Jesus "wrote with his finger on the ground". What he wrote we do not know.
We only know what John tells us he said to the "woman taken in adultery". "Has no one condemned you?... Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more". His words of forgiveness set love in order. What Jesus wrote on the ground we do not know. But he didn't draw a line in the sand. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone".
The marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer captures beautifully the ideal of the holiness and the permanence of the vocation of Christian marriage. Far from being antiquated and archaic, it speaks to our age.
It upholds an ideal, to be sure, but it is one which is capable of "setting love in order" (Song of Songs). For its strong gospel message is that marriage is only possible by the grace of God in Christ. Without Christ, "we have no wine" as the allusion to the wedding miracle in Cana of Galilee would remind us and, even more, that the joy and the fulfilment of the marriage vows are only possible through the "hour" of Christ, namely, his passion, death and resurrection. The provision of wine, indeed, the best wine, likewise speaks to the fruit of Christ's passion, his resurrection. Sacrifice lies at the heart of Christian marriage. But it is the sacrifice of Christ. We can only die to ourselves and live to the other in the covenant of marriage through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His sacrifice is the forgiveness of sins.
The failure to intend what the Church intends in Christian marriage is equally a failure of the Church to teach. In the face of our contemporary moral and social confusions what is needed is a renewed confidence in the strength of the ideal of Christian marriage. The reasons for Christian marriage are non-negotiable. Procreation, for example, is not an option; it is implicit in the sexual union of a man and a woman regardless of intent, capability and age (one would do well to remember Sarah before laughing).
The same cannot be said of same-sex relationships. The reasons for Christian marriage are the counter both to the sentimental and self-destructive tendencies of our age and to the efforts to redefine the family and the nature of marriage in ways that contradict their truth. Like the efforts to re-image God, so the attempts to redefine the family belong to a despair of revelation.
Marriage is not just any kind of committed relationship. While it is a kind of friendship, it is not just any kind of friendship. It is the covenanted relation of "this man and this woman" in the "holy Estate of Matrimony" established by God and "instituted in the time of man's innocency".
Whatever the blessings of friendship, same-sex or otherwise, might mean, they cannot be the same thing as Christian marriage. Against the confusions that result in moral disorders such as divorce and same-sex "marriages", both within and without the churches, there is a pressing necessity to recover the fullness of understanding of Christian marriage and to proclaim it with clarity and with great compassion.
It means giving primary attention to the forgiveness of sins rather than simply relying on the standards of moral and social correctness. Only the transforming power of God's grace can set our loves in order.
At present, there is considerable confusion about marriage and married life manifest in the phenomenon of cohabitation, common law relations, divorce and remarriage, as well as in so-called same-sex "marriages". These represent in their totality a considerable state of disorder and disarray.
Not surprisingly, much of this disorder and disarray has found its way into the churches. In large measure, the churches have failed to teach with clarity and with compassion the Christian doctrine of marriage and to set forth compellingly the moral ideals of lives consecrated to Christ, whether within or without the married state. The churches, we might say, have been taken captive by a culture now altogether divorced from its spiritual and moral origins.
In the face of such disorders, both within and without the Church, it will not do simply to assert the law of Christian marriage or to recall the customs of an imaginary golden age now past and gone. These are especially the temptations of conservative Christianity. They fail because they are essentially reactionary and engage neither the Gospel nor the culture. To lead with the chin of moral and social correctness will only leave one open to the same temptations of the age and to the inevitable hypocrisies which attend those who fall. The churches have to be something more than the enclaves of a kind of moral self-righteousness or the ghettos of a particular form of social correctness.
It is, after all, only by the grace of God that we stand at all. It is also only by the grace of God that we can be forgiven and arise and walk and go in peace. "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee... arise and walk"; "Woman,....has no one condemned you?...Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more". Sin is clearly and unambiguously acknowledged, but it is not permitted to define us over and against the grace of God. Christ would define us by his grace of forgiveness.
A renewed confidence in the doctrine of Christian marriage and in basic Christian morality means giving primary attention to the greater doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. There are those who would deny that there is any revealed morality or that credal orthodoxy implies any moral order. To the contrary, the doctrines of creation, redemption and sanctification proclaimed in the catholic creeds open out to view a entire moral universe, but the explicit avenue of approach is the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. That is the great and critical starting point for setting love in order, the point to which we must ever return. For without that we shall ever fall and never hope to rise again.
The failure of the churches to teach has resulted in the inability of people to intend what the Church intends in Christian marriage. This has to be admitted in dealing with the phenomena of divorce and remarriage in the pastoral work of setting love in order. It will not do simply to draw a line in the sand delineating those who are in and those who are out, as if the church were some sort of sect of the elect. The Church must be the place of forgiveness.
The clergy should be brought to know, too, that a higher standard is indeed expected of them, namely, "in framing the manners both of yourselves, and of them that specially pertain unto you, according to the same rule of Scriptures" and "to sanctify the lives of you and yours, and to fashion them after the rule and doctrine of Christ, that ye may be wholesome and godly examples and patterns for the people to follow"(BCP, p.650). To recover such an understanding does not mean the harsh fist of legalism but once again the convicting power of the forgiveness of sins.
It means a deeper understanding of repentance and forgiveness, like David's rather public penitence and prayer: "Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness;/ according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences"(Psalm 51.1). "Man", we are told, "looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart"(1Sam.16.7). In the story of David, we are given to see something of the heart that God sees. It is his heart of penitence that makes him truly beloved of God. "David", John Donne tells us, "both shows us all the slippery wayes into sin and all the wayes out of sin". "The wayes out of sin" are always the ways of penitential prayer and forgiveness.
The failure of the churches to uphold the necessity of the institution of Christian marriage has resulted in a generation or more that have been told by their parents and grandparents to take the experiential approach and "to live together". The wonder is that increasingly many of that generation come now to the Church seeking for something more, seeking for the understanding of their lives in grace, seeking for what was not passed on to them, namely, the idea of the grace-ordered form of their lives together in holy matrimony. At issue, is whether the Church will be there for them with the forgiveness of Christ or against them in judgment.
The failure of the churches to hold firmly and without equivocation to the three classical reasons for Christian marriage results in the redefining of marriage to mean any kind of committed relationship, including same-sex partnerings. By omitting or rendering procreation merely "optional", the churches effectively reduce every marriage to "gay marriages" and dishonour the institution of Christian marriage. Against the illusions of sexual fulfilment and the eroticising of friendship, a renewed understanding of Christian marriage is the call to maturity in love, to sacrifice and commitment, and to an acceptance of the God-given forms of our creatureliness, "male and female he created them". Equally, it means a recovery of the proper forms of friendship.
But with the recovery of clarity there must be as well a deepening of charity. Both belong inextricably to the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of sins. He wants us to know that he is the forgiveness of sins. "Christ pierced upon the cross is "liber charitatis", 'the very book of love', laid open before us"(Lancelot Andrewes). To behold that love is to let that love set our loves in order. We are recalled to the forgiveness of sins without which we cannot hope to rise and walk.
(from an article published in the May/June 1998 issue of "Mandate", USA)
The Rev'd David Curry is
Vice Chairman of the Prayer-Book Society of Canada, and a country
parson in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Canada. He and his wife
Marilyn have three lovely children.
LIBRARY