The Gift

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 16, 2013

The Gift

Genesis 2:18, 24

Graduations;

Father’s Day;

The beginning of summer;

The end of cicadas:

June is a full month.

There are many things we connect with June,

but certainly weddings have to be near the top of the list.

June has always been the most popular month for weddings,

so popular that we have the term “June bride”.

Weddings are big business these days:

Did you know that the average cost of a wedding

in this country is now more than $20,000!

Invitations, the photographer,

the dresses, the tuxes, the flowers,

the limos, the food, the dj,

the honeymoon –

it all adds up.

It is an extravagant expenditure!

But then, getting married is extravagant,

an extravagance of hope,

especially when statistically

there is a 50:50 chance the marriage

will end in divorce.

An article in the New York Times a few months back

painted a bleak picture:

Marriage is “an institution that so often fails….

with fully half of all marriages ending in divorce.

For those ages 50-64 the divorce rate has doubled since 1990,

and has tripled for those 65 and older.”

(New York Times, September 30, 2012)

The good news is that couples still approach marriage

with confidence,

with hope,

with a wonderful eagerness:

two people wanting to share life together.

For me as a clergyman,

as someone who gets to preside at weddings,

every couple who come to share their wedding plans with me

fills me with great joy.

Over the years I’ve presided at dozens and dozens of weddings.

Some have been quite simple and modest,

while others have been more elaborate.

But every couple who have stood before me

have heard the same words that begin our wedding service,

words that come from our Presbyterian Worship book:

“Marriage is a gift given by God,

blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ,

and sustained by the Holy Spirit.”

Marriage is a gift,

a gift given us,

a gift given us by God.

We base that statement on the Bible,

on a verse we find in the second chapter

of the first book of the Bible:

“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother

and clings to his wife,

and they become one flesh.”

(Genesis 2:24)

Two become one:

that’s the essence of marriage,

the essence of the gift we are given by God.

God calls two people together

and they become a union, a holy union.

In the words of our wedding service:

“God gave us marriage as a holy mystery

in which a man and a woman are joined together

and become one,

just as Christ is one with the church.”

(Book of Common Worship)

As with any gift, we can either treat it

as something truly special,

something valuable,        

wonderful,

something to take care of.

Or we can treat it with indifference,

ignore it,

treat it with disdain,

even contempt.

Husbands and wives can nurture and care for their marriage,

or they can let the marriage founder,

rust,

rot from within,

turn to dust.

What a marriage becomes is up to both partners.

Our wedding service reminds us that,

“In marriage, husband and wife

are called to a new way of life,

created, ordered, and blessed by God.

This way of life must not be entered into carelessly,

or from selfish motives,

but responsibly and prayerfully.”

Husband and wife should enter into the relationship

with a sense of gratitude for the gift,

and then live their marriage with gratitude to God

for the divine gift given them.

We are, of course, thick in a debate about marriage in our society

as we consider the idea of same-sex marriage.

In the Presbyterian Church marriage is defined as,

“a union between one man and one woman.”

I am guessing that within the next few years

that definition will change to allow for same-sex marriage.

The state law here in Virginia is less likely to change

in the near future.  

In the debate within our own denomination,

as well as within our larger society,

we hear calls that we should maintain “traditional marriage”,

that we should keep to “biblical marriage.”

In my Adult Education class a few weeks back

we explored what those terms mean:

traditional marriage; biblical marriage.

Do we mean something along the lines of Abraham and Sarah,

a marriage which saw Sarah give her maidservant to Abraham

so he could have a child, a descendant by the maidservant,

something Sarah was unable to provide Abraham?

Or do we mean marriage as exemplified by the great King David,

who we know committed adultery with Bathsheba –

committed adultery not just against one wife,

but against his seven wives.

Yes, David had 7 wives!

I don’t think we mean marriage as exemplified by King Solomon

the king renowned through history for his great wisdom.

Solomon was also renowned for having 700 wives…

and three hundred concubines.

It’s Father’s Day, so we might have better luck

if we look to Jacob,

the one who was the father of the twelve men

who became the pillars of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

But we run into trouble here, too,

as we learn that his twelve sons came from

Jacob’s two wives, and his wives’s two maidservants.

And we won’t have any better luck with the New Testament.

Of the twelve apostles the only evidence we have

of any of them being married

is a reference to Peter’s mother-in-law.

Paul gave us the beautiful, lyrical words

from his letter to the Corinthians,

words we love to hear at weddings,

“Love is patient; love is kind,

love is not envious or boastful

or arrogant or rude;

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

(1 Corinthians 13)

But when Paul wrote specifically of marriage,

he wrote these words:

“he who marries his fiancée does well;

and he who refrains from marriage will do better.”

(1 Corinthians 7:38)

We may not find much in the Bible that speaks to marriage

because for most of human history,

marriage was viewed not as a gift from God,

but rather as an economic arrangement –

“an economic transaction

that involved the transfer or consolidation of land and wealth

as well as the development of social networks.”

(S. Coontz, Marriage, A History, 65)

It wasn’t until the 13^th century that the church got involved,

that people turned to the church for weddings,

that we began to look at marriage as something more than

an economic contract,

a transaction.

Our Westminster Confession of Faith,

written in the mid-1600s, 100 years after the Reformation,

articulates our theology of marriage;

it is language that is timeless and still guides us today:

“Marriage is designed for the mutual help of husband and wife;

for the safeguarding, undergirding, and development

of their moral and spiritual character;

(Westminster Confession of Faith, 6.134)

“The mutual help of husband and wife:”

that idea is built on another verse

from the second chapter of Genesis:

“Then the Lord God said,

‘It is not good that the man should be alone;

I will make him a helper as his partner.’”

(Genesis 2:18)

God gave us the gift of marriage so that we would not be alone,

so we would have a partner,

a friend, a mate, a confident,

The Hebrew word we translate as “helper”

doesn’t mean an assistant;

it doesn’t mean someone in a secondary,

subservient role.

After all, what food needed to be cooked,

or clothes washed,

or house kept in the Garden of Eden?

The word means a partner,

someone to share life with.

God does not want to live alone,

to live solitary lives.

In the same way we are called to live our faith in community,

within the body of Christ,

God calls us to live in love in partnership with another,

in a relationship, as the marriage vows remind us,

in which husband and wife

help and comfort each other,

living faithfully together in plenty and in want,

in joy and in sorrow,

in sickness and in health,

throughout all their days.

The two belong to each other;

they give themselves to each other.

This means that marriage requires friendship as well as love.

It requires genuine interest in one another.

More marriages unravel not because husbands run off

with women half their age,

but because the two stop living as partners,

stop supporting, nurturing, caring for one another,

stop talking with one another.

When husband and wife lead separate lives,

the ground underneath will turn rapidly to sand.

“They say they will love, comfort, and 

honor each other to the end of the days,”

writes Frederick Buechner.

“They say they will cherish each other

and be faithful to each other always.

They say they will do these things

not just when they feel like it,

but even – for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and in health –

when they don’t feel like it at all.

In other words, the vows they make at a marriage

could hardly be more extravagant.”

Buechner is right:

our marriage vows could hardly be more extravagant.

But the couples who exchange them

come filled with extravagant hope.

And they are right to have that hope,

for they’ve been called to one another by God,

and given the gift of marriage by God.

And if they care for that gift,

nurture it as they care for each other,

they will be sustained in marriage by God

“Till death do they part.”

AMEN