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Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.\\xa0 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.\\xa0 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church\\u2014for we are members of his body. \\u201cFor this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.\\u201d This is a profound mystery\\u2014but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. \\xa0(Ephesians 5:25-33)

In Russian novelist Dostoevsky\\u2019s book, The Brothers Karamazov, there is a line that goes like this: \\u201cThe more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.\\u201d \\xa0

Many of us are full of great ideals of who and what a spouse should be and do\\u2014or the church, or humanity. \\xa0We aspire for our society to be one of love for all instead of hate for any. \\xa0We hold up ideals like a happy marriage where our spouse always has time and capacity for us and with whom we never fight. \\xa0We seek a church where everyone gets along, holds the same beliefs, and serves shoulder to shoulder in common purpose. \\xa0But, the more we love our ideals of what the church, society, marriage, or people ought to be, the less likely we are to love any particular person we meet in the church, society, or even our marriage. \\xa0Frankly, none of them can possibly measure up.

A good example is the current claims flowing across the pages of the Banner and elsewhere in our denominational discourse that suggest that for the sake of our strong ideals on marriage, there is no possible way that we can remain together in the church with other Christians who accept same-sex marriage. \\xa0This always strikes me as ironic in light of Ephesians 5. \\xa0The mysterious one-flesh union Paul is ultimately alluding to is the union of Christ and his body, the church. \\xa0\\u201cWhat God has joined together, let no one separate.\\u201d \\xa0But for the sake of our ideals on marriage, we are ready to tear apart the greater mystery-of-union that is the body of Christ, of which marriage at its best is only an image and foretaste. \\xa0It seems to me that we have missed the point of this passage entirely.

Jesus came in the flesh so that all of these ethereal ideals about \\u201cGod\\u2019s love\\u201d and \\u201choliness\\u201d might be made concrete and particular among real sin-broken persons with names and faces. \\xa0Paul alludes to this loving way of Jesus as he invites us too, to make our love concrete and particular in what for many is the most basic, personal, and daily relationship of our lives: marriage.

Loving our neighbour\\u2014even our spouse\\u2014as our own self requires surrendering our selfishness and our ideals for who the other ought already to be. \\xa0We have to get past these so that we can meet the person in front of us as they are: stained, wrinkled and blemished. \\xa0I promise you: they are not ideal. \\xa0But they are the concrete, personal, and particular one\\u2014wrinkles and all\\u2014to whom we have become united and through whom we will learn what it means to give ourselves up in love as Christ loved the church.

We err when we assume divorce or church division is the only way forward to the radiant ideals or holiness we seek. \\xa0This would be as if Christ came to earth, saw our blemishes, and decided to turn right around and abandon us, keeping his holiness to himself because we just didn\\u2019t meet the ideal. \\xa0It doesn\\u2019t work. \\xa0The cart is on the wrong side of the horse. \\xa0

Jesus\\u2019s love reveals a better way\\u2014he kept his commitment to us in love, despite the blemishes inherent in his church: "while we were still sinners, he [gave himself up] for us\\u201d in love (Romans 5:8). \\xa0It is the commitment\\u2014the mystery of union\\u2014practiced daily in love among the particular people we live and worship with that gives context to the feeding, care, and cleansing that slowly (and with much difficulty) brings forth the ideal within the body. \\xa0Not the other way round. \\xa0

I think then, rather than loving our ideals of a spouse or of the church, the call is to love instead what we have been given: a real spouse and a real church. \\xa0Wrinkles and all. \\xa0Trusting that in time, through the mystery of union in our church and in our marriage, \\u201cwe will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. [For] from him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work\\u201d (Ephesians 4:15-16).

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