Our Wedding: David Brock's Homily, 30 June 2007
"We met in the spring of 2004 in a Spanish class at the US Department of Agriculture Graduate School." It could be the first line of a novel, don’t you think? Nascent love blossoming to the sound of the language of romance about which the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda said: . . . [son las palabras las que cantan, las que suben y bajan] it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend . . . . They have shadow, transparence, weight, feathers . . . and everything they gathered from so much rolling down the river, from so much wandering from country to country . . . They are very ancient and very new.
Emilia: "Amada amante."
Mateo: "Compañero para la vida."
So . . . Mateo meets Emily: this world-embracing woman from Michigan; articulate, passionate, capable, forthright, friendly . . . and short! Truth-teller, boundary-breaker and justice-seeker, with initiative and drive; a visionary change agent of revolutionary spirit who is funny, wounded, loved and loving, aware of stark realities, but driven by hope.
Convicted by her Christian faith to be stalwart seeker of shalom, Emily knows that beating swords into ploughshares takes time, skill, muscle, work harder than making weapons . . . and prayer, plenty of prayer; and equal amounts of humor. She is obstinate in demanding more of herself and of a world that continues to rob this and future generations of God-given rights promised to all, not just some. She listens with her eyes and speaks with her life.
This is Emily, the grade school child who misunderstood the concept of talent show, thinking she was required to learn a new talent in order to perform! She quickly taught herself American Sign Language by reading books, practicing, and visiting a family with a hearing-impaired child. On the day of the show, she performed her new talent flawlessly, and concluded by turning to her teachers to sign "Thank you for teaching us." Her mother and father, watching with amazement, realized even then that their 'little girl' was ready for the world, and, that the world had better get ready for her!
And, Emily meets Matt: child of England, boy of the Americas, man rapidly acquainting himself with the planet. He is a mestizaje mixture of race, culture and geography that prepares him uniquely for the world he now inhabits. He is brilliant writer and researcher with incisive mind; seeker, questioner, healthy doubter, and a fine observer of humanity.
Matthew has a passion for finding practical ways to make the world safer, and saner; a desire to both savor and save the earth and its peoples. His sense of adventure propels him, as does his passion for understanding and respecting the world's poor and disenfranchised. He is dreamer and explorer who puts heart and soul into hammering dreams into reality. He is sensitive and gentle friend, compassionate listener, man of wit . . . and tall—like a lean, leggy, hairy Afghan hound, says his father, with sparkle in his eye and the lilt of good English humor in his voice. "He has found a strong woman in Emily who is well able to stand up to him," Andrew adds. "I am very pleased she is Mennonite and committed to non-violence because there will be times when he may test her!"
This is Matthew who talked early and often (ad nauseum, exhausted parents might have said at times), who didn’t sleep through the night until he was three, and read at 5 what most of us read at 10. At 4 he designed and hammered together a robot with moveable legs and arms which he clothed with his own favorite outfits. Person of inclusiveness and hospitality from the beginning, he had a major public argument with his mother outside a theatre when he insisted that the robot come in to watch as well. She cleverly insisted he couldn’t take robot in because she hadn’t bought him a ticket. Matt was heartbroken that his own mother could have forgotten to buy his best friend a ticket. They finally agreed robot had great vision and strength and would keep the car safe while they were inside. Later, on the way home, Matthew chatted non-stop to robot about the play, "You’re a good man, Charlie Brown!"
Individually, you are both pretty amazing people. Together, a formidable duo, says the father of the bride. All of us want you to know that we are here today because we love you, are thankful for what you mean in our lives, and pledge to support you in this lifelong covenant.
What is this thing we do today asks the inquisitive child, or the youth who serve us as ushers today . . . or maybe even the seasoned seniors in our midst? What is marriage and why? Why this wedding ceremony of laughter and flowers and dresses and dancing and all this planning and preparation and travel and time off work? Why these rings and these vows and these public statements that we make to each other in front of everyone? Why, when so many don’t bother any more, and when so many who do bother, don’t or can’t or won’t keep the promises made to each other and to God?
Marriage is a promise; marriage is a risk; marriage is hard; marriage is adventure . . . and, a lot of marriage is routine. It is constant accommodation and negotiation, and learning to live in a small space with your roommate! It is a lot about keeping little promises to each other . . . like putting the trash out every Friday morning, dusting the furniture before the guests arrive and coming home from work when you said you would. It is thousands, no, it is millions of intricate moves we make to say to the world, "if we can just learn to live in peace with each other as husband and wife; if we can say "welcome into my life, and my heart;" if we can fill a space with the joy of being together, maybe, just maybe, there is hope that we can live in harmony in our neighborhood and in our world.
Marriage is also an occasional, unanticipated, unspeakable revelation. You look across the kitchen table, or the crowded lecture hall, at the beauty and goodness and value in the other’s face. Or, you look into anguished eyes in a time of deepest pain and you know beyond doubting that your spouse is the face of God come closer to you than in any other face. In an instant you wish would never end, you know you stand or bow or kneel in the privileged place of the Holy and Sacred. The eternal breaks in on the temporal and the light of divinity leaks through.
A wedding ceremony is in part, I believe, for the photos and the memories. Take the pictures today of young faces shining with unmitigated joy with the goal of looking back in 10, 15, and 50 years, membering again the tiniest details and recounting what a journey it has been!
A wedding is rituals and symbols, and these rites and acts convey meaning far beyond what appears on the surface. The wedding, this wedding, is one way to say, “We long for a relationship with the transcendent; for connection in community; for the sight and touch of beauty; for assurance of our worth as a person; for the promise of faithfulness and trustworthiness.
A wedding is sacramental; a response to our belief that:
-God chooses to be in covenant relationship with creation.
-God is in and through all, so all of life is potentially sacred.
-God yearns to bring all humans into peace, wholeness, and right relationships with each other and the divine.
This is no daisy-lined smooth pathway walk in the park, friends . . . as if I needed to say that, what with statistics the way they are and with all the experience accumulated through the days of living right here in this sanctuary. But, it has never been easy. You want proof: listen to Malachi and Jesus and Paul from two millennia ago:
"God, not you, made marriage. His Spirit inhabits even the smallest details of marriage. . . . So guard the spirit of marriage within you. Don't cheat on your spouse." (adapted from Malachi 2:12-14)
"Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn't for everyone. . . .But if you're capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it." (adapted from Matthew 19:10-12)
"God made male and female to be together. . . .Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart." (adapted from Mark 10:4-6)
[M]arriage . . . must be a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to "stand up for your rights." Marriage is a decision to serve the other." (adapted from I Corinthians 7:2)
You both know you’ve got things to offer the world. We know the call that burns in you to give yourselves not only to each other but to an ongoing multi-generationed dream of a planet where we will learn war no more, where mom’s and dad’s can sit ‘neath their own vine and fig tree and children can live in peace and unafraid.
Be angry about what God is angry about: mine fields, killing fields, valleys with bones of the innocent dead; paper-thin, skin-covered skeletons of the sick and the starving. Desolated hearts, deserted relationships and uninhabited ruins.
Two-by-Two from now on, friends. Two-by-two. Two-by-two to the land and animals and peoples of Kenya; two-by-two to live with the Sudanese. Two-by-two to listen to the people on the streets and in the libraries of London. Say ‘peace to this house’ when you stay with anyone. Eat their food, heal their world and relationships and let them heal the wounded places in you. Two-by-two show them the hoped for reign of God right in their midst and in their future, even when you don’t always see it or feel it or have hope for it yourself.
Your marriage is a sign of hope for us, as it was in similar circumstances in the days of Jeremiah (33:10-11) and Isaiah (62:4-5). Let it ever be such a sign for you two as well; two-by-two. Yet in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither men nor animals, there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom . . . saying, "Give thanks to the LORD Almighty, for the LORD is good; his love endures forever."
"God delights in you and your land will be like a wedding celebration. For as a young man marries his virgin bride, so your builder marries you, And as a bridegroom is happy in his bride, so your God is happy with you. "
Two-by-two, Matthew and Emily; a joyful duo that laughs and plays and sings. Enflesh the hope and freedom of the good news wherever you go. And we’ll help you, starting now! We’ll go, like Jesus said, to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone we find; both good and bad, and we’ll fill the wedding hall with guests and love. (Matt 22:9)