Isidor and Ida Strauss were an immigrant couple who came to America in the 1800’s to begin a new life. They settled in New York and opened a little merchandise store in Manhattan. They named it Macy’s. In 1912 they decided to take a much-deserved vacation, and so one fine April evening found them strolling the deck of a brand-new ocean liner named, “Titanic.” Later that night, as the ship was going down, Isidor and Ida searched calmly for a lifeboat. They found one that was being filled with women and children, but as Mrs. Strauss was climbing into the lifeboat, she paused, changed her mind, and then, turning to her husband, said, “Where you go, I go.” And she got out. The crew members tried to convince her she was making a mistake. One crewman suggested that Isidor could go along, since after all, he was an old man. But he said no, that he would not go before the other men. The old couple was last seen sitting on a pair of deck chairs, waiting for the inevitable. “Where you go, I go.”ⁱ

You and I have been thinking together this fall about some of the real things in our lives, and some of the most important things, too, the relationships and realities of who we are as human beings. We have been searching God’s mind for spiritual truth about these things, because we are convinced that the Lord of the Universe just might have a thing or two to teach us about the lives he made for us! Today brings us to what I suppose we could say is the first human relationship, the one between a man and a woman, when the two become one in the covenant of marriage.

From the very beginning, marriage has occupied the time and attention and energy of most people on the planet. And, also from the very beginning, we men and women have had problems with it. Immediately after Genesis tells us about the first marriage it proceeds to tell us about the first marital problem, as Eve and Adam encounter the serpent and the fruit on the tree. So it should not surprise us that one day a group of Pharisees came to Jesus and in their unending attempts to discredit and embarrass him, they asked him a question about marriage, or, to be more precise, about the end of marriage in divorce.

In ancient Jewish society, marriage was somewhat different than it is for us today. There have always been interesting little variations in marriage as it is practiced in different cultures. In Jesus’ day, men had very much the upper hand in the marriage relationship. Over the centuries, two schools of thought had developed about marriage and divorce. One school held that divorce was hardly ever permissible, and the other made it relatively easy. On the one hand there was the thinking that divorce was only possible when adultery or perhaps desertion was involved. But on the other hand there was the idea that if a man was unsatisfied with his wife for any reason whatever, then he could simply state his desire to divorce, or write a letter to that effect, and that was all it took to end the relationship, which had the effect of leaving the wife to become a burden to her family or to turn to prostitution. The Pharisees were trying to force Jesus into declaring which side of the permissive versus restrictive philosophy he was on.

To get a complete picture of Jesus’ attitude about marriage and divorce you have to consult all the instances in the gospels where he addresses the question, and then you have also to consider the rest of the New Testament witness. You have to remember what Jesus said to the woman who had had seven husbands, and you have to take into account what is said about forgiveness and renewal when a person fails in any aspect of their life. And we’ll go further with that in a moment. First, we want to see how Jesus answered the Pharisees. He went straight back to Genesis and reaffirmed God’s original intention and design for marriage. “Have you not read?” he asks them, knowing full well, of course, that they were well-versed in the opening chapters of Genesis. The first thing we have to say about Jesus’ teaching on marriage is that he simply called us to remember what God had always said. And what did God say?

Marriage is, first and foremost, a gift of God for our good. John Gwynne defined marriage as, “A deal in which a man gives away half his groceries in order to get the other half cooked.”ⁱⁱ I suppose that may be part of it, but we know there is so much more. God made Adam and then saw that Adam needed a companion. Being alone was not a good thing. So God made Eve. And Adam was not alone anymore. Adam and Eve were not exactly alike, of course. Each had much to offer to the other, and it was not just about who brought home the bacon and who fried it up in a pan. Adam and Eve were so complex, so amazingly different, and yet so much alike, that we are still trying to figure out how it all works. But that’s the way God made it, that we men and women are the same and yet different, and in that matrix we can experience much of the true goodness of life that God means for us to have.

Marriage is, secondly, about a man and a woman. One day, after the apple incident, Adam was talking to God. He asked, “God, when you made Eve, why did you make her body so curvy and tender, unlike mine?” God said, “I did that, Adam, so you could love her.” Adam said, “Is that why you gave her that long, shiny hair and those beautiful eyes?” And God, said, “Yes, Adam, I made Eve like that so you could love her.” And then Adam asked, “But God, why did you make her so, well…so stupid?” And God said, “So she could love you.” There is controversy in some quarters of our society today about what actually constitutes marriage. While admitting the complexity and sensitivity of the many questions involved, we cannot disregard the simple and clear message of scripture, proclaimed first in Genesis, then strongly affirmed by Jesus, and later reaffirmed by Paul, that God designed marriage as a union of a man and a woman. God made two distinct genders, and in the union of the two there is marriage. There is no other biblical model, and the vast majority of the Christian church today and throughout history attests to that fact.

Marriage is, thirdly, about relationship. A recent newspaper cartoon pictured Eve chatting with Adam. The caption read, “The first hint of trouble in paradise,” and Eve is saying to Adam, “I really like you, Adam, but…I think we should start seeing other people.”ⁱⁱⁱ Adam and Eve had only each other, to be sure, but that was enough to create relationship. One of the fundamental realities of creation is the physical reality: things, matter, stuff exists. Another reality is that of creatures. God made all creatures, and there is a certain kind of relationship that can exist between creatures of different types. But God wanted there to be relationship between creatures of like kind, hence, Adam and Eve, man and woman. Relationship requires two separate and distinct and yet similar creatures. Hence, the human being in two genders, both of which are created in the image of God. And this is because God himself is relationship, we believe, that eternal relationship of the Trinity, of Father, Son, and Spirit. The human relationship between man and woman is a reflection of the divine relationship between God, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Human life is meant to be all about relationships.

Marriage is, fourthly, about children. Children can happen without marriage, certainly. But that arrangement is never supported in scripture and, not surprisingly, children are seriously hurt when not reared in the context of a loving marriage. Marriage can happen without children, too, but since marriage is not exclusively about having children, such marriages can be and are a blessing. Most often, one major result of marriage is children. Sometimes I think that we take this natural progression so much for granted that we forget just how absolutely crucial this fact is in God’s design for the world. Without children, Adam and Eve would have been just one tiny little blip in history, and that’s all. Without children, the human race would be gone from the face of the earth in short order. But we believe that God made the human race for a reason, and with the gift of children in marriage, God is executing his plan for his creation.

Marriage is, finally, about growth. Joseph Barth said marriage is “our last, best chance to grow up.”^iv While children are the result of physical relationship, growth is meant to be the result of emotional, mental, and spiritual relationship that happens in marriage. Two becoming one is about more than just procreation. It is a physical reminder of a much deeper and yet invisible reality, that in the life-long relationship God intends to happen between a man and a woman, two people have the opportunity to grow into the mature adults they were meant to be. The business with the apple and the tree and the snake did more than separate us from God, it also separated us from each other and took us down a path that leads to the destruction of who God wants and means for us to be. And so we have to undergo the difficult and demanding process of growing. This growth must be emotional, spiritual, and mental. It is growth in character, in personality, and in the very essence of our being. And marriage is the relationship above all others that can help us grow. Ogden Nash described marriage as, “the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force.”^v The total intimacy that marriage can promote is an intimacy of being known and of fully knowing, of loving and caring and understanding, of encouraging and forgiving and nurturing, through which two people can move closer to each other and also to God.

When Jesus referred to the theology of Genesis in his confrontation with the Pharisees, he affirmed all these things about marriage. But we have to take into account the fact that this conversation happened because of a question about divorce. It is one of the great tragedies of our time that half of all marriages in this nation now end in divorce. As I mentioned earlier, we have to take the entire biblical account into consideration when we think about divorce. And for today’s scripture passage, we need to recognize that Jesus affirmed a spiritual and scriptural principle about marriage, but he did not pronounce a legal requirement about marriage. Anything less than a life-long marriage is less than what God desires or intends for us. Anything less is, therefore, in the broad sense of the term, sinful. If sin is any status or action that does not fully embody God’s design for us, then divorce is sin. But, and that word “but” is a very important word here, what does God do with sin? Jesus did not tell the woman caught in adultery that she was forever cut off from God. Jesus did not tell the woman at the well who had been married seven times that she was forever cut off from God. If the Bible means anything at all, it means to say that God forgives, that God heals, that God redeems, that God restores. God takes divorce very seriously indeed, but he is even more serious about loving us and setting us right again. For those who have been divorced, and for those in the midst of its unimaginable pain right now, God has a word of understanding, of hope, of grace, and so should all of God’s people.

The disciples had been listening in on Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees. And they well knew, apparently, how challenging marriage can be. And so they said that perhaps it is better not to marry at all. Jesus didn’t agree. He did say that for some few, the option of remaining single was viable and perhaps even desirable. We talked about that last week. No, Jesus affirmed the beautiful and meaningful possibilities of marriage as he reminded the Pharisees and us that God’s design from the very beginning was to create man and woman with a need for each other. Someone once said that Adam and Eve were the only two people with an ideal marriage. He didn’t have to hear about all the other men she could have married, and she didn’t have to hear about the way his mother cooked. The rest of us, I suppose, have had to deal with the fact that marriage can be hard work as well as beautiful bliss. There are many sermons left to be preached about what makes for a successful and happy marriage.

I want to leave you with just one word of advice. Here’s the word: shmily. That’s s…h…m…i…l…y. Laura Jeanne Allen writes about her grandparents, married over 50 years, who had played a simple little game from the very beginning of their relationship.^vi The game consisted of writing that word “shmily” in unexpected places for the other one to find. When one found the word, it was the other’s turn to find a new place to write it. The word would appear in the steam on the bathroom mirror, in notes stuffed in shoes, in the dust on the mantle. One time, the grandmother unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper and wrote the word on the very last sheet. Laura Jeanne wrote also of how her grandparents would hold hands at every opportunity, or steal a kiss when others weren’t looking. She noted how they never failed to say grace together before meals. But there was always that word “shmily” appearing in the oddest of places. It was not the only thing that helped them have a happy marriage, and perhaps it was only a wonderful symbol of their marriage. But, to this preacher’s way of thinking, it’s not a bad place to start, for anyone who wants a happy marriage. Shmily. S…h…m…i…l…y. See how much I love you. God loves us and so has given us marriage. And in marriage, we can take God’s love, and show it to that one other person to whom we are married, in countless ways, wherever we are, wherever we go.

Amen.

ⁱAs told in When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages, Les and Leslie Parrott, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2001, p. 182.
ⁱⁱDictionary of Quotable Definitions
ⁱⁱⁱSix Chix, Margaret Shulock, San Diego Union-Tribune, date unknown.
^ivDictionary of Quotable Definitions
^v Ibid.
^vi Chicken Soup for the Couple’s Soul, Canfield, Hansen, De Angelis, Donnelly, Donnelly, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, Florida, 1999, p. 16.