Christian Marriage: What I Wish They’d Told Me
A sermon preached at
Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church on August 14, 2005, by the Rev. Robert
Therefore a man leaves
his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. Genesis 2:24
So they are no longer
two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one
separate. Matthew 19:6
Let love be genuine;
hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual
affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in
spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in
prayer. Romans 12:9-12
Every Saturday this month there is a wedding in this sanctuary. A bride and a groom will stand here with guests assembled. Solemn vows are exchanged. And they begin their life together. Thus is acted out one of the great ministries of our church. And I want to, this morning, talk about this ministry so we can wrap our arms around it and embrace it.
The title of the sermon is Christian Marriage: What I Wish They’d
I do a lot of pre-marital counseling. I confess to you that over the years I’ve been ambivalent on its value. At times, I’ve believed you can do very little before the marriage. That if you really want to talk, come in six months after the wedding. But it’s hard, if not impossible to do much that is beneficial beforehand. Love blinds. A wise person once explained it this way and you can think of this as a primary rule of love: You can’t talk sense to two human beings rushing towards each other at the speed of light. The same is true, by the way, of two people rushing away from each other.
But at other times I’ve believed this is an absolutely critical time – when the couples can really learn and grow and prepare for the joys and challenges of Christian marriage.
That’s where I am now, by the way. At any rate, here’s what I wish I’d heard. I’m going to give you all six of these now and then we’ll come back and talk about each.
1. Christian marriage is not a contract or an agreement between two people.
It is a covenant two people enter into with each other and with God.
2. The time before the wedding day is ripe with learning opportunities.
3. Marriage is never what you think it’s going to be. It’s as simple as that – It’s not what you think.
4. To make marriage work – I mean really work – it takes a great deal of effort, time, attention. Most people get bored or distracted or exhausted before the hard work really begins. It takes the kind of commitment most people don’t have. That’s why there are so many divorces and so many couples who remain married but live in a state of emotional divorce. And so few couples who are able to achieve a vital marriage that lasts.
5. There’s no such thing as a couple that does not have irreconcilable differences. If you think otherwise, you’re not paying attention. What matters is not whether or not you have differences, but how you deal with them.
6. Love necessarily involves suffering. Marriage is not a primrose path lined with beds of roses. It, by its very nature involves pain and suffering. And if you’re not up for that, you’d better not get married. Of all human endeavors, loving well is the most difficult and the most rewarding. Faith, hope, and love abide. But the greatest of these is love.
Christian marriage is far more than simply a civil service where two people come under contract with each other; though it is that. Christian marriage marks the formation of a covenant, a holy and sacred commitment a bride and a groom make with each other –
and with God. You might envision it as a triangle. With the bride and the groom at the bottom on each side and God at the top – and there are interactions, relationships, communication, agreements between all three parties, continually, all along the way.
A pastor by the name of Lee Wyatt put it this way:
Marriage is triangular. It involves you,
your mate, and the triune God. It is
the
ministry and mission of this triune God that establishes and nurtures the
love
that binds you to your mate. Without a focal, intentional, awareness of
God’s
holy presence in the midst of our marriages, we will fail whether we
stay
together or not.
So, when a couple stands here before God and before the company of dearly beloved gathered to witness their union, and when they promise to be together For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, they are entering into a holy covenant with one another and with God in a threefold agreement. And this is the basis of their union. Frequently, I’ll say to couples, as we stand here, there will be days when the husband will come home and have nothing to give and the wife will hold things together. There will be days when the wife comes home and has nothing to give and the husband will hold things together. Yet there will be days when you both come home and have nothing to give. Then you can count on God to hold you together. So, make sure your faith is strong and your marriage has a solid spiritual foundation. We live in a throw-away culture. When things aren’t right, we leave. When we get restless, we look elsewhere, when we get bored we change the channel. Christian marriage is therefore counter cultural. This is not how a holy covenant works.
The pre-marriage stage is really important. That’s why we
are starting a Marriage Mentor program here.
To have couples in healthy, though not perfect marriages, work with those
just entering into marriage, to help them along the way. It’s a cauldron. The pressures are enormous, sometimes
overwhelming. There’s the financial
stress. The average cost of a wedding in the
As that big day approaches the pressure grows and grows. Sometimes there’s an explosion. There’s a web site called theknot.com, a great site where couples find information and support. The following words are taken from one of the chat rooms. They were spoken by a bride-to-be to online friends. I quote them verbatim, except
I had to clean up some of the language. She says,
I have nearly killed at least once if not
twice every member of my own and my beloved’s
families so far. We have nine and a half months to go and I am hating this planning. Nobody likes anything
I’ve already done, am going to do, or will get
around to doing, and it’s supposed to be my (exclamation) day!
My fiancé one night when I was
screaming hysterically and crying all over him saying
how much I hated everything that was happening around me said, “Let’s jut cancel it and go to the Bahamas.” At
first, I said yes and then I realized he intended
to still have both our families there. So I figured, why do it? These are the
very people I want to kill! So I would
be merely moving my discomfort from one
place to another. Great!
We’re still having the wedding we
originally planned, but I swear to goodness, I
wish I had just gone to the local registry office with my fiancé, in my jeans
and baggy t-shirt, and said, “Marry
us – please!” And then told our families to get over it.
I want you to think about the important issues a couple must face during the pre-wedding phase:
You see, these are vital questions. So much to learn – so little time. The big day comes and goes and now the couple is off and running. It’s a wonderful and exhilarating time. And often a struggle. Here’s the second rule of love: It’s never what you expect. Never. When people move from the wedding day into the marriage, here are the surprising and yet inevitable truths they have to discover: My partner is not the person I thought he/she was. I am not the person I thought I was. And we together are not the couple I thought we were going to be.
They’ve been living in a state of illusion. That’s what romantic love is at the beginning. And now dis-illusion begins. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary if mature love is to bloom. I’d say usually that happens in the first two years of marriage. Though not always. Sometimes it begins before the wedding vows are said, and for other couples it might come thirty years later. But it comes, and whenever it happens, now starts the real work of the marriage. In fact, some say, now starts the real marriage. When dis-illusion sets in and we begin to discover not the partner we project out of our hopes and dreams and fears but the person who is really there. Not the fantasy, but the reality. During this stage, and in the everyday rigors, marriage takes a lot of hard work.
It takes commitment, honesty, attention, and sweat equity. And it takes that from both partners or it’s just not going to work
Here’s a third rule of love: All couples have irreconcilable differences. When you think about how compatible or incompatible two people are, you can think of it like this.
Think of two large circles that overlap. And the overlap are those areas of compatibility – what the couple shares in terms of opinions, values, interests, tastes, personality traits. Everything from what kind of restaurant they like to how they raise their children. The part of both circles that do not overlap is where there are differences. For some couples this area is large, for others small. The critical thing to know though is that what matters most in predicting satisfaction in marriage is not the extent of the overlap. There are some couples that are very different one from another, and they get along just great. There are other couples that are highly compatible but miserable. What matters, you see, is how the couple handles those irreconcilable differences. Do their differences cause friction? Or is there an acceptance of differences? When they hit one of those areas do they engage in distancing behaviors, or are they able to work it out? So, how do they resolve their differences? Here’s what one marriage educator says:
The number one predictor of divorce is the
habitual avoidance of conflict.
And
what’s sad is the reason we avoid conflict is because we believe it will
cause
divorce. It’s like the cartoon where the
couple explains to the marriage counselor, “We never talk anymore. We figured
out that’s when we have all
our
fights. In the beginning, we avoid conflict because we are so much in love and
we believe that “being in love” is about agreeing. We’re afraid that if we
disagree – or fight – we’ll ruin our marriage.
Later we avoid conflict because when we try to deal with our differences
things get so out of hand and our fights so destructive and upsetting that we
simply shut down. After a few bad blow-ups, we become determined to avoid
conflict at any cost. Successful couples are those who know how to discuss
their differences in ways that actually strengthen their relationship and
improve intimacy. Successful couples
don’t let their disagreements contaminate the rest of the relationship. . . We need to realize that every happy, successful couple has approximately ten areas
of disagreement that they will never resolve.
Love necessarily involves pain. If you’re going to love, you’re going to hurt. One of the most dangerous myths about marriage is that everything’s going to be alright. We’ll be happy forever. Everything will be just fine. But that’s not the way love works. There is the pain that comes from struggling to make things work over time. Sacrificing. There’s the discomfort of having to give, having to work hard, having to let your own needs go in deference to your partner’s. And, finally, there is the pain that comes from loss. Make no mistake about it; suffering is a necessary part of love.
God is counting on us as His people to build strong and healthy families that are filled with faith and love and hope. And for those who are married, God is counting on us to build strong marriages. This is part of our ministry as Christian people. By building great families we witness to our faith in Christ because when we live in faith and hope and love with each other we incarnate for the world to see what it means to be a child of God. We model that. It is part of our witness.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.