This homily was given by Pastor
Gene Preston on the occasion of the blessing of the
marriage of Anne Street and William Allan at Community
Church Hong Kong on Sunday, May 28, 2000.
TAKING THE
PLUNGE - MARRIAGE!
Once upon a time when a man and
a woman informed their families and friends that they
were having serious thoughts about marrying one another,
smiles and congratulations would have been the universal
response.
Now many couples prefer to keep
their serious conversation about marriage to themselves
because they suspect their families and friends would
respond with raised eyebrows and puzzled
frowns.
That's because nowadays marriage
is no longer viewed as unalloyed blessing. With divorce
rates at historic highs, marriage looks risky.
Once upon a time the
unchallenged logic of marriage was that men earned money,
women kept house and produced progeny. Out of the deal,
men got heirs and women got food and clothes. Now women
can feed and clothe themselves and so don't need to
marry.
Of course the romantic has
always thought there was more to it than an economic
contract. There was an emotional bond in which there was
love, and meaningful goals for life, and mutual
fulfilment.
But these ideals are under
attack by modern views of marriage. The award winning
film, AMERICAN BEAUTY, holds up what is thought of as the
ideal in marriage as a sham. The handsome husband and
beautiful wife and teenager live the seeming good life
in a beautiful home with all its accoutrements of
pleasant furnishings, manicured garden, and affluent cars
and their marriage reeks of frustration.
As for children, traditionally
considered the reason for marriages, nowadays women and
men, as singles or as unmarried partners, are able to
birth and raise children without any benefit of a legal
contract called marriage.
I have just visited a half dozen
relatives and close friends in the U.S. and the recurring
pattern, whether the family is Christian or secular, is
the acceptance of both living together and birthing
without the benefit of holy matrimony.
Marriage is about living
together, but numerous couples live together, and turn
their house into a home, and share shopping, and argue
over whose turn it is to vacuum, and have kids, and
consider themselves lucky that they don't need marriage
to further complicate their arrangements.
********
But Christians still want
marriage, both as the ideal and as the sought after
reality. Those who value the sacramental commitment of
marriage still want it.
That's because at the
matrimonial altar something essentially new takes place
for the couple who marry. Marriage gives us a new
dimension just like the sacraments of baptism and
communion give us something new which we did not have
before we entered into them.
In marriage God comes to dwell
not just in each person, for in truth God always dwells
in each of us, but God through marriages comes to dwell
in the relationship. You cease to be two and become
three. It is that grace of God which glues Anne and
William together in marriage in which the two become not
only one but three.
A few weeks ago a computer bug
jammed e-mail and computers around the world. This
computer virus had the opening message I LOVE YOU.
I LOVE YOU is a tempting and
always a risky message. It's risky for Anne and William
to have said I LOVE YOU to one another privately. It is
far more risky for them to say now in public I LOVE
YOU.
It's also risky for GOD to put
the divine I LOVE YOU into this marriage. God always has
loved Anne and William but now God is taking a new risk
and placing into their new life together a special
blessing of his love and presence with them.
The skeptics regarding holy
marriage have screwed up values. They think that the
greatest compliments a modern man and woman can receive
is to be admired as SELF RELIANT, AND INDEPENDENT, AND
CAREER ORIENTED.
In that view, marriage is a
contrarian reality in which God takes the risk to say
that his love will now be shared with Anne and William
and will shine through them. Marriage not only cements
their relationship as a couple and family, their marriage
cements their relationship with God.
Wanting to get married may be a
sign of weakness for worldly skeptics but only if it is a
weakness to want to be called Beloved Wife and Faithful
Husband.
Christians honor marriage
because we know we are dependent, first dependent upon
God, so certainly dependent upon one another.
Christianity has always been about acknowledging a
certain kind of weakness, a definite dependence, a
partnership with the Other and the others. After all at
the center of our faith is the God who became weak for
our sake. And who called us His Children.
Marriage is a way to get more in
love with God just because the partners are in love with
one another and to depend upon God to guide and nurture
the couple in their love. Marriage is both a new romance
and a new reality of the couple together and of the
couple with God..
Anne and William: It's our
pleasure to congratulate you for taking the plunge. You
won't be sorry to give up your self-reliance and
independence. You will be blessed because your marriage
is both legal and now it's God's sacrament with you.
Pastor Gene
Preston
Archives: Sermon
Texts
|