Loading...In a couple of weeks, I will be officiating the wedding of one of the young men I consider to be another son. He is just a few months younger than our daughter, so his mom and I were pregnant together, as we were with our first pregnancies. Our families’ lives have been closely linked: we have lived near enough to one another to be very active participants in one another’s lives.
I like to think we helped raise each other’s kids into the amazing adults they have each become.
Being asked to officiate this wedding is an amazing gift for me. For the past couple of months, I have gotten to know the couple as a couple. Since we have lived away from Minnesota since 2016, I have only met the bride briefly. I’ve learned a lot about them through premarital counseling.
You may remember that last year I officiated the wedding of the daughter of one of my other best friends, too.
Now, I’m not going to say too much about this, but it can be a little tricky counseling someone you have known their whole life.
I bring this up because today’s reading from Ephesians reminded me of premarital counseling. We see in this letter a list of behaviors that help people live in community in healthy, life-giving ways. When a couple is preparing for marriage, it is important for me to teach them skills to be in a healthy, life-giving relationship that can pour out into all the relationships they will have in their lifetimes.
When I begin counseling a couple, I tell them that it is very likely one (or both) of them will cry. I don’t say that to be rude, to scare them, or to sound like I’m super tough. I say it because it can be an emotional and sometimes scary experience to become vulnerable with each other in ways that they may not have experienced before their time working with me. It is often in these sessions they learn it is okay to speak the truth in ways they hadn’t before.
I use a curriculum that provides a step-by-step system that requires couples to talk about things like their communication styles and habits, ways to work through conflict, and finances. There are more topics as the weeks progress, but I find it extremely important to devote appropriate time to communication, conflict, and finances, because often, couples need to say something that they haven’t yet said.
And that can be hard.
It also sets them up to get through the rest of the curriculum when they may surprise one another, surprise themselves with an awakened emotion or situation, or get through a conflict they may or may not have recognized before.
Looking at this letter to the Ephesians, we all are being given good advice. Maybe even some we have given out ourselves.
How many of you have been told at some point in your life, or offered this advice to a newly married couple: “do not let the sun go down on your anger”?
How many of you (and you don’t have to raise your hands) have (actually) gone to bed angry? I know I have.
Yep. The writer of this letter gives good advice, just not easy advice.
What I find compelling about this list of behaviors is that these are life skills. I have a feeling there are very few people who can say they are successful with all of them. Hopefully, we all are willing to learn how to do them better, to practice healthy behavior, and allow ourselves to be transformed, especially when we catch ourselves falling into less than helpful behaviors and attitudes.
Now, this letter could be written by anyone from any religion or no religious practice at all to people from any religion or no religion. Treating one another well, within the traditions and customs of the day and context in which someone lives, is basic to community survival.
We look at this letter from a Christian viewpoint. That’s important to remember, because while we can intellectually comprehend the value of healthy behavior in communities, we are called to go deeper—into our faith in God and trust in Jesus and hope in the Holy Spirit—to find the strength and courage to live well together.
And where is the source of that strength?
It’s in the Bread of Life—Jesus who came down from sitting at God’s right hand to do the will of God and bring us back into right relationship with our Holy Creator.
It’s in being fed the holy food that sustains us—the Holy Food and Drink that weekly feeds us through the Eucharist, yes. But also, that we are fed with scriptures, hymns, prayers—through being present with one another as we discuss and learn who God has been and will always be. It is in wrestling with angels and, like Elijah in today’s first lesson, finding food waiting for us when we wake up—enough to sustain us with the power of God’s abundant love for us.
It’s in knowing God—trusting God to be present, and as we hear in marriage vows, but can recognize in all aspects of our lives: it’s in sickness and in health, in richer or poorer, throughout all the ups and downs life throws at us, until and beyond our death.
It’s in knowing that God won’t leave us because we know God hasn’t left creation. God has only begged us include God in our lives, to see Godself in the beauty of holiness that surrounds us, and especially, to give thanks.
It’s in following Jesus’ commandment to love one another. We know this because at the end of this portion of the letter to the Ephesians we are told to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Jesus shows us through his ministry and his life on this earth what love looks like. It looks like mercy, kindness, compassion, and justice. It looks like ensuring that those who have been sent away from community are brought back so that they can be included, cared for, and belong—no matter what it was that sent them away. Jesus shows us how to be.
That’s a bit of what I hope to accomplish with couples when I work with them to prepare them for their marriage. To learn how to be, not only in their marriages, but in their lives and in all their relationships.
I hope they will have the confidence, energy, humility, and vulnerability:
To be able to speak the truth.
To allow for anger, as long as it does not fester too long and does not harm emotionally or physically.
To work honestly toward common goals.
To give of themself to one another.
To share their gifts and abilities to people and organizations in need.
To speak kindly, building up others, with love and grace and forgiveness.
I hope that through our time together these couples will recognize that love comes from God, and where true love is, God is there.
I hope that their love will flourish and grow, transforming them. That even when marriage gets hard, and it will, they will be strong enough to withstand the temptations of anger, dishonesty, tearing down, and bitterness, and will remember they have tools that can lead them to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving imitators of God, living in love for one another.
Because, ultimately, I want this for everyone. What a world it could be.
Let us pray these words from today’s Collect: Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will. Amen.
