A Wedding Sermon

1 Corinthians 13

Today we celebrate the extraordinary gift of love that meets ordinary human beings, miraculously twining them together to make a union that reflects the great communion that is the being of God himself.

Does that sound too poetic to get your mind around?

Consider what it fully means.

First, we celebrate a relationship that started with a simple meeting of people—two people decided to go out. They felt an affinity for one another. As they talked, they found there was a vein of commonality that offered the security to risk revealing more and more of themselves to each other. The more they revealed to each other, the deeper their connection and bond became. The deeper that connection and bond became, the more they knew and recognized that, as Adam gushed long, long ago, “Here at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” The King James Bible tells us that Adam “cleaved unto” Eve—that cleaving is astounding—it imagines Adam splitting himself open to find room for Eve to dwell within him. 

And that is the first lesson of marriage—preparing and keeping room for the beloved—never allowing the busyness of life, the distractions of life, the disappointments of life, and the stress of life to crowd out the beloved so that he or she hears the words that met Mary and Joseph on another night long ago—“There is no room for you.” To maintain being open may well take some cleaving, but, then again, we prune the bushes to keep them healthy, don’t we?

Second, we celebrate love that is utterly transcendent of any definition of love that culture offers—most of which focus on self—love is that which is gratifying, which is warm, which is fulfilling—but nearly always, only as those things apply to me, answering the shouted question of our time, “What do I get out of this?” As God defines love, that is the last question—if not the wrong question! Love as God defined it was revealed in Christ Jesus who emptied himself in love for all people everywhere and in every time. Marriage is entrance into a life of self-emptying as one gives themselves to another on a daily basis. It flows from that making room—to make room for another means letting go of self, allowing their needs to lead, their questions to guide, and their hopes to take precedence. What makes it work is that it is never one-sided—or if it is, then work must be done to make repairs—but rather it is mutual—each meets the other in this same self-emptying which, ironically, results in two people fuller than they ever imagined being. Yes, there may be times when one partner needs more than the other, but over years into decades, if mutuality is maintained, nurtured, and deepened, it balances out. Further, this self-emptying is freeing—if I am no longer fixed on me, I find that I am less afraid—I no longer fear someone is trying to take what I have; I no longer fear that I won’t get what I want; and I no longer fear that I am not doing what I need to be doing—if I am self-emptying, all those feared losses are met with assurance that all shall be well, and they can even be dismissed—they simply are no longer central to my focus. 

Which brings is to the glorious third point of love rooted in God—it is transformative. The more we commit to living in and by love as God defined it, the more our lives become more than we imagined them ever being. Moreover, we find the strength and the ability to endure through the moments when things are not as they should be.

Let me explain.

First, the more we live by self-emptying love, the more aligned we are with God’s intent in creating us in the first place. We were made for love, the scriptures tell us. We were made to find one another to find our completion as children of God. We were made to create a web of love within the created order, following God’s purpose in making all that is. All things are an expression of the love that is God; so we become God’s image as we live in love with one another. We become who we are.

Second, everyone knows life is unpredictable. We will pass through dark nights of the soul, hit deep valleys of even deeper shadows, and run into rain storms of desolating crises—that is just life—and we may well find ourselves crying out with the Peanuts character, Peppermint Patty, “It is raining tonight in my valley!” We also know our own propensity to make mistakes, to stumble, and to trip over our own feet—we know those triggers inside of us—we have spent a lifetime dealing with them. All of these things make love hard and, truthfully, make us hard to love. But as we live in and through God who is love, we find that love which endures all things, as Paul proclaimed. It does so because (a) it is the embodiment of grace—i.e., the beloved offers the beloved another chance, forgiving, opening the door to getting it right, and accepting apologies as sincere gifts of love; and (b) it flows from the being of God who is greater than anything else we will encounter—anything—at your leisure, read through Paul’s list in Romans 8—with the power to redeem so great that we can coin a term—omnicompetence—to define it—God can handle anything we meet—including each other as we are.

So, we are here to celebrate love—the love of these two human beings for each other, but also the love that is God that will ensure that they will be all they need to be to fulfill the promises made today. God is with us. God is good and grace abounds. God is love.

Blessed be all who seek to live in love.