Wedding homily

Wedding homily August 15, 2011

Ephesians 5:18-21: Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

Let us Pray.

Open, O Lord, our ears and hearts, that we may believe what You promise and do what You command. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth . . . Be exhilarated always with her love.” So says King Solomon in the staid and prudent book of Proverbs. In a racier mood, he opens the Song of Songs with this: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine.”

Love is intoxicating. Scripture says that the Spirit too is intoxicating.

When the Spirit fell at Pentecost, cynics charged that the apostles were full of new wine. To outsiders, the effects of wine and the effects of the Spirit were indistinguishable. It’s no accident that the first sign of Jesus, who was born of the Spirit, is to turn water to wine. Wine gives joy, and Paul says that the Christian alternative to drunkenness is inebriation with the Spirit.

Love is intoxicating as wine. The Spirit is intoxicating like wine. Is that a coincidence? Or are we to conclude that human love conveys the Spirit?

Of course, not everything that’s called “love” conveys the intoxicating Spirit of Jesus. Whoever sins sexually sins against his body, the body bought by Jesus and inhabited by the Spirit. A marriage driven by greed and selfish ambition does not produce the Spirit’s fruit. Some of what the world calls love grieves the Spirit of love.

But godly lovers do transmit the Spirit to one another. Paul closes Ephesians 5 with the famous passage about the mystery of marriage, but that comes at the climax of a series of instructions about how to walk with the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit is, of course, a pre-requisite to a blessed marriage. But Paul says something more. Marriage is also a means for receiving the fullness of the Spirit. In a faithful Christian marriage, the Spirit circulates from a man to his wife and back again, transforming each and both from glory to glory.

“Leave room for the Spirit,” we often joke, but it’s more than a joke. When the gap closes, and a man kisses his bride in genuine Christian love, the Spirit breathes in, with, and under the mingled breath of the kiss.

Much of what Paul says in the second half of Ephesians explains how to be filled with the Spirit in all our relationships, including marriage: Speak the truth. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Labor with your hands. Do not speak rotten words, but only what edifies. Put off bitterness and malice, and be kind. Kill immorality and greed. Forgive, and forgive, and forgive.

From all these, let me highlight the three that are in the verses I read a moment ago.

First, sing together. “As we sing together we pay attention to the activity of our bodies in making sound, and we respond to our own song as we hear it resonate in the space around us. While singing, we hear and attune ourselves to the sound of others’ voices . . . We submit ourselves together to a tempo, a pattern of melody and rhythm, and we respond to the shape and movement of our musical interaction” (paraphrased from Steve Guthrie). When you sing together, the Spirit attunes your hearts to the Father and to one another. When you sing, you learn to keep in step with the Spirit’s dance. A marriage full of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs is a marriage full of the Spirit.

Second, give thanks. The world and everything in it is a gift from the Father through the Son and Spirit, and the only proper way to receive it is in the mode of thanksgiving. Gratitude isn’t a periodic response, something we express here and there for this and that. Gratitude is the essence of creaturely life because we live in a world we did not make and do not deserve. Give thanks “always” and “for all things,” no matter how bitter they are, because even the bitter cup is a gift from God. Above all, give thanks to God and to one another for one another. A marriage full of thanksgiving will be a marriage full of the Spirit.

Finally, submit. Paul goes on in Ephesians 5 to speak of headship and submission, a hierarchy and order within marriage. Before he gets to that he exhorts the Ephesians to submit to one another in the fear of Christ. Husbandly headship without submission turns tyrannical; a wife who submits outside a setting of mutual submission will get trampled. Defer to one another. Each of you, think of the other as more important than yourself. Humble yourselves before God and to one another. A marriage of mutual submission is a marriage full of the Spirit.

So: Sing, give thanks, submit. These three; do them in faith, and your marriage will be filled with love intoxicating as wine because your cup will overflow with the wine of the Spirit.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 


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