My friend Donna is getting married this weekend, and she has asked me to be an officiant. She is not a friend I know well, though she is the kind of person that if you and she “click” right, you can go deep and fast into your friendship. I have quite literally found my conversations with her life changing, though they have been very few in number. In knowing her I lost a layer of something that did not belong to me. Somehow she gave a certain flavor of confidence and assuredness that I did not previously know. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she did not doubt me as her pastor, and she did not demand much of me as her friend. Donna gave me a very great gift. She did not begrudge me of my unavailability. My children were very young when Donna and I first met, and she made space for that. She frequently and generously told me “I know you don’t have much time….and a talk once and a while is perfectly fine with me. We’ll still be connected.” Not many people offered that to me, especially in the intense church world in which I was living, where every conversation had to be wrought with emotional and spiritual depth and had to happen on a weekly basis if it was to be deemed “real.” Also, I just thought of another thing. Donna is one of the first truly postmodern friends I’ve had. What do I mean by this? I mean that if we disagreed on something, even something deeply fundamental, we could still be friends. That doesn’t happen much in the church. Believe me, I know. Plenty of people have walked away from me because I’ve espoused some sort of theological or behavior point that they did not agree with. (And I’m sure I’ve done the same to them.)

At any rate, I like Donna. And I like her fiancé, Alex, too. I think they are well suited for each other. There is a lot of mutual respect there, and that goes a long long way. Plus, Alex just has a easy way about him, which I think will compliment Donna’s intensity. I don’t know. They just have a good vibe about them as a
couple.

So, this is what I finally wrote for their wedding homily. The last paragraph is based on Tracy Chapman’s Wedding Song. Donna said to me, “There are only two things I need to have in this wedding–you as an officiant, and Tracy Chapman.” I think we worked those things in just fine. Click below to read the homily.

Marriage is such a mysterious thing. On the one hand is it pretty straight up. There is a certain amount of money passed through a window at a downtown office, a certain legal document passed back–stamped and sealed and awaiting signatures, a certain number of people are required to be present, a minimum number of words must be spoken. Do you freely take this man, this woman in holy matrimony….if there is any legal reason why this man and this woman should not be joined… Do you then pledge…and of course…“I do, I do”

On the other hand, marriage is a complex creation; part ceremony and ritual, a great deal of family, two very distinct individuals, a dizzying mix of tradition and habit and cultural standards– programs and candles, stringed quartets and banquet halls, emotion and memories and more emotion, good friends zipped into matching outfits and guest favors tied in color coordinating ribbons, rice or bubbles, something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. And that just at the wedding ceremony! Then marriage, the actual marriage unfolds in front of you, one slow unfurling fold at a time, like a roll of rich-colored ribbon unwiding itself from a spool, or a pretty Chinese fan uncrimping itself to show off it’s gold etch picture from between the folds.

And that’s where you stand today Alex and Donna, right at the place where all the bits come together, where all the simple legalities and the lovely traditions are lined up and bundled together into one neat and memorable sentence. And here, in this room with those you love, you will place, at the end of all that dreaming and planning and folderol, a punctuation point. This ceremonial sentence will end not with period, but with the exclamation point of a kiss. This ceremony, this sacrament today turns on that punctuations point and sends you on and off into a mystery, into the process of growing a marriage.

A friend of mine has been recently ordained, and I was at the first wedding he officiated a few weeks ago. There he described marriage as not an act which starts and completes in a single day, but as an act of becoming. Here today, you continue on in definiteness and permenance your act of becoming: of becoming a husband, of becoming a wife, of becoming family, of becoming, perhaps a deeper more nuanced version of your own selves – and in the same mysterious moment of becoming one.

There are many gifts that will grace you in this becoming. Donna, you have told Father Bowman and I that you find in Alex the gifts of humor and laughter; that you admire his quick move towards confession and forgiveness, and that he has brought to you a positive outlook on the days of our lives, and a adventurous spirit that inspires and compels you into a broader way of living than what you might otherwise have experienced on your own.

Alex, in Donna you have found examples of patience and generous indulgence towards others. You have seen in her a life poured-out as a care-giver; and through her personal relationships she has offered to you lessons in friendship making, mending and maintaining.

Through these traits it is easy to see that you already embody, as individuals, the kind of living which is encourage in one of the passages you have chosen today. You have exhibited to one another, and to us, your family and friends all of the traits detailed in Colossians 3: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness. All of these traits flow out of one source–Out of love. So it is not hard to see why love would come and kiss each of you. Why love would draw you Alex, and you Donna to each other. Deep you see, calls to deep. Love calls to love. Is it any wonder then that the love in each of you has found the other? “For love binds all these things—compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, forgiveness—love binds all these things together in perfect unity.” And as you come together to form a union one with the other, it is easy for us, your family and friends to see that this marriage has emerged out of a deep love which already dwells within each of you.

I believe that this source of love is the love of God—and that this deep love source has fed you both, as you have lived these mutually admired lives of compassion, patience, humility and generosity. You have recognized embedded in your souls a seed which you have chosen to water and cultivate in your everyday living, and which now will twine together as a great vine, allowing your lives to weave together as one, and drawing each of you one to the other.

Marriage is a beautiful mystery not because of the trappings and traditions, but because it reflects the wonder and mystery of love—God’s deep and abiding love to us, our ability to give a deep and abiding love to another out of that original God-gifted love.

There is no way to speak of such a love in anything other than metaphor, and even our best metaphors are pale reflections. We try to capture love in the metaphors of ritual: the lighting a unity candle symbolizing two lives and even two families becoming one, the intertwining of fingers as you hold hands, the exchanging of rings–their precious metal an unending circle whispering to us of love’s ultimate reality.

We can only look at love sideways, depict it in pictographs, demarcate it symbols. This is how vast and how high and how wide and how deep love is. And this is the love which dwells within you, which draws you together, which feeds you, serves you, protects you inspires you. May this love always be as close to you as a ring is to a finger. May you be able to see and admire the vine that grows out of your God-source and twines you together. May you reach out your hand to love –the love of God, the love of each other – and see arms extending, outstretched before you. May your lives be a witness that there is salvation and rapture for the lonely. And may this day be a blessing to both of you, a sacrament, sacred and holy.