The Three Things That Will Bind You Not Only to Your Spouse But to God And to Others

I love my cat, but I don’t want to look like him.  Yet some folks seem to get so wrapped up in their animals that they start looking way too alike too.  

 Just look at this woman and her dog.  I don’t know but that’s almost a little spooky.  

Or how about this man and his dog, talk about getting up close and personal.   

Heck, it even affects the famous.  Just look at Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning and this dog.    

  

Why am I showing you pictures of people and their pets?  What in the world could that have to do with anything I’m talking about in the Bible?   It’s because in two words in this passage from Ephesians today, God is saying, that what looks like is happening with those owners and pets, actually kind of does happen when you get married.   And the same thing happens even more so when you become a Christian.

God intends marriage to change people at a deeper level than they often realize.  And because they don’t realize it, their marriages never become the rich and life-changing gift God intended them to be.  But more than that, God intends the same not only for the relationships in marriage,    but for the relationships you have here, with the people in the pews right around you.   And only when you realize that, do you begin to understand the rich gift that God intended this community to be.

How does God intend marriage to change you?   How does God intend for this community to change you?  In these words, God shows you.  Let’s hear what God has to say.

Ephesians 5:21-33

When you get married, lots of things start to change.   Often where you live changes, and certainly how you live does.  But marriage changes more than that.   Together the two people actually create a new entity, one that transcends and transforms them both.   And as powerful as that change can be, it actually points to a deeper one.  It points to the transformation that happens when you become a Christian.   Still in both cases, often this transformation doesn’t fully happen.   The marriage never becomes the intimate new creation God created it to be.   Christians never experience the depth of change God intended them to have. 

For that to happen, three things need to occur, and when they do, then your marriage will become the intimate union God intended it to be, and your communion with God and the folks here will become the intimate one God intended it to be as well.

But before looking at those three things, what is this new entity that marriage creates?   Paul tells you here when he quotes this sentence from the Old Testament.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”   When God tells you here that these two are joined, it doesn’t mean some sort of loose connection like between a couple of train cars.  No, this word actually means glued together, like two missing pieces forming a whole.    But then God goes further.  God says that these two people actually become one flesh.   In some deep sense, their joining together creates a whole new thing, some new compound that didn’t exist before.  

Take this cup of water here.   How do you get water?  You combine two quite different things, hydrogen and oxygen, and when you do, you get water.  You get a radically new substance that is one of the most powerful on the planet.   If you doubt how powerful, try going without it for a few days or hanging around the ocean when a hurricane hits.  

In much the same way, God is saying that when you get married, your union makes a new thing, a new thing more powerful than you realize.   But beyond that, throughout this passage, Paul keeps comparing marriage to Christ and the church.  Why?   When you become a Christian, this same sort of new creation occurs.   That’s how the term Christian came about.   Outsiders created the word to describe the first followers of Jesus.   And what was the word they created?  They created one that means little Christs.   They saw that when someone became connected to Jesus, that union created something radically new, not just in that individual but in that whole Christian community.  

Yet, in reality, both in marriages and in churches, these new creations often fail to become what God intended.  Marriages never really become one.  They exist more like oil and water.  Yes, these two folks mingle together but they so don’t unite.   And among Christians, the same thing happens.   People’s connection with Jesus, and with one another only goes so far.  It never becomes the new community that God intended to change the world.  

So how does this happen not only in marriages, but here in this church family.  It happens when you do three things, when you let your dirt be seen; when you let others’ words reshape you; and when you realize that you can’t go it alone.  

What do it mean to let your dirt be seen? Well, before you take a bath, do you try to avoid looking at your stinky and dirty places?   If you’re like me, you actually look for them.   I smell underneath my arms.   I check my feet, and my fingernails.   Otherwise, how am I going to know what to wash, right?    In marriage, you’ve got to do the same thing.   You’ve got to be willing to show your dirt.   If you are now one flesh, then your dirt won’t just affect you, it will affect your partner too.   You’ll both start to smell so to speak.    More than that, your partner can reach dirty places in you in ways you can’t.   He or she can clean things up in you that you haven’t been able to do in years.   Yet too often, couples don’t risk that vulnerability.   And because they don’t, they don’t really become one.  They become more like roommates with privileges.  They never find the intimate union God created them to have. 

And what God expects from marriage, God expects from Christian community.  God doesn’t expect you to share your dirt with everyone.   But God expects you to share it with someone.   It’s why in the book of James, God says.  Confess your sins to one another that you may be healed.   God is saying.  Show your dirt to someone.   Why?  Because the showing will heal you.   It will clean you up.  And it will create the sort of intimate community God intends you to have.  It’s why the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said.  “If a Christian is in the fellowship of confession with a brother or sister, he or she will never be alone again, anywhere.”

But beyond letting others see your dirt, you’ve got to let others’ words reshape you.   In marriage, this actually occurs almost automatically.    As you are with this person day in and day out, the words that they share with you about you have the power to reshape you.   If they pour words of love and affirmation into your life, you become more and more who they say you are.   Your partner’s word pull out beauty and greatness within you that you didn’t realize were even there. 

But this power goes the other way too.  Often couples don’t realize the power their words have.  So they deliver some jab to their partner, one not all that different then they gave to their parents or siblings or friends.  But when it hits their partner, it hits so much harder.  You think you shot a bee-bee gun, but instead you unleashed a bazooka.  So you throw out a few digs, and when you look over, there’s nothing left of your partner, but two sneakers with smoke coming out.  

Or to put it more seriously, you’re like the character Lenny, in the book of Mice and Men.  In that book, Lenny loves to pet animals but because he doesn’t know his own strength ends up killing them.  In your marriage, you can be like Lenny.  You don’t know how deadly the power of your words can be.  And the unity and power of your marriage will have so much to do with the words you speak to each other.

In the same way, through this Christian community, Jesus can speak words into your life that radically change who you are.   My Aunt Mavis, who died last week, became an accomplished educator where she lived.   And how did that career begin?  It began when the pastor of the mission church that she joined, called Hollywood Church by the way, told her she could be a great teacher.  And because of his words, she became the first person in that community to go to college.   A  Christian community has the power to speak words into your life that empower you to become all that God created you to be.  And in the same way, too, these communities can speak words that literally kill the presence of God within you.    The power of a Christian community lies not just in what we do, but in what we say, in the words we speak to one another. 

Finally for your marriage to become what God created to be, you have to realize that neither of you can go it alone.   Just as in your body, your feet can’t decide to go in one direction, while your hands go another, so it is in marriage.  The great preacher, Martin Lloyd Jones, tells a story of how after a sermon he preached, this man came up, and fervently shared how God had called him to be a missionary.   Immediately, Jones asked him.  “Have you talked to your wife?”  The man said.  “No.”   And Jones said, well, if the Spirit of God is calling you to go on the mission field, then the Spirit will tell your wife the same thing.  You can’t go it alone.  

In marriage, if you lead lives that are too separate, where decisions aren’t wrestled through together, then whatever unity you have will fracture.  You will never become the powerful entity God created you to be.  You can’t go it alone.

And it’s the same in a Christian community.  This Wednesday, we’ll show the first part of a stunning documentary, Into Great Silence, on the monastic community in Chartreuse, France.  When the director first approached the monastery decades ago, the monastery’s leader, the abbot, said to him. “Ok, we’ll discuss this and get back to you.”    Sixteen years later, the abbot called and said, “Ok, now, we’re ready.”     Why did it take so long?  Because that community didn’t move forward until they were ready to do it together. 

No one goes it alone.  Even Jesus knew that.  It’s why the first thing Jesus did to begin his ministry was call his disciples.  He called together a community.  Even Jesus didn’t go it alone. 

Will that commitment limit your freedom at times, both in your marriage, and here?  Yes.  Will it slow you down?  Definitely.  Will it be frustrating at times?  Yes.     But if you truly want a marriage, if you truly want what Jesus offers you here, then that’s simply the way it is.  As the physician, Paul Tournier put it, “There are two things you cannot do alone: the first is to marry, the second is to be a Christian.

But how do you actually do these things?  How do you find the courage to risk showing your dirt?  How do you get the grace to speak words that lift up when you so want to say words that destroy?  How do you find the patience and strength to go together, even when that going gets hard?

You look to the one who meets you here at this table.  In Jesus, God did not just see your dirt.  God took that dirt on himself so he could make you clean.   And even when you nailed him on that cross, what did Jesus say to you?  He said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Even there, his words lifted you up.    And at this table, they continue to do that.  As Mary Karr describes communion.  “You are loved, someone said.  Take that and eat it.”    And as you take and eat it, you will realize.  You never have to go it alone.    The same God who didn’t abandon you on that cross, will never abandon you.   And in the power of his love, you will find the courage to let your dirt be seen.  As his words lift you up, you will discover the power to use your words to do that for others.  And together with Jesus, you will discover the power of what can happen when you come together in unity, both in marriage and in this place.  And in that unity, you will be stunned at the beauty and the joy and the richness, God will bring.