HeartSmart: Ministry of Marriage

The Ministry and Meaning of Marriage

(Eph 1:3; Gen 2:24) (1/25/15)

INTRODUCTION

In March of 1960, Rosemary and I were heading home from Rapid City.  We had been dating off and on for 4 to 5 years.  There was no doubt in our minds that someday we were going to get married.  In fact, we’d been engaged for six months, the date just hadn’t been set.

On the way home, we had a spat.  The resolution, the kiss and make-up part, was that we were going to get married that weekend.  As soon as we got home we were going to tell our parents we wanted to get married.  Never mind that it took three days to get a marriage license.  It was obvious that we weren’t going to get married that weekend and our parents breathed a sigh of relief.  My dad lived in fear I would not finish my college education.

Sunday afternoon we drove back to Rapid City and decided on the way we’d get married in three weeks.  And we called our parents to let them know.  Not happy, but three weeks later we were at the church.

One little detail.  I didn’t know about this until later.  My dad was still worried about a wedding preempting my schooling.  Now Rosemary’s church did not have an entry way, no place inside for the bride to wait for the processional to begin.  She stood on the outside step waiting for the wedding march to begin.  I was to find out later that all the while she stood out there, my dad was there too telling her, “Rosemary, you don’t have to go through with this.  If you’d like to go to college, I’ll send you anywhere you want to go (meaning a long way away), and I’ll pay for it.  Rosemary, you don’t have to go through with this.”

But we did.  (I need to tell you that Rosemary and my Dad became fast friends.)  Anyway, we stood there before Reverend Locher and repeated, “I Rick, take thee, Rosemary, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and therefore I plight thee my troth.”

“And thereto I plight thee my troth.”  What in the world was that?  “Plight, troth.” By the way, in nowhere else that the wedding ceremony are those words put together that way, and I’d never heard them before.  I had no idea what they meant, but they were part of the vow.  So I said it.

I know today, this week because I looked it up, it means, “And therefore I promise to be true.”  Today we say, “This is my solemn vow.”

BODY

Now, just like I didn’t know what “troth” was, I’m not sure we knew what we were getting into or why.  We just wanted to be together.  I’m sure that others have thought it out in a great deal of detail.  But we just wanted to be together.  Fortunately, we’ve been together long enough to figure out many of the other reasons, the purposes and meanings of marriage.

One author that I’m reading sums it up well.  He says, “The purpose of marriage is not to just get along, but to support each other’s hopes and dreams and aspirations, and build a sense of purpose into each other’s lives together.”  He says, that’s really what he means when he talks about honoring and respecting each other. Those hopes and dreams and aspirations can be as varied as there are marriages.  They can be family, they can be ranches and farms, they can be careers. They can be judgeships, aspirations, and they can develop and change as you go through life together.

But they honor each other. 

And they honor God..  God is a partner to this arrangement.  It is not a contract signed by two parties, it is a covenant established by God.  God is a partner to the covenant.  God established this arrangement: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”  Covenant.

Let me tell you what my understanding of the difference between a contract and a covenant is.

First, a contract.  A contract establishes boundaries.  To fulfill a contract, you operate at the edges, how far you can go without violating the terms.  If you have a rental agreement that says you can only put eight holes in a wall, hang eight pictures, you probably stop at seven pictures, just to make sure.  Your concern is not the integrity of the wall, but how far you can go without violating the contract.

If I treated a marriage as a contract, I would say, “how far can I go before I dishonor her?”

With a covenant, you live into the covenant, rather than operating at the edges.  With a covenant, the question becomes “what can I do to honor her?”  Live into the covenant.

With a contract one might say, “how flirtatious can I be, before I exceed ‘forsaking all others.’?”  “What can I think before I no longer cherish her?”  What are the limits?  Where is the edge?

With a covenant, you live into it.  God lives into it.  We live into it. God made a covenant with the children of Israel, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”

God lived into it by blessings us, a blessing is the promise of a future.  Land was a part of the covenant.  In the Old Testament, it was the land of Canaan.  As New Testament participants in the covenant, we see that land as the kingdom of God and our eternal home.

Our part to live into this covenant with God, to be his people is to Love God and to Love one another.  We live into it.  We don’t ask about the edges.  O, some do.  Remember the lawyer that asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  He wanted to know what the edges were.  He wanted to know the boundaries, he wanted to know who he didn’t have to love.  It’s the story of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus was saying, you don’t have a choice who you have to love, live into it.

How do we live into it?  How do we make the most of loving God and loving neighbor?  We are intentional about it.  We ask ourselves each day, what can I do today?  Of course we fail.  But God is faithful, “He is faithful and just and forgives us our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.”

And of course the same thing is true in marriage.  To live into it, we need to be intentional each day about being a blessing to the other, to seek the best of the other, to honor and respect the other, to understand the other.  Of course we fail there to.  That’s why we said last week that one of the pillars of marriage, of the covenant relationship we have with each other has to be forgiveness.  “Forgiving each other as God in Christ has forgiven us.” 

LOVE BANK

So if we are going to be intentional about blessing the other, how is it that we are to do it?  And how much is enough? (Yep we still want to know where the edges are don’t we?)  Maybe the best metaphor I have seen is the love bank or relationship bank)  A bank, because it works like a bank.  We make deposits, we make withdrawals.  The account has a balance.  If we make more withdrawals than we’ve made deposits, we have insufficient funds and there is a price to pay isn’t there?  You see how this is working?  And if we have insufficient funds too long, we can expect the account to be closed.

Do you see the metaphor?

In marriage, in relationships, deposits are those things that bless the other person, that lifts them up, that affirms them, that honors them, that give them hope, that makes them see meaning and purpose, that make them feel loved.  Do you see?

Of course there are withdrawals.  Out too late with the boys.  Not getting the garbage out on time.  Staying at the fishing hole too long when there are chores. Here’s one: buying her a lawn tractor for her birthday.  Now if Rebecca bought Steve a tractor, that would be a deposit.  Not so much the other way around. 

Then there is the zinger.  That “cute,” critical, contemptuous, disrespectful, demeaning, comment made in the heat of battle.  One truth in relationships is that one zinger can destroy 20 acts of loving kindness.  20 deposits just gone with one zinger.  Instant overdraft.

The other thing is that men and women have different concepts of what makes up a deposit.  Men think it’s big things, women think they are the little things we do every day.  I say, “I bought you a car for last Mother’s Day, that ought to be enough for a year.  Right?”  Rosemary would just as soon I unload the dishwasher for her.

What is it that constitutes a blessing?  What is that helps us to live into our relationship in marriage?  In preparation for a sermon series on marriage four years ago, Church of the Resurrection did a survey of over 2000 women and 1500 men of ages from 19 to 90, these are some of the things they found that men want and women want from a relationship.  One question they asked was, “What are the things your spouse does to make you feel closest to him or her?:

Married Men, 19-29 (young bucks): 1. Having fun with me.  2. Demonstrations of affection.  3. Sexual intimacy. 4. Words of admiration/compliments. 5. Sharing feelings with me.
(One comment here and then I’m going to flash through the others so you can see the changes that take place with age.  First, fun together.  Here is the commonality, the friendship, the companionship that is so important in a marriage.  Rosemary’s niece, Katie and her husband Jesse just hit that 30 mark and boy do they have fun together.  But let me tell you the things they do are expensive.)

Married Men. 30-49. 1. Sexual intimacy. 2. Demonstrations of affection. 3. Having fun with me. 4. Words of admiration/ compliments. 5. Listening to me.  (Note that intimacy is at the top in this age group and listening to me has made an appearance.  Interesting.  Bet you women didn’t think that listening would be a man’s issue.)

Married Men, 50-69. 1. Having fun with me. 2. Demonstrations of Affection. 3. Sharing feelings with me. 4. Listening to me. 5. Sexual intimacy.

Married Men, 70-100. 1. Sharing feelings. 2. Tender touch/affection. 3. Listening to me. 4. Having fun with me. 5. Words of Admiration/compliments.
(Just so you know.  Even in this age group, intimacy was not far away.  It was number 6.)

I want to skip back to 30-49.  A couple of observations.  This age group is a danger zone.  I think we’re seeing here the impact of kids and job stress.  Kids have an impact.  Mom is worn out.  The kids worry her.  Jobs for both men and women are stressful.  Kids stress out the marriage.  There’s less time for intimacy.  We men are fragile creatures and our self-esteem gets wrapped up in our desirability and in our intimacy with our mate.  And if we are rejected, it attacks our esteem too.  It becomes important to us.  It has shot to the top of the list.  The second thing is, we need to be stroked.  Admiration and compliments are part of every age group.  We may not be admired or complimented anywhere else, but it is important in our marriage.

Again, why are we looking at this?  Women, it is a chance to see what it is that blesses your mate, what it is that draws him closest to you.  How you can make deposits in your Love Bank.

Now let’s look at what women say makes them feel closest to their mates:

Married Women, 19-29. 1. Sharing his feelings with me. (Women, does that surprise you?) 2. Having fun with me. (That’s common, good to have common things.) 3. Demonstrations of affection.  (Again men and women need affection (different than intimacy, but there’s really room for common ground.)) 4. Listening to me. (Men, does that surprise you?) and 5. Words of admiration/compliments (We all like to be appreciated.)
Now lets see how it changes with age.

Married Women, 30-49 (Again the stress years.) 1. Sharing his feelings with me. 2. Having fun with me. 3. Listening to me. 4. Demonstrations of affection. 5. When he cares for the children. 
(Again, the stress years.  I think children occupy the thoughts of the wives while the job stresses out the men and we men don’t pay enough attention to the kids.  I can hear Rosemary emphatically telling me she wanted me to spend more time with the kids, she wanted part of me to rub off on them.  It fits exactly here.)

Married Women, Age 50-69. 1. Sharing his feelings with me (Men, do you see a pattern?) 2. Having fun with me. 3. Demonstrations of affection. 4. Listening to me. 4. Making me feel safe and secure.  (I’m not sure where this one came from.  Maybe that’s why we need to teach our wives to lie and to always pack a knife (you had to be here last week.))

Married Women, 70-100. 1. Demonstrations of affection.  (Wow, affection up at the top.) 2. Sharing his feelings with me. 3. Words of admiration/compliments. 4. Tender touch. 5. When he worships with me.  (I like this last one.)

Again men, we’re looking at how we can bless one another.  Interesting that sharing feeling was on both lists.  But when Pastor Adam Hamilton used this at his church, he followed up on facebook to ask what men and women really meant by sharing?  Women said, “Sharing your feelings with me is not grunting.  I need you to tell more.  I want details.  I want information.  I want you to tell me what you were thinking and what you were feeling.”  Sound right?  For the guys it was simpler, “Tell me exactly what happened, and give it to me in 60 seconds or less.” 

You’ll notice that sexual intimacy is not on the women’s list, but demonstrations of affection, yes.  Tender touch, yes.  It took me a long time to come to understand that non-sexual touching was important.  It is important all the way to 100.

And then, “When he worships with me.”  By the way, other surveys show that deeply committed Christians share more intimacy than others.  Maybe we take the command to be fruitful and multiply more seriously.  Then worship together.  Just saying.

LOVE.     

Again, we’re talking about Love Banks.  How can I make more deposits, how can I bless my partner more?  I think the responses can be seen as the various kinds of love that flow through a relationship.  The Greeks have five different words for love.

Eros is Cupid’s love, romantic love.  It is the love that first calls us to “cling” to one another.

Agape is that God-like active, sacrificing love that we would like to emulate but we so often fail to do because we are imperfect.  We want to be self-giving but at the same time we say “I can’t live without her.”  We have need-love too.

Then there is Philo, friendship love.  It was CS Lewis that said with Eros, we share with one another face-to-face, with Philo, we look at the future side by side.  With Philo, friendship, we look at the world with common purpose, common meaning.

Then there is familial love, the love we have for family.  The Greek word is “storge.”  It showed up when the woman said they were drawn to their husbands when they cared for the children.

There’s one more form of love that intertwines all of the others and that is “affection.”  I think of affection as the charm, the tender touch, the caring that flows through all of the other types of love.  It is the blessing that the women called for in desiring from us displays of affection.

Friendship.  But friendship too weaves itself through the other aspects of love.  One marriage expert says the determining factor in which most couples feel satisfaction with all aspects of their marriage is their friendship.  I think that’s where we saw the desirability of fun together, of listening to one another, of admiring and complimenting one another.  We need a friend.

In fact one of the forms of marriage counseling is to strive to improve familiarity, to make the partners better friends.

It doesn’t make difference go away, but friends overlook differences, find a way to work around them.  And even though they may have differences, they stand side by side, arm in arm, looking at the future together.

In turn, they use their familiarity with one another to bless one another, nurturing their fondness and admiration for one another.

I seems to me that we need to work on all of these, romance, the love that first makes us cling together, may not need work at first, but after the honeymoon is over, even that one needs attention.  They all need to be weaved together.  We need to be intentional about all of them.

CLOSE

The man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and the two will become one.  The covenant  of marriage established by God.  A covenant with one another that we live into. 

John Wesley told his followers we are to do no harm, to do good, and to stay in love with God.  I think the same rules apply to marriage.

First, do no harm: No zingers, Avoid negativity.  Do no harm.  Do no harm is first, because remember, we can always be forgiven, but often the consequences of hurt, the consequences of harm can never be erased.

Then Do Good: We do good when we live into the covenant, seek to bless the other.  Fill the love bank to the brim.

Then, Stay in Love with one another: When we work on the loves, when we weave all five of them together; we stay in love with one another when we weave them all together in the sight of God.  We become one flesh and we are not ashamed.

So may it be in all of our lives.  Amen.