Very apt what you said
Further, with all the heralding of marriage in church, its strange that its the one thing we supposedly cherish that we are not only the worst at, but totally are missing the mark about what CAN be good about it
is a really good point. If it is such a christian thing to do, why is it harder and harder to make it work, in spite of all the books being written, the seminars attended, the workshops worked through?
So Jesus is going along getting disciples and goes up to this one guy and says, "Come with me." Now we are assuming that at this point Jesus has already been demonstrating his awesome teachings and that this guy knows about it, because he says, "Absolutely I'll come, I've just gotta bury my dad." Jesus says, "Let the dead bury the dead."
That's pretty harsh. I mean imagine this: imagine that a university professor or boss or whoever says that--"No, you can't have compassionate leave to arrange for your father's funeral--chop chop." It's one of Jesus' harsher examples, I've always felt. I mean surely he could wait a few days?
I think that as he often did Jesus made these moments into lessons, demonstrating in life what was important. You see Jesus always saw the kingdom of Heaven as something imminent, as something life saving. I contrast this to Jesus' actions when it came to faith. Jesus often seems angry about matters of faith. Like why DON'T we have more faith?
The thing is, Jesus is the emissary of the Kingdom of Heaven, where life is GOOD. And here on Earth, life has become tainted deeply by evil. That's how he saw it; it was a lifesaving moment. It's like he had come by in a helicopter with a bunch of people he'd rescued and saw a guy on a rooftop surrounded by a flood, and asked him to climb up the ladder and get in. The guy says instead, "I have a few things to do; it'll just take me a few hours."
We do that a lot, I think. Jesus is there, hand outstretched, but we decide other things are more important than our lives being saved. Including our own theology. We need to stop worrying about marriage and start wondering about our salvation, no matter WHAT seems to be in the way.