What makes a marriage?

Reading: Matthew 19.1-15

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As I was preparing for this morning's sermon, I decided to title it, “What makes a marriage?” A kind of natural reaction suggested that it needed an extra word, that it should really be “What makes a marriage work?” Yet, as I thought about it, I realised that there are already many articles and books which freely give out advice on what makes a marriage work – some of it quite helpful advice. But there is a crisis today, a crisis that questions the very validity of marriage.

I recall a phone call a couple of parishes ago. The young man at the other end asked, “Do you believe in trial marriages?” I replied that I didn’t, but that I did believe in marriage and that I would do all I could to help them make a marriage that would be lasting.

The fact is that a so-called “trial marriage” isn’t really a marriage at all and doesn’t prepare people for the real thing, as some people seem to assume. In practice, it tends to increase the kinds of difficulties that we all face in marriage – and does so to a point that even leads some to say that “Marriage spoils a good relationship.” The truth is that the relationship, with its option of pulling out at any time, has made rather more difficult the long haul of the life-long commitment of marriage.

What is marriage?

In 1989, while still in the previous parish, I conducted a Chinese wedding. The bridegroom was half-Chinese and wanted to marry a nice Chinese wife like Mum. A family friend in Hong Kong located a suitable bride on the mainland -an educated young woman who worked as an editor for publishing educational books. It wasn't a matter of accepting the choice “sight unseen”, however – the bridegroom went to China to meet her.

The bride left China just three days before the Tiananmen Square massacre. She purchased her four bridal gowns in Hong Kong. She was married in a western-style white wedding dress, but in the course of the reception changed into red (for happiness), golden and finally into her going-away outfit. We were among the guests at a Chinese restaurant in Fortitude Valley. There were two Chinese men from Hong Kong at our table who interpreted the menu (handwritten in Chinese) for the Australians at the table and explained the tea ceremony and other Chinese traditions.

Of interest also was their rationale for arranged marriages. They said, “With you, marriage is like putting a pot of hot porridge on a cold stove and it gradually cools down. With us, marriage is like putting a pot of cold porridge on a hot stove and it gradually heats up.” They do not trust what we call “love” to make a wise choice.

What, then, is marriage? The Marriage Act 26 (1) provides that a celebrant who is not a minister of religion is to say words to this effect, “I am duly authorised by law to solemnise marriages according to law. Before you are joined in marriage in my presence and in the presence of these witnesses, I am to remind you of the solemn and binding nature of the relationship into which you are now about to enter. Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of' a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.”

That is a useful definition to begin with. Notice what it says about marriage:

(1) Marriage takes place between a man and a woman – there is no credibility given to homosexual or lesbian relationships.

(2) Marriage is described as a “union” – there is a legal commitment, as well as a commitment of the two persons in a union involving body, mind and spirit.

(3) It is an exclusive commitment – no polygamy (only one wife), no adultery (only this wife or husband).

(4) It is a voluntary commitment. It is not a legal marriage if it takes place against your will, without your consent.

(5) But it is a life-long commitment. We aren’t to let ourselves off the hook by implying that we meant it then, but not any longer. Even though today’s laws (like the law of Moses) have to make provision for the breakdown of marriages, the intention of both parties at the time of marriage has to be a commitment for life.

The Creator’s Purpose

In today’s reading, the Pharisees came to Jesus with a trick question, “Does our Law allow a man to divorce his wife for whatever reason he wishes?” There was a dispute at the time between two schools of Rabbis. The school of Shammai took the unpopular view of divorce for unchastity alone. The school of Hillel took the liberal and popular view of easy divorce for any passing whim – if the husband saw a prettier woman or burnt his biscuits for breakfast. The aim was to damage Jesus’ popularity.

But Jesus goes back to the more basic question of the Creator’s purpose in marriage. “Haven’t you read the scripture that says that in the beginning the Creator made people male and female?”

The creation account is fascinating at this point. Genesis 1.27 says, “So God created human beings, making them to be like himself He created them male and female and blessed them…” Then in chapter 2 we read that “the Lord God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live” (v. 7). But the man was lonely and there was no “suitable companion” for him among the other creatures. So “the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the flesh. He formed a woman out of the rib and brought her to him. Then the man said, ‘At last, here is one of my own kind – Bone taken from my bone, and flesh from my flesh…’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one” (vv. 21-24).

As I have put it elsewhere, “We seek and find in marriage, not just companionship, but completeness. As man and wife come together in the commitment of marriage, they become one, not just in sexual union, but as a new unit which thinks, responds and acts together” (Love One Another).

“So”, Jesus says, “they are no longer two, but one. Man must not separate, then, what God has joined together.”

There are many stories of how people have worked out that commitment. Here is one I came across recently from Richard Selzer, a surgeon. “I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. The surgeon had followed with religious fervour the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumour in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve.

“Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wrymouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.

“ ‘Will my mouth always be like this?' she asks.

“ ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it will. It is because the nerve was cut.’

“She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.

“ ‘I like it,’ he says. ‘It is kind of cute.’

“All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in such an encounter… Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works” (Mortal Lessons).

In the marriage service we promise, “I take you to be my wife/my husband. I accept you, and you alone, in sickness and in health, in poverty and in prosperity, in agreement and in conflict, in times of comfort and in times of struggle, as long as we both live.”

Those are very special words that herald the beginning of the marriage commitment. But the Creator intended for us (as well as for Adam and Eve) that the relationship would be in partnership with him. That is why we pray, “Almighty and most merciful God, without whom we cannot live as we ought, we pray that as these two people have been brought together, they may be filled with your grace and may keep the vows they are about to make…”

Because of what God made a marriage to be, we need to remember to include him in the partnership! All of us bring to marriage, not only our love (and hopes and dreams) but our brokenness. We have the potential for the great happiness the Creator intended or for the misery we all too readily create.

Stay close to God. He loves you and he smiles at your loving. He reaches out to touch, to forgive and to heal every expression of your brokenness and sin. Learn to pray together and to stick together through whatever times of “comfort or struggle” life may bring to you.

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