Scriptorium Daily
It is an honor to be here today. It is especially significant to Hope and to me, because it is the day after our own wedding anniversary.
Yesterday we were looking at the few pieces of glassware that have survived all the moves and four children. Our marriage has proven more durable than most of it. Looking at pictures of our wedding reminded us that our love has proven more timeless than the dresses of the bridesmaids.
Our marriage, and the love it created, turned out to be stronger than even our affection on that first day of our wedded life. What we made that day weathered sin, disappointment, and the death of a beloved child.
There was more to our marriage than us.
This is the reason for all the elaborate ritual today. It is the heart of why it is appropriate to bring all the party and the pomp to this moment as we can muster.
The reason is simple. We are not here to officiate at making a legal contract. We are not here to celebrate the private affections of two people who love each other. Both those things will happen today, but they are not the important thing. Legal contracts can be legally undone. Private affection can wax and wane, but it is not the basis of what is happening here today.
There is a deeper romance to Christian marriage.
Romance is no longer fashionable, because it is so demanding. Emotions can be satisfied, at least sometimes, but romance cannot. Recently I was reading someone say that the notion that one man and one woman can be satisfied with each until ‘death parts them’ was just silly.
I prefer to think it romantic and divine.
Let me speak plainly to you, Michael and Jamie. As human beings, you have (at least!) two parts. There is the physical and the spiritual component to what makes you human. Whatever philosophers and scientists decide is the relationship between the two, the two exist.
There is a marvelous tension within you, between the desires of the body and the aspirations of the soul. Both are good as created by God and both are deeply harmed by the fall from grace that so plagues humanity. The body is good, but broken. The soul is good, but fallen.
At times your soul will try to ignore the simple wisdom of your body. You must never forget that though you are both more than just physical, you are incarnate!
Your soul will make demands that your body cannot meet.
Hope and I know both of you well enough to know some of the temptations you will face.
Michael: beware the temptation of the workaholic.
Jamie: beware the temptation to forget your own health while helping others.
More common, however, is for the body to make demands on the soul that prevent your higher nature from lifting you from the level of the merely animal to that of the divine image within you. Today you both aspire to something greater than your mere physical desire could ever sustain or produce.
You desire to bring together the Male and the Female and so recreate the whole Image of God in humankind. You long to bring together the fundamentally different expressions of the divine nature in the Man with that expression of God found in the Woman. In becoming one flesh, Holy Scripture says you will have done something great.
Jamie and Michael in desiring each other, you do what any higher creature can do, but in marriage you do what even the angels cannot.
You help produce a divine image of that greater, and even more mysterious, coming together of Christ and His Church.
Your body, fallen as it is, is out of harmony with your soul. It does not, in itself, need this higher thing. It can be more easily satisfied than through the hard work of marriage.
The desire to leave and eternally cleave is the desire of the soul and not of the body. Looked at only from the viewpoint of the physical, the cost is too high and benefits too little. The body looks out from the basement windows and sees the difficulty of reaching the heavens!
From the viewpoint of the romantic, from the higher windows of the soul, such a journey into exclusivity and ever deeper knowing may not by easy, it may even be impossible without divine aide, but it is as necessary to the lover as air is to drowning man. There may none available, but still he longs for it.
Keep longing for it, because the best news on this wedding day is that you are entering a relationship like no other. It can be imitated and aped, but not duplicated. You are coming together in this union of two others and God Himself as blessed your foolishly romantic aspirations.
He sanctified them by His first miracle of at Cana. There the Christ saved the wedding party from ending, in fact made it better after human fears, because marriage is His best image.
There will be times when the wine of your marriage, the physical affection that provides the spice of your love, will run out. Do not be afraid! If you persist, if you get the right help as the wedding party did in Cana, He will see to it that the wine of your love is renewed.
I am here to testify that the new wine is better.
Michael and Jamie:
You told us that you wished to be this holy image to the world. You will fail frequently. You will fail when you are cruel to each other or are selfish. Isn’t it silly to think that you can become less cruel and selfish?
Not silly, but deeply romantic and miraculous in a world where every traditional Christian marriage is a miracle. When you fail, repent and renew your vow.
Even failure at a glorious quest is nobler than those who give up and settle for less. Some settle for the merely sensual satisfaction of mental polygamy. Others grit their teeth and are chaste, but without love. There is no beauty in mere endurance. The death to self, the bloodless martyrdom of dying to self for the sake of the beloved, is extravagant to the point of folly . . . or to the point of being divine!
God Almighty in on your side in this quest. By faith, through grace, you will see glimmers of it in the life to come and the fullness of what you hoped for in each other in the world yet to come.
Our culture does not understand this mystery and even mocks it, but
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,
until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,
and her salvation as a burning torch.
The nations shall see your righteousness,
and all the kings your glory,
and you shall be called by a new name
that the mouth of the LORD will give.
Michael:
You are the groom today. Though it should humble you to your knees, you are a picture of God to us. You are the one who receives the bride and gives her a new name. Of course, this is not because you are, in yourself, superior to Jamie in any fundamental way. You act as her head as a part in a play.
The wedding garments you wear are your very best. You will give your new bride the best wedding feast and honeymoon that you can. Your beneficence (which must continue toward Jamie!) serves as a picture of God’s superabundant jollification in our direction!
You stand today crowned as the spiritual head. The Kingdom of God is not a democracy and you are not elected head. You lead by the grace of God and not by your merit. Like a high school actor called to play Hamlet, the scope and greatness of the role exalts you, but also lays you low.
The very grandeur of today’s unmerited role indicates the very humble tones in which this divine image is painted through you today. You are an image of God painted in earth tones!
In one way, you are an image of the Divine Bridegroom, but playing such a part reminds us even more strongly of human smallness!
You are not just an image of the Lord Jesus, but also of humanity whenever it leads.
Like any man or woman called to lead you do so not by any great merit, for your wisdom to do so is always inadequate, but by the Grace of God. You are called to be prince . . . and I know from many conversations you know that you lack the wisdom.
As Aslan said to Caspian so we, in a less impressive way of course, say that knowing you know you are inadequate is why we trust you to play this part in the drama. We would not trust a spiritual head who thought he was called by merit!
You act today in a divine drama that reminds us of the greater relationship with God that we must all enter in this life.
Jamie:
You stand for all of us today as you take on a new name and become part of a new family. We are the bride of Christ and are given a new name. Your external beauty today is simply a reflection and promise of the inner righteousness that Christ will work in you, and in Michael, and in all of us.
The purity expressed by your gown is a symbol of the holiness of spirit, the purity of love, that God will work in you and in Michael and in the world to come. Your purity was kept for him, just as our worship and the ultimate end of our love must be kept for God.
This very maiden modesty is a picture of humanity before God, but in its seeming smallness and its real humility, it elevates you. The role of the human in this marriage play is painted in gold and silver!
In bowing the knee, you also remind us of God!
Your submission to Michael is an act of supreme charity. As his equal in creation, you bow the knee today and take his name. In this way, as you will if God blesses you to play the role of mother, you remind us of the Incarnation where a greater stopped to serve the lesser.
The image of God is clear in you today.
For both of you, if you are faithful, it can be truly predicted and certainly anticipated that:
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
My guess is that there are some more weary couples who wish that they could start again. There are others, single by providence, that wonder how they can share in this holy mystery.
But that is the point of this ceremony!
Nobody is left out! Nobody needs despair!
We can be born again in our resolve. We can renew our vows, both earthly and heavenly. Those of us who have failed our earthly vows can renew them as we participate in Jamie and Michael making them for the first time.
In God’s providence, through the timeless forgiveness He lives in, it can be as if it were the first time.
But all of us, married or single, can renew the deeper vow to adore the God of Love. We can participate in the divine romance of which this is only an image.
This is not an image of our choosing, which means we cannot change it, but we also cannot truly destroy it! Its meaning is available for all to see!
For the single the news is good. Acting out the roles and forming the image may not be an individual souls calling, but the substance behind the image is freely available to all. We can all be part of the Wedding of the Lamb that Was Slain!
Nobody is forgotten at this wedding feast. Nobody needs to be left out.
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate,
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
and your land Married;
for the LORD delights in you,
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your sons marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you. […]
So Michael and Jamie, you have done us a great favor today.
We love you and thank you for letting us be here.
You are an image of hope to us. You are an image of the future and it is good. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your holiness. Thank you for your zeal for romance.
I speak over you these words as if I could see the future:
Go through, go through the gates;
prepare the way for the people;
build up, build up the highway;
clear it of stones;
lift up a signal over the peoples.
Behold, the LORD has proclaimed
to the end of the earth:
Say to the daughter of Zion,
“Behold, your salvation comes;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.”
And they shall be called The Holy People,
The Redeemed of the LORD;
and you shall be called Sought Out,
A City Not Forsaken.
