Marriage

At Morning Prayer last Thursday it seemed to me that the prophet Amos in Amos 4:1 was actually likening the wealthy, drunken, poor-oppressing wives of Israel to Samaritan cows. Really? Are we allowed to say that sort of thing – a biblical prophet calling women ‘cows’? I rushed home to look into this further in a studied commentary on Amos, and yes it seems that Amos is indeed likening women to cows and my commentator adds that the striking image of the cow is linked to the overt voluptuousness of the women of Israel. This of course left me even more confused and wondering when was the last time I last saw a voluptuous cow? And if I did consider a cow voluptuous might I need strapping down and medicating immediately? (Incidentally a balanced Amos is pretty hard on fathers and sons drinking and sleeping around too. Amos 2:7,8)

A more glorious image of a man and woman, wife and husband, is found in Revelation where the bride and husband in their beauty and passion is the image that St John uses to give us an idea of what Christ and the heavenly Jerusalem will look like. At its most glorious and most intimate a marriage says something about eternity, and about Christ.

This is all a way of coming in the back door and allowing me to raise in advance the subject of marriage and relationships, coming our way in our 1 Peter series on Sunday February 3^rd.  That Sunday at our 10.30am and 4pm services, using a simple liturgy, I’d like us all to corporately express our regret for any failure and shortcomings in our marriages and to renew our commitment to working together for holier and stronger marriages. I’d also like to invite those who aren’t married to participate both as an act of solidarity and  also as an intercessory action for others. Do I think that marriages are particularly bad at Malmesbury Abbey? No. But in a world all too familiar with the painful breakdown of marriages and divorces we can look back honestly over the last few years and say with sympathy, not judgement, that the church is not an immunisation from the complexity and fragility of contemporary western marriages.

Nevertheless, in the reality of our relationships we are called to be holy, distinctive, different. We proclaim that grace is sufficient in weakness. So I invite us all to look back with gratitude and openness and prepare of a time of rededication and renewal in our relationships on February 3^rd.

(NB In January 2012 I argued from Ephesians 5 & 6 for mutual submission in marriage, and against male headship. As I won’t be covering this ground again in detail, should you wish you can read it online on my blog or pick up a copy from the back of the Abbey.)