Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 29, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

As most of you know, Jane and I were married--to each other--here in this church yesterday. My beautiful new wife, The Rev. Jane Sorenson, formerly Jane Ostby, is here with us this morning. As many of you know, this is my second marriage. I was married to my late first wife Francie for thirty years. We did "’til death do us part," and Jane and I have committed to each other before God that we will do the same. So I am taking this occasion today to talk to you about marriage. It is something I know a good deal about, not because I have studied it but because I have lived it for over half of my life. So please bear with me. It is a rather important topic for Jane and me today..

Marriage is a hot topic these days. It is a hot topic because people who have always been excluded from this foundational institution of our society are now demanding access to it. Gay and lesbian people are saying: "Hey! What about us? If marriage is such a great thing, then we want in on it too! It’s not fair to exclude us!" Some courts and a few politicians, like King County Executive Ron Sims, are starting to agree with them.

The movement for marriage equality has touched off a firestorm of protest in reaction to it. Most notably, President Bush has called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would exclude same-gender couples from marriage by declaring as a principle of constitutional law that marriage may exist only between a man and a woman. Closer to home, a judge of the King County Superior Court has ruled that Washington’s so-called Defense of Marriage Act violates the equal protection provisions of the Washington State Constitution. Marriage is definitely an issue on the public agenda these days, and it is appropriate that we take a close look at it from our perspective as an Open and Affirming Christian church.

What is marriage? I think the starting point for understanding it is the realization that for those of us in the church, it is really two things. It has both a civil legal and a spiritual dimension. In its civil aspect, marriage is a contract between two people sanctioned and protected by the state. The federal government and all of the state governments in our nation have structured their laws in a way that provides numerous privileges and benefits to married couples. The list of those privileges and benefits is far too long to cover fully here, but let me just mention a few of them. They include inheritance rights in the absence of a will, the right to make medical decisions on a spouse’s behalf in the event of severe illness, and the right to visit a spouse in a critical care unit closed to other visitors. That’s the civil side of marriage, and it is these benefits and privileges that many same-gender couples seek when they demand access to marriage.

There is also the spiritual side of marriage, at least for those of us who participate in a life of faith in a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or other religious institution. Our denomination’s Book of Worship, in the introduction to the order for marriage, explains this spiritual aspect of marriage in terms of covenant. It says:

The essence of marriage is a convenanted commitment that has its foundation in the faithfulness of God’s love. The marriage ceremony is the glad occasion on which two people unite as husband and wife in the mutual exchange of covenant promises.

A commitment grounded in God, or, as the UCC Book of Worship says, having its foundation in the faithfulness of God’s love? What does that mean? Well, first of all the statement tells us that marriage has something to do with love. That may sound obvious to us, but we need to understand that from the perspective of history it isn’t. For most of human history marriage has had little or nothing to do with love. Even today in much of the world people don’t marry for love. Historically and anthropologically speaking arranged marriage is probably the human norm. These are marriages arranged for a couple, usually by their families and usually for economic or even political reasons. When Frank Sinatra sang "love an marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage," that may have sounded self-evident to us. For most people throughout history, however, and for millions, perhaps billions, of people today it probably sounded like utter nonsense. My point is just this: Understandings of marriage evolve. They change over time and from culture to culture. Significantly, the church has had no trouble blessing marriages not grounded in love

But today in our culture we say that marriage is. or at least should be, about the love for each other of the two people who marry. Now, I’m all for that; but we have to recognize that, while we may find the notion of a loveless, arranged marriage strange or even abhorrent, our grounding of marriage in love has its own problems too. The biggest problem with it, I think, is that we misunderstand the nature of love. We think that love is an emotion. We think it is the same thing as romance. We think it is warm, fuzzy feelings; and we think it is the same thing as passion.

Now, all of those things are quite lovely when they are present between two people. The problem comes when we think that they are all that love is. Reducing love to those emotions is a problem because, as I think any of us who have been married for any length of time can tell you, they don’t last. Today countless couples discover that inescapable fact, and, because they understand marriage as being about love and they have no other concept of love, they become miserable and either stay in an unhappy marriage or quickly divorce.

That’s why our denomination’s statement that marriage is founded on the faithfulness of God’s love is so important. For us, marriage can, and I believe should, be a matter of love. At its best it can mirror the love of God in human lives. But here’s the think we must never forget: The love of God isn’t about warm, fuzzy feelings. It isn’t about passion or even about bearing and raising children. God’s love for us is a commitment not a feeling. The love of God is an unshakable divine commitment to the well-being of the other, that is, to our well-being, and to the health of the relationship between God and us. The love of God is a self-giving love that finds its joy and its completeness not in receiving but in giving for the sake of the other and of the relationship. That is true love, love that lasts, love that can sustain a marriage through good times and bad.

They say that marriage is under attack today. To be sure, the institution of marriage is being eroded in our society. It is being eroded by high divorce rates, spousal abuse, and the way so many couples treat it as a matter of temporary convenience to be ended on a whim, even when there are children involved. Don’t get me wrong. I support the right to divorce, and I don’t consider it a sin when it is necessary for the safety and the spiritual and psychological wholeness of the people involved, as it sometimes is. Still, our high divorce rates are a symptom that the institution of marriage is not particularly strong among us.

Some say that the biggest threat to marriage today is the desire of gay and lesbian people to have access to the institution. I disagree. The unhealthy state of marriage among us is not the fault of gay and lesbian people who want in on this sacred institution and its benefits. It is the fault of us straight people who do not take marriage and its commitments sufficiently seriously. As a New Yorker cartoon I saw recently had a woman put it: "It’s not gays and lesbians that threaten my marriage. It’s all those women sleeping with my husband." And her philandering husband too, it would seem. Marriage has been weakened as an institution among us simply because those of us who have always had the right to it don’t treat it with the reverence it deserves. The movement to extend marriage to same-gender couples, however, reflects people taking the institution seriously, not people disrespecting it. The marriage equality movement wants to extend the institution precisely because it values it, honors it, and wants everyone to have access to it.

For us Christians, marriage is a holy institution grounded in God. We should, as the author of Hebrews said in the Epistle lesson this morning, "let marriage be honored by all." I believe, however, that we do not honor marriage by keeping it the monopoly of only some of God’s sons and daughters. Let us indeed protect the sanctity of marriage. For those of us called to it (and not all of us are), it is a gift of God. As a new groom I ask you all to give the matter your prayerful thought. I support the extension of marriage to all loving, committed couples. I think that commitment is consistent with our commitment to be an Open and Affirming church. On the occasion of my own marriage, I invite you all to consider where God is calling you to stand on this important issue. Amen.