Church of the Holy City

The Mystical Marriage

The Mystical Marriage
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
February 15, 2009

Hosea 2:14-23 Revelation 19:4-9

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would talk about love this Sunday. And the love I will be talking about is that love between two people who have devoted their lives to one another. What is surprising, is that very few theologians talk about interpersonal love. Whenever they talk about love, they tend to want to talk about what the Greeks call agape. Agape is a spiritual love to all of humankind and is characterized by selfless giving to others. For many theologians, this form of love is the only form that theology should deal with. Love between two individuals, which we celebrate on Valentine’s Day is called in the Greek language, eros. Eros is best translated as desire. And theologians think that this isn’t all that important for religion.
But mutual love between couples finds a central place in Swedenborg’s theology. The special relationship between lovers is found in his very first works and his later works. He calls it “the fundamental of all good loves, and as it is inscribed upon the very least things of a person” (CL 68). Due to the time in which he lived, Swedenborg’s discussion of romantic desire is treated within the context of marriage. But the principals he describes can be applied to all couples, whether formally married or not—provided that they have made a commitment to one another.
In various places in the Bible, the relationship between God and the church is compared to a marriage. We heard this today in both our Old Testament reading and our New Testament reading. In the passage from Hosea, God says to the people of Israel, “In that day you will call me ‘my husband’” (2:16). And further in the same reading, God says, “I will betroth you to me forever” (2:19). And the passage we heard from Revelation speaks of marriage between Jesus and the Church. A mighty voice is heard saying, “the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready” (19:7). And the angels say to John, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb” (2:9).
The marriage between God and the Church is more than just a symbol, or metaphor. The intimate union in love between God and the Church is the origin of love between married pairs, or between those who have made a commitment to one another, whether formally married or not. As the Apostle Paul says of this mystical union, “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the Church” (Ephesians 5:32). And Swedenborg talks about this mystery in his book Marriage Love. In that book he develops a complex theology of marriage love that I would like to begin to discuss this morning. With the Bible, Swedenborg asserts that the source for love between couples is God’s union with the church. There he writes,
The correspondence of this love is with the marriage of the Lord and the Church. That is, as the Lord loves the church and desires that the church shall love Him, so husband and wife mutually love each other. It is known in the Christian world that there is a correspondence between them; but what it is is not yet known. . . . marriage love is heavenly, spiritual, and holy, because it corresponds to the celestial, spiritual and holy marriage of the Lord and the church (CL 62).
When Swedenborg talks about the church, and I think this goes for the Bible as well, he means everyone who is conjoined with God. Another way to put this to say the church is the community of believers. Or, everyone who is seeking a relationship with God according to their notion of religion. The church is God’s dwelling in the soul of each person, and collectively in the souls of all who are in relationship with God. Those who are in a relationship with God are in that mystical marriage between God and the church.
We can say that a person is in the church if he is in relationship with God; or we can say that the church is in him or her. Whenever a person is doing good according to what he or she knows about good, then a person is in the church, or the church is in him or her. Swedenborg calls this the marriage of good and truth. “The marriage of good and truth is the church in a person; for the marriage of good and truth is the same as the marriage of charity and faith, since good is of charity and truth is of faith . . .” (CL 62). So when a person is doing good according to what he or she knows to be right, then God is in them.
According to Swedenborg, God is infinite love and infinite wisdom. From love comes what is good and from wisdom comes what is true. So when a person is doing good according to truth, then God’s love and wisdom is in that person. And since God actually is love and wisdom, God is actually in that person. Thus when a person does good according to what he or she knows to be true, God is in them, and they are in that mystical marriage of the Lord and the Church.
That is the theology Swedenborg constructs around romantic love. And as the marriage of God and the church, or the union of good and truth, is what salvation is all about, the love couples feel for one another is absolutely central in Swedenborg’s theology. As with so much in Swedenborg, no matter where you start, everything comes together when you follow his ideas through. And here in his discussion of love, all the essentials about the relationship between God and humans come together. But Swedenborg doesn’t just discuss love from its theological basis in God, he also discusses the feelings of love. And for most of us, that is what Valentine’s day is all about.
Since romantic love is based on the union between God and the church, it is the most fundamental love of all loves. The love couples feel for one another is one of the most powerful feelings we can experience.
In this love are gathered all joys and all delights, from first to last. . . . Now, as marriage love is the fundamental of all good loves, and as it is inscribed upon the very least things of a person . . . it follows that its delights exceed the delights of all loves . . . For it expends the inmost things of the mind, and at the same time the inmost things of the body, as the delicious current of its fountain flows through and opens them. . . . all the states of blessedness, satisfaction, delight, gratification, and pleasure that could ever be conferred on people by the Lord Creator are gathered into this love (CL 68).
The only other love that compares to the intensity of romantic love is that between parents and children, and this love is bound up in married love.
In love between couples, all the essentials of what it means to love are found. In a true loving relationship, giving happiness to the other person is at its heart. This is the case with divine love, as well. God wants to give the human race as much happiness as we can bear. And to do this, God gives us the mutual love between couples.
. . . . as love is such that it desires to share its joy with another whom from the heart it loves, yes, to confer joys upon him and from thence to take its own, infinitely more then does Divine Love—which is in the Lord—towards humans, whom He created to be a receptacle both of the love and wisdom proceeding from Himself. . . therefore He from the inmosts infused into humans marriage love, into which He might gather all the blessedness, happiness, joys, and pleasures that together with life proceed and flow in only from Divine Love through His Divine Wisdom . . . (CL 180).
It is fitting that we take one day a year to celebrate this wonderful gift of God to the human race. In the society of ancient Greece, love was considered a god. We are not far from that idea in Christianity. Our God is also the God of love. And as we let God’s love into our hearts, we cannot but love others, as God does. And especially, when we find someone who has captured our heart we feel an exquisite joy in relationship with that one special person. Feeling that marriage love, is just about the same as feeling heaven’s joy,
The states of this love are innocence, peace, tranquility, inmost friendship, entire confidence, and mutual desire of heart and mind to do each other every good; and from all these come blessedness, happiness, joy, pleasure,–and from the eternal fruition of these, heavenly felicity. . . (CL 180).