The Mystery of Union

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. "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—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.  (Ephesians 5:25-33) In Russian novelist Dostoevsky's book, The Brothers Karamazov, there is a line that goes like this: "The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular."   Many of us are full of great ideals of who and what a spouse should be and do—or the church, or humanity.  We aspire for our society to be one of love for all instead of hate for any.  We hold up ideals like a happy marriage where our spouse always has time and capacity for us and with whom we never fight.  We seek a church where everyone gets along, holds the same beliefs, and serves shoulder to shoulder in common purpose.  But, the more we love our ideals of what the church, society, marriage, or people ought to be, the less likely we are to love any particular person we meet in the church, society, or even our marriage.  Frankly, none of them can possibly measure up. A good example is the current claims flowing across the pages of the Banner and elsewhere in our denominational discourse that suggest that for the sake of our strong ideals on marriage, there is no possible way that we can remain together in the church with other Christians who accept same-sex marriage.  This always strikes me as ironic in light of Ephesians 5.  The mysterious one-flesh union Paul is ultimately alluding to is the union of Christ and his body, the church.  "What God has joined together, let no one separate."  But for the sake of our ideals on marriage, we are ready to tear apart the greater mystery-of-union that is the body of Christ, of which marriage at its best is only an image and foretaste.  It seems to me that we have missed the point of this passage entirely. Jesus came in the flesh so that all of these ethereal ideals about "God's love" and "holiness" might be made concrete and particular among real sin-broken persons with names and faces.  Paul alludes to this loving way of Jesus as he invites us too, to make our love concrete and particular in what for many is the most basic, personal, and daily relationship of our lives: marriage. Loving our neighbour—even our spouse—as our own self requires surrendering our selfishness and our ideals for who the other ought already to be.  We have to get past these so that we can meet the person in front of us as they are: stained, wrinkled and blemished.  I promise you: they are not ideal.  But they are the concrete, personal, and particular one—wrinkles and all—to whom we have become united and through whom we will learn what it means to give ourselves up in love as Christ loved the church. We err when we assume divorce or church division is the only way forward to the radiant ideals or holiness we seek.  This would be as if Christ came to earth, saw our blemishes, and decided to turn right around and abandon us, keeping his holiness to himself because we just didn't meet the ideal.  It doesn't work.  The cart is on the wrong side of the horse.   Jesus's love reveals a better way—he kept his commitment to us in love, despite the blemishes inherent in his church: "while we were still sinners, he [gave himself up] for us" in love (Romans 5:8).  It is the commitment—the mystery of union—practiced daily in love among the particular people we live and worship with that gives context to the feeding, care, and cleansing that slowly (and with much difficulty) brings forth the ideal within the body.  Not the other way round.   I think then, rather than loving our ideals of a spouse or of the church, the call is to love instead what we have been given: a real spouse and a real church.  Wrinkles and all.  Trusting that in time, through the mystery of union in our church and in our marriage, "we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. [For] from him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work" (Ephesians 4:15-16).