IS GOD STILL SPEAKING ABOUT MARRIAGE?
A Dialogue Sermon – October 16, 2005
Revs. Sarah Campbell and Anita Bradshaw

Sarah: The time is right. History is serving up this question yet again. Ideas about marriage have changed, sometimes dramatically, through-out human history. From polygamy to monogamy; from arrangement to romantic choice; from male headship to mutuality; from stigmatizing inter racial marriage to acceptance. The notion that there has been one definition from the beginning of time is preposterous. The time is ripe for our society to look at marriage again. Since the church is central to the wedding business, it seems fitting that we should examine our traditions and practices and see if they fit our deepest held beliefs.

Anita: We want to open up a dialogue by being very honest and in some ways a bit vulnerable by talking with each other and you about marriage. We say open a dialogue because we want to invite you to talk with each other and us about this very important institution in our lives. We do not want to persuade you, but to invite you to begin thinking and exploring and talking about what is marriage, why it is important and why should we bother to talk about it in our culture and in our church.

A caveat as we begin: We want to recognize that some people choose never to marry and that is a valid and good choice. We also want to recognize that people change, mistakes are made, harm is done, people grow apart and some marriages have to end. So, for those of you who have been through the horrible pain of divorce, we want to be clear that embarking on this discussion is not intended, in any way, to negate or trivialize the important decision to undo a marriage. That is clearly a good and moral choice for many people and indeed, to end a marriage that is not fulfilling what marriage promises to be is, in a way, honor the institution, but more importantly, to protect and honor one’s self.

Yes. Anita and I are going to have a public conversation. Actually we’re going to recreate the kind of conversation we have as clergy, we, who are obviously very involved in weddings. So, we want to begin with how it feels to officiate at weddings.

OUR FEELINGS ABOUT WEDDINGS

Weddings are one of my least favorite pastoral duties. I have had some the worst experiences with couples wanting to marry, helping them prepare and actually doing ceremonies. A couple of quick stories:

Or the couple who called and asked about my availability for a particular date and I said I was out of town, happy to do the wedding, but we would have to find another date. No, they said. It has to be this date. No, I said, I can’t do it then. Finally, they admitted that they had already printed the invitations and put my name on them as the officiant. They had gotten the reception hall, caterer and band they wanted and figured I and the church would just cooperate. I could continue, but I will spare you. It doesn’t get any prettier.

Yes. I agree. “Doing weddings” is one of the aspects of my work as a minister in which I feel the most compromised. Now I’m coming from 9 years in a church that had a money-making wedding industry (We did non-member weddings for a nice fee.) So my view is tainted. I have experienced time and time again, couples– who rarely if ever darken the doors of the church– come to the church at wedding time with high expectations and a need for their wedding to have a Christian patina. What are we blessing as a church? For one thing, a growing consumer industry that leaves many couples in debt. The average cost of a traditional wedding in the US is $25,000. Sometimes I feel like a pawn of the wedding industry. What does my calling to follow Jesus have to do with following the rules of a Wedding magazine?

The inherent consumerism of our culture has taken over the whole wedding business. Couples are spending a fortune on dresses, tux, caterers, bands, receptions, etc. They start their married lives in tremendous debt and all for a day. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good party, but is this sort of expensive, and in many cases, excessive partying what we mean when we talk about Christian marriage?

But then, the values of our culture are not one’s that reinforce a faith-based notion of marriage anyway. When there are television shows that ask viewers to call in and vote on who the contestants should marry or celebrities marry and divorce a couple of days later and cheating on one’s spouse is the point of some TV shows and there is no shame around any of these things, well I guess spending a fortune on a wedding is actually not so bad on the moral scales.
Consumerism drives the church to the backseat. Couples rarely start with the minister and the church. They start with all the other folks they need to hire. That makes me question if marriage truly is a religious institution and how much the commitment before God and the community really matter for many couples. Is the blessing of God and the support of community the point of the ceremony? Or is it a quick stop on the way to the real event and oh, don’t forget to sign and file the marriage license so all this is real and official? Or as some have described the job of the church and the clergy is to “match, hatch and dispatch.”

Yes. Exactly. And I also feel increasingly compromised by the state. I can not sign a wedding license for every couple I marry, every couple with whom I’ve done pre-marriage counseling. The state tells me I can only sign on the line for a man and a woman but my church tells me that I can marry any couple in my congregation who are in love and want to spend their lives together. Increasingly this is feeling like an untenable position. I’m talking to more and more clergy who are coming to this realization. And what about older people who fall in love later in life and want to get married in the church, but soon discover that to be civilly or legally joined would put them in a precarious financial position? With the aging of our society, this painful dilemma will happen more and more.

I first began to think seriously about all of this after a phone call I got from my attorney. She asked my help with an elderly couple who were working on some matters with her. Both were widowed and had fallen in love. They wanted to marry, but could not legally. If they legally wed, they would lose the pensions from the respective deceased spouses. They went to their minister and ask if they could marry in the church, but without a marriage license. He said he had to sign the license. Being of an age and a set of values that kept them from living together, they had sought the advice from an attorney. I said tell them to go back to the minister and tell him that he is not legally bound to sign a license for the state to hold a service of blessing for the couple. They could marry in the church without marrying in the state. And if he would not do the service, I would. That experience propelled me towards a positive reassessment of marriage and its religious value as opposed to its civil value. It also taught me how “wedded” to be agents of the state we ministers have become.

It’s amazing that the little piece of paper is becoming such the focal point. Honestly, I don’t even know where my wedding license is. Do I dare admit that?

I admit this is personal. I don’t have the luxury of a license. I have to carry papers in my car to prove that Sherrie has a right to make decisions if I am incapacitated or that she should be the first one called if I have an accident and vice versa. Right now in Minnesota, we are fairly sure that such paperwork would be honored. But when I travel to Virginia in a month to celebrate my mother’s 75th birthday, I will not have that assurance. Last year Virginia passed a law saying that it would not honor paperwork such as that which we carry.

I have always believed in the separation of church and state, but when I became ordained, I had to register with the state and become their agent when signing marriage licenses. I have increasingly become disenchanted with being an agent of the state especially when in so doing I feel as if I am violating my own rights as a person and as an ordained minister. That is what we have judges, justices of the peace and other magistrates for is to represent the interests of the state. I represent the interests of the community of faith and of God.

How does it feel to officiate? I wish it felt better, but as an ordained person, giving this kind of stamp of approval to the excessive consumerism of the wedding industry and to the discriminatory laws of the state feels compromising. And somehow getting everything just right, every hair in place (I never like that..), every tie tied meticulously, all to create that perfect Kodak moment, is not the same, indeed it is the antithesis, of creating a sacred time and place for covenant blessing.

AND YET

And yet, when the rehearsal dinner is done, the camera lenses covered, and people have relaxed into the inevitable imperfection of the wedding- the little flower girl went the wrong direction- and the two are standing together there in the spot, and time stops for a minute and it feels like a thin place where divine and human meet. That’s when I feel profoundly honored to be a part of it.

And during pre-marriage counseling when the couple talk about their romance, when they first knew they were in love, and the air is electric I feel honored to witness to this intimacy. And when, I am in the hospital room and she is on the bed and he, her husband of 60 years, is gently washing her face, I blush at witnessing this surpassing tenderness and feel honored to be present. And then there are, of course, all those moments of life in between, the ordinary moments, which are extraordinary moments because you are in the presence of your beloved… those moments when you do not long to be older or younger or born in any other nation, or any other time, or any other place, those moments when you feel deep rest, your love a refuge in an agitated world.

Are there three most profound mysteries that point to the beyond, to the deep, that take you right to the edge or even into the cloud of unknowing? Birth-from what profound mystery did that baby come? Death—unto what profound mystery does that human being go? And marital love- from what inexhaustible and deep well of mystery does that arise?

Of course, we “do” weddings in church. That’s where it belongs!

If marriage were somehow wiped clean off the planet or it devolved out of existence, I am convinced that it would sprout again, like the shoot of Jesse. It’s part of the human condition. Two human beings find each other on this planet and they discover this inexhaustible love between them that is also somehow bigger than them: What do they do? First, they go to the canyon and yell out, proclaiming it to the world. Then they have a ritual, in God, the Ground of Being, and with the community surrounding them, and with the most sacred music and words and silence imaginable. They have a ritual and allow the universal blessing to happen. After, they have a big party to celebrate. Straight or gay. It doesn’t matter.

The church, where we are ultimately about that which is ultimate, must be in the business of marriage.

So, by now, you are probably wondering why I am in this business or perhaps wondering if you want me in this business with Mayflower Church. So, let me be clear that I do believe in marriage, both in a religious sense and in a civil sense. It is an important institution for many reasons. Let me name just a few:

 Marriage is one of the crucial ways that we experience the incarnational love of God. We come to know how much God loves us through the love of the other and particularly in a committed love that is deep and intimate.
 Marriage is one the important avenues through which are able to grow and mature as persons. Through the day to day living with another and struggling and helping them to grow and flourish, we come to understand who we are and who we are called to be as persons.
 Marriage is an important institution for stabilizing our lives and that of the wider community. It helps to create order so that we all may live better.
 Marriage provides a stable environment for children to grow and mature and prosper.
 Marriage can be a wonderful and joyous relationship when it seeks not its own, but the good of the other which, of course, is something we are also called to do in Christian community.

But can we reclaim it from the Mall of America and the halls of the state legislature, at least reclaim our part, the essence of marriage?

Yes, I think we can reclaim marriage. Marriage is too important to be used as a political pawn and for unjust reasons to further any politician’s political power and clout. It is too important for the church to keep playing handmaid to the state on the issue. It is too important to hand it over to the various industries that want to make money off of it. It is too important for us not to clarify what we mean as a church about marriage and what marriage should be. It is fundamentally a religious institution for people of faith and a secular, civil institution for citizens. The two have been confused too long and need to be separated, if we are ever to reclaim the religious institution of marriage.

The state can and should provide civil marriage to those who are willing to make a serious and as far as they can tell permanent commitment to one another regardless of gender. The church should provide religious marriage to those who are also serious about the commitment, but serious about it being not just a commitment to one other person, but to God and to and with the community of faith. Because the fundamental difference is that a wedding license is a contract, but what we do here in the church is about covenant. They are similar, but very different concepts. Contracts can be voided. Covenants are not so easy to dispatch.

Yep! I think it is only a matter of time before the United States, a country which was founded on the principle of the separation between Church and State, will separate civil union from religious marriage—as have Canada, Spain, and other countries. It is only a matter of time before legislators will leave sacramental, covenantal language to the houses of worship, where they belong, and use only legal, civil language. The big question is: Who will step out of the current, tangled arrangement first, the State or the Church? And: Why should the church wait?

Granted, Stepping out of this cozy arrangement with the State– that is church representatives no longer signing wedding licenses on behalf of the state– is a logical move, but the emotional reactions to such a proposed change are deep and real and not to be ignored. I speak as a heterosexual, married person, with all the privileges and benefits that I imply. I/We straight people want our children to be able to get married like we did, with a wonderful church wedding and no need to even think about the State, with one stop shopping and no needless inconvenience. But it goes deeper than that for some of us…The church is already considered irrelevant and impotent by many these days. Why should we further gut its power by giving up this privilege of validating and somehow making permanent and real a marriage? The words of the vows are beautiful and nice, but the rubber hits the road when the license is signed. Why willingly give that power and relevance away?

Why? It’s about justice. It’s about theological and professional integrity. And as a straight person who has spent almost all my life in church, it’s about extravagant hospitality. Have you ever been the guest in a poor home? –maybe in Guatemala or in Palestine?—There you witnessed the art of hospitality at its most beneficent. Your hosts, of little means, make a feast and give you the best portion, food in the eating place… and maybe they insist that you lay your weary head down in their sleeping place that night. They choose to be displaced because that’s what their heart tells them to do, in Christ.
I’m willing to be displaced, to be inconvenienced and to lose a beloved tradition, and I’m willing to make this decision for my children to be displaced, in the name of Christ, who lived and breathed extravagant welcome.