All Saints Episcopal Church, Thomasville
Trinity 11, 2006

'Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God...For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh."  (St. Mark 6)
 

There is a famous line (the opening line) from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, in which the author states that "happy families are all alike, while unhappy ones are each different in their own way."  I was reminded of this in a book review of a new novel titled:  "Tolstoy Lied" by Rachel Kadish, an author I'm unfamiliar with.  The heroine of this story (Tracy) is a 33 year-old lapsed Jewish single college professor living in New York.  Over time she falls in love with a lapsed Christian fundamentalist, and in the course of the story (and in the process of dealing with her own experiences in and out of love), she comes to the conclusion that Tolstoy was not only wrong, but he lied when he wrote that "happy families are all alike:"  hence the title "Tolstoy Lied".

In "Anna Karenina", Tolstoy exalts the pure but difficult love between Kitty and Levin against the adulterous love of Anna -- a love driven by nothing but her search for happiness.   According to Tracy, "There's a deep, long-running bias against literature about happiness.  A cultural mistrust of anything but tragedy... Anyone who tries to take happiness seriously (like Anna Karenina) is belittled.  Tolstoy is just my symbol for the problem."

"Happy families are all alike, while unhappy ones are each different in their own way."  This is the Tolstoy this new author is dealing with.  And yet, at least according to the reviewer, her heroine seems to have misunderstood Mr. Tolstoy.  That is, the heroine in "Tolstoy Lied" comes to the rather sober and quite correct understanding of how difficult -- and yet worthwhile -- it is to achieve love and happiness in a world filled with envy, misunderstanding, self-centeredness, and just plain bad luck.  (A perfect description of Kitty and Levin's relationship in Tolstoy's novel.)  "People," Tracy notes, "misunderstand happiness.  They think it's the absence of trouble.  That's not happiness, but luck.  Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble."

And nothing I've ever read or observed lately about happiness could be more correct than that:  "Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble."  Tracy goes on to say that since not two people have the same trouble, that therefore no two happy people are happy in the same way.

 And that may very well be the case, one which I don't think Tolstoy would take issue with.  Again, his point is also that happy families really do have this one thing in common:  that is, they have the ability (like his heroes Kitty and Levin) to live well alongside trouble.  Tolstoy would never be so stupid to claim that every couple has the same trouble to deal with.

He simply makes the case, and does so quite powerfully, that Kitty and Levin (along with every other happy couple), are able to be happy because they not only live well with trouble, but they actually expect trouble.  Anna runs away from her marriage because she has the starry idea that happiness means the absence of trouble.

 To prevent such tragedies St Paul tells every couple here this morning to submit ourselves one to another to the fear of God.  Submit yourselves one to another under the Providential Hand of God remembering that the world is far greater, far more serious, and far more terrible than any two of us.

Every time Kathy and I have encountered a bump in the road -- and believe me it’s happened more than once -- I've tried (not always successfully) to remember Humphrey Bogart's wonderful line to Ingrid Bergman at the end of "Casablanca":  "This it doesn't take much to see that the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this wretched world.  Some day you’ll understand that."

And maybe one day I will better understand that.  The world is far stronger and far more terrifying than I'll ever be able to appreciate -- which is why God ordained that we not journey through it alone, but with someone else, submitting ourselves one to another in the fear of God -- under the Providential Hand of God. Obviously this passage has to do with Holy Matrimony, but before I say anything else we need to make one thing perfectly clear.  St. Paul, no matter how difficult or headstrong he may seem at times, is not saying that wives should allow themselves to be treated like doormats.  Nor does he mean that husbands have any reason to act like tyrants.  If Paul says that wives should submit to their husbands, he also says that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave His life for Her.  And he prefaces this by telling us to submit to each other.

His point is to hold up the image of two individuals becoming one flesh.  When we read about how wives should submit and husbands should love, he's using the same language as in the wedding vows where husbands plight their troth and wives give their troth.  Married couples are vowing to hold up the image of the two individuals becoming one flesh.  That is, when we read these words (plighting and giving and submitting) we need to think of them not only in the promissory sense, but in the physiological sense.  Because it is the physiological, physical, and willful acts of love which leads to the emotional, spiritual, and affectional aspect of marriage.

Further when marriages are consummated (as well as reconsecrated literally and figuratively) with the couple submitting themselves to each other, the individuals are in fact saying to each other that each is an incomplete being without the other.   The two shall be one flesh.  And the two need constantly to be re-constituted as one flesh.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother -- in order that he and his new bride may submit themselves one to another in the fear of God -- and learn what real happiness is all about.

 I want to make two more points about our marriage vows, and hopefully they will relate to the idea that happy couples have the ability to live well alongside trouble.

I don't for a moment presume to present myself in front of you all, not to mention in front of Kathy as the ideal husband.  Fr. Ralston used to say how anyone who would dare to say anything at all about love is a fool, including St. Paul.  What he meant is that no two loves are alike, and that what might work swimmingly for one marriage could be absolutely dreadful in anyone else's -- and vice versa.

 Nevertheless, since we don’t really get the opportunity to preach that much about marriage, it's helpful I think to remember just two things about our vows.  Primarily, the marriage vows are there for our benefit.  They are not meant to be constricting, but absolutely freeing.  Just as I find my true freedom by not exercising my rights but by serving God.  I find my true freedom in my marriage by doing what I can to take care of Kathy and the children.

If we approach -- or when we revisit our vows (which we really ought to do from time to time especially when we witness the vows of other couples); if I correctly approach and appropriate the words:  "Till death us do part", I really am freeing myself.  The words may sound frightening if not mechanical -- and to some folks they make love seem mechanical.  But real affection of the heart comes from doing for each other even and especially when the flame of infatuation has died out.  Those words remind us that when trouble strikes, the solution is not to assume that you’re unhappy, and therefore split and remarry.  The solution is to resubmit.

 The Spanish author Gabriel Garcia Marquez describing the mindset of a bride at the turn of the last century, writes how she understood that the words:  "till death us do part" were foreseen not only in the laws of God but in the laws of man as well.  And that from the moment she spoke them, all her doubts vanished.  She could accomplish without remorse what had to be done -- in her case to banish forever the emotional tug of her old boyfriend.  Such an idea might seem somewhat farfetched to us a century later, but it's not at all unrealistic.  That is, throughout her marriage, her vows reminded her that there was no way out.  Yet she never thought of that fact as constricting, but as freeing.  This is, the vow allowed her to live happily alongside trouble.  "Till death us do part."  Rather than imprisoning us, those words ought to loose us.  The same principle applies in the prayer we just prayed -- that we find our true freedom not in doing whatever we want, but by serving God -- whose service is perfect freedom. 

 The second and final thing I want to say about the vows, is that the Church would not make us take a vow "till death us do part", if She did not expect us to encounter trouble from time to time.  The vow to stay together and to submit to each other, assumes that there will be times when one or both want to call it quits.

In that same novel, ("Love in the Time of Cholera") Mr. Marquez describes that the mindset of the husband on Matrimony:  "an absurd invention that could exist only by the infinite grace of God.  It was against all scientific reason (the thought) for two people who hardly knew each other, with no ties at all between them, with different characters, different upbringings, and even different genders, to suddenly find themselves committed to living together, to sleeping in the same bed, and to sharing two destinies that perhaps were fated to go in opposite directions.  Marriage can exist properly, only by the infinite grace of God -- which really is the understanding of the Church.  I might add that the character was a splendid and faithful churchman.

"He would also say (and never hesitated to say) that 'The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.'"  (Author's privilege of hyperbole?)  (There's more than a fair amount of truth in that.)  The author continues:  "The only possible bond for them was something as improbable and fickle as love, that is if there was any love, and in their case there was none when they married.  And when they were on the verge of inventing love, fate had done nothing more than confront them with the reality of how difficult it all was.

 I know I'm going to get clobbered by some who would say there's no romance in this marriage.  But they're wrong.

Two totally different people with the same stoic but realistic mindset:  a mindset which allowed them to live lovingly and devotedly and more than happily to each other, even through a severe case of adultery -- throughout the greater part of fifty years.  Throughout those fifty plus years through give and take, volley and parry, submitting and forgiving, yinning and yanging, they learned not only that they were not going to change each other, but that was OK.  Over the years they both reached the same conclusion by different paths:  that this was their way to live -- and that it was not possible to live together in any other way, or love in any other way, and that nothing in this world was more difficulty than love.  They came to the rather sober but quite correct understanding of how difficult -- yet how worthwhile it is to achieve love and happiness in a world filled with envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. 

 Again, the Church would not make us take a vow, if She did not expect trouble to make us want to break that vow.  The presence of the vow assumes the presence of trouble.  And couples that understand this and who expend the energy to digest this quite logical and seemingly unmistakable fact, are invariably happy in their marriages.  Further, they don't compare their fortunes and misfortunes with the marriages of other couples.  Instead, they are happy in their own way, knowing that what might work great for someone else isn’t necessarily going to work well for them -- and vice versa.  Such couples realize that the absence of trouble is not happiness, but luck.  They understand that true happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble -- and that is what makes them all alike.

 This week I received from a priest in the diocese a questionnaire about my life (we all received one and they’re going to do something with it at the Clergy Conference).   One of the questions was:  "Where did you grow up?"  After completing the bulk of the sermon I changed my answer to "Where did you grow up?"  I deleted "Savannah, Georgia" and replaced it with:  "in my marriage to Kathy."  At least that's where I think I've grown the most -- which is what we're supposed to do in marriage.  I recall where another priest has said with brutal honesty that marriage will make a man out of a boy and a woman out of a girl like nothing else can -- not even the Marine Crop.

 But if Kathy has been fortunate enough that in thirty plus years I've become somewhat more of a man, I have in fact become a happier man.  I think she is a happier woman.  And if that truly is the case, then the only reason and cause is what we've done what we can to submit ourselves to each other in the good times and the troubled times -- especially in the troubled times.  Happy families really are all alike.  They have the ability to live well alongside of trouble.  Both of us could do more; both of us could do better -- certainly I could.  We are by no means perfect, but we’ve found what works -- and it works at least OK for us.

 The final phrase of  our marriage rite is the priest’s prayer and blessing that the couple "may so live together in this life, that in the world to come they may have life everlasting."  It does not mean that if we behave in our marriage that God will send us to Heaven.  What it means is that the better we are in our marriages, the more we will enjoy Heaven.  This is precisely why God ordained marriage.  This is, Holy Matrimony is our spiritual, emotional, and moral training ground on earth for our life in the Kingdom of Heaven.  And the more we submit ourselves and our marriages to that simple fact, the happier we'll be in this life as well as in the next.