Living Word

It is a pleasure to preach the Word of God at a wedding, and especially on such a joyful occasion for our church community. We rejoice because we are told that “he who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favour from the Lord.” We have just read the account of the creation of man and woman in Genesis 2. It is a text that is full of significance, full of meanings that we all find inscribed in our very being, in our bodies, and in our minds.

In the account of Creation in Genesis 1, we are told, in a regular sort of rhythm, “And God saw that it was good.” Every time God finishes some act of creation, there is the evaluation, like punctuation before the next sentence: “And God saw that it was good.” Here, in Genesis 2, God has made the man from the dust of the ground; he has breathed life into his nostrils; he has taken him and put him in the garden; he has given him the job of working and keeping it; he has given him permission to eat from all the trees except one; and he has warned him of the consequences of eating from that one. In short, God has set man over the creation, made him His vice-regent, charged him with his job, given him his marching orders — and now, suddenly, just when we might think that everything was perfect, there is the declaration that “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Shocking in its starkness.

Not good, because by himself, the man cannot fulfill the calling to which God has called him; cannot fill the earth and subdue it; cannot produce culture; cannot properly rule the world as God’s image. He is radically deficient because he has no helper.

We live in an age that tries to teach us that men and women do not need each other; that men can “go their own way;” that “all women are like that;” that women need a man the way a fish needs a bicycle; that “anything a man can do, a woman can do better”; that marrying is a fool’s bargain, a way for men to lose half their net worth. The sexes are estranged from each other: men think women hate them and have rigged the system against them; women think men look down on them and want to abuse them. The two sexes look at each other with suspicion, fear, and resentment. What this has done to the Canadian marriage rate, I think we all know. It makes people fear to say those words, “I do,” let alone in a context where they are vowing to be faithful, “forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live” and to live together “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.” That all sounds frightfully permanent, a loss of one’s life as an individual.

And it is. That is the point. Against all this modern misandry and misogyny and individualism, the Bible teaches us that man and woman in fact made for each other; that in her husband a woman takes up the task of ruling the home and building her household; that for his wife, the man will strive and toil and try to bless her with his labour; that in marriage husbands and wives die to themselves, and in losing their lives, they will find it. As the Greek poet Homer said in the Odyssey, when Odysseus speaks to the princess of the Phaeacians,

“And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:

       husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.

  200  No finer, greater gift in the world than that . . .

       when man and woman possess their home, two minds,

       two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,

       a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.”

Homer is right, in spite of his paganism. “No finer, greater gift in the world.” And it is a gift. But not from the gods. From God! “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” (Proverbs 18:22, ESV)

For God is the author of marriage. He invented it, he made men and women with all the amazing correspondences between them. When God makes the woman in Genesis 2, he puts Adam into a deep sleep, a coma even; the Hebrew word is a tardema, which could well be translated “death-sleep.” Adam, in other words, virtually dies, and that is how he gets his bride. Jesus, the new Adam, actually died; and that is how he gets his bride.

When he sees her, he recognizes her, that she is not one of the animals, but that she is “a helper fit for” him. There is a fittingness, a profound correspondence. It isn’t just about sex and body parts; it is about the way the male face differs from the female face; the male voice and the female voice; the male mind and the female mind; the male way of looking at the world and acting within it, and the female way. Adam looks on Eve and hear the human music played on a different instrument, and realizes that between him and her, there is a harmony. That is what the Greek word harmonia means: it is from the verb harmozo, to fit together, like joinery that makes wood into furniture. Because the woman is “fitting for” the man, there emerges something greater than the mere sum of the parts.

Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19 appeals to our text today, Genesis 2, to prove to the Pharisees that “What God has joined together, let not man separate”, because “they are no more two, but one flesh.” An ontological change takes place here. Two individuals walk into a church, say words to each other, exchange rings, and then one flesh — one new family — walks out of the church.

Adam’s declaration over Eve reflects the joy and astonishment of discovering what was missing: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” At last! After all those other animals he inspected, he finds at the end of the line the one who is suited for him. And she is made from him — from his rib, that is, his own bone and flesh. She is not made from the dust of the ground, but from Adam; part of the man was removed, and is restored in beauty and glory as woman. This is why a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to, be united to, his wife, and the two will become one flesh — precisely in accordance with the Biblical pattern of death and resurrection, exile and return, losing one’s life and finding it. As the internet joke about McDonald’s fast food says, “The McRib is back!”, to which Eve says, “Stop calling me that!” When Adam’s rib is restored to him, it has been transformed and made glorious. That, by the way, is the very good reason why it is the arrival of the bride that is the event we all wait for in suspense; that is why the bride is arrayed in white: she is glorified and presented to the bridegroom. When Christ was crucified, he died, and entered into an even deeper sort of tardema, and then from his side poured forth water and blood. And we sing about it in “The Church’s One Foundation” — “she is his new creation by water and the word.” For Jesus is the new Adam, and the Church is the new Eve, the bride who is precisely fitted for him. And she is presented to him in glory.

And that, in short, is why weddings are glorious occasions. Erik and Alexandra are stepping into roles that are bigger than they are: in their life together, they are to act out the parts of Christ and the Church, and thereby show the world the truth of the gospel. This is a powerful thing that God is about to do today. You cannot fulfill it in your own strength. But then, you will not have to. For God who created marriage and makes you one will also support and sustain you. The author of the gift of marriage will also gladly give you all you need to make your life together a testimony of his grace.