This morning we are stepping out of our series on Hebrews for one week. Instead, in a moment we’ll look at a passage from Ephesians that talks very directly about marriage. Let me tell you a couple of things before we do that.

First, I’m not preaching today on the controversy in our culture over whether the definition of marriage should be changed. Last fall I preached a very explicit sermon on the whole topic of sexuality. You can read that sermon online or in our library. I’m not revisiting that today.

Second, I’m very aware that many in our community are not married: are single, or have been widowed, or divorced. Some have great pain around these events, and I don’t want to ignore that. We will, in fact, preach on singleness this summer. But that’s not where I’m headed this morning either.

The reason we’re talking about marriage is that it has just hit me so strongly in this last month that while the argument rages in the culture over what marriage IS NOT…in the church we certainly ought to be prayerfully considering what marriage IS, according to the scripture.

Anne, if you’ll come and read with me? We’ll read from Ephesians 5:21-32.

I have to tell you… to stand up in front of your own spouse and preach a sermon on marriage is…well, it is an incredibly humbling thing.

Last weekend, I had the privilege of doing two weddings, one on Friday night and one on Saturday night. Both great couples and nice times of worship and prayer. Both couples used essentially the same vows, very traditional ones. You hear them each time you go to a wedding, but this morning I ask you to listen to the words. I’m going to read them very slowly (and to protect the innocent from last weekend, I’ll just use Anne's and my name):

“I, Dan, take you, Anne, to be my wife;

and I promise,
before God and these witnesses,
to be your loving and faithful husband;
in plenty and in want;
in joy and in sorrow;
in sickness and in health;
to love, honor and cherish,
as long as we both shall live.”

Do you hear what these words are promising?! If we stopped and thought about it for very long…we might have a lot fewer weddings!

I promise, out loud, front of these witnesses and the God who made me, to be your:

• loving husband…not just your husband.
• faithful husband…to you and you only.
• in plenty…if we have a good job, food on the table, the blessings of friends, money to share…I’ll be your loving and faithful husband.
• in want…if we’re unemployed, or under financial strain…I’ll be your loving and faithful husband.
• in times of joy…life is good, energy of youth, richness of friendships, when God seems close…I’ll be your loving and faithful husband.
• in times of sorrow…life is bleak, when someone struggles with depression, when a friend betrays us, when we lose our parents, when God seems distant,

…I’ll be your loving and faithful husband.

• in sickness…when a disease strikes, if a report comes back from the mammogram and it’s grim…when I can’t do the athletic things I once did and which we still enjoy together…I’ll be your loving and faithful husband.
• in health…if we’re blessed to grow old together…I’ll be your loving and faithful husband.
• I will love you…I choose that…
• I will honor you…I will praise when I talk to others about you,
• I will absolutely cherish each and every day I have with you for as long as we continue to draw breath together…

How…preposterous! We were 23 years old. It struck me again this last weekend that not one word of a vow like this applies to the present moment. When we hear the vows at a wedding, it all applies to the future. Not a word about how the bride and groom feel right now, or how deep their love is right now…it’s all for the future. It’s all for a time when things may have radically changed…for which they don’t have the slightest understanding of what they are agreeing to.

Are you kidding me? We should surely add to the end of these vows, “desperate for the grace of God,” because no one will really succeed at this.

But that doesn’t mean we should change the vows to

“I’ll give it my best shot.”

No, it means we throw the words out there in front of God and everyone, knowing…that we must also throw ourSELVES on the mercy of God.

Where do we get the audacity to say such things? Where do we get off thinking that you could ever bring two independent, autonomous people who have different backgrounds, strange family systems, separate issues, different needs, individual careers…and think that it even had a shot of working?

Jesus quotes from the creation story in Genesis, part of God’s creation that he calls “good”:

“A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

And the Apostle Paul says to the Ephesians,

“Be subject to one another.”

I believe that in the last couple of weeks, I have read every scripture passage that has to do with marriage, even in the slightest way.

Here are a few conclusions:

• Scripture doesn’t speak about marriages that look like negotiated contracts: “You agree to feed the dog, I agree to do the laundry. I keep my assets, you keep yours.”
• Scripture doesn’t speak about marriages as experiments, “let’s try it out and see if it works for us.”
• Scripture doesn’t speak about marriages where one person makes sure their needs get met adequately, then gives the other person whatever is left over.
• Scripture doesn’t speak about marriages built on a score keeping system: “you went out with the girls last week, that’s plus two points for me, leaving me with a net of plus 18 which means that I can not do dishes for the next two weeks while staying out late 5/14 nights.” I’m cashing in, see you in a couple of weeks.
• Scripture also doesn’t speak about the idea that every person should be married. We don’t have time to read it this morning, but there is a very difficult passage in I Corinthians 7 that should make every Christian person pause, and drive us to our knees in prayer as to whether God is actually calling us into marriage.

But if you are married, or heading that direction, or wanting to support friends or family who are…scripture has a lot to say. Be subject (or as many translations say, submit yourselves…I’m going to use that word just because it’s easier to say!) to one another. That is what God asks for. And underneath this mutual submissiveness, wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives. And listen, as we go, how the Apostle Paul has such a hard time talking about a marriage between two people without talking about our relationship with God.

In our day, the word “submit” raises the hackles of many just to hear it. “Submit” means abuse of power, coercion, domination. “Submit” means get walked over by anyone and everyone. Submit means you’re constantly unhappy and everyone else gets what they want. It is probably the case that we have permanently ruined the word.

And yet there it is in verse 21, which is the umbrella which covers the next 11 verses:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Not just for husbands, not just for wives, not just for the church…but for all.

Submissiveness…will bring up some other “S” words, four that I can think of. One of the most powerful is “surrender.” It may be a more useful word for us, actually. Mike Mason wrote a wonderful little book years ago called “The Mystery of Marriage,” and in it he says,

“marriage is both a giving and a taking away.” What is given is rather obvious: the love of another human being. What is taken away is perhaps not quite so apparent: the entire freedom to think and to act as an independent person.

Ouch. There has never been a civilization that has valued independence and autonomy as much as ours…which is, I believe, one of the reasons that marriages in our country and in the church fall apart at record rates.

Every second of every year of your life until the time of a wedding you are free to think for yourself and of yourself, to make decisions for yourself, to act according to what you will do and think of the ramifications for your own life. And suddenly after you are married, every single decision and act will be thought of IN LIGHT of another person. It does not go away. Ever. You are freely choosing to limit yourself in that way.

I’m doing a lot of premarital counseling right now. And you know about the statistics on marriages not lasting, within the church and without. Over the years, I’ve tried to ask harder and harder questions of engaged couples. As I’ve thought more this week, though, I don’t think I’ve asked tough enough ones. I need to ask questions that include things like this surrender word. What are you UNwilling to surrender to the other person?

• Career?
• Standard of living?
• Escape clause?

What do you hold back? Go there, find out why. Decide if you can say “I will hold nothing back.” If both can say it and mean it and grow into it, the relationship could hold. Marriage is not about two who become 1.5, but who become ONE.

I have two friends who are in their eighties, Tom and Mary Bess Kelly, long-time friends here at Bethany. They’ve been married for 60 years. Tom is in a nursing home with severe Alzheimer’s, no longer able to respond to much of anything. It is not the situation Mary Bess ever imagined being in…but she holds nothing back…her life is built around Tom’s schedule.

I went and had lunch with them a couple of months ago. And I watched, eyes wide open, as she fed him, spoonful by spoonful. I watched as she talked with him as though he were able to understand. As she rubbed his back, and held his hand, and loved him like the old friends they are. It was such a beautiful thing, I cried.

I pray I can be that kind of loving and faithful spouse…who will surrender everything. Marriage is about surrender.

Marriage is also about sinfulness. That may be simply another way of saying that after two become one, it is no longer all about me. Marriage is a magnifying glass for sinfulness. You see things about your spouse you don’t want to see. You see more things about yourself you wish weren’t there. Being married means, Mason says,

“being lovingly, persistently confronted with the plainest and ugliest evidence of sinfulness, and thus encouraged on a daily basis to repent and to change.”

How glamorous.

When our kids were small, I was in a business where I traveled a fair amount for work. I would come home after three or four days and be very eager to get home. I would arrive at Sea-Tac and hurry home as quickly as I could. My mind was filled with the eager welcome I would receive upon re-entering my castle. I assumed I would be greeted with an effusive wife, a parade of children and an eagerness to hang out with me. What I often received, of course, was a tired hello, a busy schedule, and a wife who was slightly distant. I would be irritated. Had not the golden hero returned home?!

The reality, of course, was that in my absence Anne had worked full-time and overtime as an independent parent, coach and scheduler. And she was very good at it. I was, in fact, messing up the system when I returned home. Rather than being the focus of all attention, I needed to slowly fit into the situation. I’m ashamed to say it still took me several years of frustration to finally see how self-centered I really was.

Marriage is about sinfulness. (Practically by definition, marriage will be marked by a daily asking and receiving of forgiveness).

Marriage is about sacrifice. The mystery of this whole marriage thing is…when the apostle Paul looks around for something to compare a marriage relationship with, he looks to Christ and the church. Our relationship with Christ who died for us bears some resemblance to our relationship with our spouse.

When Paul tells women to be subject to their husbands, he does so in 43 words. He tells them “in everything,” without qualification, to be subject to their husbands. And when he tells men to love their wives, he does so in 147 words. He tells men to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

Somehow, we have at times managed to turn these instructions into a justification for domination, power, abuse or coercion by men who understand these to be the tools of being the head of the household. I’ve tried hard to find that in these verses. But do you know what happens? I keep running into Jesus. Love your wives as Christ loved the church. Nourish and care for her as Christ does for the church. Lay your life down as Christ did for the church.

Paul says a marriage should be at least some faint echo the relationship between Christ and his people, the church. Try as I might, I don’t see Jesus using domination, lust for power, abuse or coercion in dealing with the church. Instead, I see Jesus tipping the scales of power upside down. I see him coming as a servant. I see him unconcerned with his own ego and reputation. I see him living with compassion. I see him pouring himself into his disciples, his followers, weeping at the tomb of his friend. I see him being the head of the church by literally sacrificing his life for it. Where is the coercion, the domination, the struggle for power in this picture? It has been nailed to the cross. Marriage is about sacrifice.

Marriage is about steadfastness. Being in it for the long haul. When I was a kid growing up, THE college basketball team of all-time was the UCLA Bruins. UCLA won 10 NCAA titles in those years. At one point between 1971 and 1974, they won 88 straight games.

They were coached by a man named John Wooden, one of my heroes. John Wooden was perhaps the finest coach ever in college basketball. He was quiet, straight-laced, a strong Christian man with great integrity who is still alive today in his nineties. For 53 years he was married to his beloved wife Nellie.

She died back in 1985 on the 21st of March. And ever since, on the 21st day of each month, John Wooden sits down and as the sportswriter Rick Reilly says it,

“pens a love letter to his best girl. He’ll say how much he misses her and loves her and can’t wait to see her again. Then he’ll fold it once, slide it in a little envelope and walk into his bedroom. He’ll go to the stack of love letters sitting there on her pillow, untie the yellow ribbon, place the new one on top and tie the ribbon again.”

He smiles a little when he says “I’m not afraid to die…death is my only chance to be with her again.” Marriage is about steadfastness.

Somehow, the Apostle Paul says, God’s picture of marriage is hopelessly intertwined with the picture of our relationship to God. And while we stumble through our marriages as best we can, we walk with a Savior who:

• asks us to Surrender everything and come to Him.
• knows all about our Sinfulness.
• offers himself as the Sacrifice that frees us.
• and is Steadfast in faithfulness to us beyond any reasonable limit.

Thanks be to God.