Something About Love
a Wedding Homily Delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
For Patrick and Samantha Kennedy
September 15, 2017
Herrington on the Bay, North Beach, Maryland
I chose the famous pledge
by Ruth in the first chapter from the book the bears her name because she, in a
way, does in that pledge what you are doing today. You are making a pledge to
each other, to live your lives together, in more than just spatial togetherness,
but with a spiritual connection, that transcends each of you individually. And
like Ruth, who was doing the absolute opposite of what logic and worldly wisdom
dictated she should do, you are entering into something somewhat counter
cultural in our age, for you are entering into the commitment of a lifetime.
You are pledging your entire lives to living with each other, partnering with
each other, working together, fighting the battles of life together, come what
may, whether the winds will blow, and they will, and whether the rains will
fail, for they surely will as well, and even if the very foundations of the
earth may shake, you two will be bound together by the pledges you make today.
That is quite a big deal, and though marriages are quite common, the reality of
such a pledge being fulfilled is rare. Life happens, things change, but you
today look out into that unknown of the future and clasp hands, and choose to
hold to each other, always.
I recently preached a
sermon series at my church that sought to define love, to get at exactly what
love is. . . and we found it to be difficult to do so both honestly and
completely because when you get down to it love is of God, and being of God is
infinite in its nature, like God is, making it impossible to define, without
confining too much, without putting it in a small and safe heart shaped box,
but real love is bigger than that, it is bigger than today, its bigger than
your relationship thus far, for it includes also everything you will face. And
if we look out across this beautiful group of witnesses assembled today, it
includes everything they have faced and experienced, and it includes everything
that the great cloud of witnesses who have come before have experienced. . . it
must include it all, for love is the very foundation that this world is built
upon. It is the stuff that binds it all together. It is the stuff that it is
made of. Pretty big deal huh!
But even in its infinite
nature, it can also be recognized in its manifestations, and we can know it
through them. So there are aspects to love, and it is these I wish to point you
to, today, at least three of them.
1. Love
never walks away.
2. Love
is about the other
3. Love
leaves behind it a trail of life
Today you embark on a
promise of the first of those aspects. You are joining hands and looking into
each others tear filled, light radiating eyes, and saying to the other, I will
not walk away. . . the world be damned, come what may, I pledge this day, and
each day to come that I will be with you. . . my love will be steadfast, a
mirror image of the steadfastness of God. As God is Love, and He has not
abandoned us, so I pledge that I will be there with you in all you do from this
day and each in turn, sunrise and sunset, until my last.
And in doing so, you
embark on the second of those aspects. Love is about the other. Just as Christ
died on the cross, just as God gave his only begotten son, you will give of
yourself to the other. True love, the stuff of life, the stuff of the world,
requires as such. The emptying of yourself for the other. . . mind, body,
strength, and soul, your love for your neighbor begins with the person lying
next to you, and if given fully will mirror and honor the love you have for
God, completing the great commandment, to love God, fully, and to love your
neighbor as yourself, though in truth you are never really done. . .
Because the third aspect
is also true. Love leaves behind it a trail of life. God made the world that
way, that the person giving fully of love, never runs out, the more you give,
the greater the well you have to draw from, the cup runs over, the well it
never runs dry, but instead is amassed with living waters that spread and in
doing create life and energy. . . We can have faith because Jesus Christ has
shown us the way, that no cross and no tomb could ever hold the amazing life
giving power of love.
And so you can love each
other freely, for that is what we do as human beings, and what life ordained by
God is all about. . . Remember that, remember, when times are hard, when the
challenges of life come, that it is not mere circumstance that has brought you
together, but a divine purpose, that every event and aspect of your life has
led you to this very moment, and will lead you. You have been shaped by your
upbringing, by your training, by your
experiences, by the very order of your lives to make not only the commitment
you make today, but each day of that commitment as they unfold slowly one by
one going forward.
It is easy when blessed
as you two were, and as I was, to look at our parents and see ease and
perfection in marriage, and to seek to emulate and replicate that perfection,
but what we don’t see is that there is no such thing. . . I can tell you after
8 years of marriage myself that we are far from perfect, and that we fail, and
fail often. . . but we keep coming back, we wake up to each other and the
commitment that we made, and never question truly that God has brought us
together, not for perfection, but for the unique and flawed and messy and bumpy
and expectation challenging and hotly discussed disagreement filled creation
ordained by God that marriage is, and that is a blessing to us both, beyond
what we could ever imagine creating our own.
So Patrick, Samantha
today, we do not pray for perfection for you two, but instead for a long,
humble, marriage, full of times where you fall short of your expectations you
have made for yourself and each other, but where you say I will not walk away,
and give of yourself completely to the other, and so build behind you a trail
of life, that will never run dry, for this is Love as God has made it, the very
love that has brought you to this moment, and will carry you through to its
fulfillment, as God himself wills. . . for the Glory of God, and in His holy
name, do we pray. . . amen.
The Unity Candle
Your marriage, which
begins today has a much longer story than either of you may know. The light
that has been shining in the world since its beginning finds itself here with
you, and you are a part of that history. Each of you were raised in the light,
into families, with mothers and fathers who have passed on the light of life to
you, just as it was passed to them, generation to generation, back to the
beginning of time. The light spreads, it divides through the centuries, as the
branches of the human family tree grow and sprout and bear fruit and multiply,
but never does the light dim. Today in joining your two families we use the
symbol of fire, with its light and heat, to show how in your love, and by your
marriage, we are joining together not only two people, but two families,
uniting their lights into one, so that a new branch may form, such as it has
been ordained by God, and such as he commands, bidding us to be fruitful and
multiply. May he bless the union between your two families, now and forever. .
. Amen.
by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
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