Intimacy: Who do you love? - Do you choose to love your significant other?

FOCUS SCRIPTURE

Matthew 1:18-25

DAILY BYTE

If you are reading this and are not in a romantic or married relationship, please keep reading anyway! Sometimes we have the option in life of engaging in such relationships - sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we choose them and sometimes we choose to live without them for a time or even for our whole lives. However, even if our relationships are not romantic, every person is called to choose to be in relationship with others, and the vision of marriage the scriptures present can inform all of the ways that we love each other. The scriptures describe the church (thereby all of us in it) as the bride of Christ, and so in a very real way, our “most significant other” is Jesus. Our culture’s understanding of romance and marriage is often bogged down in pop culture’s stereotypes of what relationships should look, which means our focus is diverted away from the real question: Do you really love the person you say you love - the most significant other person in your life, and if you do love that person, how do you love them?

People who’ve been married for a while often say there’s no question that real, committed, intimate love is a choice that must be made newly each day. For those who make this choice, stepping over that threshold is a huge crossroad. It’s one that we usually choose to celebrate in a big way! But in the midst of the hoopla, in the Methodist tradition a wedding service begins with a crucial “Declaration of Purpose.” What, after all, is the purpose of vowing to love someone for as long as you live? Within the Declaration of Purpose, it is written that the choice for marriage is “not to be entered upon or thought of lightly or selfishly; but responsibly and in the love of God.” We often enter into relationships flippantly and self-seekingly. Once when considering the future of a potential relationship, a very wise person said to me, ‘You would never go into a car lot, glance at the cars in a row, point out the one that looks best to you, and buy it without taking the time to look under the hood, research the safety features, ask about fuel consumption, etc. And yet, so often, we make the biggest decision of our life - choosing a life partner - by using just that method.” We too often seek after what we want on the surface level in other people, and the minute what we see that’s pretty in them fades, our “love” for them fades, as well. But when we read the story from Matthew for today, we see that when Joseph struggled with the choice of whether or not to marry and to love Mary, God called him to look beyond the surface level of her appearance and her situation to see that there was actually Christ - God - growing within her - that when he married her, he also would marry the powerful movement of the Holy Spirit within her. And he chose that. He chose to commit himself to her and also all that God would do through her. He chose to trust that through their union, God would work more powerfully than through their separation. And so he gave himself to her and to God. The Declaration of Purpose in the marriage vows says that such a union is “compared to the union of Christ and his Church, for he loved the Church and gave himself for it.”

How do you love the person or people to whom you are committed through marriage and through Christ? Do you choose to love them in a way that encourages the growth of Christ and the movement of the Holy Spirit within them and through your relationship? Or do you approach your relationship in a way that is selfish - that seeks your own gain and fulfilment before the fulfilment and wholeness of the other? Do you sacrifice for them, as we see in the stories from scripture for this week, intimate love with Christ and others cannot occur without sacrifice...

Questions for reflection:

1. If you have chosen marriage with another person, are you actively choosing to love them each and every day? How might your love be expressed more fully? What acts or attitudes of selfishness might you need to lay aside in order for Christ to grow more fully within the person you love and within your relationship?
2. If you have not chosen marriage, or simply are not married at this point in your life, in what ways does Christ’s love for the church inform your views of marriage and love in general? How might your choices about the people and church you love be affirmed or shaped by the way that Joseph loved Mary and that Christ loves the Church?

PRAYER

Pray today this prayer, adapted from the marriage liturgy in The Methodist Service Book:

Praise God, King of the Universe, who has created all things, and us in his own image. Praise God, who has created courtship and marriage, joy and gladness, feasting and laughter, pleasure and delight, love, unity, peace and fellowship. Praise God, who has sent Jesus Christ to save us from sin and redeem our love from selfishness, and has given us the Holy Spirit to make us one with each other and with him. Praise God.
Amen.