|
|
|
|
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.
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
|
|
|
|
The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
This page has been visited
times.
This page hosted by
Get your own Free
Homepage