A Sermon for the Marriage of Matt Belcher and Aimee Gilroy
23rd May 2015
People often say your wedding day is the happiest day of your lives.*
Matt and Aimee, I hope this isn’t.
Weddings take a lot of planning and they cost a fair bit of money
and they require dressing up on a scale that is rarely repeated again,
and getting married is not something you do every day of your lives,
hopefully you only do it once.
So we might lean towards saying a wedding day should be the happiest day of a couple’s life.
Certainly our culture, including the church, puts a lot of energy into encouraging people to find the perfect partner, Mr or Mrs Right
and arriving at a wedding day can have taken a lot of heart ache on the way,
a lot of soul-searching and questioning, do I really love him or her?
and so it might be quite right to say a wedding day should be the happiest day of your life,
but as I said, Matt and Aimee, I hope it isn’t.
I hope this is a great day, I hope it is a wonderful and happy day,
yet I hope it isn’t the happiest day of your lives.
Let me suggest why.
I don’t want it to be the happiest day of your life
because it is to buy into the view that getting married is the end of the journey rather than its beginning.
How many Hollywood films, end with a wedding, as if that is the climax to the relationship, as if happily ever after now follows,
as if this is where the story ends.
What a sad view of happiness if the wedding day is the best it gets.
I don’t want it be the happiest day of your life
because that is also to buy into the view that once you’re married it’s all down hill from here.
Think now of the Hollywood films that begin in wedded bliss,
but end in acrimony.
The suggestion is that happiness doesn’t last,
that marriage ends up been the source of unhappiness,
as if to say enjoy today because it ain’t going to last.
Two views – one sickly romantic, the other deeply cynical.
That’s what you’re up against.
Let me suggest
a wedding doesn’t make a marriage,
a lifetime makes a marriage.
The vows made today will declare you are married,
but the months and years that follow will be evidence that these vows are more than mere words.
It doesn’t matter how you got here,
it matters where you will go from here.
My hope is that happiest days are still to come,
that in the vows you are making,
in the blessing of your relationship,
you are creating something that will last more than one day,
and that will weather the difficult days,
that will become an alternative to the Hollywood version.
Which brings me to my second reason for saying this is not your happiest day.
The Bible doesn’t provide many specific readings for a wedding,
unless you want to choose something from Song of Songs.
Most of the Bible readings people choose for a wedding day are not about what it is to be husband and wife,
but what it is to be a member of the church.
The two readings we have heard from the letters of Philippians and 1 John are no different.
What this means, I suggest,
is that for those who are Christians
being married is not something separate from being part of the church.
Your being part of the church takes priority over being married,
your happiest day, if there can be such a thing,
should be your baptism day,
for in your baptism you discovered that God’s love for us comes first.
So while you might think that your getting married is
because a decision you’ve made together for love,
the church is expecting you to be good witnesses, both inside and outside the church,
of what love after God looks like.
It says in the bible reading from 1 John three times that we should love one another, and this doesn’t mean you should love each other because you’re husband and wife,
but because you’re Christians.
Jesus’ command ‘to love one another’ even applies if you’re married!**
Marriage for those who are Christians is a vocation,***
a vocation in how to love.
You have not been asked ‘do you love each other’, but will you love each other.
Loving each other today is hopefully fairly easy, but the vows you are making are to love each tomorrow, next year, until the end of your lives.
Love is as much the fruit of marriage as its cause.
Marriage is a vocation in how to speak truthfully.
In the vows you are about to make,
you are making possible honest speech.
When a relationship is fragile, sometimes lying feels necessary to sustain it,
but for those who are married,
you can take the risk to speak honestly,
you can be free to speak truthfully,
for you are about to say to one another
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health, in other words, whatever happens,
you will love and cherish each other.
Marriage is also a vocation in faithfulness.
You are saying today that for the next 10, 20, 50 years or whenever death parts you
you are committed to each other.
No other commitment that you will make in life
is similar, other than the promise at your baptism.
At your baptism, God says I love you,
and I will never leave you or forsake you;
marriage reflects that love and commitment.
This is what makes marriage a risk, a joy, an adventure,
and flipping hard work,
because in too many ways that can be grasped,
you have no idea what you are doing today.
You will change and grow,
and life around you will affect you,
and what will hold you together is the love of God declared to you in baptism,
and the promise you are making to be faithful,
and the rest of us here who are your witnesses today.
Today is a happy day, a joyful day,
it is a day that recognises there are happy days still to come.
For Aimee and Matt you are beginning the adventure that is marriage.
Today is a happy day, a joyful day,
it is a day when the church says we expect you to help us
show what love looks like, what truth sounds like and what faithfulness is to watching world,
a love, a truth and faithfulness already given by God in Jesus
and whom we seek to follow.
Today is a happy day, a joyful day,
and I’ve said more than enough, Amen.
* I owe the line of thought in this sermon to Kim Fabricius' Ten Propositions on Marriage, especially proposition 2.
** This line is from Stanley Hauerwas.
*** This section on vocation is inspired by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life (Abingdon, 1999), pp.98-100
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