Church of the Holy City

Marriage in a Spiritual Sense

Marriage in a Spiritual Sense
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
October 6, 2013

Genesis 2:18-24 Mark 10:2-16 Psalm 8

There’s more to marriage than two people falling in love and going through a ritual that sanctifies their relationship. There are spiritual issues that go straight up to God when we consider the topic of marriage. Marriage is built into the very fabric of the universe. It is about God Himself, about God’s relationship to humanity, and, yes, about a couple who marries.
Our reading from Mark this morning is not necessarily a prescription for modern marriage relations. In Mark, divorce is prohibited unconditionally. This teaching is so severe that Matthew adds one escape clause. In Matthew 5:32, divorce is permitted on the grounds of marital unfaithfulness. Today we recognize that there are issues that break people apart and divorce seems the only option. It is never easy and always involves pain. I have heard people say that their divorce was the hardest thing they have ever gone through. But I think that there are times when divorce is allowable. Let’s turn from the unhappy issue of divorce, though, and look at the happy issue of marriage.
I want to jump right up into the spiritual aspects of marriage before considering human marriage. Let’s start at the very highest way to think about marriage. The highest marriage is in God Himself. In God there is a union of love and wisdom. We can say that God is love expressing itself wisely. Swedenborg writes,
In the Lord God the Creator are Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and these are Himself; that is, He is Love itself and Wisdom itself (CL 84).
I might say, since this is communion Sunday, that our communion service reflects this union of love and wisdom. We see the communion elements as symbols of love and wisdom. The bread symbolizes God’s Divine Love, and the wine symbolizes God’s Divine Wisdom. By partaking of the bread and wine, we are symbolically letting God’s Love and Wisdom into our hearts and minds.
OK, but where is marriage in all this? This union of love and wisdom is called the heavenly marriage. From love we do what is good, and from wisdom we think what is true. When we do good from a love for doing good, and when we think what is true from a love for wisdom, then we are in the heavenly marriage.
In the created universe and in every detail of it there is a marriage between what is good and what is true. This is because what is good is a matter of love and what is true is a matter of wisdom (DLW 402).
Some traditions call this marriage of love and wisdom the alchemical marriage of the feminine and the masculine elements. But as I do not know about alchemy, I will not go any further on this than to mention that alchemy uses these terms, too.
This spiritual marriage of what is good and what is true is directly related to our spiritual growth. This church sees salvation as a gradual process. We learn right from wrong. But do we always practice what we know to be good or right? Sometimes we fall short. But we little by little put off our sinful nature and little by little put on a godly nature. Paul calls this dying with Christ and being resurrected with Christ. Little by little, our loves are purified from lust into healthy affections and heavenly loves. The alchemists call this process refining base metals into gold. We lift our emotional life up into heaven’s good feelings and good deeds.
We begin the purification process by means of truth, or by means of our mind. Our minds can rise way up above our lives and look down at the way we live. From this lofty vantage point, we can see where we need to make improvements in our lives. When we lift up our emotions and behaviors to conform with what we know to be good, then we are living what we know. Our knowledge of right is one with the way we live. Our thoughts are one with our feelings. Then the heavenly marriage takes place inside of us. Good and truth are one; love and wisdom are one.
Our understanding can be raised into heaven’s light and gather wisdom from it. I have also frequently noted that our love or volition can be raised up as well if it loves the things that are found in heaven’s light, things that involve wisdom. . . . Love4 or volition, though, is raised into heaven’s warmth, while the understanding is raised into heaven’s light. If they are both raised up, a marriage takes place there that we call “the heavenly marriage” because it is a marriage of wisdom and heavenly love (DLW 414).
I can think of an example of this from my own life. When I was younger, I wanted to reform the world. I did this by protesting what I thought needed to be changed. The thing was, I didn’t make any allowances for other people. It was as if I wanted to be the director of a movie. I wanted everyone to stand where I told them, I wanted them to act the way I thought they should act, and move where I wanted them to move–the way a director would direct a cast. However, the world is quite capable of acting on its own. All that my attempts to reform the world just made me frustrated and mad, because people had their own ideas about what they wanted to do. Well I read a book that talked about this very thing. It taught me that I had to accept the world not on my terms, but on the world’s terms. I had to accept the world, not make it into an image of me. At first, this was a bitter pill to swallow. But I trusted this book, and began to let the world turn without my guidance. This is an example of me learning wisdom. The wisdom was the teaching about accepting the world on the world’s terms. The next step was to raise my love up to conform with the wisdom I learned from that book. So as time passed, I let go more and more. I accepted what I couldn’t change. I tended my own garden, and let others tend their gardens. Now I can say that I am a much more serene person. I am calm a lot of the time, instead of being frustrated and angry. Sure, I get upset by drivers who don’t show the courtesy I think they should. And I still get upset at pedestrians who walk out in front of my car without looking because they’re looking down at their smart phone. But by and large, I’ve resigned from the debating society and I’m letting the world go the way that an All-Knowing God allows it to go. I say all this to illustrate the idea of a heavenly marriage of love and wisdom. Wisdom told me to accept, and my serenity from accepting is the love.
There is a final aspect to spiritual marriage I need to bring forth. God’s relationship with us is compared to a marriage. Even if we are not monks or nuns, we are spiritually married to God. Paul talks about this,
Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:28-32).
In this passage, Paul, like Mark, quotes the Genesis passage about the creation of Eve and the general statement about marriage that “They twain shall be one flesh.” But Paul says that it is a profound mystery, and that it refers to the marriage of Christ and the church. In many passages in the Bible, God compares Himself to the Husband and the church, or the people of Israel, to the bride. I’ll just cite just a few:
Isaiah 54:5-6:
For your Maker is your husband,
the LORD of hosts is his name;
and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,
the God of the whole earth he is called.
For the LORD has called you
like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit,
like a wife of youth when she is cast off,
Jeremiah 31:31, 32
“Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, . . . not like the covenant which I made with their fathers . . . my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband,” says the LORD.
Hosea 2:16, 19-20:
“And in that day, says the LORD, you will call me, ‘My husband,’ . . . And I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD.
In many places in the New Testament there are parables about the bridegroom, and marriages that symbolize our relationship with Christ. And there are some striking passages in the book of Revelation, such as Revelation 19:7-9:
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
I’ll conclude with a statement about human marriage. If a person is living out that marriage of love and wisdom in their lives, their marriage will be more blessed and tranquil. For both parties will be striving to be good and to love wisely. And if a person is spiritually married to God, that is, if a person has God in his or her life, then their marriage will be blessed and tranquil. For God is the Source of all love and God expresses His love wisely. So, too, will a married couple express their love for each other wisely when they are married to God. The spiritual marriage of love and wisdom, the mystical marriage of Christ and the church, and the love between two humans all make for happiness in this world and in the next.

PRAYER

Lord, we pray to you this morning to lead us into the heavenly marriage of good and truth. Teach us your ways, so that our minds may be filled with truth. And then, Lord, we pray, give us to love your ways and to do what we know you would have us do. Teach us, Lord, what your will is for us and give us the power to carry that out. For only when we know what is good and love to do what is good is the perfect heavenly marriage alive in our souls.

And Lord, we pray that you bring peace to this troubled world. May those who harbor ill will for their neighbors learn to understand and see the fellow humanity that they share. May those who strive against each other see that they are like in their wishes and in what they want for their land and nation. Lord, we especially ask that you be with the people of Egypt and of Syria. May the way of peace and diplomacy prevail over force. May all warring factions find their way to peace.

Lord, we ask for you to heal those who are sick. As you worked miracles of healing when you were on earth, how much more can you work healing miracles now that you have risen and have all authority in heaven and on earth. Grant all who are in need your healing love and power.