Leaving, Cleaving and Priority of Relationships

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Message M3: Marriage and Singleness November 9, 2008

Title: Leaving, Cleaving and the Priority of Relationships

Text: Eph. 5: 21-33

Big Idea: When a person gets married, their spouse becomes their most important human relationship (in way that is analogous to a person’s relationship with God)

There is a passage in Scripture that those of us who are happily married find troubling: Matthew 22: 23-30.

Some members of a religious group called the Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him about a woman who had married seven different men across her lifetime and then died. The Sadducees asks Jesus, “At the resurrection whose wife will she be? Would she have seven husbands in heaven?” Jesus replies, “At the resurrection we will neither marry nor be given in marriage.” We know that in the life to come we will remember people we knew here. So, this is a very hard teaching for those who of us are happily married.

Author Lauren Winner points out that this encounter between the Sadducees and Jesus teaches, not only about marriage, but a lesson about the end of time—at the end of time there is only marriage between Christ and the church.

We have been looking at Ephesians 5--this famous passage on marriage.

If you have your Bibles pleasure turn there:

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

At the end of our text Paul says, “This is a profound mystery, or a profound revelation, but I am talking about Christ and the church.” What Paul is saying is that his commentary on marriage, which is considered by many to be the central teaching on marriage in the Scripture, is really a metaphor for the church’s marriage with God.

A good marriage, either through our own experience of it or as an example to us, can prepare us for the kind of relationship we will enjoy with God in the world to come.

One of the ways that marriage tutors us in the life to come is that it shows us the priority of our relationships. The theologian Augustine suggested that “a well-ordered heart is to love the right thing to the right degree in the right way with the right kind of love.”

In Ephesians 5 we are taught about the priority of marriage which also becomes an analogy for the priority of our relationship with God.

In verse 31, after Paul speaks on the nature of marriage, he says “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery (or “revelation”) but I am talking about Christ and the church.”

Here in Ephesians 5: 31 we read that in marriage “a man will leave his father and his mother and unite or ‘cleave’ to his wife.” These words are a quotation from Genesis 2: 24 where God says the same thing as he creates the institution of marriage in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

When Paul speaks here, using the language of Genesis to describe marriage as a process where we leave our father and mother, many people in the Ancient Near Eastern world would have heard this as radically counter-cultural.

In Paul’s world (as is the case in many Asian and Latin cultures today) a person’s connections to their own family, and in particular their relationship with their parents, were considered hugely important. In fact, in the world in which this passage was first read, most people would have regarded their relationships with their parents as their most important one.

What does it mean to leave? Does it mean to physically leave your parents?

In the Jewish culture of Paul’s day, when a man and woman married, the couple would typically live in the man’s home--or at least very close to his parents.

So when God says for this reason when a man or a woman is married, he or she will leave his father and mother, God does not necessarily mean that the husband or wife will physically move from the parents’ home and set up a home far away (though this does, of course, make it easier to “leave”). Arguably, a better way to translate that word “leave” is “forsake.” We could translate this passage: For this reason a man will forsake his parents and be united to his wife.

What does it mean to forsake? Of course, forsaking is not an absolute forsaking. We are told in Scripture to honour our parents. The forsaking that occurs in marriage

is a relative forsaking. When a person marries, God calls the person to forsake a number of different things.

Ronald Rolheiser in his excellent book on the spiritual life, The Holy Longing, has pointed out that every choice is a renunciation. When you choose to marry, you renounce certain things. If you choose to have children, you renounce certain things.

Mike Mason, in his book, The Mystery of Marriage, has pointed out that when a person gets married, it is not so much the bringing together of two worlds as it is the destruction of two worlds and the making of a new world.

It sounds negative, but this renouncing of old opens you to fully experience what it is God has called you to. There is something about making God your heart focus that causes your relationship with God to flourish and there is something about focusing on your spouses that causes that relationship to flourish.

If you get married, part of what you called to do is to leave or forsake certain things.

One of the things that we leave behind would be old priorities.

I got married in my mid-thirties. I was wondering if I could make the adjustment work- wise, from working with the freedom of a single person to working as married person.

When Sakiko and I first got married, we went to England where I was pursuing a study sabbatical. As I shared before, I ended up spending way too much time in the library, and this particular university library was one where you could only study if you had student status. It was a library where you could not check books out, because many of the books were considered national treasures. I was operating in many ways with the work schedule of a single person, not the schedule of a married person.

One of the adjustments we will make if we are married, whether we are students or working on in job, is that the old way that we studied or worked will be left behind.

This does not mean, of course, that we necessarily leave our schools or our companies, but we find a new way to work. When we are married, we must shift our old priorities with respect to study and work and everything else.

When we are married, we will leave or forsake certain patterns that we had growing up.

Let’s envision a couple about to get married. The husband grew up in a traditional home. His dad worked outside the home growing up. His mom did not work outside the home, but as a homemaker. The way that his mom showed her love to his dad was to say when his dad came home from work was to say something like, “You have been working hard all day. Just relax. Read the paper. Watch hockey. Dinner will be ready in 12 minutes.” The way his mom showed his dad that she loved him was through traditional acts of service like cooking, doing laundry, etc. But this guy is marrying a woman where both the mom and the dad worked outside the home. And the way her dad showed her mom that he loved her was that he helped around the home a lot with cleaning, occasionally cooking, and changing the diapers. Let’s say, the guy’s wife has her own career… If he’s not willing to put his old patterns behind him, the marriage is headed for a collision.

In our family growing up we were pretty vocal and engaged in a lot of debate around the dinner table and would verbally spar and fight… 5 kids. Now as adults, we are relatively calmer, but when Sakiko first started coming to our family reunions she thought we were fighting…all the time I’m like no no no… we weren’t fighting… no one one’s feelings were hurt.

In Sakiko’s family there two kids, her and her sister, and they were much more civil with each other…

As couples, when you marry, you leave behind your old way of fighting or not fighting and find new healthy ways to fight.

It’s important to do some family of origin work perhaps with the help of counselor so we can leave behind old patterns.

When we are married, we leave behind certain old priorities. When we join our lives to God, we also leave behind certain old patterns relating to people…viewing the world. We leave behind certain relationships, both past relationships and future relationships. We forsake them. At a typical wedding ceremony, I will turn to the bride and then to the groom and ask them, “Do you promise in the presence of God and before these witnesses to love and comfort Lisa, to honour and cherish her, in sickness and in health and in prosperity, and in adversity, forsaking all others? Will you remain faithful to her as long as you both shall live?” Of course, the primary kind of relationship that a person is thinking about in the context of a marriage ceremony, that he or she will forsake, will be other romantic partners. It is a commitment to forsake other potential sexual partners. It is also an implicit commitment to say that no-one in my life will be a closer friend to me than you—that no-one will occupy the greater part of my heart than you.

But forsaking also includes our parents… don’t think about wedding

At this time I am going to invite Janice Hoshizaki, to come forward and talk about what that has looked like for her.

Could you describe where Brent was on priority list of people when you got married?

Well, I thought my priorities were God first, Brent second, and my mom third—but only as long as they were all in agreement, it turned out. My actions kept showing that my mom was first, God was second, and Brent was maybe third. Even at third, he’d sometimes be tied with my brother and my work!

This made for a lot of conflict. I drew more on others’ opinions, especially my mom’s, when it came to things like where to attend church, what kind of place to live in, and wives’ and husbands’ roles, I also didn’t care as much about what Brent thought about his career and our life together as their potential impact on my mom. Soon after we were married, I fought with Brent vehemently about moving to Olympia, Washington, only a 4-hour drive away, because I didn’t want to leave my mom. We prayed about it, but because I knew how sad my mom would be, it felt like the wrong decision to me. She is a widow, after all, and from Japan, where traditionally, people are more closely tied with their parents. Even after we moved to Olympia, I continued to fight Brent on it, and with added resentment.

I knew that God wanted Brent to be a higher priority, but I had extenuating circumstances, I thought. You know how you sort of bargain with God? God couldn’t expect me to really “leave” my mom—a widow, from Japan-- and “cleave” to Brent? Surely He was just working on making Brent more agreeable.

Did that shift for you and if so how?

God brought people into my life who helped change my priorities. I joined two prayer groups after we moved to Olympia because I was so miserable. Both groups listened, prayed for me and pointed me to what God says about love and marriage in the Bible. I started to realize that concentrating so much on my mom and so little on Brent was “off” a bit.

I made a good friend who shared and modeled what a loving spouse was. She often talked and prayed about wanting to lift up her husband and not tear him down, even in their conflicts. Even though I’d grown up in church, I hadn’t really heard anyone speak openly about marital love and conflict like this before. Seeing what it looked like to make her husband a priority helped me see what it could look like for me.

What really made me change my priorities, though, was listening to Brent. Really listening, and with love. I didn’t just decide to do this myself, one day, though. A counselor we saw taught us to use a communication technique called “the floor,” which requires putting aside your thoughts to accurately hear and empathize with the other’s. At this point, we’d been married four years, but for the first time, I listened to Brent’s feelings about being low on my list without thinking about my rebuttal or what anyone else thought. And for the first time, I truly cared about how sad this made him feel.

Now, my actions better reflect my straightened-out priorities. I have, at times, chosen Brent’s way over my mom’s, and in a loving way! Here’s an example: When we moved back to Vancouver, we stayed with my mom until we could find a place of our own. At the start of our hunt, I would ask my mom to come along—the more eyes, the better, I thought! Well, my mom and I fell in love with this one condo and we immediately informed Brent of all of the reasons we should jump on it. Brent shared his reservations with us calmly. When my mom left the room, Brent and I talked more and I could see that negotiating with a two-against-one approach didn’t make sense. I told my mom later that we would keep looking and that I could see why Brent thought what he did. My mom, quite used to me agreeing with her, looked disappointed, but respected what we decided. I also stopped asking my mom to help us look, which was hard because after inviting her in, I was leaving her out. She didn’t see the place we ended up with until things were almost finalized. But you know, it all worked out—Brent and I both love our place, and as an aside, my mom likes it too.

Keeping my priorities straight is obviously something I still work on. Sometimes I forget to keep Brent up at the top. The difference is that my priorities have changed and now I just have to remember them. Before, I thought my priorities were fine the way they were.

As Janice spoke of, how would we know that we have really forsaken, again in relative terms, our parents? If our partner doesn’t feel like she or he is #1, he or she likely is not (unless they are truly crazy—they’d be in the best position to judge). If we are married and we find ourselves constantly needing to consult our parents on every major decision, we have not left them. If we always need the approval of our parents for the things that we do, we have not left them. If your spouse has a conflict with your parents and you always side with them, you have not left them. If there is conflict between your spouse and your parents and you are always neutral, you have not got far enough away.

If you hate your parents and what drives you is to do things that would irk your parents, and so you do the opposite of what they want you to do just to get back at them, you have not left them. So, we forsake our parents and we even forsake our children in a relative sense.

Biblically speaking, when we marry someone, that person becomes more important than our parents and even our children. The best thing that parents can do for their children is to love each other first. That creates a sense of stability and safety for the child. If the son becomes his mother’s surrogate spouse, that puts far too much pressure on him. He’s just a boy. We often tend to think of abusing a child as not loving a child enough, but ironically it is also possible to abuse a child by “loving” the child too much, becoming dependent on the child…

As I said, in the introduction Paul in Ephesians 5 is talking seemingly about marriage, but at the end of that passage about marriage he ends up talking about Christ’s relationship with the church. Marriage is really a metaphor for our most important relationship, our relationship with God.

Marriage is a metaphor for what our relationship with God can be like.

Marriage is not the ultimate relationship. It is a penultimate relationship and it points to our relationship with God.

In verse 32, Paul, when describing a husband and wife becoming one flesh, says this is a profound mystery or a profound revelation. He is talking about Christ and his relationship with us--the church.

The truths that Paul speaks of here, apply to marriage, but also to our more important, enduring relationship that is to our relationship with God.

It is hard to leave. It is hard to forsake. If we are married, it is hard to forsake old patterns or old priorities, our parents. Old ways are comfortable and they look attractive.

If we do commit our lives to God, it is also hard to forsake the old priorities, the old patterns which have become so engrained (which may be relationship or sex or others matters), and our parents, which we are called to do in a relative sense. (We will talk more about that in an upcoming message.)

Let me close by offering a couple of practical ways that will help us leave.

Like the children of Israel, it is our natural tendency to remember with certain nostalgia the “the good old days.” The Israelites did not have a great life in Egypt—they were slaves. They were building the pyramids. They did not have a singular day off. But as God was leading them through the desert under the leadership of Moses to the promised land, they kept grumbling and complaining about how they would have been better off in Egypt with the onions and the leeks and the meat they had. It is often our tendency to glorify the past and to compare our present with what we had in the past, but when we are married to another person or brought into union with Christ, we are called to forsake that old world which was not as great as it might be in our memory and to resist the temptation to compare.

We are also called positively to renew our mind with the perspective that comes from the Word of God. Paul says in Romans 12:1-2:

¹ Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Paul says we are to renew our mind through the Word of God. This is why reading the Word of God and meditating on the Word of God, ideally each day, is so important.

One of my philosophy professors Arthur Holmes, said “You’re not educated until you’ve read Plato’s Republic.” He wanted to motivate us to know the great classic.

You’re not going to be formed fully in Christ unless you know and internalize the sweeping truths and perspectives of the Word.

This is why it is so important to read the Word, spend time with people whose perspective reflects God’s as Janice did, and to tell each other the Gospel story as we gather Sunday after Sunday, in small groups, informally with people, at the Lord’s table, etc. so that our minds will be renewed.

As we resist the temptation to compare and as we renew our minds through the perspective of God, we will be better prepared for marriage (if God calls us to marriage) and for our everlasting union with God.