Love on the Rocks

      “Love.  Twue, twue love” – come on, you know the west – “and mawige.”

       Don’t you love the movie, The Princess Bride?  If you don’t, you haven’t watched it.

       Despite the confident words of the impressive clergyman, there is no such thing as a perfect marriage.  Almost every married couple has enough problems to break up if they allow it. To have a perfect marriage you would have to have two perfect people who are also the perfect people for each other.  I don’t know anyone who can wear that label.  There are various degrees of marriage from the horrible to the quite good.   But even the best marriages have problems because people have problems and marriages are made up of people.    

       David’s marriage to Saul’s daughter Michal is on the absolute horrible end of the spectrum. 

       Last Palm Sunday when we dedicated our new sanctuary I preached on 2 Samuel 6. We talked then about David’s great joy before God as he led the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem.  But today we will look at the rest of the story – what happens when David gets home.

        David is dancing before the Lord dressed in a linen ephod – the garment worn by priests.  This ephod is so short that Exodus 20:26 prohibits the altar being built so high that steps are necessary to reach it, "so that your nakedness may not be exposed on it."  The ephod is simply not long enough to keep David covered during his joyful celebration.

       For some reason, David’s wife Michal isn’t at the service.  But when she looks out her window and sees David dancing and leaping before the Ark she despises him in her heart.

       David comes home with a cheerful heart and a desire to pronounce blessings upon one and all. But David's joy is quickly turned sour by Michal’s rage.  “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants' maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!”  

       David doesn’t have an easy time with women. He uses them and is used by them.  His relationships with women are pretty much all dysfunction without any fun.  This includes his relationship with Michal.   

       Their relationship starts back in 1 Samuel 18 – shortly after David kills Goliath.  Saul wants David on his side – but he is also afraid of David. He hears the praise song of the women, “Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands” and offers David his older daughter Merab as a wife.  He thinks, “If David is my son-in law he’ll have to fight the Philistines for me.”

       David doesn’t need a royal daughter to secure his loyalty   David is willing to serve Saul faithfully no matter what.  David is fresh from tending sheep.  So when David asks, “Who am I that I should marry the king’s daughter?” it’s not false humility.  David is humble. When the women sing their praise song David still looks over his shoulder to see which David they are talking about.  So he tells Saul that he’s not worthy to marry Merab and she is married off to someone else.

       But later Saul starts to think that he might so well to get rid of David altogether.  And he has another daughter named Michal.  From Saul’s perspective, Michal can become a snare to David and bring about his death.  And Michal is easy to use because the Bible tells us that Michal actually loves David.  

       Saul anticipates David’s, “Who am I to marry the daughter of the king?” speech.  He’s ready with an offer.  This is one of those “I can’t believe it’s in the Bible” things. Michal will become David’s wife in exchange for a bride price – in this case the foreskins of a hundred Philistines. 

        Okay.  Most guys, if their prospective father in law made such a demand would tell the girl, “I think maybe we should just be friends.”  But this request is right up David’s alley. With this gruesome bride price, David can say, “I’ve earned this.” 

       There are only five ways to separate a Philistine from his foreskin. One is to convert him to Judaism. That’s possible but not likely. The second is to ask very, very nicely. The third is to buy it.  The fourth is to incapacitate him and take it.  The fifth is to kill him and take it.  David chooses number 5. 

       Saul hopes that David will get killed in the collection process and be removed as a threat to Saul’s position.  But David succeeds in the best Hollywood fashion, “He kills the Philistines, takes the foreskins and gets the girl.”  In fact, he comes back with two hundred.  David was always an over-achiever.

       The Bible says that it then “pleased David to become the king’s son in law.”  But does it also please David to be married to Michal? The Bible is quiet on that point.  Does he love her or is she part of his growing collection of trophies – giant’s head, king’s daughter?  Is his love a counterfeit?   She loves him but does he ever love her? 

       Saul sure didn’t love her.  He is willing to use her to trap David.  He’s willing to cause the death of the man she loves.  So you can’t much blame Michal for feeling like a poker chip in a high stakes game between two alpha males.  It gets worse.

       1 Samuel 19 tells how Michal protects David when Saul sends men to kill him. She makes a fake David and puts it in their bed while David heads for the hills to live as an outlaw.

       Saul then annuls Michal’s marriage to David and marries her off to someone else.  David, for his part, collects several wives including Abigail. And when Saul dies on Mt. Gilboa, David is crowned king of Judah. 

       A few weeks ago we looked at some of the events of the civil war between Judah and the northern tribes of Israel.  Finally Abner, the power behind the throne in the north, decides it time to join forces with David. 

        What does David want for peace?  David’s only demand to Abner is that Michal be returned  to him.  He’s paid a hundred perfectly good foreskins for her and wants her back.  2 Samuel 3 has the pathetic scene of Michal’s new husband Paltiel following after Abner and his soldiers whimpering like a whipped puppy.  Abner tells him to shut up, turn around and go home.

       But at least Paltiel loves Michal enough to weep for her. To David, she is just a purchase and a political tool – a way to be connected with the family of Saul. That’s important if David is to seen as rightful king of the whole nation.  So Michal is hauled back and placed in the palace – now one of several wives.  She’s a royal princess in the harem -- a status symbol.

       This is not happily ever after for Michal. It’s not the kind of life Disney tells us princesses get to lead.   She feels used.  So you can’t much blame her for trying to get some of her own back – a little queenly dignity. 

        But now, as the Ark enters the new capital, she sees David tearing down whatever reflected glory she still has. He comes home and she lights into him. 

        Her timing isn’t the best. This is David’s high day.   He is coming home to bless his family.   Michal’s sharp words of criticism are a real disconnect with what David has just experienced.  The fight escalates quickly.

       Michal’s says that her father Saul would not have acted in such vulgar fashion. David’s reply is to remind Michal that God rejected her father and chose him instead. David’s animated display had not been intended to please Saul or Saul’s daughter, but to honor God.  “I don't care who was watching,” David continues. “God was the one before whom I was dancing. And I bet the maids you are talking about know that and honor it.” 

       Both Michal and David are right of course.  When you hear a married couple argue, you often want to intervene and try to get each of them to look at it from the other's angle, because it is often the case that both of them are right.

       From David's angle, Michal has spoiled this day by being concerned about dress code on a day for flinging such concerns to the winds. She has failed to share in the joy of this stupendous occasion.

       From Michal's angle, David has made an exhibition of himself. It would have cost nothing to put on underwear. The very fact that Israel later came to require trousers for priests shows that God believes in some discretion. And if David is really dancing before God why is he so enthusiastic about the idea of the young women admiring him?   

       David’s words about the young women are a sexual threat. “I will be glorified among the young women.  “You think I have too many wives now?  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  But you won’t see me – at least not in your bed.

      So the Bible then tells us “And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death."  After this we never hear about Michal again.  We’ll hear a lot more about David’s family life and his relationships with women.  It doesn’t get any better. 

       Is David’s marriage dysfunctional?  Yes. Very dysfunctional. Is this broken relationship God’s will?  Not at all. Gay marriage isn’t God’s will.  The Bible is clear on that.  We get to vote on that.  But neither is loveless, abusive, joyless heterosexual marriage.

       This relationship between David and Michal is very, very far from what God wants for marriage.  What God wants for marriage is spelled out in our passage from the New Testament.

       Paul writes: “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of His body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’” 

      Love is a wonderful feeling. People write songs and poems about it; Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan star in movies about it.  It sells millions of dollars worth of magazines and paperback books.

       But our Christian understanding of ‘love’ is very different from the popular version. This is illustrated by the wording of the wedding vows.  In soap opera land, when a couple gets married, the words they say to each other are “I do”. “I do” is an answer to a question about your feelings: “Do you love this person?”  

         But the vows we ask people to make are very different.  “Will you promise to be loving and faithful – not feel love but be loving -- to this person, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow in sickness and in health – no matter how you feel when you wake up in the morning – as long as you are both alive.

        The answer to that isn’t “I do” but “I will.”  Because it’s a choice.

        When you first “fall in love your heartbeat spikes to that of a jogger.  The pituitary, thyroid and adrenal glands all gear up. Electrical impulses skitter across a veneer of sweat.  Maybe you feel breathless or sick to your stomach.    So you are either in love or you are being chased by a wild animal.  The emotions are biologically hard to distinguish.

        But all of us who have long-term marriages know that, sooner or later, the intensity of those initial feelings begin to fade. When this happens, some people get worried.  They think their love for each other is dying. This is the point at which some people bail out; “I don’t love him any more”, they explain, which means, “I don’t have the same intense feeling for him that I had when we first fell in love. So I obviously married the wrong person, and I need to get out as fast as possible and find the right person.”

       But the truth is that the waning of those high intensity feelings is normal.  It doesn’t signal the end of a relationship, but rather the beginning of the next phase of the relationship. That next phase is about learning that love is a decision.

       The word ‘love’ in the Bible very rarely refers to feelings; it usually refers to actions – as in “love your enemies” and “love your neighbor.” To love someone in the Bible means to serve them, to bless them, to do good things for them, day in and day out, whether you feel like it or not. And the good news about marriage that I want to share with you is that when couples make this choice, day in and day out, something deeper and far more lasting grows inside. It’s different from the early feelings of romantic love that bring us together; it’s deeper, stronger, more stable – it’s the experience Jesus talks about in Matthew 19:5 when He says “The two shall become one flesh.”

       This is hard work.  All of us who are married know that. Because there are days when we don’t feel like delivering on the promises we make.

       I’m a naturally selfish person; I may be the only one like that here today, but I suspect not! As a naturally selfish person I’d far rather be loved than love; I’d far rather be the main character in my own play than be a servant in someone else’s. But if I take my promise seriously, it means that day in and day out I will be constantly on the look out for ways to do acts of kindness and compassion for my wife – whether practical things like doing my fair share of the work, or relational things like being there to listen and care when she needs a sympathetic ear and an arm to support her. That’s what I signed up for when I said, “I will”.  A good, lasting marriage is built on thousands of little decisions to say ‘no’ to our own selfishness and ‘yes’ to the decision to love.

       But where does the strength to do this come from?

       It comes from knowing that God designed our marriages for a purpose.  He wants to use marriage to teach us humility and true care.  In the words of Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage, “God didn’t design our marriages to make us happy but to make us holy.”  God wants to use marriage as the place where we most learn what we need to grow into His image.

       A Christian marriage stands before Jesus and says, “Use us together to build up Your kingdom and better Your world.  And along the way use our marriage to craft us into the kind of people You have called us to be.  Sanctify us through each other -- and in the process, we will root ourselves in a community of faith so we won’t forget that the vows we have taken are larger than our individual selves. We need scripture, congregation, sacrament, prayer, worship and faithful brothers and sisters in order to fulfill this heavenly calling.” 

       Marriage like this is not for wimps But God is ready and willing to help, if we are ready and willing to ask for His help.

       And recognize that Jesus Christ is in the middle of everything in your marriage. 

       Now notice I didn’t say “Put Christ in the middle.”  You don’t put Christ anywhere that He hasn’t already put Himself.    We don’t make Jesus anything that He isn’t already. 

        So I didn’t say put Christ first, as though He were a priority among your other priorities.  I am saying “Get yourself and your marriage in line with the reality of Jesus’ lordship.”

        Jesus is the middle, the center, the focus, the source, the Word.  He’s the Word who made you, who called you into existence, who holds you in His death and life, who reconciled you to God together with the whole world.  It’s His robe of righteousness that you wear like a Teflon suit of forgiveness.  It’s His innocence that God sees when He looks at you.  It’s His blessedness that is yours.  You live under the sign of His baptism.  You are citizens of His kingdom. Hear His Word together and pray together at your table.  Worship Him at work and at play.  Deal with each other and receive each other through Him.  He’s the center of your marriage, not you.

       David should have learned that.  It would have saved him and his children after him a world of hurt.