Sermon from June 17, 2001
I enjoy being a man. I do not mean that I am glad to be a man and not a woman. That would be arrogant and demeaning. I am what I am, a man, and I take pleasure in that fact. I enjoyed growing up in a neighborhood with many other boys my age with whom I played and fought and went to school and learned to drive and discovered girls.

I enjoyed being in a men's-only dorm in college, although the food in the women's cafeteria was better. I enjoyed going to an all-male seminary, where today my daughter is pursuing her own master's degree. I enjoyed season tickets to Syracuse University football games with three other guys from our church. I enjoyed standing in RFK Stadium with 50,000 other men and singing together, "Holy, Holy, Holy."

Men and boys do certain things together better than they do them with women and girls. I assume that women and girls experience the same thing in their mysterious sorority. Something precious would disappear from life, if gender segregation ceased altogether. Men have things to talk about that they will not talk about, when women are present. Men of course can talk great nonsense. We love to hear the sound of our own voices, but we are none the worse for that. And at times men communicate with each other at a level of inticmacy that, I think, would startle their wives and girl friends.

Over the past three decades or so a fundamental question has begun to disturb male psyches: What does it mean to be a man? Nothing I or anyone else says will make that question go away. It is a kind of standing issue that Western culture poses to humanity for the foreseeable future. We men feel its force and find ourselves without ready answers. My own license to speak to the issue comes from two realities.

For one thing I stand in a bit of a privileged position from which to consider the question. I spent the first part of my life in a world from which that question was absent. I have spent the next part of my life in a world in which that question was very present. The curious experience of having a foot in both worlds has worked in my personality in such a way as to produce a certain skepticism about the conventional wisdom of both.

I can feel the justice of the questions about men raised by feminism. I feel the force, and even the justice, of the questions raised by homosexuality. And I feel something approaching despair about the way in which great numbers of men have mistreated and sometimes abandoned their wives and children during the last 30 years. But none of these social realities persuade me to accept the dominant ideology of feminists, homosexuals or their sponsors in the mass media.

On the other hand, I will not and would never disown the power of growing up in a neighborhood three blocks long, where every household but one consisted of both husband and wife with an occasional grandparent. I cannot forget the shame occasioned by the alcoholic father and the homosexual boy and the family whose father and mother spearated on more than one occasion due to what people delicately referred to as "family problems." But none of those social realities have persuaded me that what I saw there rested on secure foundations. Many of the children of those homes proved otherwise.

The other reality that gives me license to speak to the issue of manhood is the Christian faith. I stand in the 2000-year-old tradition of Christian understanding, which I believe, and I have been empowered to be one of its interpreters to my generation. That tradition stands like a living rock on which humanity finds stability in an uncertain sea. It has endured the rise and fall of at least five civilizations with their contradictory value systems and their idolatrous claims to sovereignty over human life. It does not provide easy answers to human questions, but it gives us a firm place to stand to consider them.

Given my vantage point from which to observe the human scene and given my place in the Christian tradition, I would like to speak to the question, What does it mean to be a man? I want to do that in a way that engages everyone present and that is consistent with the Gospel of Mark. So, I will go where Mark takes us, and the Gospel of Mark takes us back to the creation. So, let us fit immortal wings to our heels and return to the origin of all things in Mark 10:6-9.

Some Pharisees had come and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" It is difficult to know what the test was. Were they seeing whether He would say divorce is lawful and accuse Him of being indulgent, or would they be looking for him to say it is unlawful and then accuse Him of being in contradiction to the teaching of Moses? Whatever their intentions, Jesus turns the entire discussion back to the more fundamental issues of human life. "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. In verses 6-9 Jesus justifies this accusation.

As I mentioned last week, quotations from the Torah come readily to His lips. Reflections on its revelation of God shape His consciousness of human life. In these verses He goes back before Moses to the creation of humanity itself. He quotes Genesis 1:27 about the creation of man into male and female. Then, He quotes Genesis 2:24 to express the divine intention for the man and woman. Let's read Mark 10:6-9.

"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one." There is an old saying: "If all else fails, read the directions." Jesus takes His accusers and all the rest of us back to the directions in Genesis one and two and in the process raises questions.

The first question we should have asks, "Why consider these directions?" The short answer says, "Because anyone clever enough to make a human being probably has the best idea of how human beings ought to function." In more elegant and reverent language we say that because God is wise, compassionate and powerful, we should pay close attention to what He has made in order to discern His intentions. And with that we have the first solid answer to the question, "What does it mean to be a man?" It means asking for directions, which men are sometimes loathe to do.

Paying close attention raises a second question. Why make God-image-bearing humanity male and female? The easy answer seems to be that God made us that way for the propagation of the race. But we know that some organisms repoduce asexually, and there is no logical reason why God could not have created humanity to do so. "It would not be as much fun to do it that way," we say,meaning to be titillatingly flippant, but actually stumbling on something deep.

It is fun to reproduce the way we do, because it takes both of us. God designed us that way, but not simply for having children. God's male-female design gives us another solid answer to the question, "What does it mean to be a man?" The answer is, "Except in most appropriate but rare cases of celibacy, a man cannot be a complete human being apart from a woman." The need for each other to make babies only dramatizes the deeper needs that each has for the other. From a male perspective that means that I, a man, need a woman's intelligence, emotional nuances, and different perspectives on life in order to be a complete human being.

This mutual need for each other raises a third question. If men and women cannot be complete apart from each other, how are they to be together in order to achieve the completeness that God had in mind for them? Jesus, quoting the Torah again from Genesis 2:24, answers this way: "'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.'" So they are no longer two, but one."

The togetherness God had in mind is not random meetings with different partners. It is becoming one flesh, the conventional name of which is marriage. And once again God's male-female design gives a solid answer to the question, "What does it mean to be a man?" From a male perspective the answer means that I, a man, need to be in an exclusive relationship with a woman.

This exclusive relationship raises a fourth question. Is this exclusive relationship to be permanent? Jesus, reflecting on the divine intentions at the creation of humanity, draws this conclusion in verse 9: "Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." Relentless fellow, Jesus, don't you think? He insists that the directions call for a man to be a complete human being only in company with a woman, but not just any woman any time he wants her. The fulfillment of male humanity requires him to be in the exclusive company of one woman, but not one woman at a time. To be a man means that for my fulfillment as a human being I must be in an exclusive, lifetime relationship with a woman. God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, had this in mind, when He created man as male and female. His design has implications.

First and foremost, entering into this exclusive, permanent relationship with a woman is one significant way for a man to honor God. Honoring God therefore provides another answer to the question of what it means to be a man. I, a man, cannot be a complete human being without honoring my Creator.

A second implication of God's design will take up the next three verses, and we will talk about it next Sunday. For today it is enough to say that divorce does not have a place in God's original design. That, obviously, does not mean it does not happen, but for the life of me I cannot understand why Europe and North America have become so casual about this place of their spiritual heritage.

God's design has a third implication. Homosexuality is not an alternative lifestyle, equal in value and validity to marriage. Homosexuality dishonors God, and it is contrary to nature as God created nature. As with divorce, that, obviously, does not mean that homosexuality does not exist, but it does call into question the ethics of our secular culture on this point. This in turn leads to a fourth implication of God's design.

It brings us again into conflict with secular, democratic culture. Jesus' teaching, my efforts to interpret Jesus' teaching faithfully, and our belief in His teaching rest on a fundamental conviction: God created man, and His design was for one man and one woman to live together in a permanent, exclusive relationship. People who disagree with us reject that conviction. A few try to make Genesis one and two mean what almost no Jew or Christian has ever thought it meant. Most simply reject our Christian conviction and build their lives on another vision of what it means to be human. Thus, opposing creeds find themselves in conflict, and we find ourselves in conflict with our culture and, often, within our own hearts.

To say that what a person believes does not matter seems irresponsible. It would be far truer to ask if anything else matters as much. When a person says that a homosexual lifestyle is just as valid as heterosexual marriage, it is a confession of faith not a matter of demonstrated truth; yet the impact of that belief in public life has become pervasive. But our confession of faith in the creative intentions of God still carries clout, even in this secular culture of ours. So, let us hold fast our confession, not with scorn or spite for those who disagree, but with firmness, compassion and joy. Holding fast that confession also belongs to what it means to be a man.

If a man can only be a complete human being in a permanent, exclusive relationship with his wife, then we men face some challenges. I would like to touch on two of them and then consider with you a challenge we all must face up to.

First, men, let us work to keep the relationship exclusive. Don't flirt with other women. Equally challenging, stay away from pornography, whether print, video, Internet or live. Our culture has lied to the American people by saying that pornography is a victimless act. I don't know how we can say that the perpetrators of pornography escape harm. The fact that some of them do it with full consent only makes the harm greater. Above all, if my pastoral experience is any guide, pornography deeply offends the woman who is your wife. They may not be able to express their fear and outrage, but for us men to use pornography does great damage to one's wife. 

If you use pornography, you can find some help to put that practice to death. There are men in this congregation, with whom you can talk about your habit, and who will listen to you without condemnation and with a willingness to share their own struggles and walk with you, as you seek to overcome this danger to yourself and to your wife and children. I would be glad to help you to get in touch with these men.

Here is a second challenge. Let us work to keep the relationship with our wife permanent. Shortly before he ended thirty years as host of the Tonight show, Johnny Carson reflected on the failure of three marriages. He said this: "If I had given as much to marriage as I gave to the Tonight show, I'd probably have a hell of a marriage. But the fact is I haven't given that, and there you have the simple reason for the failure of my marriages. I put the energy into the show," (Time, June 26, 1989, 66).

That expresses a uniquely male temptation: to put the energy into his work. Ours is a congregation of men who like to work. We like to achieve. We are not afraid of long hours. The question we have to contend with is whether we have plenty of energy dedicated to building a strong marriage and family for the long haul. Our fathers and grandfathers could perhaps assume that marriage would endure. We cannot. We have to make it a priority. That is a challenge in our demanding work environments.

Finally, the thing I fear is that people will hear what I say today and dismiss it as idealistic nonsense. "Whatever God's original intentions, marriage comes apart so often and so easily now that it would be wiser and more courageous to accept the new situation and stop making divorced people feel guilty with talk about God's original purpose."

I want to talk about what to do with the guilt next Sunday, but I have not talked about God's original purpose to make people feel guilty. The teaching of Jesus Christ about God's original purpose for marriage claims to speak to the nature of reality. It would be irresponsible to ignore that, as I think American politics, jurisprudence, business and popular culture are irresponsible to ignore it.

If all the other institutions of our democracy do not care about God's original design for marriage, the Church does. We do. But the Gospel and the Church are not for people who never make mistakes. It is for us sinners. Humanity has marred God's original design for everything in a thousand ways, but as followers of Jesus Christ, we know that God is at work to restore His original design for all things. The whole creation is moving toward the restoration of all things. That is the destiny God has in store for redeemed humanity. Because Jesus Christ gives us that hope, we pursue God's original design for marriage now, and we reach out now with affection to people whose marriages have failed in order to restore their hope and their dignity.

So, men, husbands, fathers, let us be men, not with machismo but with humility, hope and courage. With humility, because no man can live well with a woman unless he is willing to be a servant. With hope, because no man should be a servant unless he serves a bright hope such as we have in Christ. With courage, because we are servants of Jesus Christ, who asks us to lay down our lives for our wives, as He laid down His life for His Bride, the Church. I enjoy being a man. It is a high calling. What do you think?