No Idea

Credit to: http://www.jrginsberg.com

A Wedding Homily

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

Anna, Kristoff—allow me to be the first to welcome you both into the wild and woolly world of marital bliss. And may I just say: you have no idea what you’re in for.

You guys are an amazing couple. You’re open, you’re honest, you’re level-headed, and you are clearly in deep and lasting love. You know each other right down to the core. You have that beautiful complementarity of a couple whose differences perfectly interlock. Where one is weak, the other is strong, and as a team you’ll be unbeatable.

Over these last couple months it has been an honor and pleasure to get to know the both of you and to see just how very much you mean to one another.  Your love thus far has already stood the test of time and distance, of joy and contentment, of disagreement and compromise.  You know each other, you strengthen each other, and you love each other. That much is crystal clear to anyone who’s met you even for an hour.

And now you’ve come to make heartfelt, lifelong, and legally binding promises to one another, before the authority of the state, before the witness of friends and family, and before the eyes and pleasure of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God. Everyone loves a good wedding.  Especially Him.  And for good reason indeed.

But no matter how much we prepare, no matter how much we strive and dream and plan, marriage never goes the way that we expect it to. Never. You have decided to take everything you are, everything you have, everything for which you aspire, and intertwine it all—body, mind, and soul—with another living human being. That is going to do things to you that you’ve never imagined. You are going to learn things and travel places and endure hardships and celebrate joys that you cannot see coming. None of us can. You are going to have to give things up—big things, your life as you know it, in fact.

Marriage is the Copernican revolution of the soul. It’s the moment when we cease to become the center of our own universes, the stars of our own personal movies, and become instead part of a living, breathing, ever-transforming, husband-and-wife family. One that is both ancient and ever-new. The hard part is that you’ll never be alone again. The wonderful part—is that you’ll never be alone again. From this moment forward, you are more than the sum of your parts. You are part of an inextricable, life-long love.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the love you share right now is going to be strong enough to stand the test of time. It won’t be. This love, here, today, will not stand the test of time. But that’s okay. In fact, that’s a good thing. Because as you guys age and grow and strengthen each other and meet brand new challenges, you know what? Your love will grow too. Your love will expand and strengthen and age like a fine wine.

The love that you share today, the fresh love of a new bride and her groom, is absolutely beautiful. It spreads joy to all those here this afternoon! It brought you to each other and to the altar of our God. But five years from now, 10, 30, 50—your love will not be the same. It will be older, wiser, stronger, more patient. And even more beautiful than today.

True love means watching the same person floss beside you in the bathroom for the next 40 years. True love means that your spouse will magically inherit the ability to drive you crazier than any other person on earth. It’s true what they say: the more you love someone, the more you want to kill them. But that’s what makes it so wonderful. That’s how you know that it’s real.

Oh, and then there’s kids. Let me tell you about the kids. They will turn your world upside down. They will turn you into your parents. They will destroy your house and get you sick and never let you sleep, ever, for years. And they will bring so much love into your home that you feel like you could die from it every single day. That’s really what marriage and parenthood both are. Death and resurrection. Every day. And there’s something deeply holy about that, something that makes the chaos of a messy household every bit as sacred to God as the cathedral or the monastery.

No, guys, you have no idea what you’re in for. And that’s what’s so awesome. God is going to take the two of you and forge you into one—and from that one, who knows? Three, four, five, that’s up to you (mostly). In this marriage God opens a Pandora’s Box. Not one filled with woes, though there will be more than a few in there, but one filled with life. Messy, painful, gorgeous, joyous, happy, tired, lusty, absolutely unpredictable life. It’s going to be so hard. It’s going to be so great. It’s going to be so beautiful.

That’s why everybody has come here this afternoon, you know. Because we know how exciting it is, how fresh, how hopeful, when God binds two people together and unleashes a marriage upon the world. We’re all rooting for you. We’re all here to bless you, because we know how much of a blessing this husband and this wife will be for us. You may not feel it all at once. You may wake up tomorrow and feel more-or-less the same way that you do today. But I promise you, God is already at work, weaving your lives into one, intertwining two lovers into a miracle of His own design. A time-bomb of life!

And someday the two of you will look back on it all—all the joys that came unbidden, all the hardships you’re amazed that you survived—and you’ll see how much He’s done through you. You’ll see the sacrament God has made of your one shared life. And on that day you will say, “My God. That crazy preacher at our wedding was right.”

Thanks be to God, who pours out life like we wouldn’t believe. In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.