What's a marriage supposed to look like?  With so many questioning whether same sex couples should be allowed to marry, many are turning to the Scriptures to see if they can shed any light on what qualifies as "marriage."


If you're looking for a single answer I can tell you right now to forget it.  The Bible portrays many examples of marriage and family customs, all of which, apparently, were OK with God.  You might think we'd start with Adam and Eve but we can't.  The word 'marriage' is never applied to Adam and Eve.  As a social convention, marriage doesn't make any sense --given that there was no society around them.


Let's start with Abraham's time (still pre-history).  People were encouraged / required to marry within their own tribe.  How they defined 'tribe' is unknown to me.  How closely were these people related?  Sounds dicey.  


Later on we see polygamy with multiple wives or with concubines (child-bearing slaves).  Then there was the custom of "Levirite marriage," whereby a man marries his late brother's widow (probably as a second wife) in order that the widow bear children considered heirs to the late first husband, even though fathered by the brother.  


King David is supposed to have had 1,000 wives -- hundreds of which were married in order to form political alliances.  David's son Solomon only had a few hundred wives.


The practice of polygamy faded after the Israelites landed in the Holy Land.  As a form of tribal survival it was more suited to Israel's days of wandering than to a more stable, landed society.


Throughout Biblical times, and up to the 19th century, families tended to be extended families.  Odd aunts, uncles, cousins, orphaned 3rd cousins twice removed, random individuals picked up along the way -- all could be absorbed into one's family unit.  The first and only time that the nuclear family (mom, dad, and their offspring) that we are so accustomed to as our model of family existed, was in post-WWII North America.  It was the only time that economics of a society could support the nuclear family on a wide scale.  Part of that economic picture is also the industrialization of society, which encouraged people to leave the family farm and form their own nuclear families elsewhere.


In short, throughout the Bible we see marriage and the family shaped by economics.  And until Jesus came along, women and children were extremely vulnerable in all these models.


So does the Bible give us any useful guidelines for how we should understand marriage and family in our time?  Not as such.  But we are inheritors of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who calls us to live in peace, to love, to practice justice, to generously care for the most vulnerable in our society, and  to grant dignity to all.  It is not in the light of the Bible, but in the light of the GOSPEL that we should decide how to order our society.

Below is a message I delivered to the church I serve on May 13, 2012.  Maybe a little more scolding than I intended, but I stand by it.  And I had already heard enough hate speech (and speech that bordered on hate speech) flying around the community.  I hate doing stuff like this.  I'm disappointed that the times require it.  

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We 're all aware that there is an election in Wisconsin in June and a national election in November. We have all heard the political language this year get uglier and uglier. And it will probably get a lot worse before it gets better.

As an American you have the right to say whatever you want to whomever you want, as loud as you want, using any language you want. That's your right.

But as followers of Jesus Christ I hope that you will express yourselves politically with decency and respect for those who disagree with you. Every political discussion you happen upon is an opportunity for you to do so, AS YOUR WITNESS TO YOUR FAITH. When we engage in name-calling and hate speech we witness to a belief that the cross and resurrection of Jesus was for nothing; that nothing in the world changed; that the healing of the world through the coming of the Kingdom of God is not possible.

If, however, we believe that the power of Christ is real, we should reflect the spirit of Christ, even in our political speech. We should remember that the 8^th commandment is still in effect. Hate speech is not an option for us, even if your best friends engage in it. No one should hear hate speech in our sanctuary, in our Fellowship Hall, in our parking lot, or in our Thrift Shop.

Jesus calls us – not to legislate our faith, but to live it. We are to be examples of life lived in love – not bullies, not crybabies, not examples of hate. Our goal, as people of faith, should not be to lower our standards to match the times, to match the worst behavior around us. Rather Christ calls us, as a community, to be a light on a hill, leaven for the bread, to affect the whole – not by force, not through screeching or name-calling, but by being the adults in the room, being teachers of civil behavior.

What should you do if you hear someone badmouthing your side? “Those blah blah blah, they're all blah blah blah. Somebody ought to blah blah blah...”  If someone says that about your team, feel free to say something like “I heard what you said about me. And I forgive you.”  

Let's not go back!  One of the phrases often heard on the presidential campaign trail these days is "take the country back."   I understand almost everyone has some slice of America they'd like to go back to.  I'm not exempt.  I'd like to go back to a more civil, respectful tone in our national discourse, for example.  But it occurs to me that the set-up of the universe doesn't allow us to "go back."  We can remember the past, and emulate certain aspects of the past, but time always pulls us forward.  


This is not a bad thing.  It means that we continually have opportunities to build a better world.  Those who wish to build a better world (for all of us) have no reason to fear the future.  The good -- the public good-- does not lie in the past, unrecoverable in the present.  We can always move toward it.


I find myself made nervous by those who would seek to "go back."  We had the 20th century.  It wasn't perfect, but a lot got done.  There are reasons why the 19th century was left behind.  It contained child labor, 7-day work weeks, industrial violence, an abysmal lack of rights for women and African-Americans.  Voting rights, civil rights, workplace rights, reproductive rights, a slowly dawning enlightenment about human sexuality-- these are some of the things that took big strides in the 20th century.  We should not go back.  We should go forward.  We go forward, not because we have some misguided idea that we can reach some kind of human perfection, but because 1) forward in time is the only direction the universe allows; and 2) because going forward is faithful.


There seems to be some idealized picture of a "Christian" culture that the religious right wants us to move toward.  Some of those cultural elements may rightly lay claim to the title "Christian,' others clearly do not.  Followers of Jesus know that we do not practice a Christian culture, or worship some idealized point in time.  We do not follow a program or a platform.  We do not follow a set of principles.  We follow Jesus Christ --  crucified and raised from the dead.  Christ does not live in the past, calling us backwards toward the first century, or the 19th century or even the 20th!  Christ does not stand behind us in the past pushing us forward!  Christ is with us in the present and also stands in the future calling us forward.  And that's the way we should go, with our rhetoric, and with our work, never losing sight of the fact that Jesus rejected a society where the rich and powerful continually grew richer and more powerful and the poor were used up and ground into oblivion.  In the name of Jesus Christ, let's not go back to that!

My apologies for being out of touch for so long.  I decided to keep my thoughts to myself for a while.  Often because I was too angry and disappointed about the political news I was hearing.  I wasn't really sure I wanted to express myself, but now I feel like I can go on.  So welcome back to me and you both!