Enough About Sex: Let's talk Marriage

As I was walking through Costco Sunday afternoon, I passed by a woman on her cell phone. I heard her say, “I’m in the Costco and I’m going to pick up a few things.”
‘Like me’, I thought to myself, as I browsed the clearance tables, ‘trying to squeeze in one more task’.

As I stopped to survey the food samples, I heard her say, “No! I’m not with anyone. I’m by myself.” Her voice was strained. I glanced over my shoulder and looked at her. I saw her fumbling in her purse; I saw the distress in her eyes and her trembling hands.

“No,” she continued, “I told you, I am at the Costco.”

“I’m not with anyone! Why are you being this way? Why can’t I just make a stop on the way home?” She looked like she was about to cry.

I saw the ring on her finger and assumed she was talking to her husband who, I’d already concluded, was a jerk. I wanted to say, “Honey just hang up! Run away! Run away!” But I didn’t. I headed towards the laundry detergent.

While I can rationalize my actions in that moment (my husband and kids were waiting for me, I couldn’t judge anything from half a conversation, it wasn’t really my business, etc.), I cannot help but think that the Church (that is, those who claim to be followers of Jesus) could say more to the world about human relationships.
The more I think about it, the more bizarre it seems that the church spends so much time talking about sexuality and sexual orientation, but precious little time talking about human relationship and human flourishing. Howard Thurman once said that the two great questions in life are: “Where are you going?” and “Who is going with you?” I think two questions can be added to his formula: “Who do you want to be?” and “Who can help you become that person?”

In a world where most relationships are regulated by power (emotional, sexual, economic, etc.), I think a faith based on radical love could offer a great alternate model. This makes it all the more embarrassing that the best the Church could come up with, is what Christopher Webber termed a “Faustian bargain with the State”.
The Church tried to pretty it up. We called it “a sacrament”; we said it was “holy” (even though the net effect was putting an ecclesiastical seal on the status quo).
Surely something we term Holy (as in Holy Matrimony) should have more transcendent power than it is currently given by the church.

Marriage has to be more than magic fairly dust that somehow removes the “taint” of sex from those who do it, or a legal contract that gives participants the right to sue one another. It has to be about more than the political wrangling about who gets to do it and under what circumstances. The Church has talked about marriage as if it is the only context for “good” sex, without confronting the reality that it is also the context for horrible, manipulative and abusive sex.

A better understanding of Holy Matrimony could offer glimpses of the same re-union reflected in the incarnation and the resurrection. Marriage could be a context in which we are reunited with our most vulnerable self, with God and with another. It could be a safe course on which we practice the art of intimacy: spiritually, physically and emotionally, with God’s help. And if we could figure out how to go holy places with an another human being, if we could learn the lessons of mercy and forgiveness, if we could develop a knack for yielding and sacrifice with one who is willing to practice in the same manner…….who knows what we could do?

Maybe in addition to the potential for fantastic sex, Holy Matrimony could offer the potential of living the command “love one another as I have loved you,” too. Maybe if we got a better grip on the marriage relationship, we could figure out best practices in other relationships as well. If we talked about the context in which deeply intimate human relationships grow, maybe we could come up with better ways to talk about marriage.

I am not claiming that marriage by any definition will answer to all the relationship problems in the world. I do think the Church will remain unable to speak convincingly about real reconciliation and relational righteousness in this world if we simply abdicate marriage to the pundits, lawyers and reality TV shows.

I have prayed for the woman in Costco many times. I know my silence and the Church’s ongoing silence is letting her and everyone like her down. We keep getting stuck in the crazy stuff, and forgetting that there is a world full of wounded people suffering broken relationships.

So, enough about sex and sexual orientation; Big Love and Big Bad Love, Yes to the Dress and Skins! Let’s talk about relationships and power, and the holiness of true union and the radical love of God in Christ…..for a change.