I BELIEVE IN CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
Martin
Camroux
This is a sermon about marriage. Just as marriage
is not for everyone this sermon therefore is not for everyone
either. There must be some be some of you who have never married,
and don’t intend to get married. As one lady once said, “Marriage
may be a wonderful institution, I just don’t won’t to be in
an institution”. So I’ll just have to ask you to bear with
me on this one.
For me one of the wonderful things about being
minister of this church is the number of weddings that I do.
It’s wonderful to be able to share the happiness you get on
a wedding today. Once last year carried away by enthusiasm
I kissed the bride. And the groom said, "I'm so happy
I could kiss you myself". I was carried away but that
not carried away. "I'd rather you didn't, if you don't
mind". But the happiness of a wedding is infectious.
I am personally convinced that for many their wedding day
is the best day’s work they’ll ever do in their whole lives.
Today marriage is facing a time of change and
challenge. Fewer people are marrying than ever before – the
number now is only half what it was 30 years. Many people
live together and 40% of children are born outside marriage.
And when people do get married fewer marriages last. There
is now one divorce for every two marriages, and Britain has
the highest divorce rate in the European Union. I don’t take
any of that lightly. But I want today, if I can, to give a
positive message about marriage.
Firstly 50% of marriages fail. That is tragic.
The trauma of divorce can be shattering. But lets not idealise
the past. Think of the world of Jane Austin. Why was marriage
really like then? Jane Austin wrote, “Poverty is a great evil
but I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think
of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like”. Think
of Charlotte who marries Mr. Collins. What kind of marriage
was that? Claire Tomlin comments “Austin allows that Charlotte
is making what is for her a reasonable decision in buying
herself a social position as a married woman, escaping the
humiliations of a dependent daughter at home in exchange for
sexual and domestic services”.
In the past you got married because socially
it was very difficult to do anything else. Once married if
you were a woman you had little choice but to stay because
you could not afford to be on your own. Legally it was difficult
to get a divorce. Marriage really was for better, or for worse
for life.
Today it is not like that at all. Socially no-one
cares if you get married or not. When I see couples for marriages
one of the questions I often ask them is “why do you want
to get married – why don’t you just go no living together”.
Its not that I suggesting this is a good idea. I simply know
that most couples live together before marriage and there
is no need for them to get married at all. Today if you get
married it is a choice
And when you do get married there is very little
to keep you together except your own commitment to each other.
The social pressure keeping couples together has almost evaporated.
Women are economically independent. Legally divorce is now
quite simple. In the preparation for this service I was checking
on the Internet how many divorces there now are. And one of
those adverts popped up – for quick and easy divorce.com.
“Welcome to quick.e divorce. In under 5 minutes you can have
everything you need to be able to conduct your own divorce
at home for just £30”. Modern western society is the
first ever to base marriage almost solely on the state of
the feelings we have for each other. It is like walking along
a tight-rope - many couples are going to fall off.
The point however is this – in a time when no-one
needs to get married every year 150,000 couples choose freely
to get married for the first time. In a time when nothing
is holding couples together except their own commitment –
half of those marriages last. And 30% of those who get divorced
marry again and in my experience frequently find everything
in that second marriage which they had hoped to find in their
first.
There must be something that’s leading so many
still to choose marriage, and something that many are still
finding in it. I suppose you could be a cynic. The statistics
are that married live people longer than single people; are
financially better off and psychologically more stable. However
I have to say that in my experience those statistics have
got nothing whatsoever to do with motivates the couples I
see!
Said Jesus, 'For this reason a man shall leave
his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh". That I think is more the heart
of it. Marriage is a way of committing yourself to a loving
partnership where two become so close they one flesh.
I don’t agree with everything Paul said about
marriage – he was a man of his time not ours – but in Ephesians
he says, “husbands should love their wives as they do their
own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself”. There are
times in a marriage when the two of you are close that that
is true. As the American Ann Bradstreet felt when she wrote
of her husband “If ever two were one, then surely we”.
At the heart of marriage is a commitment by
two people to each other. It can be made anywhere. If two
people took it alone on a hillside I would regard that as
morally valid. But we take it here to church, in the presence
of God, before our friends, to emphasise that it is the most
solemn commitment we could possibly make.
Of course it is a very difficult commitment
to keep. I rather like the comment of Billy Graham's wife
who on being asked if she'd ever thought of divorce said,
"Divorce. No, never. Murder, yes". When you get
married you never know what is coming. Marriage may bring
not health but sickness, not riches but poverty, and these
will test the frail love which the husband and wife had at
the start. Sexual attraction may come and go just as health
and happiness come and go. Few people are untested by the
experience. The story is told of the minister who was taking
a service "Will you take this woman to be your wife,
forsaking most others". If that was the promise it might
be easier. As it is it's difficult. We make mistakes, we hurt
each other. We drift apart. Sometimes marriages fail and there
is nothing you can do but admit the fact. But half of marriages
stay together. And sometimes they gloriously succeed. And
sometimes those who’ve had to struggle find they’re glad they
stayed together. And often those who failed once find another
day when their life comes together in a way they never dreamed
it could.
The basic truth is we are creatures made for loving. We find
our origin in the love of God. The best part of our lives
is when we love others. As Robert Southwell said, “Not where
I breathe, I live, but where I love”. A deep committed loving
partnership will always be the most profound way that finds
fulfilment.
Years ago Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote: -
“In its long history mankind has tried every
conceivable experiment with the sex relationship...out of
this long experimenting there has arisen the great tradition:
a man and a woman loving each other so much that they do
not care to love anybody else in the same way at all, and
so building a permanent home that puts around the children
the strong security of an unbroken affection”.
That’s the heart of marriage. No other
kind of relationship can give children what a loving family
can. No other form of relationship can offer such deep personal
fulfilment. Any of us who have had the good fortune to be
part of a family of that kind know how much we owe to it.
When my own children grow up I can hope for nothing better
for them than that they find that kind of relationship.
Said Jesus “For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and be one with his wife and the
two shall become one flesh”. I believe in Christian marriage.
The shape of it is changing. We are feeling our way towards
a new kind of marriage. Marriage is ceasing to be a power
relationship between two unequal persons. Increasingly it
is now a freely entered a relationship between two persons
who want to create a life together, share sexual pleasure,
work in concert for the economic well-being of the family
unit, and be partners in planning their older years together.
It will not be for everyone but it will continue to be the
most powerful way of expressing the deepest kind of loving
of which we are capable. Christian marriage has a great future
ahead of it.
Rev'd. Martin Camroux MA
Trinity Church, Sutton
(United Reformed/Methodist)
Cheam Road, Sutton, SM1 1DZ |
