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Sometimes
I worry about the people I marry. Some, because they are so
young. Others, because they are so immature. A few, because
they are so broke. A few more, because they are so pregnant.
Still others, because they bring such lousy marriage models
from their parents. But the ones who worry me the most are
the ones who don't seem to be visibly in love.
I know
that sounds ridiculous. I know that my judgment is subjective.
I know I could also be wrong. So be it. But over the course
of 1600 weddings, I have watched a lot of brides and grooms
come and go. And I think I can tell the difference between
those who are anxious and those who are indifferent. No one
comes to the altar complete. Most everyone lacks something.
But the ones it hurts to see are the ones who lack joy.
You might
argue that such is all to the good. Marriage ought to be entered
into soberly. For marriage is serious business. One could
argue that weddings ought to be approached with fewer starry
eyes and more clear heads. Romance ought to yield to realism.
After all, isn't that the note we clergy always try to interject
into weddings? Sometimes our arrogance amazes me. We operate
as if we were the last line of defense against fantasy and
frivolity. Here we stand on the side of principle and piety.
We believe it is our job to put a solemn perspective on things,
lest anybody get giddy over things old ... things new ... things
borrowed ... and things blue.
But I
have a confession to make. Sometimes we clergy overplay our
hand. Amidst all this talk about "marriage as serious
business," we tend to lose sight of the fact that marriage
is also delightful business. From listening to us, one might
think we didn't believe that married people could always be
as happy as they are today. All our talk about the "work"
of love gives us away. It betrays our fear that bolting and
running might be the normal human response, did we not browbeat
people into understanding that promises were for keeping.
Several
months ago, I co-officiated at a wedding right here in our
sanctuary. The other clergyperson gave the homily. By the
time he got done, I was left with the feeling that marriage
was a titanic struggle for all but the saintly, resembling
a theater for heroism for all who would enter therein. I mean,
when he got done speaking, marriage sounded like a sled ride
down a mountain filled with stumps and moguls.
And I
understood where he was coming from. All of us know that marriage
is a challenge. All of us know that marriage is under attack.
All of us know that marriage is darn hard work. But do we
preachers have to make it sound so grim?
When I
listen to my own wedding meditations (which I think are really
good), I catch, nonetheless, a reoccurring litany of words
like "commit" ... "covenant" ... "promise" ...
"sacrifice" ... "second mile" ... "unconditional" ... and,
of course, "bear and endure." All of which are biblical
words. All of which are very good words. And all of which
are heavy words. They sound obligatory ... ominous ... frightening.
But more important, they sound impossible.
And they
are. John Vannorsdall hits home when he writes:
What
brides and grooms pledge to one another, they cannot keep.
For there will be times of gross insensitivity to the pain
and lostness of the other, which are far worse than any
blow. There will be infidelities of subtle and various kinds,
both known and unknown. Nevertheless, they vow to live beyond
their capacity, setting themselves against the odds. To
whatever extent they fall short, it is to fall short of
the most glorious truth they know. Painful as such shortfalls
may be, we still prefer them to the cynicism of making some
lesser vow.
Fred Buechner
is even more grim, when he speaks of a wedding as that moment
when sentimentality comes face to face with candor. For the
heart of a wedding consists of the promise to love the other,
not only when he or she is lovable, but at half past three
in the morning when the baby is crying and both of you have
terrible colds in the head, and there is 40 percent less money
in one drawer than there are bills to be paid in the other.
Both Vannorsdall
and Buechner are right. I have been saying those words for
years. I will probably say them again. But it makes me wonder.
If people were to take me seriously, why don't more of them
walk out on me? Maybe I'm spending too much time warning people
about what is to come, and not enough time celebrating what
already is ... including the wonder, the joy, the ecstasy,
and the sheer romantic delight of it all.
Years
ago, in the middle of a wedding, I slipped and mispronounced
a single word. It was late in the ceremony. The songs had
been sung. The vows had been said. The rings had been shared.
I whispered for the couple to kneel. Then I petitioned the
congregation with the words: "Let us play." Most
of the people never caught on. I suppose we hear the words
in church that we expect to hear in church. A few who caught
my mistake labeled it "Freudian." But maybe, in
some strange and accidental way, it was good advice. Maybe
we ought to urge married couples to pray and play. If this
marriage business is serious business, we still believe that
it offers more enjoyment and pleasure than can be obtained
from other "serious business" ... else why would
we do it? If it is God's design that we are meant to leave
mother and father, find a spouse, and go about the business
of "becoming one flesh," I do not think God wants
each passing year of "one fleshness" to look more
like a chore and less like a delight.
I know
this is a strange tact for a preacher to take. Over the years,
I have addressed the problem of good marriages that go bad.
But I don't ever recall addressing the problem of good marriages
that go dull. But you can spot the dull ones, especially in
a restaurant. Take a look around the next time you go out
to eat at a nice place.
Some years
ago, Dennis DeRougement penned an essay entitled "Does
Marriage Kill Love?" It does, he said, if you restrict
the discussion to romantic love. He claimed that romantic
excitement cannot be sustained on a long term basis. I read
that and it made me sad. Are moonlight and roses merely melodic
memories? Will I never again cross "moon river"
in style? Have I slipped beyond the entrapping spell of "that
old black magic?" Will no one ever again "play Misty
for me?" Will I never be "as helpless as a kitten
up a tree ... unable to tell my right foot from my left ... my
hat from my glove?" A father said to me: "I watch
my 17 year old daughter sitting on the couch in the family
room, all wrapped up in her date. They have that faraway look
in their eyes, indicating that they are in a world of their
own. My wife and I look at each other and neither of us has
to say what we are thinking. For what we are thinking is:
`Why don't we do that anymore?'"
Well,
why don't we do that anymore? On the surface, it would seem
that the Bible offers little help with such a question. In
the New Testament, Jesus is not married. Paul is not married ... and
even counsels against it. Some of the disciples may have been
married (since we are told that Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law).
But it would appear that the disciples all left their wives
in order to pursue loyalties they considered more important.
In the
Old Testament, we read about many forms of marriage. Some
were arranged. Some were political. Some were entered into
for reasons of military alliance. Some were even polygamous.
The study of these transactions is fascinating, but unhelpful.
Obviously,
something akin to romance existed, but I have yet to find
a Bible dictionary or encyclopedia that has even a single
listing under the word "romance." We can trace at
least one biblical courtship pattern where feelings and emotions
must have run high. For we are told that romance tended to
flourish around wells. Which explains why the friends of Jesus
were both surprised and "put off" when he stopped
by a well and talked with a woman. Wells were not innocent
places. Wells were provocative places. If you were looking
for a woman, you would go look by a well. Isaac met Rebekah
at a well. Jacob met Rachel at a well. Moses met Zipporah
at a well. Young men hung out at wells, knowing that mothers
would send their daughters to fetch water in the evening.
The courting
scene followed a predictable formula. The man waited by the
well, scouting the prospects. The woman came to fetch water,
scouting the scouts. The man asked for a drink. If the woman
was interested in pursuing the matter further, she gave him
one. Violins were heard off stage. And the couple walked off
together, with or without the water bucket. And lest you think
this courtship pattern died with the Old Testament, consider
the fact that single's bars (where similar rituals take place
today) are often referred to as "watering holes."
But look
more closely at the Old Testament. For you will find that
the Jews preserved, within their canon of approved writings,
eight chapters of the most romantic and (at times) the most
erotic love poetry that the world has ever produced. In some
Bibles it is called the Song of Songs. In others, the Song
of Solomon. But while it is attributed to Solomon, it is almost
certainly not from his hand. Let me read a few selections,
carefully chosen and edited for the sanctuary:
The Bride
Speaks:
I hear
my beloved.
See
how he comes
Leaping
on the mountains,
Bounding
over the hills,
My
beloved is like a gazelle,
Like
a young stag.
See
where he stands behind our wall,
He
looks in at the window,
He
peers through the lattice.
My
beloved lifts up his voice.
He
says to me, "Come then, my love,
My
lovely one, come.
For
see, the winter is past,
The
rains are over and gone,
The
flowers appear on the earth.
The
season of glad songs has come,
And
the cooing of the turtle
is
heard in our lands."
The Bridegroom
Answers:
How
beautiful you are, my love,
How
beautiful you are!
Your
eyes, behind your veil, are doves.
Your
lips are a scarlet thread,
You
are wholly beautiful, my love,
and
without a blemish.
You
ravish my heart, my promised bride,
You
ravish my heart,
With
a single one of your glances,
With
one single pearl of your necklace.
What
spells lie in your love.
Your
love is more delicious and sweeter
than
wine.
What is
fascinating is that this stuff is in the Bible at all. All
kinds of critics say it shouldn't be there. Some say it is
"humanistic literature," in that it makes no mention
of God. Others claim that it has no religious value whatsoever.
So why did Israel preserve it? Four answers have been suggested.
1. Some
feel that these love poems are allegorical in nature and
are meant to describe the love of God for the people of
Israel. Those who adopt this theory often go the second
step, drawing parallels between Christ as the bridegroom
and the Church as his bride.
2. Others
feel that the poems are lingering remnants of Canaanite
fertility rituals which infiltrated the Jerusalem Temple,
prior to the reform of Josiah in 621 BC.
3. A
third group traces this material to the erotic fertility
cult of Adonis.
4. A
fourth school of thought suggests that the poems are remnants
of a primitive Jewish wedding festival.
But none
of these views is the prevailing one. Current scholars believe
that these poems are just what they seem to be ... uncomplicated
verses of romantic and intimate love. B. Davie Napier takes
delight in that explanation, when he writes:
If these
poems inform, nourish and enrich the category of joyful,
rapturous love ... and if they have the power to restore
something tender and fresh to the marriage relationship ... then
they have all the justification they need, and clearly belong
in the sacred literature of a people who looked at all the
gifts of God's creation and pronounced them "good."
Don't
miss his phrase "to restore something tender and fresh
to the marriage relationship." What a lofty goal. For
he's talking about lighting up this so-called grim business,
so that we can recognize that Christian love is as much about
Eros as it is about Agape. Preserving the poems enhanced romance.
Apparently, Israel didn't want love to grow dull either ... this
love that they said was "sweeter and better than wine."
Which explains why Israel kept the poems.
Where
did we lose it ... this thing called romance? I suppose some
of us were handicapped from the start, because we spent 20
years living in a home with two unromantic people. They may
have been very good people, but they distrusted their feelings
in general, and distrusted intimate feelings even more. So
what we failed to learn at home, we have struggled to learn
through endless courses in "remedial romance."
This subject
often comes up during premarital counseling sessions. I sometimes
ask the following questions:
1. On
a scale of one to ten, would you call your parents romantic?
2. On
a scale of one to ten, would you call your parents affectionate?
3. On
a scale of one to ten, would you call your parents physically
demonstrative?
Some of
us were lucky, in that we had good teachers. But then we let
this business of "romance" slip through our fingers
through thoughtless inattention. Love became buried under
a mountain of collected neglects ... words not spoken ... cards
not sent ... adventures not planned ... flowers not bestowed ... simple
ceremonies left untended ... and rich memories carelessly trampled.
Without realizing we were doing so, we offered the best of
our time and energy to everybody else ... meaning that the
"one at hand" always got second or third best, simply
because it is easy to overlook people who are always "at
hand."
Still
others put romance on the back burner while they concentrated
on meeting the needs of their children. What they forgot was
that children need to be taught, not only the nature of parental
love, but the nature of marital love. Probably the best lesson
we can convey to a son or daughter is how to properly love
a spouse.
But flames
can be rekindled. For everyone who has lost "that lovin'
feeling," there is someone else crooning: "I saw
you last night and got that old feeling." Which is not
always a matter of technique ... although technique never hurt.
Most of us know how to pay attention to another in ways that
are tender and caring. Our failure to do so is not one of
ignorance so much as one of indifference. Techniques of romance
are secondary to a desire for romance. Do we want it? Are
we hungry for it? Are we yearning after it?
Yearning ... to
discover more of you, believing that there is more of you
to be found?
Yearning ... for
you to discover more of me, believing that there is more
of me to be found?
Yearning ... to
discover more of us, believing that the more we learn about
our love, the more we will understand about God's?
I think
that while God expects love to be responsible, God has also
set things up so that love will be pleasurable. What does
that mean? It means that lovers are supposed to enjoy themselves.
It's part of the plan. Therefore, on St. Valentine's weekend,
let the word go out that marriage was never designed to be
grim. Or boring. Or dull.
So ... let
us play.
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