A Wedding Homily

A Wedding Homily

Ruth 1:1-8a, 16-19a
Psalm 67
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Matthew 7:21, 24-29

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall!” Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (Matthew 7:21, 24-29)

When I was a teenager growing up in Oregon, my family decided to take a whirlwind summer vacation, camping at a different site nearly every night for two weeks. This trip took us all over the state, including Cannon Beach State Park. In those days, Cannon Beach was a wide stretch of white sand, very suitable for building sand castles. My sister and I, having grown up on the desert side of the state, had never built a sand castle before, and didn’t really know how to begin. So we walked up and down the beach watching how other families tackled this project.

We procured some small and large buckets from our camp, and returned to the beach. We experimented with the mixtures of sand and water to get just the right consistency that would allow each bucketful of sand to pack together. In time, we built this huge creation complete with flat topped turrets and a moat. It seemed secure. Impenetrable. But it was, after all, built of sand. And in the morning, after the tide had come in and gone out, it was gone. At best all that was left was a slight mound to mark the spot where we had built the day before.

I first met ____ and ____ when they came to St. Martin’s University Chapel where I served as Chaplain. Between them they had lost of life experience. They, like most adults, probably knew how to build all kinds of castles out of sand! As we got to know each other, it became clear to me that although they had different views of God and how God worked in the world. Like the Moabites and the Bethlehemites, it was clear that they depended on their knowledge of God to inform the other aspects of their lives. This past year, ____ and ____ left St. Martin’s and St. Paul’s and moved to Jonesboro. At about that time they became betrothed, and asked me to serve as their pre-marital counselor.

They drove back every now and then and we met to discuss finances, in-laws, children, house-hold management, and many other topics. During these discussions, I became aware of the fact that although they still held different views of God, their dependence on God being at the center of their lives was central to their merging life together. Also central to their life together is the gift of love that they share with each other. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians describes love as the greatest virtue and the most enduring feeling, and source of understanding in the universe. But Paul also says that what we currently understand of love is only a partial thing. I think that is good, because as our relationship with our significant others grows, we need a deeper and greater understanding of love to support and nurture that growth.

Love creates new things out of old things, transcends differences, and heals deep wounds between people. It is a form of divine grace that can bind two people together. It is something so grand that it needs to be announced to the world in public ceremonies like this one. But what we are about here is more than a civil wedding ceremony, or a public affirmation of love. It is a time when two people come together to make holy promises to one another and to acknowledge their understanding of the importance of God in this. It is a time when two people come together to publicly acclaim the new creation they have fashioned. They also come here somehow different from what they were before, to express their thanks to God for the goodness of their new creation. They come together to revel in the incarnate presence of that provides them the bedrock upon which their present and future relationship rests.

Over the years, I have noticed something about the language of love in 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.

The presence of God, through the action of the Holy Spirit, helps two people to create a third entity: the “We.” The “we” is more than a “you” and a “me,” 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” love for one another.

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 the 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 person who is loved, and the bond of love uniting them both. The “We” is the bond of love that unites two people together. It is the incarnated presence of God among us. It is that spiritual “We” that we recognize in this ceremony and that the church blesses.

In creating a “We,” we give away our freedom. In creating their “We,” ____ and ____ take each other’s burdens onto themselves. They bind their lives together in ways that are even more painful to unbind emotionally, humanly, than they are to unbind legally. And, assuming they have any success at all in keeping their rash, quixotic promises, in return, they will 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 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 two people become more richly themselves together in the “We” than they could ever manage as individuals. And, with God’s help as the third party, and the firm foundation upon which the new relationship exists, the “We” continues to develop.

____ and ____, it is our wish for you that you always remain steadfastly aware of the presence of God in your relationship. We hope that you will always be aware of the foundation God has provided to you in your new life together as you face the challenges and experience the blessings that life brings to you in the years to come.

Ruth 1:1-8a, 16-19a

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. But Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die— there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.

Psalm 67

May God be merciful to us and bless us, *
show us the light of his countenance and come to us.

Let your ways be known upon earth, *
your saving health among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, *
for you judge the peoples with equity and guide all the nations upon earth.

Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.

The earth has brought forth her increase; *
may God, our own God, give us his blessing.

May God give us his blessing, *
and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe of him.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

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.

Matthew 7:21, 24-29

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall!” Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

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