A couple of decades ago the legendary band Three Dog Night sang a song with an opening line that has become part of our national lingo and, for some folks, a theme song of sorts. Here it is:

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
Two can be as bad as one
It’s the loneliest number since the number one.

No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know.
Yes, it’s the saddest experience you’ll ever know.
‘Cause one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
One is the loneliest number, worse than two.

It’s just no good anymore since she went away.
Now I spend my time just making rhymes of yesterday
One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.

We are well along in our look at the real relationships that populate our lives and our consideration of what our faith has to teach us about them. We’ve talked about families and kids and grandparents and adolescents. In coming weeks we’ll talk about men and women and parents and marriage. Today, we begin with that status in life in which everyone shares at some point or other, what we generally refer to in a rather inelegant and imprecise way as, “single.”

When we think of being single, we generally mean to refer to someone of adult age who has never been married, or perhaps someone who is no longer married, either due to death or divorce. A man who remains single all his life we call a “confirmed bachelor,” or what someone once described as, “a man who would not take yes for an answer.” A woman who remains single all her life we call—somewhat more pejoratively, I’m afraid—an “old maid,” described in the Cynic’s Cyclopedia as, “a woman who has been engaged once too seldom.”

It may seem a bit incongruous to talk about the state of being unmarried in the context of our relationships, but the truth is that vast numbers of adults in our society are single. And the truth is, sadly, that our society generally seems somewhat uncomfortable with that fact. If you do a search of the word “single” on the Internet, you’ll discover that most of what pops up early in your search is not so much about being single as it is about finding a mate. Single is ok as long as you’re in the hunt, apparently, but confirmed singlehood is another matter. And we have to admit that the Christian church has not always been especially enlightened in this context, either. For many centuries, the church taught that singlehood and the corollary status of celibacy was a special status reserved only for the particularly religious. And then parts of the church, the Protestant especially, began to teach that singlehood was actually an aberration, and marriage was clearly the God-preferred status. With all that in mind, what can we say from a biblical perspective about being an unmarried adult person? Thankfully, our good friend Paul, as he wrote to the first Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, had a few thoughts on the subject.

Paul’s letters to the Corinthians were written to answer some specific questions that had been asked of him and to address certain vexing issues that were dividing that local congregation. He gives a rather lengthy and detailed discussion of the issue of marriage. What he says, he says is his own pastoral advice rather than a direct word from God, and he also says it from out of his conviction that Jesus was going to return to earth quite soon and thereby set up God’s complete reign on earth. In a sense, Paul’s wisdom is a provisional wisdom, designed to meet the needs of the Corinthian community in something of an interim period between Jesus’ ascension and then his triumphant return.

Remember that Paul was writing to people who already had formed their religious and social opinions from the various religions and philosophies of their day. Many of them had adopted that idea that marriage was the only way to go, and that remaining single, especially remaining celibate, was abnormal and undesirable. They carried that idea over into their Christian faith. Others of them had adopted the opposite idea, promoted by the Stoic philosophy, that marriage and sexual relations were things of the material world and thus of lesser moral value than things of the spiritual world, therefore, singleness and celibacy were actually superior, from a religious point of view. Strangely enough, in later periods of Christian history, certain groups would adopt these same rather extreme positions.

Paul’s advice—and what the church now calls scripture, the word of God, mind you—hits between these two extremes, and it speaks on an entirely different plane. From out of his belief that the end times are coming soon, he advises Christians to stay married if they are married and to stay single if they are single. But, if they are single and want to get married, that is equally acceptable, too. He reaffirms the traditional Jewish and then Christian perspective that sexual relations must be confined to marriage, and he acknowledges that for many people, marriage is the way to go. But he also encourages some folks to remain single, if they are able, in order that they may have more time and energy to devote to what he considered to be the supreme crisis of his age: the critical need to proclaim the gospel so that people might meet and know Jesus. Whether single or married, Paul sees no moral or spiritual distinction, and he understands that God can be present in both contexts.

The key phrase for this whole discussion comes when Paul affirms in verse 17: “God, not your marital status, defines your life.” That’s a great little text to memorize, and you can even substitute many different things in that middle clause. “God, not your physical status, defines your life.” “God, not your material, social, educational, political, or whatever other word you want to put in, status, defines your life.” Whether you are single, married, or single again, the defining reality of who you are is your relationship to God and nothing else. If you are married, serve God. If you are single, serve God. There is zero distinction between the two. In God’s math, one is a whole number.

But what do we do about the theology of Three Dog Night? Is one necessarily the loneliest number that you’ll ever do? It’s true that many people are single who don’t want to be single, and perhaps many people are married who don’t really want to be married, but that’s for another time. For singles, the same human needs are present as they are for married folks. We all need to have a strong sense of who we are as an individual person, whether married or not. We need companionship, goals, financial security, and a healthy perspective on our sexuality. In a relationship with God through Jesus, single people can find deep companionship that dispels loneliness, with God himself and with the people of God, the brothers and sisters of the church. In a relationship with God through Jesus, single people can find the spiritual wisdom and strength to construct completely healthy and whole lives, apart from the so-called necessity of having a mate. In a relationship with God through Jesus, single people can, as in Paul’s case, find themselves freed for ministry and service in ways that married people cannot.

It is fitting, I think, that as we recognize that many people are single, either by choice or by circumstance, in an American culture that tends to believe in the superiority of marriage, that we have gathered around a communion table. It is an all-too-human tendency, I think, to make idols for ourselves. Some of us have idolized singleness and celibacy, thinking that is a special spiritual status reserved only for those worthy of being ordained ministers of God. That is wrong. And some of us have idolized marriage, or idolized sexuality, thinking that only with a mate, or even without a mate, only with sexual fulfillment, can we truly be fulfilled persons. That is wrong, too. This table reminds us that there is only one relationship that defines us, only one relationship that ultimately fulfills us, only one relationship by which everything else in our lives can be aligned and judged. And that relationship is with the God who died for our sakes, who brings us all into one family, and who nourishes us so that we can be strong and wise and live as his agents in the world. Single or married, Jew or Greek, slave or free, Paul would say, makes no difference. The defining moment is actually a defining person, Jesus. So, let the whole family come, moms and dads, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, cousins and in-laws, married and single, and let’s enjoy the Holy Meal together.

Amen.