Wedding Sermon

Wives, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

Let us pray.

O God most pure, author and creator of all creatures: bless these marriages. Bless them as You blessed Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca. Bless them as You blessed Jacob and Rachel, Joseph and Asenath. Bless them as You blessed Moses and Zipporah, Zachariah and Elizabeth.

Grant to these Your servants, Toby and Emily, and Josiah and Afton, a peaceful and long life, chastity, mutual love in the bond of peace, long-lived offspring, gratitude from their children, a crown of glory that does not fade away. Graciously grant that they may see their children’s children. Preserve undefiled the joys and pleasures of the marriage bed, and give them of the dew of heaven from on high, and of the fruitfulness of the earth. Fill their houses with wheat, wine and oil and with every good thing, so that they may give in turn to those in need; and grant also to those here present with them all their petitions which are for their salvation. Unite them in one mind; wed them into one flesh, granting to them the fruit of the body and the procreation of godfearing children. For Yours is the majesty, and Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory: for You ever live, One God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Once upon a time, the path toward marriage was bounded by chastity and modesty on the one side, and by chivalry on the other. A chaste woman is unwilling to offer herself to just anyone; to be chaste is to be selective, and patient. To win the attention, much less the favor, of a chaste woman, a man has to act gallantly, treat her with respect and restraint, in some cases to risk life and limb in some act of daring.

In this case, “once upon a time” was not so long ago. Long after lords and ladies, knights and damsels, favors and tournaments and bright banners rippling in the breeze, had become the stuff of misty legend, chastity and chivalry remained the twin coordinates of courtship. The man was no longer expected to slay dragons or assault the dark tower, but into the last century everyone expected young men to be chivalrous in a bourgeois American sort of way. Meanwhile, the demand for feminine chastity had hardly changed in several millennia. The front porch was a lower and homier version of the castle balcony.

Near as this is in time, the front porch is worlds away in sensibility. Young men and women no longer court on the front porch, much less the castle balcony. Somewhere near the middle of the last century, we moved from the front porch to the back seat. Today, talking about the back seat has a fusty old fashioned scent about it.

What happened? Myth has it that this tectonic shift happened all at once thirty or forty years ago. During late ’50s, or the summer of ‘62, or ‘68, or ‘74, immaculately conceived boys and girls discovered sex for the first time in human history, and, as the film Pleasantville shows, this drab old world miraculously turned color. Before you could turn your head, chastity was passe, and when chastity evaporated so did chivalry – for what’s the point of gallantry when a man can get the pleasure he wants, anytime he wants?

While this revolution was in some ways very rapid, the move from the castle balcony to the back seat and beyond has in fact been centuries in the making, and the main front of the battle has been an attack on chastity. Already in the 18th century, David Hume wrote that chastity and modesty were nothing more than mechanisms to provide men with a guarantee of paternity; for Hume, modesty is a social construct so men can know which children they’re responsible for.

More recently, feminists assaulted chastity and promoted promiscuity as a means of liberation, but even a card-carrying sister like Simone de Beauvoir knew that eliminating chastity could only result in increased abuse of women. Women who want to say “No” can no longer rely on the support of a society devoted to chastity. They’re on their own, and all the pressure is on them to get over their hangups and to perform.

Why am I talking about courtship when we are standing here bringing a double courtship to consummation in a double wedding? Emily and Afton will soon remove their veils, and doesn’t that mean that the time for chastity is over? Toby and Josiah have won their prizes; so why talk about chivalry now?

But biblically, chastity doesn’t end with the vows or the wedding night. Peter urges wives to be chaste and modest (1 Peter 3:2), just as does Paul: “I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing,” Paul says, “modestly and discreetly” (1 Timothy 2:9). And Peter instructs husbands to treat their wives as precious vessels, and to grant them honor as co-heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7) – in short, to be chivalrous. Chastity and chivalry are not expendable techniques for winning a mate, techniques that can be dropped as rapidly as one can say “I do.” Chivalry and chastity are the perpetual demands of Christian marriage.

Marital chastity sounds odd to us because we associate chastity with prudery, priggishness, and pseudo-Victorian fear of sex. But modesty and chastity have never been about eliminating desire. As Chesterton pointed out, most love poetry has been written by Christians who have simultaneously insisted that marriage is the only proper setting for sexuality. There is something to Rousseau’s notion that feminine modesty is more erotic than feminine audacity. The result, if not the intention, of modesty is to enhance rather than suppress desire.

Chastity is worthy of discussion at a wedding because the same pressures that have destroyed pre-marital chastity and chivalry also undermine post-marital chivalry and chastity. If the single girl has no social support for saying No, the married woman likewise has little social support for faithfulness, and lots of cultural pressure to have a fling every now and again. Single men are no longer expected to act chivalrously, and neither are married men. The pressures you’ve had to resist during your courtship don’t go away after the wedding. They take new forms, but the world is at war with Christian marriage just as it is with Christian courtship.

But what does marital chastity look like? What is marital chivalry? Peter gives us a portrait of each.

A chaste wife is first of all a submissive wife. A wife who is constantly striving to wrest the reins from her husband, who wants to direct everything, who undermines her husband’s leadership is not a chaste woman. Chastity in marriage means respect, what Peter, like Paul, calls a wife’s “fear” toward her husband. Chaste wives are like Sarah, who called her husband “master” or “lord.” Marital chastity is evident in action as well as words; Sarah didn’t just call Abram lord, but treated him as a lord, serving him, doing him

good, and obeying him.

A chaste wife, Peter adds, doesn’t concern herself primarily with outer adornments; she doesn’t dress ostentatiously or seductively or to draw attention to herself. Her outer clothing is a visible expression of the modesty of her inward clothing, as she adorns herself with virtues of the heart, with a tranquil and gentle spirit. A contentious wife who complains, nags, shames, browbeats, and pesters; a wife who is like a dripping faucet – such a wife is insufferable, and will drive her husband away. But Peter says she’s not only insufferable; she’s unchaste.

Emily and Afton, this is God’s command, this is your calling: Honor your husbands, submit to them in the Lord, adorn yourselves with tranquility and gentleness. This is the chastity that God calls you to as wives; this is His command.

What of marital chivalry? Peter addresses this as well. A husband should live with his wife, Peter says. We could translate this as “he houses with her.” A chivalrous husband is there. He doesn’t leave his wife with three toddlers and a newborn and a sick puppy so he doesn’t miss his poker night; he doesn’t lose himself in his work to avoid being face-to-face with his wife; he doesn’t ignore his wife when he’s in the same room with her. Toby and Josiah, this is the first demand of marital chivalry, of your vocation as husbands: To live with wife, sharing your life with her and allowing her to share her life with you. A chivalrous husband doesn’t push his wife to the suburbs of his good pleasure.

Being there isn’t enough. A chivalrous husband combines gentleness and power in a way that is only possible by the grace of Christ. He understands his wife, and strives to grow in understanding her. He knows she’s physically weaker, so he treats her with the delicacy and care he’d give to a priceless heirloom and defends her with the ferocity of a lion. He bestows honor on her, speaks approvingly of her to his friends, enhances her reputation rather than tearing it down. Honor (time) has sometimes been reserved to males who win glory in war or in political struggle. Peter tells husbands to bestow honor on their wives.

Peter’s instructions to husbands and wives are part of a larger set of instructions that begins with this exhortation: “Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation” (2:12). Peter applies this politically, urging Christians to submit to human authorities for the Lord’s sake, and he applies it in the household – to slaves, wives, and husbands. Christians are to stop the slanders of evildoers by their excellent behavior, including their excellent behavior as husbands and wives. All things are created to glorify to Jesus Christ, and Peter says that husbands and wives evoke praise even from unbelievers by their excellent behavior.

So: Afton and Emily, submit to your husbands, adorn yourselves not with external adornments but with the gentleness and tranquility that pleases God. Toby and Josiah, house with your wives, treat them as the precious vessels they are, honor them as co-heirs of the grace of life. Pursue chastity, pursue chivalry, and you will be transforming slander against Christians into praise of Christ. Preserve chivalry, preserve chastity, and you will be bringing not only your marriage, but creation itself, to its joyous consummation.

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