Marriage Homily for Heather and Jon

[Readings: Genesis 2:7, 18-22; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13]

Well, you two, the Lord paraded Mr. and Mrs. Kangaroo in front of Adam, Mr. and Mrs. Rhinoceros, and Mr and Mrs. Bear. He gave them all names and that was how he received each for the gift that it was. But as he noticed the couples passing in front of him, it surely dawned: “Say! I don’t have one like that!” And so the gracious sleep and the forming of woman from the side of the man. And then God brought her to him. And his joy overflowed. “At last! This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Woman will be her name, for she came out from man.” Gift received, named, and so rejoiced in. And with that gift a change – for a man with a woman is different from a man alone: and so a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife and the two become one flesh.

Today God brings Heather and gives her to you, Jon. And you name her “my wife.” She is a gift from Him to be received with joy and thanksgiving. And likewise, Heather, today He gives you the gift of a husband, Jon. You name him “my husband.” Joy overflowing.

But the Church never forgets amid that overflowing joy the reality and sadness of sin and death. Knowing that the sin inside you and in the world around you can destroy your marriage, you pray for God’s protection. And today you make your vows together until God dissolves your union by the death of one or the other of you. Sin and death on a wedding day. It almost seems rude to bring them up, but the Church’s liturgy is adamant that they must be brought up.

Because of sin death, because of death, sin. You have both going on inside of you. And so your marriage, for it to be the joy or paradise that Adam found in His bride, Eve, and Eve in Adam, needs more than either of you can bring to it of yourselves. You need the further gifts that come to you from the Savior, who by His death has destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. His life IS love.

You heard a beautiful description of that love: patient, kind, not boastful or arrogant or rude. Not insisting on its own way or irritable or resentful or keeping a record of wrongs. Bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. Never failing, never ending. This love of His is what can transform your marriage – and it comes not from some inner resource of yours, but from your Lord Jesus who pours it into you constantly from Himself. That love is His Holy Spirit’s life inside of you – that love He delights to dump down on you, giving you each more love than you can fill a life-time with. Love for an eternity. It is true that death will dissolve your marriage, but it is also true that in the glorious resurrection, you who have lived together as husband and wife under God’s blessing will be closer to another than you have ever been in this age. Your love will not be less, but more. The very reality to which your marriage points here is fulfilled for all believers in the age that is to come.

But you’ve got a ways to go to get to that age to come, God willing, and so the Lord Jesus has gifts not only of immortal life for you, but gifts of love to transfigure your marriage right here and now. To pour that gift out on you, your Savior brought that love into our flesh as He was incarnate of the most holy Virgin. To pour out that gift on you, He went to Calvary where He shouldered all of your sins – including the sin of your past and the sin that you might commit against each other yet in the selfishness of your hearts – a selfishness He works to cure within you. But all of it has been blotted out forever by Your Savior’s blood. To pour that gift out on you, your Savior rose on the third day in a body incorruptible and made the source of eternal salvation for all who will believe in Him. To pour that gift out on you, your Savior first took hold of you in the font and just as Adam named the creatures and they were then what he called them, so Christ named you in the font: His sister, His brother, His co-heirs. The same Lord continues to pour His life into you now through His Word, through His Sacraments, through His holy Church. His Spirit would thus fill you with His love, guide you into holiness, and transform your life together so that it becomes a living icon of the love of Christ for His bride the Church and the Church’s love for Him.

Trust me, you’ll get lots of opportunity to work on letting that love change you each day of your married life. Opportunities will abound to practice forgiving each other, sacrificing for one another, and, as God wills, for your children, building together a home that mirrors already in this fallen and sad world the joys of what await all the children of God in the age that is to come. A glimpse of Eden, but even more a glimpse of Heaven where Love in our flesh, Jesus Christ, reigns in all.

It is the prayer of all of us gathered here today who love you and rejoice with you that your home ever shine with such love and joy to the glory of Jesus Christ and His unoriginate Father and His all holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen!