Hilton Head Island, SC – June 10, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Proverbs 31:10-12,26-31; Genesis 29:9-20; Genesis 2:18-25
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. – Genesis 2:24 (RSV)
For being the most sacred of all religious texts for both Judaism and Christianity, the Bible doesn’t seem to extol marriage very much. From Genesis to Revelation, there are relatively few passages which say anything about this particular “family value.” This morning you have heard three extended readings on the subject, and there probably are not three others of that length to be found anywhere else in the Bible.
One thing is evident to anyone familiar with the broad scope of scripture, and that is that over the two thousand years covered by the Bible, the concept of marriage changed in several major respects. Some of this we know from the Bible itself, and some from extra-biblical sources. For example, virtually all marriages in biblical times, including New Testament times, were what we call “arranged marriages.” That is, parents or grandparents or other relatives, or perhaps even a matchmaker, like Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof, directed who should marry whom. The parties of the first part, the couple, could not be trusted to make their own matrimonial choices. No man or woman ever checked out the field of availables and decided, “I’ll take her;” or “I think I’m smitten with him.” Virtually never in biblical society did it happen like that.
The closest thing to our romantic notion of marriage is found only in Genesis 29, and nowhere else. There Jacob, who is earlier portrayed as something of a scoundrel, went to the land of Haran to escape the wrath of his brother Esau, who had good reason to be wrathful toward his brother. When Jacob got to Haran, he saw a beautiful young woman coming to a well to draw some water for here father’s sheep. Her name, we are told, was Rachel. When Jacob saw Rachel, the text tells us, he loved her (Gen. 29:18). It was, in a manner of speaking, love at first sight.
But, Christian people, the Bible does not countenance love at first sight! What kind of cockamamie way is that to start a productive marriage? There are economic and familial and tribal considerations which ought to govern who marries whom, and never love, whatever that is! People should be paired off to serve the best interests of family and clan and tribe, and not their own interests, for heaven’s sake! Whoever heard of romantic love as a basis for a successful marriage? Nobody in the Bible, that’s for certain, except for Jacob the scoundrel.
However, since the time of the Renaissance in the Western world, and especially from the end of the 19th century on, people were supposed to love one another before they got married. It caused --- and causes --- all kinds of problems. Traditional or arranged marriages are much less likely to come unglued than the kinds of marriages we have today. And, as we shall see, the kinds of marriages we have today are far more varied than we might suppose. In virtually no way is marriage what it used to be in biblical times or anytime prior to the 19th century.
Genesis has two creation accounts, one in Gen. 1:1 through 2:4a, and the other in 2:4b through 2:25. In the first account, God created human females and males, and without saying anything directly about marriage, He told the first man and woman (who are not named; there is no Adam and Eve in Genesis 1) that they should – quote -- “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” This presumably means fill it with other humans who, collectively, shall subdue the earth, its animals and plants, and everything else in nature. You may or may not agree with the theological rationale behind that divine directive, but that’s what it means.
So how are male and female human beings to be fruitful and multiply? Up until the late 20th century, there was only one way that could happen, and that was to engage in what we call “the sex act.” However, Genesis 2 implies, but certainly does not explicitly state, sex was to be reserved for marriage. There was to be no pre- or extra-marital sexual activity. (I am hurrying over this preliminary stuff, because you know most of it anyway. This is not Human Sexuality 101; it is Marriage 101.) Thus the conclusion of the second creation story declares that “a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
In the Bible, therefore, marriage is meant to unite a man and a woman, and they become one by means of their marital vows. That’s why almost every religious marriage rite includes Genesis 2:24 as an integral part of what is recited. Note that a man is supposed to initiate a marriage with a woman, but a woman is not supposed to initiate a marriage with a man. That is still pretty much the way the system works nearly everywhere. This, however, is complicated by the fact that for at least a thousand years of biblical history, polygamy was practiced, in which a man could have more than one wife, and that too is no longer valid. King Solomon, for example, had seven hundred wives, which seems to be so excessive as to evoke either disbelief or disgust. Who could possibly be successfully married to seven hundred women? A really randy rake might have children by nearly 700 women, but he could never be properly married to any of them. In any case, since male chauvinism ran rampant through the entire biblical epoch, no woman could have more than one husband, yet for at least a millennium one man could have as many wives as he could afford and/or manage. And, as you know, in traditional Islamic cultures even to this day, a man may have up to four wives at a time; not more, but up to four. Go figure.
The last chapter of the Book of Proverbs devotes more verses to the general notion of marriage than any other chapter of any other biblical book. And surprisingly, in light of the fact that the Bible is so blatantly male-chauvinist, it extols the good wife, not the good husband. “A good wife who can find?” it asks in 31:10. Then it goes on in considerable detail to tell what such a wife is and what she does. For its time, it places the married female of our species on as high a pedestal as she is to experience anywhere in holy writ. “Her children rise up and call her blessed, and her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women have done excellently, but you have surpassed them all’” (Prov. 31:28-29).
That was the meaning of marriage then. Here are the meaningS (plural) of marriage now. In-vitro fertilization has negated the necessity of marriage for females or males who want children, but who do not want that process to be complicated by marriage. By now hundreds of thousands of people, or in the low millions around the world, have procured children by means of that singular technology.
The number of first births to females living with an unmarried male partner jumped from 12% in 2002 to 22% by 2010, an 83% increase. In some communities in America, up to two-thirds of all births occur among unmarried women. It has always been true, but it is pre-eminently true today, that marriage is not a necessary prerequisite for having babies.
In 1950, four million Americans lived alone. Now there are eight times that many. Nearly a third of all residences have just one resident, and more than five million Americans under thirty live alone. These statistics indicate commitment to marriage has fallen dramatically in our purportedly family-values society. The astonishing point is this: millions of people are less likely to marry now than ever before.
There may be very valid reasons for so many individuals living by themselves, but what does it say for the cohesion of the entire society? When marriage is being rejected by so many people, what is to become of all of us, regardless of what may become of each of us? In 1940, almost 29% of women from 20 to 34 had never married, and almost 44% of men. But in 2010, almost 56% of women 20-34 had never married, and almost 66% of men. That latter figure represents two-thirds: 2/3rds! We can talk all we want about family values, but what kind of families are we talking about? People are putting off marriage, and what does that portend?
For decades one American marriage out of every two has ended in divorce. Statistically, that doesn’t mean that half of all the couples you have ever known eventually divorced, but rather that a fairly small percentage of men and women had numerous serial marriages, rather like Larry King or Elizabeth Taylor. Nevertheless, divorce has created enormous havoc both individually and socially, as many of us in this congregation can personally attest. And although there are slightly fewer divorces in the past few years than previously, the figure is very slight.
Now, in several states and in the District of Columbia, same-sex couples may either marry or enter into what are called “civil unions.” This is not a temporary aberration; it shall become virtually universal before too many years have passed. And why? Simply because it is fair and just. All slaves eventually were freed, all inter-racial couples eventually became free to marry, and all same-sex couples eventually shall be freed to marry in the USA and nearly every advanced nation of the world. A recent letter to the editor in The Island Packet had an excellent suggestion, I thought, for a new word to describe same-sex marriage. The writer proposed “sarriage.” Men can sarry men, and women can sarry women. Such a newly minted word would clarify with a single beginning letter what sort of union is being talking about, whether opposite-sex or same-sex. Marriage has always been socially approved and sanctioned, but sarriage also shall soon be widely sanctioned. Of that there can be no serious doubt.
Therefore, obviously, every marriage does not have the same meaning as every other marriage. Many marriages either begin as marriages of convenience or become marriages of convenience as time goes on. We have all known incompatible couples who stayed together for financial reasons. As much as they may make one another’s lives miserable, they choose to remain married in order to continue the style of life to which they have become accustomed, which they do not want to give up. Or there are couples who have been married for many years where one has great assets and the other next to nothing, and the wealthy one does not want to give half of his or her assets to the other in a divorce settlement. There are couples who stay together for the sake of their children. Still others are engaged in one of the saddest kinds of all marriages, where one spouse was attracted to members of the same sex at the time of the wedding, but who married someone of the opposite sex in a vain attempt either to try to subvert the attraction or to provide an acceptable cover for engaging in a covert same-sex relationship. In other words, marriage, like all human relationships, can be an extremely complicated matter, and romantic love may have little or nothing to do with it. In truth, very few marriages maintain the strong emotional attachments which propelled the couple into holy matrimony in the first place. They are blessed beyond their ability to comprehend if they have such a singular marriage.
When I was fishing in Canada I finally read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I think I started it forty or fifty years ago, but I gave it up, because one of the characters, the wildly weird Heathcliff, greatly put me off. But I resolved this time to finish it. Everybody in Wuthering Heights, except the primary narrator, Nelly, is so dominated by emotions, passions, and feelings, that they all make terrible choices, especially as regards potential spouses. Nobody marries anyone who might be a reasonable mate. If anyone had a coherent thought unimpeded by irrationality, it would have turned out well, but they didn’t, and it didn’t. Wuthering Heights was surely the inspiration, over a century later, for the song, “We only hurt the ones we love.”
In her book When Everything Changed, Gail Collins chronicles the sociological changes which greatly altered the lives of American women during and after World War II. Rosie the Riveter began a wave of female employment which has grown steadily, until now there are virtually as many female as male employees. There are more women than men in college, and more women than men in medical and law schools. The birth control pill rendered children either superfluous or obsolete in the minds of many couples, and now, American families are smaller than at any time in our history. Maureen Dowd wrote a not altogether humorous book called Are Men Necessary? The answer, at least up to the current time, is for the perpetuation of the human race, yes, but over the course of the future, maybe not. And how does all this affect marriage?
A few weeks ago in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh Lois and I saw an impressionist painting by the Dutch artist Albert Neuhuijs. It showed a young man in wooden shoes and a demur young woman sitting on a bench. He leans toward her in eager anticipation, and she looks either disinterested or wary. The painting is entitled The Old, Old Story.
It is an old, old story. “Birds do it, bees do it, even monkeys in the trees do it, let’s do it, let’s fall in love,” as Cole Porter, who was gay, reminded us. For all the stresses and strains and challenges which marriage presents to anyone bold or brash enough to enter it, it still represents the most fulfilling of human relationships, even more than that of parents and children. To become what God intended for us, most of us can evolve into our best primarily through being committed to one other person in the culturally most necessary of all human contacts and contracts. Every society throughout history has not only sanctioned but encouraged marriage, and it is unlikely that pattern shall change, regardless of what may be happening currently.
A few days ago we went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It is a wonderful comedy with some wonderful insights for older folks. Anybody over fifty should see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and that likely includes all but a few people here today. It is romantic and realistic and honest and laugh-producing and thought-provoking. It recognizes the difficulties, but also the astonishing potential, of marriage. It is marriage counseling for a total cost of $15.00.
If, after twenty or thirty or fifty or sixty years of marriage a couple can look back and say, “Every minute of it, in good times and bad, was worth it,” then by all means it is worth it. When we were in England, we heard the story of a man who lived in the village where we were staying. His name was Richard Hartley V. On a particular day, Richard Hartley V called everyone he knew, including our good friend Trudy Yates, to say that that morning, his grandson, Richard Hartley VII, had been born. He was absolutely overjoyed that seven generations of Hartleys had produced male issue with his name. Later that same day, Richard Hartley V died. Only marriage could make possible that poignantly bittersweet story, and billions of others like it.
The institution of marriage has undergone enormous alterations through the millennia. But it is the main relationship, from which all other relationships are meant to follow, that God intended for most of us. Therefore a man -- or woman -- leaves his or her father and mother and cleaves to his spouse of whichever sex, and they become one flesh. Some of us are sufficiently strong and independent to remain single for a lifetime, but most of us need somebody else to help us become the “me” God wants each of us to be. Marriage is meant to be where that happens.