AD CLERUM - September 2005

My Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ

In recent years the concept of "prayer warriors" has gained tremendous popularity. It is a lay movement of women and men who believe in the power of prayer and commit themselves to soaking the church and the world in prayer. Of course, this is not new - throughout history both church and world have been carried by the prayers of those, usually in monastic orders, who have devoted themselves to such prayer.

It is not only Christians who pray for God's blessing on the church and wider world. Many other faiths offer similar prayers. But not all pray for blessing. Almost a decade ago, when I was ministering to persons involved in Satanism, I was told that they pray fervently for the breakdown of all that is good and that they had targeted for specific prayer the institution of marriage, and especially Christian marriage.

That conversation came back to me as I read the statistics published recently by Stats SA. Although there has been a drop in the overall number of divorces in 2003, Gauteng still managed to top the national list with 10 852 divorces - a figure more than double that of the next highest province (Western Cape), over 5 times higher than all the remaining provinces, and 22 times higher than the lowest province (Northern Cape).

The figures are staggering; not just because Gauteng accounts for almost 40% of the total, but because that number is simply the tip of the iceberg of those whose lives are torn apart in the conflict. It is said that for every divorce 7-10 lives are significantly affected, with scars that can run deep and affect successive generations. And that figure does not even begin to reflect the even greater number of people whose marriages are in trouble and who, in the words of Thoreau, "lead lives of quiet desperation."

One of the world's leading ethicists, Stanley Hauerwas, says that whereas kinship served as the unifying principle of earlier forms of society, the modern social order rests on impersonal, rational and "universalistic" forms of solidarity which have undermined marriage and stripped it of almost all its functions. As a result marriage, instead of being the glue of social life has become the place of refuge from its pressures. The consequence, he says, is that husbands and wives tend to put all their emotional needs for fulfilment into their marriage and blame each other when their needs are not met. In a society where happiness is the goal of life, this can have disastrous consequences.

Hauerwas goes on to say, "The romantic perversion should therefore remind us that if we are to sustain marriage as a Christian institution we will not do so by concentrating on marriage itself. Rather it will require a community that has a clear sense of itself and its mission and the place of the family within that mission." Our Diocesan Vision gives us a clear understanding of the kind of community we are called to be. I want, therefore, to offer some thoughts on the place of marriage within that community.

St Paul tells us that marriage is rooted in the mystery of God. This means that marriage does not begin with the exchange of vows, nor even with the age-old story of "boy meets girl." At the very least it begins for us at the moment of our baptism; at that point in which we are born again through grace and drawn into the ongoing, unfolding of God's purpose for our life. Christian marriage then becomes much more than a social or legal contract; it is an integral part of baptismal life, a working out of God's plan and purpose for us. It is not so much a matter of me choosing someone, but of God giving someone to me to help me live "in Christ" and to serve God faithfully while growing into the image and likeness of God's Son.

Marriage, therefore, is truly sacramental; a channel of God's love and grace mediated through God's chosen person. In other words, an integral part of my vocation in life is to help Susan grow and become all that God desires her to be, and part of her vocation in life is to help me grow. Each is given to the other to be a blessing for the other. This has enormous consequences for us. If Susan truly desires only what is best for me, then I can no longer simply dismiss and disregard those uncomfortable things she has to say about me. Instead I must seek to hear what God is saying to me through her. She is called to bless me and grow me and if she is serious about her calling, then I must be serious about it too. Our lives are inextricably bound together in a threefold chord; we in God, God in us. We live in God and in each other in a relationship of dying to self so that God's life might be made visible in us in each other. And the goal of life becomes not simply the pursuit of happiness, but salvation.

Marriage thus becomes an integral part of vibrant Christian community. We experience community in and through each other and become within that covenant relationship a holy place in which God dwells, and in which our children, friends, and even strangers can experience the love of God. And it is that experience of community born of the giving of one to the other that spills over into the wider Christian community in selfless love and blessing.

I know that much of what I have said may sound pious, sentimental, unrealistic and exclusive, but I believe that what I have said is fundamentally true. I recognise that not all are called to marriage as a part of their baptismal life, and that others who desire it are denied it. And I know why fairy tales are called fairy tales - because no one ever gets married and lives happily ever after. Marriage is hard and, at times, painful work. But it is, nevertheless, a channel of grace in our world and in our lives and we will not recover a workable theology of marriage until we recognise that truth and know its rightful place within our baptismal life.

While marriage is seen as a place where my needs are met and my happiness is assured, it will continue to struggle. But when I am able to accept Susan as God's gift to me for my growth and blessing and know myself to have been given as a blessing for her, then our marriage becomes a means of grace and an experience of life in Christ. Christ in me, the hope of glorious things to come for Susan, Christ in her, the hope of glorious things for me.

Marriage is under attack from many quarters - secular as well as spiritual - and there are many prophets of doom. But as St John reminds us: "Children, you belong to God's family, and you have the mastery over these false prophets because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world."

May you have mastery over the false prophets of our world.

+Brian

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