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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Kristen and George; members and friends of the Heil family, and other members of our Pilgrim congregation,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Since the engagement, I am sure all of your lives have been a bit of a whirlwind (or maybe, for those with ties to the Navy, “hurricane” is a more appropriate figure of speech). Now, here you are moments away from The Rite of Holy Matrimony. So many important considerations went into your decision to have your wedding today, I do not know if you even reflected on the irony of your choosing our Nation’s Independence Day as the day for a Petty Officer Third Class and his fiancé to, in some sense, give up their independence. Yet, at the same time, in some sense, today can be regarded as your “independence day”, for The Rite of Holy Matrimony does change your relationship to those upon whom you have previously been dependent (as children on parents), even as it also changes your relationship to one another (soon to be husband and wife). For the next few moments, God willing, we will all reflect on what is the greatest source for your relationship to one another: “Abiding in Love”—abiding, namely, in God’s love for you individually, which love in turn flows from you to one another.
In tonight’s Third Reading we heard our Lord Jesus Christ say, “Abide in My love”. Uniquely recorded by St. John, these words of our Lord to “abide in [His] love” were spoken on the night when He was betrayed, after He identified Himself as the True Vine, His Father as the Vinedresser, and His followers—including us—as the branches that abide in Him and so bear much fruit, proving our discipleship and glorifying the Father (John 15:1-8). Jesus does not mention the vine-branches-fruit figure of speech in the Third Reading, but in the Third Reading He does fill in the framework that He previously described. Jesus says that we abide in His love if we keep His commandments—commandments all somewhat summed up in His single commandment for us to love one another as He has loved us.
Now, Kristen and George you say you love each other, as nowadays you and most couples say and do before you get married. And, you certainly are honoring God’s institution of marriage—one man and one woman, united for eternal life—by coming here, to God’s house, seeking His blessing and grace to help you have a holy marriage and home. Yet, those who have been married for some time (your parents, your grandmother) no doubt are better able to distinguish between what might be called “erotic love” or “physical lust” and the kind of love or affection both that God has for us and that He wants us to have for one another. Our English Bibles usually translate as “love” any number of different Greek words with different nuances of meaning, but the New Testament does not even use the Greek word for “erotic love”. The coming of such passionate physical love can lead people to sin in any number of ways, both before and after marriage, just as the going of such passionate physical love can leave spouses bitter enemies.
Yet, people do not have to be married in order to have enemies or to fail to love as we should one another or even God. In fact, by nature we are enemies of God. Though perfectly created in the image of God, as we heard in the First Reading (Genesis 1:26-28), the first man and woman failed to love God as they should, and so all of their descendants—including us—are conceived and born in sin: not fearing, loving, or trusting God above all things and not loving our neighbors as ourselves. We fail to keep Jesus’s single commandment to love one another as He has loved us, as we fail to keep all the commandments regarding divine and earthly authority, murder, sexual purity, property, and reputation. However, from our sin and failures, God calls us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sinful natures and whatever our sin might be; He forgives it all, for His Son Jesus’s sake.
God the Father loved the Son, even before the creation of the world (John 17:24), and He expressed that love for the Son in the flesh of the man Jesus at both Jesus’s baptism and His transfiguration (for example, Matthew 3:17; 17:5). The love between the three divine Persons of the one blessed Trinity motivated and expressed itself in the Son’s conception, birth, suffering, crucifixion, death, burial, descent, resurrection and ascension. In short, God’s love led and leads to all that He did and does for us. Jesus kept the Father’s commandments and abided in His love. Jesus loved us with such a great love that, even while we were still sinners and so His enemies, He died for us (Romans 5:8). He not only laid down His life for us, but He also took it back up again (John 10:11, 15, 17-18). We are reconciled to God the Father by Jesus’s death and saved by His life (Romans 5:10). For, He loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood (Revelation 1:5). By sending His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him, God showed His love (1 John 4:9-10), and now He gives us life through His Means of Grace.
Tonight’s Second Reading (Ephesians 5:1-2, 22-33) mentions Christ’s sacrificial love for us, and it mentions the way that most of us first receive forgiveness and life: Holy Baptism. In the Second Reading St. Paul says Christ sanctified the Church—that is, made Her holy—by cleansing Her by the washing of water with the Word (confer John 15:3). There, at the Baptismal Font, God makes us holy and without blemish; there God makes us His Children and abides in us and we in Him. So baptized, we continue to abide in Him and His love: regularly hearing His Word preached; regularly confessing to our pastors the sins we know and feel in our hearts and so regularly receiving individual Holy Absolution from the pastor as from Christ Himself; and regularly receiving Christ’s body with bread and Christ’s blood with wine in the Sacrament of the Altar. At this altar and its rail, Christ is a friend of sinners (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34), giving those who believe forgiveness, life, and salvation. Whoever here feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him and He in them (John 6:56). In fact, in all these ways—preaching, Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper—we abide in Him and in His love, and He abides in us. And, so we live as He would have us live, loving one another as He loved us.
Kristen and George, as you so abide in God’s love for you individually, His love ideally in turn will flow from each of you to the other. Your marriage ideally will reflect God’s love in Christ for His Church. You ideally will have each other for mutual companionship, help, and support, both in good times and in bad times, and He will deepen your love for each other through every joy and sorrow you share. As God wills, you may have children to bring up in the fear and instruction of the Lord, and I encourage you to let Him make all the decisions as to how many children you will have and when. And, when you fail to live up the ideals of marriage, both God’s ideals and your own ideals, you always can and should live together in the forgiveness of sins as you abide in His never-ending love.
The whirlwind (or hurricane) that has been your engagement and preparations for this wedding are behind you. You may have another storm of the same sort when you plan and carry out the second ceremony with Kristen’s family back east, but you are married as of tonight. This Fourth of July is your “dependence” day, as you, Petty Officer Third Class and his fiancé, become more dependent on each other and ultimately on God. Tonight, to all of us, but especially to you both, Jesus says, “Abide in My love”. Continue to hear His Word and in faith to receive His gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation through His Sacraments. His love and forgiveness for you are the source of the love and forgiveness He wants for you each to have for the other. And, as we heard in the Third Reading, all that He has spoken He has spoken so that His joy may be in you and so that your joy may be complete. More than the fleeting happiness worldly pleasures bring, as you abide in His love, you will have the abiding joy of God’s love through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +