Wedding Sermon

I read from Genesis 2:21-23
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, ?This is now bone of my bones; and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.?E

Let us Pray

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, You gave a bride to Adam and sent Your Son to rescue His bride; send Your Spirit to lighten the darkness of our hearts, so that the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts may be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

I have just read that the Lord God fashioned Adam?s rib into a woman, but that is not precisely what the original Hebrew says. The Hebrew says that the Lord God took a rib and ?built?Ea woman for Adam.

That?s an odd way to talk about making a woman, but the oddity is a significant one because it points to one of the key differences between the First Adam and the Last. Yahweh formed the first Adam from the dust and placed him in a garden that Yahweh Himself had planted. Then, the Lord built a wife and brought her to the man. With the Last Adam, the situation is reversed. Like Noah, the Last Adam plants His own garden. And quite unlike the first Adam, the Last Adam does not receive a bride built by His Father. On the contrary, the Last Adam builds his own bride, and having built her He protects her from Satanic assault: ?And on this rock I will build My church,?EJesus says, ?And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.?E

Otto, it may seem that your situation is closer to Adam?s than to Jesus?E After all, you didn?t create Bethany; you were not around when she was born, and you had nothing to do with building her character. The foundations of her life were laid at home by her parents, at school by her teachers, and through experiences she had before she ever imagined that she might fall for a guy named Otto. This is an essential perspective on your marriage. You were in deep sleep, and the Lord built Bethany and brought her to you. Bethany is a gift of God, undeserved as any other gift, and your first and last and lifelong response to this gift must be gratitude, gratitude like the ecstasy of Adam when he awoke to find his bride: ?This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman for she was taken out of Man.?E

True and essential as that perspective is, it is also true that you are called to be
like the Last Adam. Paul is quite explicit about that. In Ephesians 5, he quotes from Genesis 2 ?E?for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh?E?Ebut he immediately reminds his readers that he is not talking about the first Adam: ?But I speak about Christ and the church.?E Otto, you are called to be a husband like the Last Adam, and that means you are called to be the kind of husband who builds his own bride.

What can this possibly mean? It hardly seems reasonable or fair that you have been given this God-like task of building a woman. It is a God-like task, but it is not mystical or bizarre. The New Testament term for what you are called to do is ?edify,?Ewhich simply means ?build.?E God has built a wife for you, and you are called to build her up, adorning her so she is translated from glory to more radiant glory, from beauty to more perfect beauty, from joy to deeper joy.

In the same letter where Paul instructs Christian men to love their wives as Christ loves the church, he also gives some instruction about edification, a blueprint for building the bride of Christ, which is also a plan for building up a wife. Paul says to ?lay aside falsehood?Eand ?speak truth.?E He says, ?be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.?E He says, ?let no rotten word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear.?E He says, ?do not grieve the Holy Spirit,?Eand ?let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.?E He says, ?be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.?E The Lord ripped a rib from the Adam to build a bride; Jesus voluntarily gave His entire body on the cross so that His bride could be born from the water and blood that flowed from His side. That is how you, Otto, are to edify, build up, your wife ?Eby giving your life for her sake.

The notion that a husband is called to build his wife is alarming. Even more alarming is the fact that bride participates in the building project. Here the Last Eve transcends the First Eve as completely as the Jesus surpasses Adam. Jesus builds His church, so that He can present her to Himself glorious, without spot or wrinkle. Yet, each member is also called to edify, to build up, the church. Jesus builds His bride, and as He does, the bride builds herself. And yet more: In building herself, the bride is also building Christ, who is the one body with many members. The church is ?being built into a spiritual house,?Ebut that divine passive envelops and drives human activity that ?builds up the body of Christ,?Ethe body that is the bride. Christ builds the bride so that the bride builds herself, which in turn builds Christ. Mary is the model here for all Christians: God sovereignly formed Mary to be the new Eve; but Mary said, ?Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me even as Thou wilt.?E And so, Mary became a participant in forming Christ, as Christ took form in her. ?He who loves his wife, loves himself,?EPaul says, and he who edifies his wife builds up himself.

Bethany, this means that you are no mere a passive object of a construction project. Otto is called to build you, to edify you, to lay himself down, in Christ, as a cornerstone for your life. But you in response are to build him, and in the same way that Paul outlines: Speak words that build not words that destroy; don?t allow the sun go down on your anger; be tender-hearted, forgiving each other, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

To capture the complex beauty of this picture, the metaphor of building eventually becomes unwieldy. We are not accustomed to buildings that build themselves, much less buildings that turn around and somehow build their builder. We need something more supple to capture the whole biblical truth, and when we need something more supple we turn, naturally, to music. Christ and His bride are fugally related: Christ the Head is the theme, but the bride follows as a melody of her own, which keeps in step with the melody of her husband. Christ?s song blazes the path for the song of the bride and provides the aural space in which the bride?s song is sung; the bride?s song is always to harmonize with Christ?s, and never to drown out His voice. But, responsive and secondary though it is, the song of the bride also builds up and adorns the song of her husband. The duet is miraculously richer than the solo. This is a great mystery; but I speak of Christ and the Church.

So too, marriage is harmonics, the lifelong fugal dance in which the husband?s song calls for the bride, and the bride?s song adorns her husband?s, so that they are together a single song. Marriage is designed to be truly a Song of Songs.

None of this is within the range of human possibility. We are not capable of building another human being. In our sin and folly, we are instead like the foolish woman who tears down her house with her own hands. Nor are we capable of the kind of harmonizing required for two lives to become a single song, for discord rather than harmony is the fundamental condition of sinful human existence. Marital harmony is not within human

possibility, but it is possible. It is possible by the power of the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son, the Spirit who gives us the freedom to become and to be what we, in ourselves, could never become or be.

Otto and Bethany, this is our prayer for you on your wedding day: That you may build one another in the power of the Spirit, and that your lives may harmonize as you both harmonize on the melody of the Spirit, the melody that is the Spirit. May the Spirit of Christ fill your home: The Spirit who hovered over the waters and formed the earth into a dwelling place for God; the Spirit who gave wisdom to Bezalel and Oholiab to build the tabernacle, and the Spirit who gave Solomon wisdom for the temple; the Spirit who hovered over the womb of Mary to shape a new creation, and the Spirit that flowed from Jesus as living water for a living bride; the Spirit poured out at Pentecost to build the church, and the Spirit who equips each member to share in that construction; the Spirit who is, with the Son, the Divine Architect and the Divine Builder; the Spirit who is the Eternal Musician, whose movement is the eternal rhythm of Triune life, who is the Eternal Music of the Eternal God.

Let us pray
Almighty God, our Father, who made all things at the beginning through Your Spirit and Your Son, give grace to Otto and Bethany that they might build up one another in faithful love to their life?s end, so that You may be pleased with the song of praise that their life becomes. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and with the Spirit, ever one God, unto ages of ages. Amen.