World-Tree

A Wedding Homily

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

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

There is something primordial, and deeply sacred, about trees. They provide for our needs in abundance: fruits, nuts, timber, shade. They shelter us from wind and sun and rain and hail. They grant us lumber for our houses, fuel for our fires, and refuge from our storms. And beyond all this they are a delight to the senses in every season: the scent of woodsmoke, the beauty of the leaves, the rustling of their branches in the wind.

Little wonder, then, that trees are universally held to have religious significance. The solidity of the trunk, the depth of the roots, the reaching heights of the uppermost limbs, serve to bind us, past, present, and future; above, about, and below. The Old Norse spoke of a tree that held all the worlds together, the things of heaven, the things of earth, and the things of our ancestors buried and gone.

In Christianity, there are trees everywhere: a Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden; a Tree of Knowledge, for good and for ill; an evergreen to mark the Savior’s birth; a rough-hewn Cross on which to sacrifice our God. Everywhere we look there are trees. Thus am I convinced that God must love them so.

David, Alyssa, you have chosen, as the sign of your union, a living tree. And I can think of no symbol more fit, both for the love you have shared up to this point, and also the life you now root firmly in each other. Marriage is a sturdy thing, a strong yet supple trunk, reaching up to the glory of the Lord, reaching down to the wisdom of those who’ve gone before. The tree of marriage, moreover, is a fruitful thing, producing sustenance, sweetness, and shelter for all who are blessed to surround it.

Of course it also produces other, smaller trees, but we’ll get to that in due time. A forest isn’t grown in a day.

Yes, marriage is a wonderful thing. Like a tree, it improves all the world around it, simply by dint of its beauty, its growth, and its strength. In marriage, the two of you will be stronger, will be taller, will be firmer than either one could be on his or her own. Wedded, we are more than the sum of our parts. We become something greater, something new. We become a family. And this fresh, new family does not take away from our families of origin but makes them stronger too, makes them into one, bound to each other by the very love that they already share in and with and through the both of you.

This is a day of joy, and abundance, and fresh new beginnings, and we are all here because of this amazing thing—this holy thing—that the two of you have come here to do. It is an honor to be a part of this marriage. It is an honor to be a part of this miracle.

Now, all of that said, I want to be clear that marriage is about love. But love is not a passion. Love is not an emotion. Love is not the same thing as feeling in love. Love is a choice: an act of the will to put the good of another before my own, so that indeed this at last is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. Marriage is the Copernican Revolution of the soul, when our individual universes cease to revolve around ourselves and turn now fully upon the one whom we love, upon the family we forge. And that’s not easy. It’s worth it, but it’s not easy.

Real love means waking up and flossing next to the same person for 40 years. Real love means that your spouse will inherit the ability to drive you crazier than any other person on this earth—at least until your kids are teenagers. It’s true what they say: the more you love someone, the more you want to kill them. But that’s what’s so great about it. That’s how you know it’s real.

This is where the Cross aspect of that tree comes in. In marriage, I give myself, 100%, without reserve, to you. I pour out my life for you, into you; I give it all away for you! And in return, I receive everything you are, all of you, all for love. That’s what marriage really is. It’s death and resurrection, every day. I lose my life for you, every day. I gain your life for mine, every day. We die, and we rise, together, every day.

And we can do this because we’re never going to run out of self to give. The truth is that every one of us has a depthless well within our soul, the bottom of which can never be plumbed, the limits of which can never be reached. 30 years, 40 years, 50 years down the line, you will still have the ability to surprise one another, to learn from one another, to become something new together.

And that’s a good thing. Because the love you have now? It won’t last. Not like this. And really, you wouldn’t want it to. We would get bored with one another, we would get bored of love, if it didn’t change, didn’t age, didn’t mature. A tree that always stays the same is dead. But a healthy tree, well-tended, rooted in good soil and reaching up to Heaven? God only knows the heights to which that tree will climb. God only knows how deep the roots of that love will grow.

David, Alyssa, you have made one heck of a start. Yours will be one heck of a marriage. So hold onto your hats, folks. And let’s do this thing, together.

In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.