This one is a little out of the ordinary. It's for a wedding, and the readings for it were chosen (mostly) from outside the Christian canon. But no worries; God's grace is so great that anything can proclaim it.
Readings:
The Art of a Good Marriage, by Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Four Elements of True Love, by Thich Naht Hanh (In the link, it's #4)
Genesis 12:1-5a
God came to Abram, we are told, and gave him some instructions. “I want you to take everything you have, and move to a new land.” Abram seems to have had a gift of being able to talk to God in a way that most of us can’t. He probably answered by saying, “And which land is this, then? How do I get there? Can I get directions? Maybe put it into Google Maps?” And God’s answer? “You’ll know it when you get there.” And so they set out, traveling across the fertile crescent, north and west and south again around the desert land in the middle east, to settle finally in a beautiful land called Canaan. A grand and powerful story.
In our American culture, we have this funny idea that love is something cinematic. It has to be big, sweeping, with romance happening in unexpected ways, the hoped-for relationship intruded upon by some problem the couple discovers as they’re falling in love, or some other person who still has feelings for one of the players. And yet there is this inescapable pull between the lovers, and they cannot ignore it. All obstacles are surmounted, and one night they meet up on the top of the Empire State Building, or in Paris, or by the side of a moonlit lake, and we all know how the story ends.
And Cristina and Stephen, your story is like that, in its own way. I mean, seriously, who else is able to talk about going to school together in Rhode Island, and then moving, separately, across the country to California, and falling in love there? And then moving back here, living in your parent’s basement (how romantic), buying a house together… It’s a story for the big screen (or at least a Hallmark Television Movie), starring Colin Firth and Emma Thomson.
Except, as I’ve gotten to know you a bit, it sounds like you don’t really feel that your relationship is cinematic. It’s just normal. It is what it is. So you renovated a house, and you have jobs, and you get up in the morning together, and you do your thing. It’s just normal life. There’s nothing all that surprising about it. Normal life, just, you know, together.
I suspect that’s why you chose the first reading, that beautiful poem by Wilferd Arlan Peterson, that begins by saying, “Las pequeñas cosas son las grandes cosas.” The small things are the big things. You know as well as any couple I’ve known that it’s not really the cinematic parts that make a great marriage. It’s just, you know, holding hands and remembering to say “I love you” regularly. It’s remembering that your spouse doesn’t have to be perfect, but only has to be loved. It’s cultivating a spirit of joy in the simple things you do for each other, instead of just service and sacrifice. It is being patient, and flexible, and kind, even when you don’t really feel like it. It’s not about going to Paris together, though that can be fun if you do. It’s about paying a mortgage together, and cleaning the kitchen together, and eating breakfast together.
I can hardly imagine what it was like, Abram sitting down at the kitchen table with his wife Sarai the next morning, having absolutely no idea how to tell her. “So, Sarai, my princess. I… So I… um… could I have a little more milk on my cereal? *cough* Heh-heh. Um, so, I have something to tell you. Right. Well, see, last night, I had this dream, and in it, God said to me… God said, well, {quickly} he wants us to take everything that we have and move to a new land six hundred miles away. *cough* So, what do you think?” I remember learning in Sunday school that it was practically a miracle that Abram had enough faith to do this crazy thing. But I think the real miracle is that Sarai had enough faith in her husband. The truly miraculous thing about Sarai and Abram is that they sat down together and talked about why this was a terrible idea together and then decided that it was still the right thing to do, together, and so they packed up and went. They just lived together.
And how do we live together? By acting in kindness, relieving suffering, cultivating joy, and refusing to discriminate. These are the things that the Buddha teaches are the components of true love. They are simple. But listen to what he says about the results of these simple works and attitudes: “First, we learn to love one person with all our understanding and insight; then we expand that love to embrace another person, and another, until our love is truly boundless.” The love we have for one another does not stay with ourselves. It expands and expands. And Abram and Sarai’s story says the same. God’s promise to them isn’t just something for themselves. God says, “In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Stephen and Cristina, I asked you a question a few months ago, when I first met with you over Skype. I asked you what difference you thought this wedding would make. After all, you’ve been together for years now. And you just bought a house together. It doesn’t get a whole lot more committed than that. So what’s the point of this today? And what you told me, I think, is right. Your wedding today isn’t really about you. It’s about them. All the people who have gathered here with you to witness and celebrate who you are together, people from every stage in your journey together, every chapter of the story of becoming who you are. It’s about taking your private love and going public with it. It’s about officially inviting all of them to see what’s going on here.
When you pay the mortgage and clean the kitchen and eat breakfast together, you are living out the love that you have for each other, and that I believe God has planted in you for one another. You are showing the world what love looks like. Which means that you are teaching the world how to love. And even more than that, you are a sign for the world that IT is loved. In the way you love each other, whether you know it or not, you are telling everyone else about how God loves them.
And that is the most important, most holy thing you could do. Celebrate the joy you have in your love. Because in this broken world, captive to fear and anger, the only thing that can fix it all is love.
We don’t acknowledge it very often. But it isn’t the big, powerful, dramatic events of the religious traditions that have really changed the world. Jesus was born to a poor unwed teenage mother. The Buddha’s claim to fame was sitting under a tree and thinking for a while. Mohammed was just a guy who loved his community. The Hindu goddess Sita simply remained faithful to her husband. And Abram and Sarai sat down and talked it out. And what is the result of that breakfast conversation? Today, 15 million Jews, 2.1 billion Christians, 1.3 billion Muslims, and the followers of a handful of smaller religions find inspiration in these two peoples’ faithfulness to each other and to God.
May you simply be kind to each other, lighten each other’s load, and find joy in each other. May you do it in all the small ways of life, never forgetting, even when you are each other’s greatest frustration, that you are also each other’s greatest love. And may many, many people come to know love through you, just as they have through that ancient couple’s love one morning at breakfast.
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