is something that you must work at to keep alive.  This is really true of any relationship.  You have to work at them-- a weekly date, a special act of consideration, flowers, and all kinds of different things. 

The last myth is what I call: that I can get along without God myth.  And of course you would expect me to say this.  This is where we are, reminding us again of what we believe.  All those things we mentioned are difficult--to be other-centered, to have a commitment that lasts a lifetime, to have true love, AKA, hard work; well I think that is hard to do by ourselves and we need our God to help us.  It takes God to make our marriages work and our relationships work because we are selfish; we are self-centered.  We get tired of it.  It is hard to sustain it over the years.  It is hard to heal bitterness and loveless marriages.  It is hard to get over these things; we need help.  A man named Don Hawkins tells a story of a time a couple came to him at his church in route as the last stop.  They were going to see their respective lawyers.  Seems the husband had had an affair and his wife had retaliated in kind.  As they sat in the room the tension was electric, the husband on one side, the wife on the other, blasting away at one another.  Don suggested to this couple that they start over.  He suggested that they go back to the point in time where they were in love, to which the man replied, “But I don’t love her anymore.”  Don said to the man, “You do respect the bible, don’t you?”  “Well yes, I do.”  Well Don said, “Scripture says love your wife.”  “Yes” said the man “but we are not living together as husband and wife.  We are in separate bedrooms.”  “Oh, you’re living in rooms next to each other?” Don asked. “Well that’s right,” said the man.  “Well scripture has a word for you, love your neighbor.”  The young man retorted, “I don’t feel like she’s my neighbor.  We relate to each other more like enemies.”  To which Don replied enthusiastically--you know it’s coming, “That’s great.  I have good news for you.  The bible says love your enemies.”  Both husband and wife told Don “But we just don’t feel like loving each other and we certainly wouldn’t want to be hypocritical, would we?”  He said, “Why don’t we suspend the discussion of hypocrisy for one week.  Let me encourage you go back to treating each other like you loved each other.” To the husband he said, “You call her from work.”  To the wife he said, “You have a nice meal.”  To both he said, “Speak just kind words to each other, even try to show some physical affection, with an occasional hug or a touch of hands and see what happens.”  Well the following week they returned.  He was surprised to see that instead of taking seats on the opposite side of the office both sat down on the same couch. Turning to the husband, Don asked, “What is the deal?”  To which the wife replied, “He has been nicer to me than he’s been since we were married ten years ago.”  And smiling, the husband said, “I guess you really can love your enemy.”  Too good to be true?  Seems like it sometimes, I have to admit.  I have found that if people are on their way to the divorce court, or to the lawyer, it is most of the time too late.  But the point is that God can heal relationships. I say all the time that God needs to be at the center of our relationships.  Jesus says in Luke, “unless you hate your mother and father and your neighbor and your children you cannot be my disciple.”  Now what does he mean by that?  Well he is not literally saying that we should hate our parents or our family, but what he is saying is that God must be first.  If you want your marriage to be healthy, any relationship, you must love someone else more than your spouse.  If you want to have a good marriage, put first things first; and it must be God.  God must not be last, or as an afterthought.  God must be first.

In closing I would just say to you, if you are married, as we pray, pray for your marriage and say to God whatever you need to say about your relationship.  If you’ve been married, or you’re single, or you’re widowed, or you’ve lost your precious spouse that way, pray for your grandchildren, pray for your children, pray for people you know.  If you are looking to be married, say Lord teach me what I need to know before that comes.  But all in all, say Lord you are my Lord and my God.  What is your relationship with God like right now?  Pray about that because that will influence what any other relationship you have will be.  If it is not good, your other relationships may not be very good either.

Let’s pray together.

Oh God, we come before you as fallen human beings, self-centered to the core; in particularly when we get in close relationships, it’s hard to get out of that.  We fight ourselves and we fight each other.  Yet Lord, you say that marriage can be a wonderful thing and it can be.  We pray Lord that we would defend it in our culture; but most of all we pray for ourselves that we might have good marriages among our community, that we might be an example to our children, to our neighbors, to others.  We pray for our families Lord because we all know people hurting in this area.  We ask for your help.  You are our God, our Lord, the One we love.  We pray in your name.  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.