Is Marriage All There Is?
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Scriptures: Matthew 19:2-12
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Summary: In the fourth sermon of our series Strange New World, Bobbi explores partnership and marriage. Cultivate relationships that can flourish.
What’s God got to do with it?: Bobbi starts by sharing a story about weddings from her own journey and then surveys the scriptures, highlighting a variety of marital and relational arrangements. We can encounter God and learn more about marriage and love by engaging with the people around us, rather than relying on the text alone for clarity about our complicated relationships.
Healing or wrecking: When asked about the law regarding divorce, Jesus presents an ideal. He calls back to Genesis and speaks to an ideal of a creative relationship rising up in a culture that is constantly changing.
Elevated or subordinated: The conversation continues, and Bobbi shows how Jesus’ references to the law of Moses and to eunuchs should expand our imagination for relationship and love. Bobbi says, “Jesus blesses union and then reorders it.” God has more in mind for a new kind of family in the kingdom than just what is contained within culture.
Love infrastructure: Where does this leave us? Bobbi points us to the concept of “pocket parks,” where little bubbles of restoration throughout a city can reduce crime. Likewise, an expansive view of relationships, ones where the flourishing of love, comfort, healing, and abundance, can restore the world around us by countering pettiness and scarcity in culture.
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Community is shaped by the conversations we share. These questions and reflections are a tool to help you meaningfully engage with the themes of this week's teaching.
Connect:
Q: What’s your favourite rom-com movie or real-life love story?
Q: What do you like about it?Share: Bobbi outlines how some of the Pharisees questioned Jesus about the law regarding divorce, because it was a topic of debate at the time, but Jesus reframed the conversation by pointing toward an ideal.
Bobbi says,“It’s important that we keep what Jesus is saying in perspective. Jesus isn’t a marriage guru. He’s speaking to Pharisees about laws they argue over. Laws given in strictly patriarchal contexts to couples joined together in their youth through arranged marriages within antiquity’s shorter lifespans.
And still, an ideal rises up through the cracks in culture to say at least this much: God loves it when we make something creative with the relationships in our lives.
Culture will change, love expands to fill it up.”Q: How does upholding an ideal help centre your view of relationships in a culture where relationships are fraught with challenges?
Reflect: Reflect on Bobbi’s words about Jesus’ expansive view of unions and families,
“Jesus blesses union and then reorders it.
He says that God has more in mind for unions than just two people, in his culture, arranged or betrothed to one another for marriage. God has more in mind for just two people, in our culture, marrying because they’ve fallen in love.
I think what Jesus is saying here is that the love of God, which he embodied, cannot and should not be contained.Marriage honoured and lived as sacred cannot contain the love of God.
Unmarried disciples committed to the kingdom cannot contain the love of God.
Any type of eunuch, whether real or just acting like one, cannot contain the love of God.Jesus shows us that he is weaving together a new family. One where those baptized are your sisters and brothers.”
Q: Do you agree with Bobbi’s words; does this view of relationships work?
Engage: Engage with the idea of “pocket parks.” Bobbi shared the idea of these safe spaces—rundown and dangerous areas of a city transformed into parks. In turn, the city discovered a stark reduction in violence and criminal activity. Consider this as a metaphor for thinking about marriage and relationships being about more than just our own happiness or our own household.
Q: How might your small acts of relational care, kindness, reconciliation, vulnerability, spread outward from your intimate relationship and transform your broader community?
Take away: What is your takeaway from the message or today’s conversation?
Prayer from the sermon:
Loving God,
Risen Christ,
Supportive Spirit,
This strange new world we live in
Is one where you do not stop making what is old,
or broken,
or misguided, into something new.
Resurrection is taking up space in our love lives,
whatever our relationship status might be.
As we go today, spark in us a renewal of love.
Enter the places where we are hurt or worn down, and heal us of all that harms us.
Help us to get healthy when it comes to our relationships.
And give us, good Spirit, the company we need.
Amen. -
CALL TO WORSHIP Psalm 121
MUSIC Curated by Kevin Borst
Josh Baldwin - Stand In Your Love
Hillsong Worship - Who You Say I Am
John Mark McMillian - Heart's Delight
Bethel Music - Holy Song
SERIES BUMPER
Strange New World
