October 23, 2011, Sing to the LORD a New Song

I Corinthians 13
John 2

The Choir just sang "Sing to the Lord a New Song!"

This is the first day of your life together as Husband and Wife.

When announcement was first shared about having a wedding on Sunday morning during Worship, there were those who responded, “You know you are starting a precedent, and soon everyone is going to want to get married on Sundays.” The truth is that up until the 20th Century, from the time of the Early Church, Weddings and Funerals often took place on Sunday mornings. Worship of God was not a 60 minute time-block, but an all day affair. Lately, we have had Saturday weddings, Friday, Thursday, even requests for Sunday afternoon weddings... not because these were a celebration of the Church as the Body of Christ, the Community of Faith, but because Restaurants for the Reception have a vacancy.

As a society, we need to rethink what we are expressing in Weddings. When everything is spectacle, how many bridesmaids, how lavish the flowers, how extravagant the reception, we have lost sight of marriage. My favorite comment, as guests come forward after a wedding to describe how beautiful it was, is to remind them that “YES and They are Married! That is the best part!” We have made marriage in America all about the Bride. Or how adorable the Flower-girls. In Sudanese weddings, because the wedding is negotiation of the Dowry, it is all about the Groom. When “The Wedding” is about “The Marriage, the covenant commitment” between these two.

At the height of the Reformation, Church leaders were concerned that in the Mass, worship seemed like a Magic Show, a performance, in which what was rehearsed was executed before the masses, the words were pronounced and miraculously, magically, the dead were raised up, the bread and wine became body and blood. Consequently, the Church began to emphasize fellowship and education rather than what was created during worship. But the fact of the mater is that by the stating of their Vows, Anna and David are changed, from being two individuals, to as happened in their baptisms claiming a new identity before God of living for one another.

We have taken marriage so much for granted!
How many of us had one or the other of these readings in our weddings?
Yet, neither of these was written for reading at weddings.

The Wedding at Cana, is evidence in John of Jesus' first miracle. And what that miracle demonstrates is the SUPER-ABUNDANCE of GOD's Love. When the limited wine has run out, there is now gallons and gallons to be shared. And the quality of the new wine, is far richer, far better than anything anyone had ever shared. We can try to recreate it. We can attempt to explain the miracle... but that makes this a trick. The miracle is that what once was impossible because of the limitations of each as individuals, even both working independently, now is possible because of joining together.

First Corinthians 13, so equated with weddings that it is often identified as The Wedding Passage, or The Poem about LOVE. The English language does not have the nuance of other languages. In English, we have only one word, to describe the bond between siblings, between grandparent and grandchild, for the parent walking their adult child down the aisle, or for a nursing mother, or as between neighbors and co-workers working as a team, who spend a lifetime helping one another; as well as romance and passion, and erotic desires between two; as well as for empathy and compassion and self-sacrifice motivated by faith, motivated by commitment. Love. But what the Founder of the Church was describing here is AGAPE, The Love originated by God, expressed by us as individuals for others that changes the lives of all the world. Paul was not writing about a wedding, but about the whole community of faith, the Church, and how we are to respect and live our lives for one another.

The Latin translation of AGAPE was CARITAS, which in English are where we derive the words CHARITY and COMPASSION. In the KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible written 500 years ago this year, this passage was always translated as FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY abide these Three, but the greatest of these is CHARITY. What a different direction that provides for reading these words at a wedding! David and Anna, Faith and Hope are vitally important in a marriage, but more than all of this, is CHARITABLE COMPASSION. When the other is in need... When there is something you can do to care for others... something motivated by God, affecting the whole world, do so in love.

Often I hear couples describe, I did this and that and all the “honey-do” things on the Refrigerator, when do I get what I want? When is it my turn in marriage? There is no score keeping. There is no budget for the costs of love. Act out of living your life for that other person.

More than a few have raised an eyebrow that today we are celebrating both your Marriage and the Baptism of you child. But then again, there are many in the church, who had not been active for years, who by having children, by the children asking about God have been brought to faith. The question we need to be concerned with is have the couple made a covenant commitment to one another to act charitably, to act in devotion to the other's needs, and have the couple claimed an extension of their faith in God for this child, claiming this child as a Gift from God?

Faith, Hope, LOVE, abide these three, but the greatest of these is LOVE.