Wedding Sermon

A few minutes ago, you each answered a question I posed to you. I asked you if you would take her as your wife, and whether you would pledge yourself to her as her husband. I asked you whether you would take him as your husband to love and honor him. Both of you have made these promises “so long as you both shall live.” Here I am talking again, and in a few moments, you will be making further promises to each other. At the end of the ceremony, I will declare you man and wife.

You may be asked, What was the wedding like? You could reply, in Hamlet’s phrase, “Words, words words.”

That’s all it is. Take away the church setting; take away the tuxedos and the wedding dress; take away the groomsmen and the bridesmaids; remove the flowers and the decorations. We don’t need any of these things to have a wedding. But take away the words, and there is no wedding. The words are of the essence of this event.

Is that all there is to it? we might be tempted to ask. Is getting married no more than that? Is it no more than saying a few words that you didn’t even write, so that a minister can pronounce you man and wife? How can words have that kind of power?

To that last question, many in our day answer, “Words can’t have that kind of power.” In our day, we minimize the importance of speech, and as a result we minimize marriage, and baptisms, and promises, and contracts, and blessings and curses, and prayer, and everything else that depends so thoroughly on words. Words flow at us constantly through multiple media, and the inflation of chatter inevitably leads to a devaluation of speech. We think that words are words are words, no matter what tone they’re spoken in, no matter what setting they’re in, no matter who says them.

Words, words, words: And none of it means much. The crisis of marriage in our time is part of a larger crisis of faith in language.

This trivialization of words is, of course, a mistake. When you answered a spelling or arithmetic question in grade school, you could answer without committing yourself. You didn’t have to put yourself on the line to tell your teacher how to spell “chrysanthemum.” Your words today are of a wholly different order. When you answer these questions today, you’re not merely conveying information. You’re committing yourselves to a lifetime of responsibility. You’ve answered many questions in the past, but few if any as important as the ones I asked you. You have spoken many words, but few as important as the vows that you will take in a few moments.

This loss of faith in speech is one consequence of a loss of faith in the God who is Eternally Word. According to the writer to the Hebrews, God upholds all things by the Word of His power. And Hebrews also speaks of the God who has spoken in His Son, spoken filially, in the last days. This Son through whom the Father spoke is also the Son through whom God made the “ages.” Most translations get this wrong. They say that God made the “world” through the Son, but the word is “ages.” The writer to the Hebrews is not talking only about the original creation. He’s saying that God creates new ages through His speech. When He speaks, He ends an old age and begins a new one. He speaks not only the “world” but “ages” into being.

Each day of the creation week begins and ends with God’s speech. God says “Let there be,” and at the end of the day He says, “This is good.” And each day of the creation week foreshadows the shape of all history. History begins with the creative “Let there be” of God’s Word, breathed forth in the Spirit, and time will also end with God’s speech, the speech that we call the Last Judgment. History begins with a command, and ends with a report. It begins with a “let there be,” and it ends with “This is how it was.” All of history is played out between the imperative of the creation week, and the forensic indicative of the Final Judgment.

This is the God in whose image we are created, and our speech is powerful and creative because we are made in the image of a God who speaks powerfully and creatively. Our words form “alleys of time” (ERH) because we were created by a God whose words created all time. Our words create “epochs” of history because we’re made in the image of a God who speaks the ages into existence.

More than six years ago, George W. Bush took an oath with his hand on an open Bible, and with those words he became President of the United States and inaugurated the “Bush era” of American history. His words gave shape to a period of time, which will end not with the last day of his Presidency, but with the last historian who investigates and passes judgment on the Bush era. In the US, political time begins with oaths and ends with books of history. World wars begin with a declaration of war, and end with the conclusion of a peace treaty. Your life as a member of the church began with the words “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and your life will end with words of hope in the resurrection at your funeral. You were baptized into a promise for the future; you’ll be buried with eulogies that will tell the story of your completed life.

We begin to see how powerful your words today are. The words you speak today are the alpha-words that cut an alley, a groove, a road, into the future. Your words are not only for today, but for “so long as you both shall live.” After you speak the words of your vows, after you are pronounced man and wife, a new age of your lives comes into being, a time in which you are no longer individuals but together husband and wife. You came here as two persons, but because of what you say, you leave as a single unit, a “we,” what the Bible describes as “one flesh.” Because the God who is Word is at work in and with your words, your words begin a new “age,” inaugurate the new “epoch” of your common life.

But your words are not merely creating a body of time for the two of you. Lord willing, you will have children, and the children you have will grow up within the span of time created by the words you’re speaking today. By speaking today, you are reaching into the future, past the end of your own life, to the next generation, even to the generation of your children’s children.

Reflections like these can be frightening and disorienting. Looking into the expanse of generations in the future can be like looking up at the endless sky on a clear night. It can induce a kind of vertigo. If our words are so powerful, it almost seems better to play it safe and say nothing.

Here is the deepest tragedy of the modern trivialization of language. We talk and chatter and banter on pointlessly, because we don’t recognize that every word we speak is an act of faith, particularly words like those you speak today. Faith is simply inherent in this ceremony.

Faith may be misplaced. You might say these words with the greatest confidence in your own ability to keep the promises you’re making. That’s foolish, of course. You’ve saying “till death do us part,” but you have no knowledge or control of the future. You have no idea what you are committing to. You’re creating an age of time in your lives, but you have no ultimate control over what shape that age takes.

But you have better hope, and this is the hope that will enable you to live out the words you speak today, to fill the body of time created by your wedding vows with joy, love, peace, patience, goodness, delight, richness, generosity. This is t

he faith that will enable you to live abundantly as you travel the path of time you begin today. You speak today with faith in the God who upholds all things by the word of His power. And your marriage will flourish if you maintain that same faith until the end. So, this is my exhortation to you: Remember the power of the words you speak today; remember them as long as you both shall live; but also know that the epoch you begin today will be fruitful only as you live by faith in the God who has spoken in His Son, the God who has spoken the filial Word through whom He made all ages.

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