If as an adult, you are
categorized as "single," you might feel a bit left out when you walk into some
churches. With pride, the mid-morning Sunday Service in many congregations is
listed as the "family service." At announcement time, you may hear of the
couples' club, which excludes you. Perhaps, a well-intended, clumsy notice of a
"singles' club" is provided for those-not qualifying for the more standard
"couples' club."
Single or not, you happen to go
to a restaurant by yourself. You might be offered unattractive seating at a
remote table near a rest room or kitchen door. A couple or another family group
would be treated better.
Quite some time ago, a bishop
held get-acquainted dinners for diocesan clergy. During dessert, ordained
persons were asked to identify themselves, where they were serving, and to
introduce their spouses. An apparently single priest identified himself, his
parish, and sat down. The bishop, who had had too much wine, barked at the
priest, "Next year, bring a wife!" The bishop had not known whether the priest
had just sadly ended a promising relationship, whether he had a commitment to
someone otherwise busy that night, or whether he had privately vowed a life of
celibacy. But the bishop's bias was insensitively evident; the priest was not
known to him as a “family man,” and that made the bishop
uncomfortable.
As a technically single
relative, you have been invited to a family wedding. It is well known that for
a long time you have had someone very special in your life. But, the invitation
is to you alone ... without any mention of an accompanying friend, who is
certainly not regarded as "family.
You are newlyweds, an
interracial couple. Not only have all relatives been difficult to deal with,
but many friends look upon your relationship as perverse, certainly not as a
normal family.
Several years ago I watched
with horror the film "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf." Portraying wife and
husband, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton lived a violent, warlike, hellish,
so-called marriage. If such couples are discreet about their sadistic
embattlement, they would fit without question within Sunday's family service
and be eligible for the preferred couples club. Their restaurant table would be
in a nicer section. If the husband or wife happened to be ordained, the bishop
would not be thoughtlessly rude. And, both would be invited to the family
wedding - even if their hostile relationship were known!
How strange it is that we
automatically prefer certain forms of relationships without due regard
for their substance) It is as if the form "married - with children" guarantees
a high quality of family life.
For centuries the Church has
held up one ideal form of family life for all persons: life-long, monogamous,
heterosexual marriage. The other ideal (sometimes regarded even more highly)
has been the single person vowing chastity and perhaps obedience and poverty as
well. These two valued forms have endured and continue to serve God, country,
and some people very well.
But, something new has occurred
recently. In the words of a contemporary sociologist, we have moved from an
age of fate to an age of choice. We are no longer fated to fit
obediently into either celibacy or traditional marriage. As individuals have
increasingly claimed responsibility for their own informed (and sometimes
uninformed) choices, other forms of relationships have become possibilities. We
have among us (for many reasons) the single parent, the remarried. (perhaps
with children of previous marriages), married or remarried with foster or
adopted children, same-sex couples - perhaps with children, interracial
families, and unmarried couples living together.
Within a month of my arrival as
pastor of a small, rural congregation, an elderly couple asked to talk with me.
Years ago he had been divorced and she had been widowed. They had been
attending church there regularly; she was a devoted, life-long member. "Father,
we've been living together for many years. We'd like to be married; we are
committed to each other, but our social security income (our only income)
would be devastated. This is a small town, and our relationship is no secret.
The congregation accepts us warmly as a family. However, with you as our new
priest, we need to know whether you will allow us to continue to receive
Communion here."
How unsettling this era of
choice is! The traditional forms of family or of being single we have come to
cherish as the only correct structures for relationships are not being
set aside: however, they are being joined by other forms claiming or seeking
equal status. Today's parents, are uneasily aware that their young adult
children might opt for forms they disapprove of, structures that in many
circles will be trivialized, regarded as immoral, and result in discrimination.
The basic answer, the Good
News, for this dilemma comes to us from an apparently single person whose
wholesomeness was most likely suspect among his own people. Clearly not living
the conventional family model, clearly not a candidate for that bishop's
approval, Jesus Christ went to the heart of the matter. He identified his true
mother and brothers as whoever does the will of God: I am convinced that Jesus
was identifying his true family as whoever is growing in the committed,
covenant life of love and justice, the very substance of all godly living and
relationships.
Regrettably, the Christian
Church and others have done and continue to do a great disservice to countless
people by not hearing Christ. For example, some missionaries have wrecked
polygamous cultures by insisting on the form of monogamy as the only correct
structure; curious, though, isn't it, that Jesus lived in a polygamous culture
and said not one word against it. We should not be surprised; his focus was on
the substance, not the forms or structures, of human living. We
still have a long way to go to get back to basics, to apply his everlasting
Word as the rigorous, ultimate standard by which all conditions and
relationships, familiar and emerging, are to be judged. (Inso doing, the
Virginia Woolf situation would not qualify as a "family.")
By the way, that elderly couple
in the parish I served, they were invited to continue to participate fully in
the Eucharist, as are you, and as am I, as Christ's family committed to the
joyful and challenging substance of the Gospel: relationships of love and
justice.