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you. Thank you, Limuel. Good morning. Good morning.

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How are you doing? Good. Good. It is my honor to introduce our Jones lecturer for her second lecture.

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I asked her a few questions because you, my colleague, I should say, Melissa Wigginton did a wonderful job in sharing all of her accomplishments. She is currently the Associate Professor of Worship at Columbia Theological Seminary. And we're delighted that she's here. I asked her, Is there anything that you'd like me to share about you that maybe we don't know?

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And she told me that she likes to read, take long walks on the beach. The beach part she didn't say. She said that she makes the best crab cakes in the world. I said, In town.

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She said, No. I said, The world. All right. She has the distinct honor of having been mother of the groom twice and officiated both times.

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And she is a proud grandmother of a four-month-old. So without further ado, if your holy imagination, we'll take you back to yesterday. And Melissa described the women that made the contribution. Their tagline was, this is going to be good.

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So I believe that what we have in store for us today, again, is going to be good. So I present Professor Long. As I begin today, I want to say thank you to Jack. I don't know if he's here back yet, but to say thank you to Jack for both his thoughtful and heartfelt remarks to us this morning.

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And I trust that you will find a number of consonances between his work and my own. In her illuminating book, One Perfect Day, The Selling of the American Wedding, mentioned this yesterday, Rebecca Mead points out that the wedding industry is big business and brides are first and foremost consumers. Even those women who promise themselves that they are not going to fall for all the hype end up at the CVS counter with 25 pounds of bridal magazines and adding Pinterest weddings to their list of favorites.

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That's a typical Pinterest wedding page. part of her research, Meade gathered a group of brides-to-be and asked them this question, What's a wedding for? The answers varied, and to her surprise, the young women never reached any sort of consensus on what would make their wedding significant. For some, it was a celebration of family.

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For others, it was a celebration of self. Some saw it as a religious occasion, others as an excuse for a good party. It was an expression of personal taste. It was enactment of tradition.

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It seemed, said me, that what a wedding was for was up for grabs. These women did share one common experience, however. Each had encountered a wedding industry intent upon ensuring that her experience of being a bride, whatever else it meant to her culturally and personally, amounted to a transformation into a new kind of consumer.

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My first experience as mother of the groom coincided with a year-long sabbatical in which I began conducting research on weddings. And I dare say that Meade knows what she's talking about. A visit to just one wedding show offered me a glimpse into the sorts of attractions to which brides, and it must be said their mothers, are exposed. Bakers offered samples of wedding cakes, cupcakes, cake pops, and cake balls, even a cake made out of cake balls.

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This one happens to be from an Austin bakery. It's a Day of the Dead wedding cake. I get the Day of the Dead, but I don't get the Day of the Dead wedding cake part. So maybe one of you can explain that to me later.

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Florists outdid one another with extravagant designs for bouquets, arbors, pews, tabletops, corsages, and all variety of dramatic displays. Photographers showed videos and exhibited elaborate photo books that showed exceedingly attractive couples posing before breathtaking vistas. Reception venues showcased, rather, plated samples of the dinners they would serve. while waitstaff circulated with trays of hors d'oeuvres and champagne.

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Models descended a dramatic staircase showing off the season's most exquisite gowns and headpieces. And then there were the vendors I did not expect to see. Those selling LASIK surgery, Botox treatments, spa packages, and mortgages. And it doesn't stop after the shows.

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Brides continue to receive solicitations for home equity loans to finance the wedding, presumably their... parents' homes, dance lessons, laser hair removal, and the list goes on. Mead points out that in America, while weddings are seen as opportunities for self-expression, they are also an occasion that evokes a strong desire to observe some form of propriety. a desire to enact a role that has been scripted by some source more authoritative than their own powers of invention.

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Yet it's not clear where this source of authority lies. Mead contends that the wedding industry has eagerly stepped into this vacuum of authority, and that as a consequence, the American wedding is shaped as much by commerce and marketing as it is by those influences that couples might prefer to think of as affecting their nuptial choices, such as social propriety or religious observance or familial expectations. Becoming engaged amounts to a change in one's social status, but it also marks the moment of transformation into a potential consumer of bridal products.

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Now, I must take a personal moment, full disclosure, confessed that I utterly enjoyed the catered meals, top-shelf cocktails, and exquisite flowers that accompanied my own son's weddings. I was reminded, thankfully, that getting married is an occasion worthy of a great celebration. It saved me from being just a little bit too cranky and a little bit too cynical.

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And yet, I was keenly aware that there are tremendous forces at work when any couple is planning their nuptials, whether they are the products of New York society or candidates for my big fat gypsy wedding. If you haven't seen it, you really must just once. Somewhere in the frenzy of this quest for the perfect wedding is the church, who is often standing in a corner of the ballroom shuffling its feet.

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Although we like to think that we have some influence in these matters, I'm afraid that Meade is right. The authority of the wedding industry looms much larger than that of the church. Ministers feel like functionaries, like this poor pastor. Whoops, there are the dresses.

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This poor pastor who caught some bad press for telling photographers to stop making worship into a photo shoot. You can see they captured his expression. While there are some clergy who take great care and even joy, thank you for those who have told me that, in preparing couples for marriage and presiding at their weddings, there are others who wonder whether the church even ought to be in the wedding business. The hype and consumerism has made them cynical.

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especially when couples with no connection to the church or to the faith expect them to be a congenial, even benign, efficient for hire with, of course, very low fees. Some clergy argue that contracting marriages is a legal matter and that they are not willing to act as agents of the state. They will marry you in a Christian ceremony, of course, but only after you visit the justice of the peace, that European model we were talking about. Others argue that weddings are an opportunity for evangelism and a chance to establish a pastoral relationship with a couple.

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And while I admire that view, in my research, the interviews that I conducted, the stories of this actually happening were few and far between. Still others figure that there's no sense in trying to buck the trend. And I'd like you to consider this pitch from the Church of England. Taking weddings is one of the most joyful parts of my job.

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And I don't mind whether people come to church often or not, whether they've been baptised or not, because it's everyone's church. And so people can come and be welcomed and have a church wedding, whatever their background is and whatever their status is. We weren't unsure as to whether it was appropriate that we would be allowed to be married in church. And of course we were delighted to find that it wasn't going to be a problem and that our local vehicle was very happy and in fact insisted on marrying us.

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Yes the church family were really really helpful in just making sure everything ran really smoothly from car parking arrangements to you know getting the flowers sorted out and everybody kind of pulled together and made the day extra special and it's been said that there's love in the walls because it's so old and there's been so many weddings there and you do absolutely feel that when you go in the church so not only is it aesthetically a beautiful place but it feels beautiful as well. What makes a church wedding so special? The music. The hymns, the vicar, the venue, the powerful vows and the love of two people coming together.

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The majority of the population in the UK, they felt that a church wedding is somehow the proper place for a wedding, it's more proper. We were surprised, in fact, that it was young people and men who were slightly more likely to say that a church wedding is the proper wedding. Before we got married we never went to church, but we always wanted to get married in a church.

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So we went and talked to the vicar and he said that we could get married there as long as we went six times. So we went six times over six months, so we just had to go once a month. We met the people there. They made us very welcome.

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They made us really welcome, yeah. And then obviously we got married and, well, we've still been a few times afterwards. People always used to live in the same place, and so we used to say, well, you can get married in your local church. Now people move around the country a lot more.

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And so we've changed the law so that you can get married not just in your local church, but also in a whole range of churches that are special for you. If you've lived in a place for six months in the past, if your mum and dad got married in a church or your grandparents did, if you were christened in that church, then you can get married in that church wherever it is, even if you don't live there anymore. Yourchurchwedding.org is a new website that was put together to help couples who are thinking of getting married in a church and plan their wedding ceremony.

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It's got lots of great features. One of them is that you're able to search for your local church. You're able to go on there, put your postcode in and find your local church and then contact your vicar. It's got a ceremony planner which helps you put together an idea of the ceremony that you want and it has ideas for hymns and also Bible readings.

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There's also great advice, the seven steps to a heavenly wedding which is a fantastic little section plus there's real life stories about people who've gotten married in church and used the website and they're passing on their expertise and their advice which is always helpful. I'm getting married later this year, 11th of June. My fiance Helen and I had looked at the ceremony planner, had used the advice that it was giving for different hymns and Bible readings and afterwards we both felt a lot more at ease. So the church was there for us.

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helping us in everywhere right up to the date of the wedding. Your marriage can run into problems and it's nice to know that the church is there for you. It's a lovely personal, loving thing to be able to do, to get married in your local church. It's part of the community, it's the lovely historical buildings, they're full of love, everybody should consider the church as the first place to be married.

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Now, to be fair, I have not had the opportunity, and I do plan to do this, but I have not had the opportunity yet to speak with anyone connected to the Church of England to find out more about the thinking behind their campaign. And obviously, a state church presents a much different context than that which we know in the US. Nevertheless, I think that their approach gives one pause. If the church stays in the wedding business, we have a responsibility, I think, to provide couples with an alternative vision to the one that drains their bank accounts or those of their parents, or worse, puts them into debt.

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But even more important, we must have something better to offer than a center aisle or good advice. In short, we must have something worth giving away to believers and non-believers alike. That means that we need to think more deeply about what it is the Christian faith has to say about marriage for those preparing for marriage, those doing the hard and good work of staying married, and those whose marriages end. Naturally, to do that, we turn to scripture.

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But as anyone who has tried to choose an appropriate text or texts for wedding service knows, The Bible doesn't say that much about marriage, and what there is does not always inspire confidence. As your own David Jensen has pointed out, in the New Testament, we find more arguments against marriage than for it. Jesus says very little about it, and Paul would prefer everyone to stay single and celibate, which reminds me that I neglected to say yesterday that Paul wasn't just a crank about sex or not having it.

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but expected Jesus to come pretty quickly and thought that Christians ought to be as single-minded as they could be. So a little shout out to Paul. While the household code in Ephesians 5 may have been radical for its time, many Christians cannot reconcile its model for marriage with contemporary sensibilities. As Ellen Davis said once when quoting one of her students, The Bible doesn't always say what you thought it did.

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Or wish it did. I do not mean to glibly dismiss what is in the Bible about marriage. Certainly we can rejoice that humans were created for companionship and affirm an ethic of fidelity. Yet no biblical writers could ever have imagined marriage the way we understand marriage now.

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an egalitarian commitment between two people who love each other and depend on one another for romance, sexual fulfillment, mutual support, and happiness. So when we do turn to the Bible for guidance regarding marriage, it's easy to fall into a sort of default bumper sticker theology. One that we don't use when we're talking about how we use our money, or our views towards slavery, or what fabrics we wear together. So we continue to repeat publicly what we have always heard, even when we quietly wonder whether we really believe all that we're saying.

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For instance, at the end of Genesis 2, we hear these words, Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. This verse makes it clear, some would say, that marriage is between one man and one woman. This verse makes it clear, some would say, that only one marriage in a lifetime is possible or moral. And yet, there are others, like Terry Fretheim, who point to this verse not as a prescription for marriage,

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but rather as an etiology, an explanation of where marriage comes from, of its origins. David Cotter takes the interpretation a step farther, even more than an etiology, he claims. This verse, and I quote, Speaks to the moment nearly universal in human experience of finding another person with whom one shares such an intense kinship and intimacy that in meeting the other, One feels as though a hitherto lost and unknown part of oneself is being discovered.

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That two people seem to share in some mysterious fashion a single personhood. And so having found what has been missing, one desires both to know the difference of the undiscovered other and to enjoy the unity that makes life possible. To my ear, what Cotter describes is what people dream about. The kind of companionship that makes us realize that there is something greater at work, some mystery, some gift.

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He does not make this verse into a set of rules, but rather into a description of our deepest desires. In thinking about marriage, then, our approach to scripture is formed not only by historical critical tools, but by literary ones as well. This allows us to read biblical texts in conjunction with one another. So then Ephesians 5 is read next to 1 Corinthians 12, is read next to Galatians 3.

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The story of Hosea and Gomer does not stand alone as a model of marriage, thanks be to God, where the woman is a constant transgressor and the man is a source of constancy and forgiveness. But when, as Phyllis Tribble has suggested-- and I can go partway down the road with her. I'm not sure I can go all the way down the road with her in this line of thinking, but we'll put it out there. As Phyllis Tribble has suggested, when Homer-- I always say that.

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When Hosea and Gomer-- it's like, what, Brangelina is like, you know, Homer. When you put Hosea and Gomer, Next to the Song of Songs, we have pictures of love and sex gone awry compared with the celebration of erotic love as part of God's good creation. Not every verse of scripture, John Burgess points out, sets forth Christ.

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Verses and chapters and books need to be placed in the broader biblical narrative. Otherwise, we miss the forest for the trees. When we use scripture to interpret scripture, as Shirley Guthrie once explained, we seek to understand difficult or controversial passages in light of the total message of scripture, including parts that may not specifically deal with the question at hand. Such an approach helps ensure that we not let a few passages on a particular issue obscure what the biblical message, as a whole,

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tells us about God and God's will for our lives furthermore we hear scripture speak into the world as we know it we affirm the authority of scripture in our lives even when it seems to run counter to what we know from our experience in the world Ellen Davis reminds us that anyone who studies the Bible will find in both Testaments much to offend In the face of such challenge, she advises an attitude of charity, receiving the scriptures as God's good gift, she says. means opening our minds to be changed by them. It does not mean relinquishing the right to disagree with some of what we encounter there, even the necessity of disagreeing on significant points of faith and practice, since the biblical writers disagree among themselves and even within each testament.

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Furthermore, she offers this principle. If we disagree with a certain text on a given point, then it must be in obedience to what we, in community with other Christians, discern to be the larger or fundamental message of the scriptures. In other words, disagreement represents a critical judgment based on keen awareness of the complexity of scripture and reached in the context of the church's ongoing worship, prayer, and study.

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What I am suggesting then is a three-fold approach to thinking about a Christian understanding of marriage. We do not ignore what scripture says about marriage, but we consider, as I just said, how these texts speak into our own time. Second, we enlarge the range of texts on which we depend to describe marriage between Christians. And finally, we consider marriage within the framework of eschatological hope.

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This is obviously more than can be accomplished in one lecture. If we were going to spend a lot more time together, I would want to talk about the complexities of interpreting Genesis 1 and 2 with regard to marriage, whether Jesus' presence at Cana really amounts to a divine blessing of marriage or something else. or how comparing the relationship between spouses to that between Christ and the church can be both helpful and harmful. I suspect that even if we did have a great deal of time, we would probably not all come to agreement on all of those questions.

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But given the time that we do have, I'd like to consider what difference it would make to view marriage through the lens of eschatology and how that approach points us to various biblical texts that inform our understanding of marriage and gives us something to share, not only with other Christians, but with anyone who has ears to hear. To establish an eschatological framework for understanding marriage, we begin, not surprisingly, with revelation. Here John of Patmos describes hearing the voice of a great multitude like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder peals crying out hallelujah for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

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Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen bright and pure for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints and the angel said to me write this blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb this text I think is among the first to be considered as a foundation for understanding marriage between Christians maybe not for the reasons you think I'm going to say for here we see John's vision of what God intends for the whole world as Brian Blunt explains the bride of this passage is the church and the garment she wears is made from the fabric of witnessing to the lordship of God and the lamb both partners in a marriage then are included in this figure of the bride right and what is being described is the relationship between God and the church at the marriage supper of the lamb All peoples will celebrate their unity with God in a relationship that is eternal and eternally life-giving.

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The results of this relationship, Blunt says, and I quote here, will be staggering. First, God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. The cause of tears, mourning, crying, pain, and even death itself. will be removed.

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Those who marry then celebrate only in part the love of God in which they share. One day they will be embraced fully by it. This is very good news for all kinds of reasons actually. But for no matter how faithful a couple is to the vows that they make,

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No one is able to keep them perfectly. Promises are broken, pain is inflicted, and partners do not always outdo one another in showing honor. The gift, however, is that all of our failures, inside marriage and out, will be washed away in life-giving water. God will cover every hurt, every broken place, even

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death with overwhelming grace and so each marriage feast celebrated on earth anticipates that great wedding banquet we will one day enjoy when all shall be well knowing this gives us a large measure gives a large measure of grace to all of us who would make promises for who among us even those who have enjoyed the longest and happiest marriages can ever fully keep the vows we make. My friend Patrick Evans, some of you may know Patrick, recruits young talent for the School of Music at DePaul University and his job takes him to various high schools around the country. As he was making his way through the fine arts wing of one high school building, he heard what sounded like a voice teacher with a voice student working on a popular classical crossover tune together.

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One voice was stronger than the other. The other, though weaker, was still lovely and singing enthusiastically, if a half a beat behind. Patrick peeked through the window to see a choral room with all of the furniture covered in plastic and one lone man painting the walls while singing along with whatever CD it was that he found on the teacher's desk. Those of us who marry are an awful lot like that tenor.

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Our offbeat, unskilled attempts at creating harmony in a marriage only hint at the beauty that is possible. And frankly, sometimes not even that. But even our amateurish marriages can be glorious in their own way. Because we do get some things right sometimes.

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And we keep at it practicing the scales of true love. Singing to the best of our ability. Thankful for the unexpected moments of transcendent joy. and undeserved grace.

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It must be said, of course, that one does not need to be married to get a glimpse of the coming reign of God. Nor does every marriage bring to mind heavenly bliss. And there are problems inherent in comparing marriage between two people with the union between Christ and the church. Nevertheless, to live out a marriage with an eschatological view is to seek continually to grow in love while also accepting grace for ourselves and our partners.

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This confidence in the coming realm of Christ means that each day we can renew our own promises and trust in the Holy Spirit to increase in us kindness patience, and the ability to forgive. These practices, as Margaret Farley puts it, can be part and parcel of the in-between of lives, marked not just by success and joy, but by failure, irritation, confusion, and the need for radical hope. Every way of life is lived under the sign of the cross.

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but every way of life can also grow in its light. Yesterday we asked, along with Farley, whether marriage can bear the weight we've placed upon it. In one sense, the answer is no, of course not. But when we consider marriage within an eschatological framework,

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then we can, I think, construct a biblical view of marriage that takes the lives of 21st century Christians seriously and enables us to speak truth and grace into all marriages, whether between Christians or not. This framework also informs the church on how to respond when vows are broken in serious ways or when marriages end. Even in this day and age when divorce is more widely accepted, the church often remains a place of silence at best, or shame at worst. While divorce is a big topic and a topic for another day, we can at least acknowledge here that all marriages, those that last and those that do not, involve failure and the need for grace.

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This brings us to consider how Christian faith and practice can inform marriage. At the heart of it, marriage is a relationship, like all human relationships. For Christians, marriage is the place, though not the only place, of course, where two people work out their salvation together, struggling to grow more and more in the likeness of Christ, while trying not to burn dinner and learning how to fight fair. Not surprisingly, the epistles give us texts that help us understand how to best do that.

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The letter to the Colossians, for instance, includes A lyrical passage that all Christians, and indeed all married couples, should probably... commit to memory. As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other.

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Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love. which binds everything together in perfect harmony. This text, which is sometimes spoken as a charge at the end of a wedding service, imparts great wisdom to those who would stay married.

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Certainly, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience are all components of a loving relationship. They also enable us, I think, to develop a practice I would say even a daily practice of forgiveness. Cultivating forgiveness as a daily habit may be the single most important thing that married people can do.

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When we forgive one another on a daily basis for leaving wet footprints on the bathroom floor or forgetting to pay a bill on time, we are better equipped to forgive one another for more serious infractions. and more readily able to heal the wounds that partners invariably inflict upon one another. This story that I heard so many years ago is still emblazoned on my memory. Do any of you remember when Corrie Ten Boom was telling her story?

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She, this is, gosh, what, the '70s, I guess? was telling of coming face to face many years later with one of her jailers, a man who had been her jailer at the concentration camp in Ravensbruck. He was one of the soldiers who had stood guard in the shower room, witness to the female prisoner's humiliation. Sometime after the war,

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She spoke at a church service about her experiences, and she preached about the overwhelming grace of God. Following the service, that guard approached her and smiled and thanked her for her sermon. How grateful I am for your message, Freulein, he said. To think that as you say, he has washed my sins away.

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He put his hand forward to shake hers, but she could not return the gesture. Rage tore through her and she could only pray for help. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.

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Somehow, through a power not her own, she raised her hand to shake that of a former soldier and a remarkable thing happened. Here's how she describes it. From my shoulder, along my arm, and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our own forgiveness any more than on our own goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on his.

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When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. Amen. Amen.

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This sort of forgiveness is not the everyday variety, I realize, but it does point to the source of our ability to forgive, Jesus Christ. The love of God from which nothing can separate us is the spring from which our own forgiveness wells up. It does not overlook wrongdoing, but it chooses reconciliation over brokenness. Martin Luther King Jr.

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put it this way, Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means rather that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the canceling of a debt.

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So then forgiveness does not mean that one holds on to the memory of a wrongdoing, nursing that hurt, or stockpiling ammunition for some future disagreement. Nor does it mean that we forget all about it as though it doesn't matter. Forgetting is not always possible. Rather, as King says, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block impeding a relationship.

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And so marriage liturgies often include a prayer such as this from the Book of Common Prayer and in the Book of Common Worship as well give them grace when they hurt each other not if they hurt each other when they hurt each other give them grace when they hurt each other to recognize and acknowledge their fault and to seek each other's forgiveness and yours is what's some trepidation that I talk about Paul's letter to the Romans, since we haven't gotten to chapter 12 yet, Beverly. Though you can correct any errors when it's your turn.

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But I humbly suggest that Paul's letter to the Romans includes an exhortation to living as a Christian that is perhaps the best instruction of all for marriage. that can be found anywhere in scripture let love be genuine hate what is evil hold fast to what is good love one another with mutual affection outdo one another in showing honor do not lag in zeal be ardent in spirit love the Lord rejoice in hope be patient in suffering persevere in prayer Contribute to the needs of the saints. Extend hospitality to strangers.

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Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.

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Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil.

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But take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. The first part of this text from Romans contains great wisdom, I think, for married people that reflects a mutual self-giving while hinting at the sort of joy that might come from outdoing one another. in honoring and loving and delighting.

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This text includes other advice for living together. Live in harmony, do not be haughty, and do not claim to be wiser than you are, are useful instructions for any human relationship and especially for marriage. But the text then takes an outward turn. Those who are married are encouraged to treat all people this way.

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The couple who is married decides together to look out for the needs of others, to show hospitality, to share in the joys and sorrows of others, and to seek peace. In other words, to live out together their baptismal vocations. From the beginning, marriage was considered Christian because it was the joining of two baptized believers in Jesus Christ. It wasn't the wedding that made the marriage Christian, it was their baptisms.

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When Christians marry, they decide to go on a pilgrimage of sorts to live out that baptismal vocation together. When the Episcopal Church set out a few years ago to study marriage and develop a resource for blessing same-sex marriages, they began with the church's focus on mission rooted in baptism which incorporates us into the body of Christ and commissions us to participate in God's mission of reconciliation in the world this mission seeks to restore all people to unity with God and with each other in Christ So when Christians marry, they take part in this mission by living as disciples and witnessing to Christ in how we live in our closest relationships.

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For this reason, we may count Paul's instructions to the Galatians as part of the foundation for understanding marriage between Christians. To the baptized, he writes, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female. For all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Reflected in his words is the unity between people, regardless of sex, background, or class, and by implication, I think, the sense of equality with which Christians ought to regard each other, and indeed all the people they meet.

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Furthermore, since unity is inextricable from the need to work for justice, Christians live out their call together. This is why, for instance, the Byzantine marriage liturgy includes a prayer for blessings on the couple that are poured out, pressed down, and running over, not only for the benefit of the couple, but for others too. Fill their houses with wheat grain and oil and with every good thing, the prayer goes, so that they may give in turn to those in need. One might say that for Christians who marry, there is no divide between the secular and the sacred that is, between their lives lived together as...

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married people in their lives live together as disciples of Christ the renewal of Christian marriage insists two prominent scholars of the history and theology of marriage the renewal of Christian marriage would seem to be inseparable finally from the renewal of baptismal consciousness and from the profound consequences that will flow therefrom When my family moved to Atlanta and visited for the first time the church we would eventually join, where Ted was pastor at the time, we were greeted by Margaret and Howard Montgomery. Their warmth was genuine. They made us feel as though our showing up that day was a source of delight.

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You remember, don't you? And they made us feel at home immediately. It wasn't about us. In the years that followed, I watched them do the same for countless other people.

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And indeed, I saw them live out their witness to Jesus Christ in many other ways. It would be impossible to tell where their Christian vocation left off and their marriage began. Which is to say, where the line would be drawn between how their marriage was a blessing to them and how it was the same to others would be hard to say.

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Who could say how their faith grew their marriage as well as their life in the world, or how their shared discipleship enriched their marriage? Their bond did not only bring the two of them great happiness. It was generative and gave witness to the love of God in Christ that speaks peace and justice for all. It's this sort of marriage that comes to mind when one hears this prayer spoken at a wedding.

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Make their life together a sign of Christ's love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair. So faith shapes the contours of a marriage. And marriage in turn can grow faith as a couple turns inward and outward in a dance of grace. So, Christian faith informs marriage by teaching us to love and calling us to live out our baptismal vocations.

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Scripture also invites us into joy. From the rhapsodic language extolling the beauty of each partner to the expressions of longing and expectation, the Song of Songs expresses the bodily delights of the lovers. I can't resist.

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How beautiful and pleasant you are, he tells his lover. Oh, loved one, with all your delights. Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit.

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Oh, it's in the Bible. You want to hear the rest? Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. And she replies, Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages.

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Let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened, and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and beside our doors are all choice fruits. new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, oh my beloved.

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Both partners share in praising the charms of the other. Both express desire for the other. Neither seems to take a dominant role. After centuries of allegorical interpretation, many contemporary scholars agree that the Song of Songs is, at least in part,

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a poem spoken between two lovers who revel in their sensual relationship. Here we can see physical intimacy as a gift that two people share, a gift characterized by mutual adoration and self-giving. The mutuality of this self-giving cannot be overly stressed. We are not talking here about the sort of mutuality that Jerry Maguire

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described to his wife when he murmured, You complete me. This is not about needing your other half so that you can be a whole person, or the kind of self-sacrifice that has historically been expected of women, the that leads to a devaluing of one person for the sake of another. Here we have a picture of lovers freely giving themselves to one another.

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The love poetry of the Song of Songs is as impassioned as any, even erotic at times, but this is no top 40 love song or a light-hearted fling. you will remember the intensity of the love and commitment expressed here set me as a seal upon your heart as a seal upon your arm for love is strong as death jealousy as fierce as the grave its flashes are flashes of fire the very flame of the Lord many waters cannot quench love neither can floods drown it If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised. There is much more that we could say about the self-giving love of Christ into which we grow and grow together.

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About the fidelity of Naomi and Ruth and what it means to form new families. about the power of the Holy Spirit who enables marriage to be a school for love there's more but this is a start if the church is to stay in the wedding business we must get serious about the marriage business we must have something worth giving away to committed Christians to be sure but also to the religiously indifferent a vision of eschatological hope the sense of love as a life's vocation and a model of self-giving that is mutual. The implications of this approach, I think, are far-reaching.

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We will concern ourselves with best practices and not proscriptions. We will imagine all the varied ways that a marriage can be fruitful, whether it produces children or not. We will celebrate marriage liturgies that acknowledge the contours of contemporary life.

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We will uphold fidelity and hope with all our hearts for partnerships that are committed and lifelong. Yet when covenants cannot hold, we will seek redemption and practice forgiveness, all the while acknowledging that every one of us lives by grace alone. We love because God first loved us. Thanks be to God for such a gift.