My Church Taught on Singleness and It Made Me Cry
I have been a single Christian my entire life.
I’ve sat through — and learned from — countless sermons on parenting, on relationships, on the holiness of marriage. I’ve listened to preaching about using your time wisely to prepare yourself for a future relationship and teachings on how to date well as a teenager or twenty something.
But you know what I’ve never heard a sermon on, from the pulpit, to the entire congregation and not just the young adult ministry, until this past weekend?
Singleness.
It was one of those Sundays when I was getting ready for church and thought, I don’t know what the message is going on be on this week, but I’m probably going to regret this mascara. This happens from time to time, and inevitably I end up crying all over myself at the end of the service. Thankfully the mascara I use doesn’t run.
Our church recently started a series called Family Matters, and the first message tackled the meaning of marriage. The senior pastor taught on the famous passage in Ephesians 5 about wives and husbands, speaking about the language of the household codes present in Paul’s time, the radical idea of mutual submission, and the fact that the scripture never says that headship means getting to have the final say. He also spoke of the fact that the purpose of marriage is not to make us happy, but to make us holy, and teaches us to be like Jesus.
And while I agreed with the idea that marriage is about mutually submitting to and sacrificing for one another, I have to admit that the last bit about being made holy by marriage irked me a bit. What does that mean for those of us who aren’t married? Can we never reach the same level of holiness as our married friends?
So I was pretty intrigued when I got to church this Sunday morning and saw that the sermon was titled “Being Single with God” — and pretty trepidatious. Would this be another message about singleness being a time you should treasure before your easy life is left behind in exchange for stressful but blissful wedlock? Or how to use this time to my advantage so I’d make a good wife someday?
Thankfully, blessedly, it was neither. Instead it was a thoughtful look at the costs of being single — especially in a subculture where marriage and childbearing are traditionally viewed as the holiest pursuit. It acknowledged singleness as a hard thing that comes with its own pains that should not be minimized. It was a message that spoke to the value of single people.
And, to answer my earlier question on holiness, it was also a message that reminded us that Jesus was single and holy, and that as a Christian, your life is defined by your relationship to God, not your relationship to another person — meaning that it is equally possible to be whole and holy without marriage as it is with it.
I am so grateful for this sermon for so many reasons. I’m grateful to be part of a church that recognizes the singles that attend and legitimizes them and their lives. I’m grateful that singleness wasn’t spoken of as an ailment to be cured or a transition phase to be suffered through. I’m grateful that this message wasn’t just to reassure singles but ended with a call to married people to be empathetic and welcoming of the singles in their lives.
I’m most grateful for what happened at the end of the service, as we prepared to take communion. The pastor asked us to consider if things in our lives hadn’t gone as we expected, and if we had disappointments, to turn them over to God in exchange for the elements.
That’s when my mascara was tested.
Have you ever felt as if a sermon were written just for you, as if someone knew exactly what you needed to hear?
Because, truth be told, while I strive to be hopeful, I’ve struggled a lot with feeling disappointed that things haven’t gone as I expected. Disappointment and frustration have been on my mind and in my prayers a lot lately. Like I said, I’ve been single my whole life — and I really didn’t think it would last this long.
I needed to be reminded that although things haven’t gone the way I thought they would it doesn’t mean that something is wrong with me. It doesn’t mean that I am less than or missing something. I can be whole and holy where I am, as I am. I needed to be reminded that God knows and sees and cares for me. And I felt that this weekend, as I took communion, having finally heard validated by the church all the hopes and frustrations about singleness that I’ve been journaling about for years.
So I’ll leave you with this scripture from this weekend’s sermon, so that you might find hope in it, too.
And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life.
