Experiencing God: As Couples

"Experiencing God:  As Couples"
Ephesians 5:31-33

Marriage.  Marriage is what brings us together.

It's hard to be a couple.

You're acquainted with all the statistics:
About 55% of first marriages end in divorce.
Approximately 80% of divorced people remarry within the first two years following their first divorce.
65% of second marriages end in divorce.
12 million Americans get divorced each year.
65 million Americans are single adults
The largest group of household configurations in the U.S. is one adult.
Divorce has increased by 700% over the last 100 years. (As long as our church building has been standing.)

And it's not just about the statistics.  For example, if 55% of first marriages end in divorce, that means that 45% of first marriages don't.  But that still doesn't mean it's a happy marriage, or that the husband and wife enjoy being a couple.  Or find it easy to be a couple.

A man went in to see his banker.  The banker said, "Your finances are in miserable shape.  Your loan is always overdue, and your account is overdrawn.  Why do you let your wife spend more money than you make?"
"Well, frankly," replied the man with a deep sigh, "because I'd rather argue with you than with my wife."

One husband was talking with a friend.  He said, "For 25 years my wife and I were ecstatically happy."
"Then what happened," asked the friend.
"We met," said the husband.

A new bride came in to the drugstore to get a refill of sleeping pills.  Thanking the druggist, she said, "I don't know what I'd do without these.  I'd never get any sleep."
"Be certain not to take too many," warned the druggist.
"Oh, I don't take them," replied the young woman.  "I give them to my husband."

Two single women were talking.  One said she was so desperate for a husband, she got on one of those dating sites on the internet.  She was discouraged, though.  All the replies she got were from wives offering her their husbands.

So, I say it again.  It's hard to be a couple.  I wonder if it wasn't with a wincing kind of smile that God created Eve then brought her to Adam.  God must have known how it was going to go with the first couple, and with every other couple thereafter.  If only Adam had stuck to the animals.

I saw a bumper sticker once that read, "The more I'm around people, the more I love my dog."  Certainly the sentiment behind that bumper sticker has as much to do with couples as with friendships.  And the saying on that bumper sticker might be why God brought animals to Adam, first, for companionship, rather than a "spouse."

These verses read from Ephesians, come at the end of a paragraph in which Paul addresses Christian marriage, and the responsibilities of husbands and wives toward each other.  It's almost funny that at the end of this marriage advice, Paul is basically saying, "Even though I've said all this, and quoted some scripture to make my point, I must confess, I don't get it.  I'm not sure what this marriage thing is all about."

Paul is always trying to connect everything about everyday living back to his Christian faith, and his relationship with Christ.  So the only thing he can mutter, here at the end of chapter 5, is, "It's all a mystery to me.  The only way I can make sense of what marriage is all about is that it's a symbol for Christ's relationship to the church.  That's it.  That's all I've got."

It's assumed Paul had been married at one time.  He was a member of the Jewish ruling council called the Sanhedrin.  You can't be a member of that council unless you are married.  So at some point, after he became a Christian, Paul had to agree to divorce her.  And it's not known if children were involved.  So even having been married, Paul wasn't quite sure what marriage and being a couple was all about.  It was still a "mystery" as he called it.

Kind of like the guy who said that the only thing he and his wife had in common is that they were both married on the same day.  It is a mystery, to me, sometimes, when I look at certain couples, and wonder what they have in common, and what it is that holds them together.

But just being a couple--being a partner in a couple--provides for a lot of needs.  You find out what those needs are when you get divorced or your spouse dies.  (Incidentally, as a side note here, I've led a few divorce recovery small groups.  I've asked each group, "Would you rather be widowed or divorced?"  Everyone, and I mean everyone, has said widowed.)

Let me go over one quality that you have when you are a couple, and how that might relate to Paul's "mystery" about what marriage is all about.

When you're part of a couple, you quickly begin to see how your identity is defined by your relationship.  Who you are has a lot to do with who you are with as a couple.  You are still an individual, of course.  But who you are as an individual, over time, will be largely determined from being in a couple.

It's been said that, "Marriage is that institution which makes two one.  The lifelong struggle is to find out which one."   In some marriage ceremonies the couple lights a unity candle.  Two tapers are lit, and those are used in the service by the bride and the groom to light the center unity candle.  But now what do you do with the tapers, once the unity candle has been lit?  Do you blow them out, symbolizing the end of your individuality so that you may be one as a couple?  Or do you leave the tapers lit, symbolizing you have unity as a couple, but that you are still an individual?

Maybe that's one of the "mysteries" Paul picked up on in terms of couple relationships.  There's a lot you gain, in terms of your identity, as a couple, that you couldn't attain if you were single.  The other, in a couple, brings certain aspects of your personality out that you couldn't do on your own.

The same is true in our relationship with Christ.  The more we try to be who we are, apart from Christ, the more we end up losing ourselves.  In relationship with Christ, the best of who we are is brought out by Christ.  The uniqueness of who we are is not found by being on our own.  Singleness doesn't create uniqueness.  Being in relationship does, because only by being played off another do we really see who we are.  We certainly need our relationship with Christ to do that.  And, I think we need to be a couple to really see and celebrate our identity and uniqueness.

Paul quotes, earlier in this chapter, a line from the creation story in Genesis:  “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.”  Whether we want to admit it or not, as I’ve been saying, we gain a sense of identity, of who we are, from being in relationship with someone else.  Prior to dating or being married—to becoming a couple—our identity is shaped pretty much by our relationship with our parents.  For good or for ill, that’s the way it goes.  We either become who we are because of our parents, or in spite of and in reaction to our parents.  That parental relationship is primary to our identity formation.

It’s been said that Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage.  He didn’t have to hear about all the men she could have married.  And she didn’t have to hear about the better ways his mother would have cooked the meal.

Adam and Eve were the only couple who didn’t have all the parental identity formation that the rest of us have to go through.  But as Genesis states, and as Paul quotes here, there comes a time when you leave that parental crock pot of identity formation behind.  When you start dating, when you start thinking about being a couple, you begin to imagine what your new identity can be with this other person whose not your parents.

Maybe you’ve heard the adage that women often marry their fathers, and men often marry their mothers.  In other words, we unconsciously go out and try and find a mate that continues the same identity we have forged with our parents.  Rather than accept the challenge of transforming our identity with a totally different person than our parents, we choose the same old, same old.  It depends how entrenched we are in that growing up identity of being in relationship with our parents.

One woman said to her husband, “If you really loved me you would have married somebody else.”  That’s how it feels, some times, when we realized we have chosen to be in a couple with someone else who best fits with our old parental identity.  We wish we would have chosen to forge a totally new identity with someone who could bring out a totally different person in us.

That’s part of what’s behind the saying that, “Opposites attract.”  It depends on how willing we are, how adventurous we are, to choose to be in a couple with a mate who takes us way outside our previous parental box.  To choose a mate who will bring forth from us a totally new identity as we are in relationship with that mate.

That is, I think, maybe what Paul is trying to say when he states that marriage is a mystery that somehow has something to do with Christ and the Church.  Prior to knowing Christ, our identity is totally formed by being in relationship with sin and self-centeredness.  Our “parents”, so to speak, up to knowing Christ, have been creating an identity in us that has nothing to do with God.  Our relationship has been ourselves with ourselves.  Me, myself, and I, have been in cahoots, creating an identity that is self-infatuated and self-destructive.

At some point we begin to feel anxious that we are stuck and some kind of change needs to be made.  We need to forge a new identity, but we’re not sure how to do that.  So we start looking around, poking our toes in the waters of a new relationship.  We explore, riskily so, a relationship with someone other than ourselves.  Behind all these little nudgings is the Holy Spirit, who is trying to help us forge a new identity, by being in relationship with God.

This is the difficult part, as in beginning all new relationships.  Is the new relationship going to call us way away from the previous relationship we had with the self?  Is the new relationship going to forge a very different identity than the one we had?  Or do we try to search for a new relationship that won’t move us very far from our  previous comfort zone?

God is calling us to move way beyond the identity we had created previously.  God is a whole new “mate” so-to-speak, who will bring out of us a new self that we had no idea was possible.  That’s the scary part of any new relationship.  How different do I want my identity to be?  Am I willing to let go of most of my comfortability with my previous identity, in order to move into something that is very attractive, but disruptive as well?

It’s the scary part of going through divorce, or losing a spouse in death.  The identity you had, that was forged out of that relationship, is now disrupted and you have the opportunity to move into a whole new self.  But all that depends on who you couple with next.

But like I said, I think the Holy Spirit is constantly nudging us towards God, and relationship with God, showing us how attractive God is.  And it’s an attractiveness that has to do with who we can become, what our new identity can be, if we were coupled with God.  The Holy Spirit keeps showing us not only a glimpse of God in all of God’s attractiveness, but also a glimpse of who we are and what we can be in a new identity if we were in relationship with God.

All that is a “mystery” as Paul says.  But it is intriguing, isn’t it?  Just imagine what your identity could be if you were coupled with God.