Christian Living: Singleness, Celibacy & Friendship

Sermon planned for Sunday, May 8th, 2011

Text: Matthew 19:9-12; 1 Corinthians 7:1-9

Last week we looked at scripture and the early stages of life. We talked about children and saw that they are a gift from God. We heard about the transition from childhood to adulthood – this thing called adolescence – and how our young people are called to move forward into discipleship with courage and boldness. We heard that all of us are called to welcome and engage our young people – to pass-on the baton of ministry and welcome their gifts.

This morning is Mother’s Day – so, first of all I want to wish all the mothers and grandmothers in our church and community a very blessed Mother’s Day. May God continue to bring you joy and blessing as you live out the holy calling of motherhood.

My sermon, this morning, continues on with the Christian Living series that I began last week. This morning we’re looking at Singleness, Celibacy & Friendship. Next week we’ll be looking at Marriage & Parenting. Just a point of clarification: terms like ‘singleness’ and ‘celibacy’ can refer to a variety of things. This morning, by ‘singleness’ I’m thinking of the different kinds of life-situations that we find ourselves in; including the singleness of a young adult before they find someone to spend their life with; the singleness of the person who has intentionally chosen to remain single for the time being, or for the long run; and also the singleness that a person finds themselves in after a spouse has died.

With ‘celibacy’ I’m talking about something more specific; about the choice to withold oneself from sexual intimacy outside of marriage, and also the choice to dedicate one’s energies to a fuller and deeper commitment to the ministry. In other words, a celibate person is someone who decidedly devotes their singleness to full dedication to God and the missional calling. This is different from chosen singleness in that celibacy is an intentional commitment to radical discipleship in place of marriage; rather than a decision to remain single for some other reason or purpose.

The bible doesn’t give us that much in terms of direct teaching about being single. There are, however, several passages in scripture that speak about celibacy. One of the most relevant is the passage from Matthew that we heard earlier. In his teachings about divorce, in our passage this morning, Jesus declared that remarriage after divorce was only legitimate if the spouse had been unfaithful. Unlike the Rabbis Hillel and Shammai who were more permissive about divorce and remarriage, Jesus upheld the seriousness and permanence of the marriage covenant.

After considering this teaching about the permanence of marriage, the disciples objected, saying: “Jesus… if that’s the case… if that’s the seriousness of the marriage commitment… then forget about it, then its better not to marry.” Jesus agreed. He continued: “You’re right, singleness is a lot less challenging than marriage – the commitments of marriage name a life of painful work, forgiveness and patience – but not everyone is cut-out for the single life either.”

Why would Jesus say this? Because the follower of Christ doesn’t have the choice between committed marriage and casual encounters and easily broken commitments. Jesus gives an alternative to committed marriage; that alternative is a single or celibate life lived for the sake of the kingdom of heaven – he says, “others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” In this passage, the alternative to life-long committed marriage is celibacy – where a disciple gives their life over to Kingdom work in place of marriage. The reason that the celibate person is single is not because of uninterest in the opposite gender, or lack of opportunity – the reason is because this person has chosen to dedicate this portion of their life to serving God in a specific way.

I want to come back to this a bit later. Singleness, as opposed to celibacy, is not the direct focus of much of scripture – but singleness is a part of almost every page. Singleness is the most basic form of human existence. We are born as singles and we will die on our own – no one can take our place or fully join us in stepping from life into death. We stand before God, singly, as disciples responding to His call, when we come to the waters of baptism. We will each have our names written in the Lamb’s book of life. In God’s eyes, we are not written down as Mr. and Mrs. Funk – but as Marco and Karen, John and Kim, Adam and Annie. Each one must individualy proclaim Jesus’ Lordship; each one must be a willing participant in the community of faith. We are each individually created in the image of God. We are each individually called to give our love, praise and worship to God. We are each individually called to turn from sin and to turn ourselves towards Christ and follow him as a disciple.

Every aspect of Christian discipleship is first of all required of you as a single and individual Christian. The parts of Christian discipleship that refer to marriages are extensions of things that are already required of individual disciples. Parenting children, for example, is already hinted at in every single Christian’s responsibility to welcome and care for the children in our midst. Faithfulness between husband and wife is already prefigured in each Christian’s call to cultivate deep friendships where Christians are committed to each other.

My point is that there is absolutely nothing abnormal about Christian singleness. Nothing about discipleship requires us to be married. In fact, it even seems as if Jesus viewed singleness just as appropriate as married life. And the apostle Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, even prefers singleness to marriage. He writes:
It is good for a man not to marry… 7 I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. 8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. -1 Corinthians 7:1, 7-9

Passages like this one, and the one from Matthew that we heard earlier, have always played an important role in the life of the Church. Catholic and Orthodox communities of faith continue to invite individuals to consider commited celibacy as a life-long calling; and not just so that they can be priests, but so that they can dedicate every aspect of their life to God; and so we can think of nuns like Mother Theresa and monks as examples of this kind of dedicated life.

Nowadays, celibacy is downplayed among most Protestants and Mennonites. When Protestants banded together and rejected forced celibacy for pastors and priests, Mennonites went along with this; but, I’m afraid that most Protestants and Mennonites have given up too much by disregarding celibacy as a faithful option for disciples. Don’t get me wrong – getting rid of forced celibacy for priests and pastors was a good idea. I’m sure glad we did.

The problem is that these churches soon found themselves unable to give a good reason why anyone would be celibate. In fact, in communities that see church growth as primarily a matter of having more babies, celibacy and singleness have been viewed as threats, or at least awkward glitches.

Another question that Protestant and Mennonite churches have failed to ask is whether there isn’t a real need for celibate individuals in the church; for people that dedicate all their time and resources to ministry and witness. Why is it that youth programs in most churches are served by young adult sponsors? Or consider camp ministries?

There are very important activities that married people are committed to that take up a lot of time. But there are other ministry opportunities that require a greater degree of flexibility than most married people will commit to. This is not at all to say that the ministries that celibate people can attend to are more important than the commitments of married men and women – not at all. It just means that there is a real need and positive role that the local and global Church has for single and celibate individuals. The Church needs singles and people who choose life-long committed celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom.

This is in the background to Jesus’ and Paul’s comments on avoiding marriage. It’s not that marriage is sinful or that it is only for the weak. Jesus says that marriage is part of the normal course of events – “a man leaves his father’s house and is joined to his wife and they become One Flesh”. Jesus accepts this way of telling the human story. But the arrival of the Kingdom of God has changed things.

The arrival of the Kingdom of God has put another set of priorites on the table – not merely biological survival. Now it’s about bearing witness to the Kingdom of God; it’s about living ourselves into the coming reality of God’s reign of Shalom. Singleness and Celibacy now have an important part in God’s story – for people who can do it, for people who have that gift. Discipleship can be an all-out mission for the Christian, even so much that there is no time or energy for marriage and the commitments that requires

Now I’m guessing that there are at least two common reasons why churches and parents don’t really talk about singleness and celibacy as good options for individual Christians. One is understandable and the other is dangerous. First of all, it is understandable that parents want their children to find a spouse. Parents want their children to be happy; and one way to achieve happiness is to find a good Christian husband or wife. And then – of course – there are the grandchildren. What’s behind this desire? I think that there is, of course, the parent’s desire that their children be happy – but I think there’s also a hidden fear behind this. I think that one reason that parents want their children to get married eventually is because they don’t want their children to be lonely, and they themselves don’t want to be lonely. As parents, we want to imagine our old age as filled with relationships with those whom we love. Grandchildren are a big part of this dream. When couples who can’t have children share this news with their parents – those parents will often grieve this news quite deeply, and that’s understandable.

The second reason that celibacy isn’t viewed as a good option for individual Christians is a dangerous reason – dangerous and even a bit pagan or heretical. This second reason that celibacy isn’t a celebrated option for Christians is because the Church can come to view itself as a club or an institution that is grown and increased primarily through biological means. In other words, the Church sometimes falsely assumes that it’s survival is dependent upon Christian men and women having babies. Together with this, you’ll find a common assumption that the Christian life is primarily about ‘focusing on the family’. And so you have Christians increasingly saying that the breakdown of the family is the primary problem for the Church in our society.

Although family and parenthood is a key component in Christian discipleship – it is not the primary component. Jesus did not call together moms and dads and tell them to make many babies and thus expand the Kingdom. That’s what you have in the Old Testament – with the call to ‘be fruitful and multiply’. Instead, Jesus called a group of men and women to go out into all the world and proclaim the good news, teaching and baptizing people into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The lie that Christianity is about ‘focusing on the family’ is a leftover piece from paganism that assumes human fertility is the key to religious revival, or it assumes that life without spouse and children is somehow less valued or crucial to the life of faith. (eg. “if we have more babies than our church will grow”, or “our fertility is a sign of God’s blessing, and a lack of fertility is a sign of God’s curse”)

A key piece to what the Christian faith has always taught is that the Church does not grow through parents having babies but through faith commitments and baptism. The Church grows as people receive the Spirit and are re-born as children of God by the baptism of the Holy Spirit and Water. In the Kingdom of God, growth is reframed as a matter of joining Jesus and entering into the Kingdom.

This is one of the reasons why, in the New Testament, there is a shift away from genealogies to accounts of mass conversion and baptism. The Genealogy of Jesus is the last one of it’s kind because biological succession has been trumped, in the church, by the succession of faith as a gift from God. Throughout the rest of Church History, biological genealogies would be overshadowed by lists of people who had been baptized, by whom they had been baptized, and on which date. In other words, in the Church, it is evangelism, and not biological reproduction, that is key to growth and survival of the Church. Babies & children are an invaluable gift from God, but that gift isn’t directly associated with Church growth or revival.

In this way, singleness and celibacy plays a key part in the Kingdom’s growth. In fact, you could say that nothing quite displays faith as a person that sets every moment, thought and deed aside for the sake of the Lord. Celibacy then becomes a reminder to the high calling placed on all of us. Our lives have been redirected towards Christ. Even our marriages are called to be outward focused, towards God and His Kingdom, rather than merely attempts at growing our influence and position in society, or fulfilling our own relational needs.

That being said – you and I – we all have relational needs. None of us were created to be alone. In fact, scripture begins with a creation account where God makes it clear that He did not make us to be lonely. He wants his creatures to enjoy the same relational friendship that exists within His own Being as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One part of God’s plan for overcoming this loneliness is marriage and family. But this morning I want to suggest that Christian friendship is one of God’s greatest gifts for us, whether we are married, single or celibate.

None of us are created to be lonely. Singleness and Celibacy can only be sustained if we do the hard but joyful work of cultivating deep friendships. In fact, even marriages require spouses to cultivate deep friendships with others. It’s often that when a spouse expects their partner to fulfill all their relationship/companionship needs that they’ll each feel dissatisfied. If I expect Karen to fulfill all my relational needs then I’m putting way too heavy a burden on her. She’s not my hunting buddy. I don’t start a theological reading or debating group with her and read Karl Barth or John Howard Yoder. And thankfully, she doesn’t ask me to help her make a baby blanket, or do scrapbooking, or read Karen Kingsbury novels with her. We have some separate interests. We definitely have shared interests, but there’s also an appropriate distance.

If I transfer my anxieties about loneliness onto my expectations for Karen – then I’ll be setting myself up for dissapointment. And so, I give thanks to God for giving me some really close male friends. Whether married, single, or celibate, cultivating deep Christian friendship is key to surviving and flourishing as disciples. The Bible gives us numerous examples of these kinds of sustaining friendships: David & Jonathan, Ruth & Naomi, the Disciples, Mary & Martha, Paul & Timothy.

Singleness and Celibacy are important realities in the life of the Church; and, in fact, we should be doing more to recognize this and to celebrate it. As we focus on our mom’s this morning, I’m curious about what’s missing in our consideration of family life in the church. The question isn’t why we celebrate Mother’s Day in church… that’s easy - after all, Mothers are a gift to us from God; rather, the questions is: if singleness is the foundational mode of life for the Christian, then why don’t we celebrate the gift of celibacy?

Will we be a community that welcomes, celebrates and cultivates deep Christian friendships? Can we do so, so that those who choose singleness and those who choose celibacy, and even those of us who get married, can be sustained through times of loneliness? After all, have we not been made friends through Christ, our common friend? Can we invest ourselves more deeply in each other’s lives, so that those among us, so gifted, might boldly choose to give every aspect of their lives over to God’s mission? That every moment, every dollar, every thought could be directed towards witnessing to Jesus and His Kingdom? Can we make room for the celebration of celibacy in this community? Could it enter into the minds of parents that their child might be called to a sold-out radical discipleship, so bold and unrelenting that it might not even leave room for the commitment of marriage? Could we be the kinds of friends to one another so that this life-long calling be a matter of joy and not loneliness? By God’s grace, may it be so. Amen.