It is to such as these

I sit underneath the shade of an oak tree in Mount Hope cemetery. Its shadow uniformly protects me as I lean against the ridges of its trunk. I look past my bent knees and see grave markers. In front of me lies Terrill Scott. Dried grass obscures his middle name, but I’m too nervous to sweep it away. I hear a woman on her cell phone, frantically walking up and down the grass rows behind me searching for someone. She says this is weird because she’s been here so many times. Her young son follows behind with a playful hop.

I am thankful for grave markers. They only reveal a name, birthday, deathday and sometimes a hopeful phrase or Scripture, but they are important. They give honor to a life. Terrill’s says “In Loving Memory Of...” The dead should be properly buried and properly remembered, not as if they were still living, but a ceremony worthy of the gift of their life.

I catch a glimpse of the boy again. He is tromping on headstone and grave-site alike. Even his mother steps heavy on the grass above the dead bodies. It doesn’t seem right to be stepping on everyone’s dead body, but it doesn’t seem that wrong either. If anything seems wrong it would be to step above someone and not know they are underneath. I am thankful for grave markers.

“To another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.””

Looking down again, next to Terrill lie the Cottner’s, sorta. Below their shared last name I read Ira E. (1889 – 1975). Next to her Mayme L. (1901 - ). She isn’t dead yet? That would make her 109 years old. Or maybe Mayme has died, but she just hasn’t arrived here yet while her grave waits. Waits for her to die, or to be buried, or for the money to move her body next to Ira. I stare down past the grass at the blank after the hyphen. I realize I have a grave waiting somewhere too. It seems distant, but real. I will die someday.

But I’m not scared. I have faith in the coming kingdom of God. I have faith that my final resting place will be a resurrection from the dead. I know that I sit on only bodies, lifeless bodies. God is the one who grants life, and life eternal. A life of
peace, not strife. Calm, not worry.

My thoughts are interrupted by the woman finally coming up to me. She asks if I have been here long? Have I seen two other men standing by a particular spot? I regrettably tell her I got here right before she did and she thanks me anyways. As she walks away her boy calls to me. He stammers through a child-like whisper, “The-flowers-are-so-pretty-and-smell-nice-in-the-water.” I look over and see a small bouquet of yellow and blue resting in a vile. He squats his body to drop his head on top of them, smiling at me as he breathes deep.

“Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

Marriage as Vocation

I grew up thinking that I would be married someday. In fact, with my parents' divorce, I was especially keen on the idea of having a family of my own. This desire drove most of my life through high school and into college. I was going to be married by 21. There wasn't any time to waste.

Then my dad moved away, and I began searching out Christianity for myself. I started to truly understand what I meant when I said that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. My favorite worship songs were about surrender. I surrendered much at the foot of the cross initially, but it took awhile to surrender my dreams of marriage and a family.

In my initial treks through the New Testament, I know I must have read Paul's admonition to be single as he is single. And I'm sure I glanced over Jesus' definitions of family being multiplied in the Spirit, not in the flesh anymore. I took evangelism seriously when I was told to commit my life to sharing the gospel, but I still confused the role of marriage in all this.

I held fast to my pre-Christian ideas that marriage is part of the life plan for everyone who is able. When I would hear about someone who was 30 or 40 years old and still had not been married, I wondered where they went wrong. And as the girls I was interested in started dating other guys, I knew my chances of landing a good one were getting slimmer everyday.

So I started reading some books to prepare myself for marriage in my time of singleness. They all said the same thing: Marriage has been a Godly institution from the very beginning, marriage is for Christians and we need to rescue its perversion from the world, Christian dating should look like courting since that's how the Old Testament Jews did it, and everything we do before we get married is in preparation for marriage so I better be real careful so I don't screw up me or someone else.

Somewhere in these books missed 1 Corinthians 7. Paul says if you were not married when you became a Christian stay that way, both males and females. And if you are married to a non-believer when you became a believer, stay married, don't seek a divorce. It would appear that Paul would disagree with all the women's gender roles I was taught in that a woman's highest calling is to be a wife and mother. And Paul doesn't seem to think any less of marriage if it's between a Christian and a non-Christian. In fact, he seems to encourage pro-creation and the passionate sex that comes in marriage to a non-believer. This strikes me as even more interesting when I think about two becoming one flesh and how Christians should treat non-Christians. What I learned from Paul is that marriage seems to be a human thing, but not necessarily a Christian thing. Now being human, Christians can get married, and Paul says this is not a sin, but should we?

And this is where I surrendered my dreams of marriage to Jesus. If I truly wished to deny myself and clothe myself if Christ, then I had to surrender every idea of what I think life is all about and submit to the leading of the Spirit. I didn't want to do this. My life felt empty and scary without the pursuit of a wife. But only in this space of mind did I actually learn anything about marriage.

What I learned is that marriage is a gift. And singleness is a gift. And as a gift, marriage is not something so much to seek for, but to receive. Think of how silly it would be if you spent all year preparing, dreaming and waiting for a big gift on your birthday. You would have probably missed out on all the other moments during the year, and imagine the shock and anger if you didn't receive the gift. Gifts are not meant to plan for. They are by nature unexpected.

But the problem with Christians is not so much that they expect to get married, but the logic that precedes. They say I want to get married and I want kids and a family. Then they send out to accomplish what they want and justify it because it's a good thing. And marriage is a good thing. But that attitude behind this is a righteous one. This attitude says this is what I want, so Lord help me. What it should say is Lord, not my will, but yours be done.

Or they say God's calling for men and women is to be husbands and wives. And in this they have misunderstood the Scriptures and evangelism. They see almost all the characters in the Bible as married and forget that this is not unique to the Bible, but to all of humanity. And if anything the Bible teaches us to be critical of fallen humanity, to be reshaped by the priorities of Christ, not the self or the world.

Now, I don't think Christians shouldn't get married. However, I do think that Christians are called to reflect on what is marriage. To pray about scriptures that tell us to leave our families behind to follow Jesus. That there won't be marriage in the kingdom of heaven, and in some ways the kingdom of heaven already arrived with Jesus. To take Paul seriously when he says he wants to spare us from the many troubles of marriage in this life.

And finally I want to conclude with what I see as the heart of the issue, in which Paul describes in verse 35 of 1 Corinthians 7...

"I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord."