Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God and in the sight of one another, to talk together about marriage .its meaning, variations, purposes.

As clergy, we continue to find ourselves in the uneasy position of being both agents of the state and representatives of the church. We find ourselves governed and circumscribed by both civil law and by the law of God; by legal matters and covenant matters; by civil rights and church rites. We are enmeshed in a tangle of church and state from which we cannot easily extricate ourselves.

However, neither you nor I are compelled to officiate at any marriage we do not want to. I have, on occasion refused to marry a couple. For the decision of when and whether to act as an agent of the state - when and whether to assist a couple in their desire to wed - is a professional and personal decision and discernment that is ours by right.

If it had been up to our Puritan forebears, however, we wouldn't be here today. We wouldn't be having this conversation. Puritan clergy wanted nothing to do with marriage and, indeed, it wasn't until nearly a century after the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, that anyone in the colonies was married with benefit of clergy. Puritan pastor John Robinson described marriage as "a civil thing" in part because it had to with such profane matters as property and inheritance, but more importantly, because there was, in his estimation, no biblical precedent for the church's involvement in it.1

There are those who believe Puritan clergy declined to officiate at weddings because they were squeamish about sex. On the contrary, "they were neither prudes nor ascetics"2 and the only restraint they put on sexual pleasure in marriage was when such pleasure became - in the words of John Cotton - "inordinate".3 What Cotton meant by "inordinate pleasure" may surprise you: he considered such pleasures "inordinate" if/when they interfered with religious duties.

In fact, Puritan New England was a much-married society. Upon reaching early maturity everyone was expected to be married. Widows and widowers routinely married so quickly after a spouse's death that, in the words of one historian, the Puritans of New England practiced "serial monogamy."4

Our forebears felt it was important to populate this new land with "hands to tame the wilderness." Yet, they disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church that the sole or highest purpose of marriage was procreation. Roman Catholics hung their bishops' mitres on God's orders that the first humans "be fruitful and multiply". (Gen. 1.28) In the colonies, on the other hand, our forebears hung their Pilgrim hats on God's observation that, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him." (Gen. 2.18) With this text, the first generation of Puritans argued two important points: 1) the superiority of marriage over celibacy and, 2) companionship, not procreation, is the primary aim of marriage.5

Over the course of 20 years as a pastor, I officiated at many marriages: interfaith marriages, interracial marriages; marriages that were blessed by the couples' families and others that were not. I officiated at blessing ceremonies for gay men and lesbian women. I officiated at blessing ceremonies of elderly, widowed heterosexual couples, who wanted to live together as husband and wife, but for whom a legal marriage would have meant a significant loss of income. I officiated at unions that I believed would last a life-time .but did not; and, at others I thought hadn't a snowball's chance in hell .but are still strong and vital.

Over the course of two-decades-worth of pre-marital counseling, Friday evening rehearsals, Saturday weddings, and counseling couples whose marriages were in trouble, I learned that love and attraction between two people is something mysterious and unfathomable .and deeply and properly private. For how and why you are attracted to another is as intimate and personal as the skin upon your hand, and the color of your skin, and how you are a woman or how you are a man.

I am profoundly grateful to my mother and father for their marriage. It was from their relationship that I learned that marriage is not merely a condition of the heart. It may begin as a condition of the heart, but marriage itself is an act of the will. It is something that requires the best of us: discipline, patience, determination, kindness, forgiveness and respect.

St. Paul admitted that he came to Christian faith as one "untimely born" .late in the day, and that he had much to learn.6 I wonder if that would be a good metaphor for us today: we come to this marriage conversation as ones untimely born. We do not have an agreed UCC understanding of marriage. We have not adequately discussed our dual roles as agents of the state and representatives of God.

This is perhaps not surprising. First, because our UCC polity encourages us to embark upon journeys of inquiry and faith that will not always take us in the same direction.

Second, the Bible itself does not present marriage in a uniform way. The Bible provides glimpses into an astonishing array of family configurations: there are patriarchal extended families, like Job's, where the patriarch owns the women and children, and the male and female servants. There are polygamous families like Abraham's; female-headed extended families like Rahab's; matilocal families like those in which Moses and Jacob lived for years with the birth-families of their wives. When Mary was married to Joseph, she was all of twelve or thirteen years old. John the Baptist, Paul, and Jesus lived as single, celibate adult males .not what you'd expect of good, Jewish boys.

Over the centuries our laws, our attitudes, and our churches have evolved and adjusted to reflect tolerance of new configurations and understanding of family and marriage across religions, race, ethnicity, gender and class.

The current debate about same-gender marriage is surely a part of the continual re-thinking and re-shaping of our collective understanding of the mysterious complexity of human relationships. Nevertheless, it is true that for some, the debate causes anger, pain, and confusion; while for others, it promises hope, acceptance, grace and justice.

As we work together today, may Paul's admonitions about love guide and inform our thinking, talking, learning and listening. After all, Paul's letter to the Corinthians was not addressed to couples on the brink of marriage. He wrote to people like us: to Christians working together at the disputed questions of life in community.

As we talk about love, therefore, let us model love for one another, a love that is patient and kind; not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude; does not insist on its own way; is not irritable or resentful; does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. A love that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things .a love that does not end.

1. Cited in the Chilton L. Powell article, "Marriage in Early New England," The New England Quarterly, 1 (1928), p.325, reproduced in Horton Davies, The Worship of the American Puritans (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1999), p. 221.

 

2. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family, p. 64, quoted in The Worship of the American Puritans , p. 216.

 

3. John Cotton, A Practical Commentary upon the First General Epistle of John, ( London , 1656), p. 126, quoted in The Worship of the American Puritans , p. 217.

4. Henry W. Lawrence, The Not-Quite Puritans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1928), pp. 84-85, quoted in The Worship of the American Puritans , p. 217.  

5. The Worship of the American Puritans , pp. 219-20.

6. The Bible , New Revised Standard Version, I Corinthians 15:8.

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