I was in a dark, painful place when I thought, “Only a bunch of unmarried Catholic priests could ever come up with the idea that marriage is a sacrament. Marriage is not a sacrament. Marriage is hell!”
What had happened to me? Why was I thinking such horrible thoughts? Was this the normal state of marriage after a few years and a few kids? Is it inevitable that all joyous weddings filled with promise and hope are, in reality, the end of a journey and not its beginning? Is it necessary that after the wedding, the months and years work their putrescent malignance on hearts captured in nuptial covenant?
How had this happened? How had I fallen so far? I could still recall with rapturous delight the first time I saw her that Friday night in January 1985. After meeting her, I remember praying, “God, when I get married, I want to marry someone like her.” I did not dare ask or think of her. She was way out of my league.
I recalled the day we both realized there was something “there.” It was Thursday, June 6, 1985. We would late call that day the day we experienced “Boom!” I recalled with awe how we confessed our love to each other the first time. It was Saturday, June 8, 1985. We called that day, “Boom! Boom!”
How had I fallen from the heights of this intoxicating love to that dark bitter soul-draining the dregs of poisonous bile?
Something needed to change; someone needed to change. The first person I identified that needed to change was Debbie. This has been typical of us men since Adam: Blame the woman.
It was a dark day indeed. However, it was also the time when light began to dawn on the darkest hours of my night.
I was far too prideful to see a therapist. But we did have a counselor who worked one day a week at our church. So, under the guise of “catching up” and “hey, I am curious,” I would ask his advice about specific situations in relationships “so that I could better serve these people as their pastor.”
While discussing marriage conflicts, the counselor said something that reoriented the trajectory of my life and started me on a path toward healing: “Marriage is God’s house of ambush. Marriage is where God digs into the deepest recesses of the human soul to root out selfishness and restore the soul with love. Nothing else seems to get that deep into the soul to allow this to happen.” I experienced another “Boom!”
Sometime later, in a conversation with a friend, my friend said, “Family has got to be spiritual. Nothing else in this world has so much power for damaging or healing the human soul as family.” I could not agree more. So many of the things we call “the ills of society” are, in reality, the sicknesses contracted in the family.
My views on marriage have changed a lot since that dark night many years ago. I have changed. I am changing.
I am learning to embrace it when God ambushes my selfishness and reveals my brokenness. I don’t fight back and defend myself as much as I used to. I am learning to clamor for the lowest seat and the lowest path of humility, rather than justify myself, claim my rightful place, or defend my rights and my way.
I have come to see marriage differently. The change has been subtle, gradual, imperceptible. I did not realize it until a few weeks ago when I was asked to review notes for a global training program within our denomination. The specific module was on marriage and family. The writing team did an expectational job articulating fundamental biblical principles about marriage. Teaching marriage and family cross-culturally is one of the most dangerous subjects within the world of Christian theology and practice.
As I read the material, I had a sudden flash of memories flooding my mind of all the things I have read over the years about marriage, all from within my Protestant background. It was like microfilm from the archives department playing through my mind.
I began to realize because traditional Protestant theology does not include marriage as a sacrament, we run the risk of reducing marriage to a transactional agreement between two parties granting legal and tax benefits from the state. And for us Christians, it gives us the moral OK to have sex and produce offspring. No mystery to it. No “otherness” about it. Just two individuals making a mutually beneficial agreement.
Yet, there is more. Way more. Legal protection, tax benefits, sex, and children are all wonderful blessings and benefits of marriage, but they are not the reason for marriage. Saint Paul elevates marriage to its rightful place as a divine mystery of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5). Marriage is the living icon of Christ and His Bride.
The love, passion, and longing I have for union with my wife – union of spirit, soul, and body – is an echo of my soul’s longing for union with Christ. When my soul’s longing is fulfilled at the Resurrection of the Dead, marriage as we know it in its icon form will cease to exist because it was for this earth. It will cease to exist not because it will become outdated, but because it will become fulfilled. Creation will be fully healed and restored to its God, the two becoming as one joined in the song of the redeemed. The icon fades into what was signified. Longing gives way to fulfillment. Promise and hope burst forth in all things becoming new. The shadow of marriage becomes the substance of what was longed for.
Perhaps my Protestant mind cannot utter the words, “Marriage is a sacrament.” Still, my transformed heart, healed and being healed by the love of the woman who captured my imagination 35 years ago, gladly confesses marriage is sacramental. And like all means of grace, it is for the healing of the nations.
Marriage is about more than two people getting married. Marriage is about the human community. Marriage is about healing the wound of death and destruction we inherited from our first parents. Marriage is about love reaching into the deepest, darkest, and most fiercely protected citadels of the human heart and healing it with love, grace, and a persistent presence. It is here, in this house of ambush, that we see the healing and restorative power of grace incarnate in human flesh, for the life of the world.
I wish I would have known this when I started. I am glad I know it now.
Debbie and I serve as the FMI Global Associate Director for MENACA and Europe. We focus on cultivating disciples, leaders, and church planting movements.
