A Wedding Sermon, August 2, 2003

A Wedding Sermon
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 2, 2003

Language is so very important. In the first reading from Genesis, God is portrayed having created every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and God brought them to the man he had created to see what the man would call them. Whatever the man said that they were became its name. By naming the creatures, God included humankind in the creative process. By the gift of language, we name things and thereby give them definition.

Over the years, I have noticed something about the language by how we speak about the people that we love. Before we meet someone that we will fall in love with, we tend to be fairly self-centered; egocentric. We refer to “my” house and “my” car. Guests are invited to “my” favorite restaurant.

When we meet Ms. or Mr. right, our language begins to change as our life changes. When we fall hopelessly in love, we unselfishly and fully give of ourselves to another person, and if we are blessed, that person gives likewise to us. In so doing, we move from what the theologian Martin Buber called the “I-and-Thou” interpersonal relationship to the “We Relationship.” I believe that when we are in solid relationship, we actually create a third entity: the “We.” The “we” is more than an I and a Thou, because with a “we” there is an intrinsic loss of the objective separation of the two people as the “we” emerges. The person previously identified as a “me” undergoes a form of death, and is resurrected as a new life, the “we.” And our language reflects this new creation. As we move into relationship with each other, we begin to substitute the pronouns “we” or “our” for “my” and “I.” We begin to talk about “our” apartment, “our” car, “our” checking account, and “our” children.

The change in the use of those little pronouns reflects a sense of possessiveness. Not ownership of another person, but possession of the recognition that through love, we take responsibility for our relationship. Our partner, also contributing to this relationship, is not a thing to be owned, but someone who fully participates as a co-equal in the creation of the partnership. Deep love implies three things: the lover, the object that is loved, and the bond of love uniting them both. The “We” is the bond of love that unites two people together.

The “We” is an entity that in fact really exists; just ask divorce lawyers. When _______ and _______ recite their vows to each other today, they will formalize the “We” that they have created. The formal “We” is recognized legally in the documents that they will sign after the ceremony is completed. It is that legal “We” that society at large will recognize.

There is another “We” that we are here, in this place, to recognize by our blessing. It is the spiritual “We” that is recognized and blessed by the church. Paraphrasing the novelist and preacher, Frederick Buechner, in the vows they make, _______ and _______ say they will love, comfort, honor each other to the end of their days.[1] They say they will cherish each other and be faithful to each other always. They say they will do these things not just when they feel like it but even — for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health — when they don’t feel like it at all. In other words, the vows they make at a marriage could hardly be more extravagant. In created their “We,” they give away their freedom. In creating their “We,” they take on themselves each other’s burdens. They bind their lives together in ways that are even more painful to unbind emotionally, humanly, than they are to unbind legally. The question is: what do they get in return?

They get each other in return. Assuming they have any success at all in keeping their rash, quixotic promises, they never have to face the world quite alone again. There will always be the other to talk to, to listen to. If they’re lucky, even after passion passes, they still have a kindness and a patience to depend on, a chance to be patient and kind. There is still someone to get through the night with, to wake into the new day beside. They will give their children, as well as each other, roots and wings.

They both still have their lives apart as well as a life together. They both still have their separate ways to find. But a marriage made in Heaven is one where a woman and a man become more richly themselves together in the “We” than the chances are either of them could ever have managed to become alone as the “I” or the “Thou.” When Jesus changed the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, perhaps it was a way of saying more or less the same thing.

And, with God’s help as the third party, the “We” fully continues to participate in the creative process. Let us pray: Beloved of Christ: The union of woman and man in Christian marriage is brought about by God and for the purposes of God. The prompting to enter this holy state has come, we trust, from God, rather than from any mere passing affection. In the sacred contract which you are about to ratify, God is ever a third partner, and as you plight yourselves to each other you are giving yourselves over to the fulfillment of God’s plans. All the while God stands by to accompany your union with the assistance of divine grace, so that you may thankfully accept its blessings and faithfully fulfill its duties.[2] Amen.

Marriage: that I call the will of two to create the one who is more than those who created it. Reverence before one another, as before the willers of such a will – that I call marriage.

The Lord God said, “It is not good that the man [I created] should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

“From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

[1] This section of this homily is paraphrased from the work of Frederick Buechner. See Frederick Buechner. “Marriage.” Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988), 86-87.

[2] Adapted from Roman Liturgy. J. Robert Baker, Joni Reiff Gibley, and Kevin Charles Gibley (Eds). A Marriage Sourcebook. (Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, , 1994), 56.

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