For Better or For Worse
a sermon given by the Rev. Claire Phillips-Thoryn
on Sunday, February 3, 2008
at The First Parish in Lincoln
To listen to this sermon click here.
First Reading - Goodridge VS The Department of Health; Chief Justice Margaret Marshall (Massachusetts 2003)
Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations. […]
Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. The union of two people …"is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects." (1) Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.
It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a "civil right." [As was said in] the case of Loving v. Virginia, "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival. …The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free [people]."
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 486 (1965).
Second Reading - Jacob Marries Laban’s Daughters – Genesis 29: 16-30
Jacob has just run away from home, and after a long journey, he stumbles upon some extended family members who welcome him. Jacob decides to join them and work for his uncle Laban. The passage reads:
16 Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. 17 Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful. 18 Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, ‘I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.’ 19 Laban said, ‘It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.’ 20 So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.
21 Then Jacob said to Laban, ‘Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.’ 22 So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. 23 But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. […] 25 When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, ‘What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?’ 26 Laban said, ‘This is not done in our country—giving the younger before the firstborn. 27 […] we will give you the other also in return for serving me for another seven years.’ 28Jacob did so […]; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife. […] 30 So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. […]
Poor Leah. Ever since Leah, grooms have lifted the veil during the wedding ceremony to make sure they get the right bride before they marry her.
Let’s face it. The Bible is not the best place to go to learn about marriage, as we now understand it. Most of the marriages have multiple wives. (Jacob, by the way, goes on to take the maidservants of Rachel and Leah as his concubines as well.) The wives are more like child-bearing machines. Even in the New Testament, Jesus, everyone’s favorite role model, is not a very good role model for marriage. First of all, he isn’t married and really doesn’t want to be. Some people even argue that Jesus was anti-family, from verses like Luke 14:26, where Jesus says “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Love your neighbor but hate your family? Not one of his most quoted teachings. The Bible describes married life as it was 2,000 or more years ago, when women were property. That is not the kind of marriage that interests me.
So I turned to a more recent text to see what it had to say about marriage. This book is called The Physical Life of Women by Dr. George Napheys and it was a HUGE bestseller in the 1870s. If it was published today with the same book sales it would be on the New York Times bestseller list for months. The publishers write in the foreword that it is “among the classics of the English language...”. So I’m surprised none of you have read it. In it, Dr. Napheys describes in detail the three stages of woman’s life, which are the maiden, the wife, and the mother. So, in my research, I turned to Part I, “The Maiden” and found the chapter on how to choose a husband. The first question the doctor takes on is one that was highly debated in his day, the question “Shall Cousins Marry?” to which his response is, go for it. He also lets maidens know that when looking for a husband, keep in mind that blond men have childlike, simple dispositions, black hair denotes a hardness of character and red hair indicates physical weakness, usually a tendency towards skin disease. So obviously there are many things to keep in mind when choosing a mate. But I’ve already chosen a mate—he has red hair. So then I turned to Part II, “The Wife” and read the chapter on “How to Retain the Affections of a Husband.” It is a short chapter and the advice is very clear. The doctor writes: “She who neglects neatness in attire, and, above all, cleanliness of person, runs a great danger of creating a sentiment of disgust in those around her. Nothing is more repugnant to the husband’s senses than bad odors, and, for reasons which every woman knows, women who neglect cleanliness are peculiarly liable to them….” Dr. Napheys points out that some women’s bad breath and smelly feet can be so offensive they should be grounds for divorce. Bathing and brushing one’s teeth are definitely good practices to take into a marriage, and that goes for men too. But good hygiene is probably not enough to keep a marriage truly healthy.
I have marriage on the brain because it so happens that I am getting married in two weeks. Ben and I got engaged in September and I decided to make an honest man of him. And as we planned our wedding, we’ve also thought a lot about our marriage. After all, as the saying goes, a wedding is one day, and a marriage is forever. But forever is a difficult undertaking in America, as you can see when you look at our divorce rates. As a nation we value marriage, but we don’t seem to know how to keep a marriage strong. And yet we have this unbelievable wedding industry, that does 161 billion dollars of business every year, selling the idea of the perfect marriage, the idea of love and bliss and sunsets all the days of our lives. But this is not a sermon about weddings or divorce. This is a sermon about marriage, why we do it and how. As the priest said in The Princess Bride: “Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam... And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva...”
We ask more of marriage today then we did during in biblical times and Dr. Naphey’s time. One of our most recent definitions of marriage is found in the first reading, the case that legalized same gender marriage in Massachusetts in 2003, as written by Chief Justice Marshall. She wrote:
Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.
It’s good to read this decision and remind ourselves of what we think marriage should be, because I think heterosexual people take marriage for granted. My close friend Daniel and his boyfriend are engaged, but they don’t know when they’ll be able to legally marry in the state they live in. In thinking about civil marriage, he wrote:
[The institution of marriage] gives individuals a kind of power or freedom over their own lives that's very important: you get to choose someone (provided they choose you back) and decide, on your own, to give them all these rights and privileges—you get to tie them to you legally. You get to make this person, unrelated to you, your primary legal relation (and so is the one, for example, to make health decisions for you when you can't); and, when you do this, your parents, who you didn't choose, are in a way demoted. And we have this institution, I think, in part because we (as a society) think that this ability is an important kind of freedom. I think that it's not just the social recognition that comes with being allowed to get legally married that's important, but also all that civil marriage allows you to do, the kind of relationship that it allows you to create.
I personally feel proud to live in a state that recognizes marriage as a civil right for any loving couple, regardless of their gender. And I think the Goodridge decision defines marriage in a way that many of us, gay or straight, would like to live it.
I also think that our modern definitions of marriage may hold up an ideal that is too perfect to exist. In our society today we want marriage to be a passionate fiery romance; an enduring love; a union of soulmates; an egalitarian partnership, a relationship of best friends and equals; a 24/7 companionship; in essence, we have this concept of marriage as two people being everything to one another, all the time. And someone still has to take out the trash and balance the checkbook. Maybe marriage really is a dweam wifin a dweam…
One of my favorite books, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, spends time with a psychologist named John Gottman, whose research has proven there are signs that show if a couple will stay in a marriage for the long haul. For almost two decades, he has been videotaping couples having an hour-long conversation. Then he and his research assistants break down the video in increments of one second, and code each second with an emotion based on the couple’s facial expressions. With this information and other data, he is able to prove with a 95% success rate whether or not a couple will stay together. With only a 15 minute conversation, he still has a 90% success rate.
The key is that each relationship has a pattern, positive or negative, and the relationship’s pattern is visible even in short conversations. There are four emotions that signal a negative pattern. Gottman calls them the Four Horsemen. They are: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Of these, only one emotion is really needed for Gottman to make his call: if contempt is a prevailing emotion, he knows the marriage is doomed. Contempt is most commonly expressed by using an eye roll. And the reason it is worse than defensiveness or even criticism is because it places your partner as inferior, and you as superior. It’s hierarchical. Gottman’s findings also show that for a marriage to survive, “the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least five to one.” One sign of a positive pattern is that each partner gives the other credit. Simple expressions like “You’re right” or “yeah” show a pattern of support.
So our relationships have these patterns. But we can choose how we are in relationship, and if we fall into a negative pattern I believe we can choose to do the work that breaks us free from that pattern. We can choose to support our partner, to thank them, to say “You’re right.” And we can choose to not be defensive, stonewalling, critical, or contemptuous. It takes faith and commitment from both partners—one person can’t make a marriage work, it takes two. It takes openness and acceptance and I think it takes some prayer too.
I asked friends, colleagues, and members of First Parish what they had learned from marriage. Married, or single, divorced or widowed, we live in a culture where marriage is all around us, and so everyone has something to say on the topic.
Here are some of the reflections I was honored to receive:
My friend Shawn, who moved to Toronto and was finally able to legally marry his husband Bob after many years together, said of marriage:
I've learned in marriage that you can truly trust another person, even though your partner will miss the mark from time to time and let you down. Because we do the same, it’s the dance that we do, and it’s one of grace and forgiveness and being willing to begin over and over again. The best advice I've ever been given: make promises you can keep. Keep your promises, and your promises will keep you.
My friend Aaron is a man in his mid-20s who recently married his sweetheart of six years:
I feel that other people’s perceptions about my relationship with Kate have changed more than ours. Church members, doctors, insurance sales people, etc - they all tend to take my relationship with my wife a lot more seriously than they did the one I talked about with my fiance or my girlfriend. It feels a bit as if I have been given their recommendation into the adult club.
Ben’s mom has been through two marriages and divorces, and told me:
My personal experience has taught me that …“being in love” is not a good enough reason to get married. Most importantly, even if a marriage fails, if you come out of it with as terrific a kid as I did, that can make your entire life worthwhile.
And finally, I received two beautiful and thoughtful reflections on marriage from a couple at First Parish that has been married for over 50 years. They had many loving things to say about each other, but what I found most profound was their description of getting through hard times together. When their marriage was truly tested, they both stood firm in their commitment. For privacy’s sake I won’t use their names.
One of them wrote:
We were married when she was 18 and I was 22. She was already my
best friend and I was able to share my deepest thoughts and feelings with her. This was and still is an essential element of our marriage.
Marriage requires a lot of compromises. […] Early in our marriage, when we were both in our 20s, we struggled with the concept that one of us had to ‘win’ … in order for an argument to be resolved. Fortunately, we quickly learned that there was only success when both parties felt they had won. …
As we got older, we shifted to an even better kind of resolution. We each developed a genuine desire to do whatever we could to make each other happy. So, instead of trying to “win” we found ourselves looking for better and better ways of helping the other to be fulfilled. We now gain more pleasure out of giving to each other than taking for ourselves.
The other wrote:
What prevailed [during difficult times] was our determination to understand the dynamics and find out how to fix our problems. With the help of a therapist we learned how to listen to each other on a much deeper level, accept responsibility for hurts that we inflicted and to make changes in ourselves. Since that breakthrough our relationship continues to grow. I think we learned how important it is for two people in a marriage to be willing to stay open and stick with it, particularly during the hardest times. What happens then is that the relationship gets much stronger. You plumb the depths of yourself and the other, and in the process, compassion, acceptance and love flourish.
One sermon on marriage could never possibly contain the depth and breadth of what marriage is, how it lasts, why it doesn’t. I’ll leave my talk of marriage with a part of this poem by Jane Hirshfield, called “For What Binds Us.” She writes:
…see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest-
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
And I have one final question for you: what can you do to support a marriage today—your own marriage or a friend’s marriage?
Amen.
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