Sermon Preached by David D. Colby
Central Presbyterian Church, St. Paul, MN
October 28, 2012
Scripture:  Romans 8:22-30

In his Introduction to the New Testament class, Macalester College professor Calvin Roetzel – a friend of Central – said that “the gospel always comes wrapped in culture.”  The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, always comes wrapped in culture.  Jesus, fully human, fully God, lived in a particular time and place and walked among real people who made a living, faced decisions.  Jesus lived within a particular culture.  By the time that the stories about Jesus were written down, those who wrote the books that became the New Testament lived in a culture of their own.  In some cases, a culture very similar to the one in which Jesus lived, in some cases quite different.  And then for us, those who read and hear about the gospel stories, we hear them as people who live in our own culture.  The Gospel always comes wrapped in culture and, try as we might, there is no “pure Gospel” that can be separated out with any certainty from the culture in which Jesus was born, the culture of the New Testament writers, our own culture or some combination of the three.

This is particularly important when it comes to issues of family arrangements.  Now some Christians have argued in favor of a yes vote on the amendment that would change the Minnesota constitution to define marriage that the Bible has always defined marriage as between one man and one woman.  I have heard that multiple times, and each time I hear it I have cringed, cried or screamed.  For that is simply not true.

A quick stroll through the Bible, looking at the heroes of the biblical faith would reveal some shocking family arrangements.  Abraham had a wife and a maid – both of whom bore him children.  Jacob, the patriarch who gives Israel its name, had two wives and two concubines.  King Solomon, the wisest of all – supposedly – had seven hundred wives plus three hundred concubines and slaves.  Victors in battle would win their defeated foes’ wives as spoils of war.  Traditional marriage in the Bible – not one man and one woman, let us be honest.  A more apt summary might be the one used by Jay Michaelson in an article in Religion Dispatches.  “Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves.”[1]

“The good news always comes wrapped in culture” and it falls to us to sort out what is the good news, and what is the culture.  The apostle Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves” (Romans 8:22).  It is as if the gospel is being birthed, Paul writes.  Being birthed and coming into being amidst changing cultural norms and expectations.  And it is our job to sort out what is gospel from what is culture.

So let’s be clear.  The Bible does not talk about marriage as only between a man and a woman.  If we are honest the Bible has a shifting definition of marriage within its pages.  Because we believe in “a church reformed, always reforming according to the Word of God”[2] we are not beholden simply to tradition.  The church is not supposed to do things the way we have always done them simply because.  No, we are called to question, to be critical; as creation unfolds, we can see more clearly the blind spots in our culture or the culture in which the Bible was written and pull out the gospel good news from the cultural expectations.

And further, we should admit, as Christians, that similar arguments appealing to the Bible were used against interracial marriages.  And slavery.  And the ordination of women.  Last week we looked carefully at Jesus’ words about divorce and saw how the church changed its mind.  This sense of creation unfolding, of good news being made known to us despite our sin and despite our past mistakes is at the heart of our Reformed faith.  We don’t have a doctrine of infallibility.  Sometimes the church has made mistakes.  Terrible and hurtful mistakes.  Sometimes it took a long time for the church to change its mind.

A reformed understanding of marriage goes way back, nearly five hundred years ago, to the time of Martin Luther and John Calvin.  In the Catholic line of theological thinking, there were two spheres – the sacred, with those serving as clergy and in monastic orders set apart from the laity.  Marriage and intimacy was and is considered profane, basic.  So clergy and those in monastic orders assumed a vow of celibacy while in this dualistic worldview, the others could get married.  Luther, Calvin and other Reformers could not find a justification for this in the Scriptures.  And they thought that it was unfair, unfaithful and cruel to impose celibacy on classes of people in the church.  Hear this again: they thought it unfair, unbiblical and cruel to make certain classes of people give up hope of ever falling in love and getting married.[3]  And this was part of their great protest against the Roman Catholic Church.  So in this reformed movement, this division between a sacred sphere of clergy and monastic folks from the rest of the church was ended.  Sometimes you can still see evidence of that today.  Some of our reformed churches, in their weekly bulletins, where lists of programs and staff members can be found, still say, “Ministers:  All members of this church.”  We do not have priests who are set apart, but pastors.  And there were no vows of celibacy to be taken by those pastors.  Marriage was to be a good thing – possible for all within the church.

“Following the lead of Calvin, the 17th century Westminster Confession of Faith contains a clear endorsement of marital union as a public good.”[4]

Christian marriage is an institution ordained of God, blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ, established and sanctified for the happiness and welfare of mankind, into which spiritual and physical union one man and one woman enter, cherishing a mutual esteem and love, bearing with each other’s infirmities and weaknesses, comforting each other in trouble, providing in honesty and industry for each other and for their household, praying for each other, and living together the length of their days as heirs to the grace of life.[5]

“Notably absent from this ringing chorus are injunctions of procreation.”[6]  In our tradition, the good of marriage is not tied directly to the rearing of children.  But instead, marriage is “both a sign of grace and a response to grace already given.  Marriage represents a journey shared by two persons, in covenant before God and the community of faith, pledged over a lifetime.”  And this “covenant of marriage extends not only to the couple but to the entire community of faith . . . a marriage expresses public claims of God’s covenantal love, witnessed in mutual human love.”[7]

Two weeks ago, in introducing this series, I mentioned that for a country that says it believes in the separation of church and state, issues of marriage are very much intermingled between civil and religious realms.  In no other arena am I an agent of the state – but I am for officiating marriages.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, which I just quoted from, was written in the 1640s at the behest of the English Parliament.  Members of the English government, tired of having the religious groups squabbling about doctrine and liturgy and thereby creating division within the country, called for “a settling of the government and liturgy of the Church of England (in a manner) most agreeable to God’s Holy Word and most apt to procure the peace of the church at home and nearer abroad.”[8]  Now that is a sign that it is hard to separate out church issues from state issues!  Having defined marriage in the earlier quote, it goes on to acknowledge that

The distinctive contribution of the church in performing the marriage ceremony is to affirm the divine institution of marriage; to invoke God’s blessing upon those who enter into the marital relationship in accordance with his word; to hear the vows of those who desire to be married; and to assure the partners of God’s grace within their new relationship.[9]

At that point, and continuing through today it is obvious that how the Church and other religious groups define marriage both shapes and is limited by definitions of the state.  We do not live in 17th century England.  And instead of bringing together religious leaders to argue about definitions and create civil rulings about things like marriage, we use our democratic institutions.  A state needs to have a broad enough definition, I believe, to accommodate different religious emphases of what marriage is and can be.  And I found it very interesting, to read this morning in the StarTribune, that in a poll taken recently about this amendment that fully 70 percent of supporters say their religious leader helped inform their decision on the question. . .  Among amendment opponents, 27 percent said a faith leader played a significant role in their position.[10]

Minnesota’s faith leaders are enormously influential.  It has been interesting to watch decisions and debates about whether and how to weigh in on this debate.  The Catholic church spending a great deal of money on this campaign, sending out DVDs, creating prayers and demanding that each parish create a committee to work for the amendment’s passage.  On the other side, various Lutheran Synods and the regional governing bodies of many Protestant churches voting to oppose the amendment.

Our own presbytery – that spans a triangular region from Albert Lea to Buffalo to Saint Croix Falls – voted in September 99 to 33 to publicly oppose the amendment.  Our presbytery is not known for unanimity.  If a certain someone were to introduce a resolution declaring that the sky is blue, you can bet that a certain someone else would organize a vote against it, perhaps arguing against calling the sky blue.  A 99 to 33 vote to take a public position against the marriage amendment was surprising in its clear margin.  I voted with the majority to oppose the amendment, and I want to explain why.  Whether you agree with me or not, I think I owe you an explanation.  I am not the pope (thank God), nor the archbishop.  I don’t have the authority or the audacity to claim that I am perfectly right and have been forever, and will be always.

But I do want you to remember a few key points.  I want you to know your Bible well enough to know that marriage in our faith tradition has not always been between one man and one woman.  I want you to remember the boldness of the early reformers and their wariness about the cruelty of enforcing a vow of celibacy on certain classes of people.  And I want you to have, deep in your bones, the belief and instinct that for a church reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God that God’s work is still unfolding.  That the whole creation, as Paul puts it in our reading today, is “groaning in labor pains” while we are awaiting adoption.  Waiting to be embraced in God’s love.  Waiting to be adopted.

That God’s love might best be compared to a parent so eager to adopt – so hoping to get to love a child.  And desiring for that child to grow up in love and find love and participate in love and goodness and righteousness.

Two weeks ago I had a mock ballot of choices you could check.[11]  This time I will leave off the comedian’s suggestion to “let the gays marry – why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us?!”  It’s funny – but as I said, I’m not miserable.  And we have just heard all the ways that in our tradition we expect out of marriage.  Marriage meant to be a means of grace – yes.  Not to be a means for misery.  So I’m leaving that one off.  But listen again, and let me again invite you to think seriously about whether you agree with each statement.

__ When I hear that phrase in a traditional wedding vow, “until death do us part” I get worried, for I have seen too many marriages end in divorce.

__ I’m gay and I have always wanted to be able to make a public commitment to someone I love and be supported in the church.

__ I grew up thinking that the only kind of marriages that exist were between one man and one woman.

__ I value the separation of church and state and it seems on this issue that those boundaries have been blurred too much.

__ I think our culture pays way too much attention to celebrity weddings – and not enough to the ways marriage is a means of God’s grace for ordinary people like us.

One more choice – and I mean this very seriously for your reflection.  Has your understanding of marriage changed over the last year or five years or ten years?  I know that mine has.

If we were able to share our answers and see all the ways Minnesotans answered those possibilities, I think we could continue a very important conversation about marriage, strengthening families, caring for couples when the bonds fray and commitment is called into question.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  It’s just a yes or no question.  And it is a question that, if the majority votes yes, our constitution will be changed.  And if the constitution is changed debate will be ended and the possibilities for change limited.

Let me end with a story.  It’s a story about my dog, Calvin.  I adopted Calvin the dog when I was in seminary, and he was just three months old.  I liked the name, Calvin, and it seemed to fit him.  (As a hint to Mike and any future Presbyterian seminary interns, it was not a bad interview talking point, to have a dog named after the theological founder of the denomination.)  Calvin was a good dog, and he was a good P.D. (preacher’s dog).  He could entertain kids at church with his barking math tricks.  He could bark out the number of gospels.  He would come with me to my church office in Delaware, and sit quietly in my office until, that is, I got on a long phone call and then he would sneak out and go from office to office in search of kind colleagues who kept boxes of treats in their desk in case of just such situations.  I miss him terribly.

But there was one way in which Calvin was not very Presbyterian, nor, for that matter, a very good Christian dog.  We spent a lot of time in dog parks, with him roaming around the park off-leash with lots of other dogs and people standing around.  And Calvin had a knack for observing which, or perhaps just smelling, which humans kept treats in their pockets.  And cute as he was, he would go up to those humans and sit patiently right at their feet.  Looking cute and calm.  If they did not get the message, he would give a gentle little “woof.”  And nine times out of ten, they would reach into their pocket and give him a treat.  Incredibly cute.  Almost made me proud.  Looking cute.  Using his senses.  Trusting in people’s goodness – that’s all good.  But upon receiving his treat, Calvin then did his unchristian thing.  He would keep other dogs from approaching to get their treat.  Having received a measure of grace and goodness for himself, he changed the rules to prevent others from receiving that same goodness and grace.

Those who put this amendment on the ballot said, perhaps cynically, that they wanted to get Minnesotans talking.  And we have begun a very important conversation about the meaning of marriage.  The ways in which God blesses people through marriage.  Some, perhaps many, are having to examine their beliefs about marriage for the first time.  For Christians, some of us have had to again do that very worthwhile task of trying to sort out the gospel good news from the assumed realities of our culture.  These are very good things and tremendous work is occurring.  The amendment has got Minnesotans talking, and that is a good thing.

But shortly it will be time to vote.  And it seems to me that a lot more talking needs to happen before we block debate.  A yes vote would claim rights and a means of grace for some and keep others from receiving those same rights and grace.  A yes vote would prevent or significantly delay further conversation.  I am proud to be part of a church that is reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.  That is why I am voting no.


 

[1] Jay Michaelson, “Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves” in Religion Dispatches can be found at https://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/5989/traditional_marriage%3A_one_man,_many_women,_some_girls,_some_slaves/.

[2] A key slogan of our reformed theological heritage, it is cited in F-2.02 of the Book of Order: The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), part II (U.S.A.) 2011/13 edition.

[3] Mark Achtemeier, in his speech “The Plan-B God,” delivered at the regional conference of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians 27 October, 2012 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis.

[4] David H. Jensen, “What Do Presbyterians Say About Marriage?” in Frequently Asked Questions About Sexuality, the Bible, & the Church: Plain Talk About Tough Issues  Ted. A. Smith, ed.  (Covenant Network of Presbyterians, 2006) p. 60.

[5] The Book of Confessions: The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), part I 6.131.

[6] Jensen, p. 61.

[7] Ibid., p. 60.

[8] The Book of Confessions, introduction to the Westminster Standards, p. 118 (1999 edition).

[9] Ibid., 6.136 in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

[10] Baird Helgeson, “Minnesota Poll: Voters Deadlocked on Marriage Question” in the Minneapolis StarTribune 28 October 2012 https://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/176121921.html

[11] In my sermon, “Choices and Commitment” 14 October, 2012 https://cpcstpaul.org/sermons-2/.