Happy Valentine’s Day Weekend.  That’s what’s important this weekend, you know.  Not that it’s the 6^th Sunday after the Epiphany.  This is the weekend that florists increase their business by 25%, and if you tried to go out to dinner Saturday night without a reservation, you probably went hungry for quite awhile. 

Love is actually big business in our society all the time.  There are about 44,000 weddings every weekend, and the average cost of one of them is $22,360, with most of that spent on the reception.  When couples ask what they should think about contributing to the discretionary fund for my services, I suggest that they tithe the cost of their wedding.  They turn very pale, and so far, no one has ever done it.

Remember that song by the title Love and Marriage?  Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage, Dad was told by Mother, you can’t have one without the other.

Those were the good old days.   It’s not that way anymore.  That was a song of the mid 20^th c. and for years now we have had love outside marriage and we have had a divorce rate of 50%.  Some young people whose parents were divorced have become very squeamish about marriage and are afraid to marry; they are willing to have children and live together, but they don’t want the marriage their parents had.  Other couples  live together for other reasons.  And it’s not just young people.  Older couples often find it financially prudent to simply move in with each other rather than marry.

So marriage seems to be waning on one end of the spectrum.  On the other we have same sex couples who want to be married, and there is no agreement in the body politic or the church about whether this is a good thing or not.  But it’s a hot topic.  You can’t read the paper or listen to the news without something about marriage or same-sex relationships.

Love and marriage.  Valentine’s Weekend seems like a good time to try to add some  theological perspective to the confusion.  Fools rush in where angels fear to tread—and here I go.

Marriage as an institution has changed dramatically over the millennium of the Judeo Christian era, and it has changed faster and more considerably in the last one hundred years than at any other time.  It has changed because of social and technological changes in our larger society, not because of ideology or theology.  That is the part that needs to catch up. 

When most of our grandparents and great grandparents were married and riding in those horse and buggies, there were not many options available to women. Marriage was a survival strategy, not only for the economic support it provided to a woman, but because life took a lot of physical work.  Couples were often farm families, and they relied on children to help with the family livelihood.  People didn’t have children just because it was fulfilling to nurture and watch young people grow up.   They needed them and they also didn’t have the family planning measures we have now. Now there are many options and many new pressures on the family.    Women don’t have to stay in abusive marriages, and people are unwilling to stay in loveless relationships.

Children are seen as more of an option; not a necessity for a good marriage.  They are economically an investment rather than an asset.  Women are fulfilled in many other ways.  Sex is available outside marriage.  Why bother?

Well, I think there are good reasons for people to marry and for people to work at staying married.  At the same time, I am glad that it is more of an option so that people can truly make a choice about whether this is the lifestyle that is right for them.  Better to choose single life before marriage rather than in the middle of one.

So why should people get married?  How are we to understand where God might be in marriage these days? 

Let’s go back to the beginning.  When God created the earth creature, God said, “It is not good that the earth creature (adamah, usually translated the man) should be alone.”  So God pulled the earth creature apart into male and female so that they would spend their lives relating to each other in a complementary wholeness.   Couples were given to each other for intimacy and companionship from the beginning.

Holy union is what I would call this.  God created intimacy; human society created marriage.    And we have changed in our understanding of  this union as a physical one primarily to one that is physical, emotional, and spiritual.  It is a lot to place on a relationship.  We expect our spouses to be our best friends.  No wonder so many marriages don’t survive.

Let’s look briefly at  two strands of the Christian tradition that have different expectations of what is possible and desirable in marriage.  For the sake of simplicity I am going to hold up the views of John Chrysostom, a 4^th c. Greek theologian, and St. Augustine, a 5^th c. Roman theologian.  The former understood marriage primarily as unitive, and the latter, as generative.

John Chyrsostom taught that God created marriage primarily to promote the holiness of the husband and wife.  It was their pathway to union with God.  Secondarily marriage was for producing children.  Sex was good, marriage was good, and it was the equal responsibility of husband and wife to preserve the integrity of their marriage.  Marriage is a sign of God’s kingdom because it begins to restore the unity of humankind and the cosmos as a whole which is broken up by sin.  He drew on Ephesians to understand that marriage is a great mystery in itself and represents a greater mystery, the unity of redeemed humanity in Christ.

St. Augustine did his theology in the context of Roman law.  He had a concubine, which was common practice until Emperor Augustus decided that marriage was better for the state.  He ruled that only people who were married and produced children could receive inheritances.  Children born in concubinage could not inherit.  The intention was to produce more marriages and more children.  Prior to this divorce was also easier to obtain, simply by one partner or the other.  Augustine after his conversion understood procreation as the only reason for marriage.  He followed St. Paul in thinking that monasticism was a higher calling spiritually.  Marriage led to sexual activity and participation in original sin.  Hence, have those babies and get them baptized immediately.

We are fortunate that Thomas Cranmer was  married for 16 years (albeit secretly because clerics were still not permitted to wed) when he wrote the marriage service for the first Anglican prayerbook.  Stories are that he carried Margaret in a trunk when he traveled.  It was the first time that marriage was described as being” for the mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.”  This is quite an improvement over getting married to avoid sin and to beget children.  He also added the promise by the groom “to love and to cherish” and the promise of the wife” to love, cherish and obey.”  It was not that long ago that the promise of the wife to obey the husband was dropped from the vows.  I have never had a bride who asked to have that put back in.

So you can see that Christian marriage has evolved and is continuing to evolve.  I personally am a great believer in the call of marriage as a call to union, a path that starts with a union with a person but mirrors the soul’s union with God.  It helps us understand better the Great Marriage—the one between ourselves and the Great Lover, God.

Gary Zukov in Seat of the Soul makes the claim that the only reason two people should get married is to assist each other in their spiritual development.  That’s not so far off from John Chyrsostom.  It is a way of participating in the great mystery of love and desire that holds the whole universe together.  But when we say this we have to make sure we don’t set up expectations that are impossible for people to achieve. 

Marriage is work.  Romance is only the way we get snookered into the marriage.  To look across the breakfast table at the same face every morning and to see the Christ in that unshaven face, in the face without make up takes a lot of commitment and effort. But there is something about the marriage vows that help make this happen.  One of my favorite quotes about love and marriage is “We are not married because we love each other; we love each other because we are married.”

I think same sex couples  want to be married or receive the church’s blessing precisely because they know that they need the support of the community and the glue of the Holy Spirit just like any other couple who is trying to make a relationship last til death do them part.  Whether we think that this is right or not, we should at least try to understand why it’s wanted so badly.  It’s an issue that will not go away.  As we have moved from a generative understanding of marriage to a unitive one, it makes it harder to think that same sex couples can not achieve this intimacy. 

On our bedroom wall we have a poster that says “God has promised to make better lovers out of us all.”  That’s why we’re here, in this world, because of love, the love of our parents for each other, the love that we have to give to friends, family, spouses, and enemies.  We are here to grow in the mystery of union with human persons and ultimately with the divine.  Jesus in the summary of the law made it quite clear that we are here to love—God with all our heart, mind and soul, and our neighbor as ourself.  It’s all about love.