Well, yesterday's service seemd to go pretty well, despite my incredibly high angst levels (which can be heard in my voice on the recording!), and I had lots of positive feedback from people who'd found it helpful and/or thought provoking.

So, what did I do?

I began by challenging oft heard saying that 'marriage is God's ideal' noting that Paul advocated celibacy and Jesus' singleness.  I noted that Biblical records include accounts of polygamy and concubinage, and not one instance of a rite or ceremony for marriage (I didn't mention this, but the wedding at Canna is a story about a party not a description of a service/ceremony).

I noted both that the early church saw celibacy as the ideal, and that there were no Christian marriage rites, rather local secular customs were adopted since marriage was not seen as a religious enterprise.

We moved swiftly through some church and European history, noting that there is almost no evidence of any explicit church/faith aspect to marriage before the 12th century, that most Christian traditions have no specific, mandatory rite for marriage, and that, legally a wedding in a Baptist church is a civil ceremony.  We noted that the 'love match' is a very recent invention, and that for most of history marriage had an explicitly political function.

So, against this background that says, essentially, there's no such thing as a Christian marriage per se, what might be the qualities of marriage that is Christian in character?  I used pairs of words to shape our thoughts...

• covenant not contract
• sacrifice not self-interest
• love not lust
• partnership not, necessarily or primarily, procreation

Not going to expand here on any of those, just offering them for anyone who wishes to ponder.

Still pretty whacked this morning - my day of rest and it's pouring with rain, so blogging to evade hoovering!