from my friends at The Englewood Review of Books...
http://erb.kingdomnow.org/
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Peace to Your House!
“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide…. Do not move about from house to house.” –Luke 10:5-7
This week I’ve been wrestling with this verse. Better yet, through this verse God has been wrestling with me. It’s been doing some work on me, as I’ve been forced to think about what it means to be a person of peace. (That’s the holy danger of living with a text for a while. It’s sort of like Jacob wrestling with God all through the night by the river Jabbok. You’ll probably get a blessing, but it could come with a limp!)
What has really captured me this week, or, better, what has convicted me this week is the instruction to “remain in the same house.” I think that it is easy for most of us to come and proclaim peace, but it’s another thing altogether when we are called to remain somewhere for a while.
What Jesus envisions here is not a flash-mob approach to peace, where we invite someone to give peace a chance and then are on our way. This is about abiding, about remaining, about dwelling. Others will learn what peace looks like as we remain with them over a prolonged period of time. God’s peace is revealed through the habits and patterns of life as we live together.
And not only that, the way we interact with one another and with others reveals something about the ways in which we connect with God. In her book Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Hallie Barton puts it this way:
“Our patterns of intimacy or nonintimacy with other human beings are the very same patterns we bring to our relationship with God, whether we are conscious of it or not.”
That idea is doing some serious work on me this week. I want to be a person of peace. I want to connect deeply with God. I want to be in life-giving, intimate relationships with other people. I am sure that you do too. What I am coming to realize is that these things are all deeply connected.
My prayer today, flowing from dwelling in this Word, is that God will transform this community of believers into people of peace, as you remain together in this church house, eating together, drinking together, and creating a rich life together in the Spirit of the One who has called you and sent you ahead of him into the world!
Peace to this house! -ERM
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Learning to Walk
It seemed to come from out of nowhere. Before dinnertime on Thursday, Z would stand in place holding toys and my cell phone. But, if she decided she wanted to get anywhere, she would drop down on her right knee and trust her signature move, a little modified monkey crawl, to get her wherever she wanted to go. She’s quite the scooter too. It’s hard at times to keep up with her, much less think far enough ahead of her to make sure a room is “Z friendly.”
But something happened during dinner. I’m not sure what it was exactly. I guess it could have been the split pea soup. Those mighty little legumes are packed with fiber, protein, and some B-vitamins, a perfect food for physical performance. It might have been the Cornbread, sweetened with a just hint of maple syrup to jumpstart the motor. Maybe it was the rice milk, a surefire way to… nah, it wasn’t the rice milk.
I’m not sure exactly what happened in those 25 minutes at the table, but as soon as she had successfully eaten and cleaned off her tray in neat little split pea piles on the floor, something changed. Our little monkey crawler became a walker. Momma shared our joy with the Facebook world, “And...she...walks!!! Just like that. Before dinner, crawling. After dinner, walking! 14 months to the day!”
M, momma, and I spent the next 20 minutes in a living room triangle, coaxing her to walk back and forth between us, while the camera flash popped and the camcorder captured the newly crowned toddler toddling.
She had her share of stops and starts. We aren’t talking red carpet gracefulness here. She would take a couple of steps, stop to teeter a bit, and then get moving again. She would get excited and let her head lean a bit too far forward. And when her noggin gets in front of her little feet, let’s just say inertia works! The best moment for us as parents was watching Z walk with reckless abandon into M’s arms as they both giggled and rolled to the floor. That was priceless.
The reality is that, while this transformation from crawler to walker seemed spontaneous to us, Z had built up to this moment. She’d trained for it. She’d cultivated the ability to walk. She prepared her body and her little legs for months, testing her balance, developing strength, and learning the basics of the movements. She prepared her mind, learning to have faith in herself. She moved from lying helplessly on the ground, to rolling, to sitting, to scooting, to crawling, to cruising, and now to walking. It happened “just like that,” but it was also a long time coming.
Life in God is a lot like that. Life with God is about walking in the Spirit. It’s not passive; it’s active. It’s not static; it’s dynamic. We don’t just start walking, but we build up to it. We grow to trust the Spirit, others, and ourselves. We rely on the support and encouragement of others who’ve been down this path before. We learn to walk.
This is one of the reasons that it is vital for Christians to practice the spiritual disciplines. The disciplines are not about earning our salvation, but about embracing it. They do not help us earn God’s favor, but to trust it. Just as Z nurtured her whole self to embrace that moment of walking, the spiritual disciplines are about learning to walk. They open our lives to God, so that we can learn to walk in cadence with the Spirit. They open our lives to one another, so we can be drawn together into the fellowship of the Trinity. They open our lives to the world, so that we can participate in the fullness of God’s salvation. The disciplines help us cultivate new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in the world. They help us to learn to walk in the steps of the one who said, “Follow me.”
At one point as Z toddled her way around the living room on Thursday, M looked at us and said, “So I guess she’ll be doing this the rest of her life.” Yes, big sis. Yes, she will. And I pray that we will all keep learning to walk too.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Guest
Today I read this wrenching and probing poem by Wendell Berry. Like all of Berry's work, it hits too close to home and challenges my feeble attempts to follow the way of Jesus daily. This is especially challenging as we move into the season of Advent and remember that our God is always coming, sometimes as a pregnant young girl looking for a room, sometimes as a "guest" encountered on the street, sometimes in our neighbor, and sometimes in the form of family, who no matter how close always remain strangers and guests to us....
God, as you continue to come into your world and walk into our lives, give us the grace to see you and the strength to refuse "to remain strange" to the threshold of our heart and a seat at our table.
The Guest
Washed into the doorway
by the wake of the traffic
he wears humanity
like a third-hand shirt
—blackened with enough
of Manhattan’s dirt to sprout
a tree, or poison one.
His empty hand has led him
where he has come to.
our differences claim us.
He holds out his hand,
in need of all that’s mine.
And so we’re joined, as deep
as son and father. His life
is offered me to choose.
Shall I begin servitude
to him? Let this cup pass.
Who am I? But charity must
suppose knowing no better,
that this is a man fallen
among thieves, or come
to this strait by no fault
—that our differences
is not a judgment,
though I can afford to eat
and am made his judge.
I am, I nearly believe,
the Samaritan who fell
into the ambush of his heart
on the way to another place.
My stranger waits, his hand
held out like something to read,
as though its emptiness
is an accomplishment.
I give him a smoke and the price
of a meal, no more
—not sufficient kindness
or believable sham.
I paid him to remain strange
to my threshold and table,
to permit me to forget him—
knowing I won’t. He’s the guest
of my knowing, though not asked.
- Wendell Berry
Sunday, October 10, 2010
The God Who Remembers
Since September I’ve been making a slow journey through Genesis on Wednesday nights with a brilliant group of folks. It’s been an incredibly life-giving journey for me. One of the things that has struck me is the way we are sometimes hesitant to engage Scripture. We all have certain assumptions about God, expectations that have been shaped over time by our study, our communities, and our experiences in life. It can be challenging when we really engage Scripture and come face to face with things that don’t fit very neatly into our tidy categories about God and life in the world. (This is, in my opinion, one of the very reasons that we should read, discuss, and engage Scripture together with others in humble love and faith.)
The Bible uses some striking language to talk about God. Admittedly, God is bigger than the limited language that we use to make sense of God. But, that doesn’t make necessarily make it easier to engage the biblical stories, especially when we encounter some strange descriptions of God and God’s actions. The God that we encounter in Genesis is a God that seems to be learning how to be in relationship with this new creation as things progress from one scene to the next. As a relational being, the God of Genesis is deeply committed to maintaining a relationship with creation. We find there a God similar to the descriptions we’ve recently seen in Hosea 11 of a parent who paces over a rebelling child.
At the end of the day, we might just think that God will want to forget this whole “creation experiment” and return to the ways things were before God spoke creation into existence. Yet, this is not what we get. We see that God is constantly rethinking things, searching to discover new ways to engage creation, to try to calm the chaos that remains in the world, ways of surprising and unexpected grace. With each trial and failure, God commits and covenants to find new ways for people to “walk with God” (Gen 2:8, 5:22, 6:9, 17:1).
This struggle is seen pretty clearly in the wake of the serious crisis surrounding the flood in Genesis 6-9. There are so many things that are both brilliant and deeply troubling about his scene. (We had a great conversation about some of them on last Wednesday.) What I love about this scene, though, what really strikes me is a line that pops up unexpectedly at the beginning of chapter 8. “But God remembered Noah.”
“But God remembered….” For some people, the thought of God remembering may stir up serious anxiety. You’ve been to some dark places in life, rebellious places, places where chaos seems to reign. Yet, this simple line is far from something that should instill fear or anxiety. God’s remembering is a surprising act of grace. In the wake of the flood, God remembers, and when God remembers, new creation begins! God remembers and does something surprising through God’s Spirit or God’s ‘wind’ to breathe new life into creation, once again stilling the chaotic waters and bringing a new possibility. (Reread 8:1-5 along side Genesis 1.) God even puts the bow in the sky so that God will remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature” (9:15-16).
“But God remembered….” At a time when God might have preferred to forget, to abort creation and leave the waters of chaos wreaking havoc on the world, “God remembered.” The Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once wrote, “God is God because he remembers.” In a world where memories are short, where we are constantly bombarded with new news that is hardly newsworthy, Genesis reminds us that our God remembers. And that is truly news worth sharing. That is gospel!
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
"Healing, Loving, Turning" (Hosea 14)
It started during the summer between my 8th and 9th grade years. I was a good kid. I always had been. I was raised in the church. I’m at least fourth generation in the Stone-Campbell Movement on both sides of my family. I had a long history of church camps, bible classes, of VBS and “churchy” events under my belt. I’d been liberated through the waters of baptism after years of walking with my parents and learning the rhythms and moves of faith. I’d learned by watching and listening to them because they were the very presence of God in my life. But there was something that summer, there was something about that group of older teens, something about them that intrigued me.
It started at a work camp, actually. I haven’t seen a work camp here in Detroit like we had back in Tulsa, where youth groups from all over town would come together to partner for a week to go into downtrodden neighborhoods and scrape and paint houses, just as a way to try to help bring a gift of life, a little new blessing into neighborhoods.
And it was during that week of work camp that I worked beside a group of juniors and seniors that were from my own youth group. But as a junior high kid, I just didn’t know them. Our middle school and high school groups were split apart and so I hadn’t had a chance to meet this group of teens.
I was at that age, at that point in my life, where I was desperately longing to be drawn in and accepted. I wanted to be able to trusting others. So I decided to trust in these new friends. They were older. They had cars and could get me wherever I wanted or needed to go. They had jobs and more money and could help pay for me when I didn’t have it. They were popular and simply getting noticed by them gave me a whole different sense of self-worth. It made me feel important. It made me feel certain. It made me feel secure.
All the while I was slipping further and further from who I was. I was becoming more and more alienated from my family. I started moving to the music of another life, not to the rhythms of the self-emptying, God-like love my parents had shown me.
As my 9th grade school year rolled around, I know my parents had hoped for a new beginning. I was heading to a new school and getting a new start in so many different things in life. Much to their chagrin, I was increasingly a frustration to my parents…. I was an ornery kid; I was volatile; and I was more than a little too big for my britches.
Soon enough, as you can imagine, the tension in the family hit the breaking point and culminating in a fight on stairs with dad. We’d been in the kitchen. My parents simply wanted to talk to me…. To make the effort, the plea to me to think about what I was doing and who I was becoming. I refused to listen. And when they kept talking, kept pleading and insisting, I decided that I’d had enough and I walked out of the kitchen and headed up the stairs. My mom stopped at the bottom of the stairs, but my dad followed me up. Half way up the stair on the landing he put his hand on my shoulder, gently trying to get me to stop. I turned and shoved him away. And we instantly broke into a wrestling match on the stairs, right next to an eight-foot tall stained glass window. My mom stood at the bottom weeping. My dad, wrestling for me. My mom, broken-hearted and crying for me. And I was wrestling for my independence.
Things seemed to calm down from that point on. There was less tension, less fighting, less… well, less of a relationship. Looking back, I think that my parents had decided that they needed to turn away, not to refuse to love me, that was something they never could do, but because they loved me. And while we lived in the same house, there was a lot of silence for a while, while I kept turning from my parents, from the ones who gave me life, to other things.
Yahweh and the Northern Kingdom
Over the past several weeks, Klint’s helped us to enter into the experience of God and Israel through the eyes of the prophet Hosea. The Northern Kingdom of was at the height of rebellion. They had turned from the Lord their God, their only savior and comforter, and put their trust in so many other things:
They kept turning to the great foreign power, Assyria, from whom they erroneously expected help again and again. Even though it was the Lord their God who delivered them from Egypt.
They kept turning to the Baals to make their land and their fields fertile and to give them a good crop. Even though it was the Lord their God who provided them with their daily bread, with manna and quail in the wilderness and water from a rock.
They kept turning to their own military strength, which had surely grown as the nation of Israel grew stronger and wealthier and more established. Even though the Lord their God had proven it was not their own might but God’s that brought them into the Promised Land.
Because of their rebellion, God had wrestled with Israel, pacing internally over God’s wayward child, struggling to know how best to respond, torn between the compassionate love of a mother whose womb grows warm and tender at the sight of her child and a parent who knows that a child’s incessant turning must eventually bring about his collapse.
So Israel, like a child dizzy from turning and turning after all of the ephemeral and fleeting and failing things she’s trusts and wants, fell….
And many years down the road, with the fall of the northern kingdom as good as complete, the word of the Lord again came to Israel through the prophet Hosea…
Hear the Word of the Lord from Hosea 14:
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
Take words with you
and return to the Lord;
say to him,
‘Take away all guilt;
accept that which is good,
and we will offer
the fruit of our lips.
Assyria shall not save us;
we will not ride upon horses;
we will say no more, “Our God”,
to the work of our hands.
In you the orphan finds mercy.’
I will heal their disloyalty;
I will love them freely, I will love them spontaneously
for my anger has turned from them.
I will be like the dew to Israel;
he shall blossom like the lily,
he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.
His shoots shall spread out;
his beauty shall be like the olive tree,
and his fragrance like that of Lebanon.
They shall again live beneath my shadow,
they shall flourish as a garden;
they shall blossom like the vine,
their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols?
It is I who answer and look after you.
I am like an evergreen cypress;
your fruitfulness comes from me.
Those who are wise understand these things;
those who are discerning know them.
For the ways of the Lord are right,
and the upright walk in them,
but transgressors stumble in them. “
The disaster has already taken place, but Yahweh, the God of Israel, desires a new beginning, for it was not the Lord their God but Israel’s guilt, Israel’s fickle turning, that brought his collapse.
But Israel is not the center of this story; God is.
And in the strange economy of God, a fall is rarely final. The Lord their God was there. The Lord their God had already turned. The Lord their God was waiting with open arms to embrace God’s dizzy and stumbling son.
This is the center, the kernel, the heart of our entire passage today. As the threat of collapse follows God’s verdict from chapters 12 & 13, so the announcement and promise of abundant life springs unexpectedly out of Israel’s fall.
Like a mother offering a hand to a little child looking at a room that is still spinning in his head, God promises to take Israel from his dizzying turning to the secure presence of God. God’s steadying voice declares:
I, the Lord your God, will heal your wayward turning, your disloyalty.
In the midst of your sickness and near death, I will breath new, resurrection life into you.
I, the Lord your God, will love you spontaneously, freely.
There is nothing that you can do, nothing you can offer that will earn you my love. Trust in me, for in my holiness I am setting in motion a completely new future for you!
I, the Lord your God, will turn from my anger and turn right back to you.
Even while you were turning from me, I was turning back to you. I will no longer haunt you like the lion, the leopard, or the angry bear. I the Lord your God am the dew, which gives life and growth, which is always present even when not seen. You will be nourished by my healing and life-bringing love. Israel will blossom forth anew. His roots shall be deep and he shall flourish and rest in the shelter of my shade.
From his dizzied turning, from desolation, from dryness, and from death, waters will fall and new life will spring forth for Israel. Israel will rest again in the shade of a tree. Israel’s faithfulness, his fruitfulness will come from God, not from Assyria, not from the gods he made by own hands, not from within himself. It is God who looks after Israel. The Lord his God will give him life.
So, here, after letting Israel fall, on the brink of total collapse, the strange God of Israel has the last word, a word of hope and promise to Israel… if only he will listen.
BACK TO TULSA:
I think that this is the wisdom that my parents knew. You see, they had been learning from the ways of Israel’s strange God their whole lives. They were brilliant parents, even in the midst of my growing longing for independence and my rebellious turning. They understood that sometimes you can’t steady someone who is dizzy, but you must let them fall, no matter how hard. Sometimes that is the only way that their idols will crash and be revealed for the idols they are.
Yet, my parents were there. They were always there. Even before I had fallen, even in the midst of the battle, my parents had already turned away from their anger and turned back to me. They were ready to heal my disloyalty; they were anxious to love my freely and spontaneously. Not because of anything that I’d done, but because I was no orphan but their child. I was the child of their womb and they longed to have compassion on me.
To many of you, this may seem unimaginable. You’d never struggle with your family. You’ve never had a fight. You’ve never wandered from a very straight and very narrow path. You couldn’t imagine your children doing anything rebellious or ever questioning you.
To others this may sound like a page off of children’s book. I know that there are others who are sitting here who have been to places far darker than I’ve ever been. You’ve turned to far greater challenges. You’ve trusted in things that are far more insidious than I ever did.
But the truth is that the story we encounter in Hosea, and the surprising act of the grace of God in chapter 14 is not just Israel’s. It is our own. This God, the Lord their God, is not just their God but is ours.
Much like Jonah, the prophetic ministry of Hosea ends abruptly, with little resolution. Instead, of “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey might give us, we read a word of exhortation to us.
Those who are wise understand these things; those who are discerning know them.
For the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.
This is a word to us. This is our “summons to understand and to follow. Every reader, every one of us, is called upon to decide between discipleship and revolt and thus between walking or stumbling in our dizziness…. “These words are not just for Israel for also for us, that we might discover and the following the way of Israel’s God as the way of the present and of the future” (Wolff).
We each struggle with our own idolatry, with trusting in and turning to things that are not God for safety, for security, for pleasure, for what feels like life.
But even in our dizziness, even in our dizziness, if we turn and reach out our arms to embrace God again, we’ll discover that God has already turned, opens God’s arms, and enwraps us with the healing embrace of his love.
This is gospel… the Word of the Lord.
Let's pray together:
Oh Lord God,
Our lives are spent turning
Like children dizzied by the colorful array of toys
Lining the toy store shelves
We turn.
Voices from within and without promise to bring us
Hope
Joy
Security
Fulfillment
Hollow pleasure.
We hear their siren’s call and spin to find them.
But in our dizzied turning,
Amid the cacophony of voices
We stumble,
Not knowing which way to turn
Not knowing which voice to trust
Amid the seductive calls and hollow promises
We hear your voice again
Prompting
Inviting
Promising
Stilling
Yet it is hard for us to turn to you
It is hard because we put our trust in so many other places
In the future of the market
In the possibility of our jobs
In people and in relationships that we can manipulate
In our own ability and gifts and skills
In the security of our own religious traditions
We trusted in these because we believed they were predictable, controllable, familiar.
It is hard to turn to you because the gods we’ve made,
The gods that we’ve crafted, that we’ve given life and trusted,
Keep calling
Arresting our attention
Commanding our devotion
Demanding our energy
So that they might live.
But we long for liberation for our idols’ demands, for they are
For they are overwhelming
For they are exhausting
For they are dizzying
They are bringing us death
But above it all we hear the promise of your voice
From our dizzied spinning we stop and turn definitively to you
We turn from the gods created by our own hands to you,
To the uncreated and eternal one who turns from your anger and turns back to us.
To love us
To forgive us
To embrace us
Redeem us through your lavish, liberating forgiveness
Renew us by your relentless, free love
Steady us with your healing embrace
We return to you…, turn to us.
Amen.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Reflecting God in Marriage and for the World: A Wedding Homily
[This is the homily from a wedding Natalie and I got to officiate together a few weeks ago.
Our text for the day was Philippians 2:1-15.]
EM:
Well, here we are. It took distant cafeteria glances, some dodge ball mayhem, and a little Strawberry Jam to get the ball rolling, but we’ve made it here. You’ve tested your relationship through the heart of long, cold Michigan winters and in the heat of the west Texas desert. There was no single moment of a grand "Explosion in the Sky," just small but brilliant moments woven together to bring us to this day where you can look at each other and say, I long to have “Your Hand in Mine.” And now today is finally here. J, it just might be the GDE, the “greatest day ever.” It probably seems like you are a long way from the Taekwondo dojo and the dance studio, from talking art and music with friends and from singing with musical groups, but you’re here.
You are joined today by people who love you, who have come to celebrate with you and share in this covenant and who by their own presence promise to help you honor one another and keep the vows you are making today.
J, you’ve spent plenty of nights at our house, gathering with the “Thank Gorlad It’s Friday” gang to dive deeply in the mysteries of friendship and life and faith. We’ve watched you grow deeper in love with God and wrestle to discern the direction of your life with the support of godly friends and mentors. These were holy moments, moments shaped by the fellowship of the Spirit.
E, We’ve seen the deep love and care and concern you have for your family… We’ve watched you selflessly set aside your own preferences, plans, and prerogatives to support your friends. When they’ve been in desperate need of someone to listen and understand, you’ve poured out the love and consolation of God into their lives. These were holy moments, moments shaped by the fellowship of the Spirit.
Together you’ve been shaped by the love and support of old and new friends, of your families, and of communities of faith that have walked with you as you figured out how to prepare for this day and for a lifetime together…. These were holy moments, moments shaped by the fellowship of the Spirit.
I think that this is one of the reasons I love the way Paul starts the beginning of today’s passage. “If you have any…” “If you have any encouragement, any solace, any fellowship…” “If you have any…” I’m convinced that Paul isn’t doubting the bonds he shares with the Philippian Christian community. I definitely do not think he is questioning their common experience of being “in Christ.” In fact, I think it’s much the opposite. Paul is confident that this is safe ground for him to walk on. He is certain that they’ve drunk deeply of the goodness of life in Christ, that they’ve started faithfully on this journey, that they’ve tasted the sweetness of benefits and blessings of life together with one another in the Lord.
So Paul daringly begins,
If Christ is any encouragement to you at all… and of course he is!
If you’ve experienced the solace of love… and of course you have!
If the Spirit has enabled and empowered your fellowship with one another… and of course she has!
If God’s compassion and mercy have encountered you… and of course they have!
And as that community hears these words read, they look around at the other faces in that little house church and memories begin to flood their minds, memories of times when they’ve encountered Christ, when they’ve shared together in the compassion and mercy of God, when they’ve fellowshipped deeply in God’s Spirit. And just like that little church, you can look at the faces around this room, and as you look, you begin to remember some amazing stories. And so, like Paul, we confidently affirm today that you’ve experienced this type of life, you’ve tasted the reality of this beautiful unity in God.
NM:
This unity does not happen on its own. It takes effort. We are to go about participating in life with God with such intent that we engage each day, as Paul later says, “with fear and trembling.” This text demonstrates the seriousness with which Jesus took his calling. He chose to empty himself to a degree beyond what we can imagine.
So if we are to have the same mind as Christ, if we are to embody the pattern he has set forth, what does it look like? I believe Paul offers us the starting point…of our relationships with others. We are not to be driven by our selfishness and arrogance. To borrow a bit of language from another text, we are to “clothe ourselves” in humility and see others as better than ourselves. Rather than looking after our own interests, we are to discern the interests of others and restlessly pursue just that.
Marriage…seems like a natural opportunity to learn how to step into this passage. Now, I recognize that today you have nothing but positive and loving feelings for one another, so what I am saying does not seem like this is really all that difficult. But there will be a day, soon enough, when your selfishness seems to come out of nowhere! If you are anything like us, which I suspect you are since you’re human, you will have many occasions in the years to come where letting go of yourself for the other is the last thing you want to do; when you won’t really feel more love for the other than you do for yourself. (For us I think it hit on about day three!)
So as you begin your lives together, make it your goal to live out this kind of love more and more each day. Seek to let go when you feel yourself frantically trying to manipulate and get your way. Strive to love one another in the self-emptying manner that you each has felt and received from Christ.
EM:
This could be a bit overwhelming, especially in the toughest of moments, when everything inside of you is fighting the call to empty yourself, when the temptation for self-preservation and looking out for your own interest seems too strong to avoid. But don’t despair for you are never doing it alone. (Don’t analyze, calculate, and over-think it all.) In fact, you can give of yourselves with reckless abandon. As you move more fully into the life of the triune God together, as you give of yourself and work out this salvation, God is working in you, partnering with you, pouring God’s own life into you…
We remember that Christ’s death on the cross wasn’t the final word. It was a surprising moment of revealing both the heart and the strange economy of God. So you can always understand your own lives in God’s economy, in which God is constantly working, empowering, redeeming, and resurrecting things according to God’s ultimate purposes. You can give of yourselves freely to one another because you affirm God’s continued care and activity in your own lives and you trust in the surprising and grace-filled work of God that is continually breaking in all around you.
It is that very power of God that will empower you to live for each other out of the super-abundance of love, rather than out of lack. And as you partner with God for one another’s sake, you can also be sure that God is making you holy!
NM:
J and E, although this day is very much about the two of you, it is really about God who has brought you together and who will sustain you. It is about bearing witness to the world of a self-emptying love that only comes from God. In this kind of love, you will certainly stand out; As Paul says, you will shine like stars in, an extremely dark world. People will be drawn to the awe-inspiring love of the Trinity that is lived out between you.
And not only are you to seek to embody this passage with one another, but you are to extend love to all people, even the unlovable…the annoying...the enemy. E, you are to love those patients who are incredibly mean to you. J you are to love those classmates and authors who think a bit more highly of themselves than they ought. And as you move into your first home together, you are to seek ways of extending love and hospitality to neighbors who may drastically differ from you.
So in light of the ways that you will reflect the love of God in your own relationship and in interactions with others, I believe it is symbolic that you are facing the audience as you make this covenant today. As you remember this day in years to come, I hope that you will recall that your very orientation right now represents the outward aspect of your relationship. I pray that the self-emptying love that God gives you for one another will not be kept just for yourselves but that you will seek to join God’s work of redemption in the world and tirelessly pour love out on all whom you encounter.
So now, facing outward before this wonderful crowd of family and friends, you have the opportunity to exchange the vows that you have written for one another and for God.
Our text for the day was Philippians 2:1-15.]
EM:
Well, here we are. It took distant cafeteria glances, some dodge ball mayhem, and a little Strawberry Jam to get the ball rolling, but we’ve made it here. You’ve tested your relationship through the heart of long, cold Michigan winters and in the heat of the west Texas desert. There was no single moment of a grand "Explosion in the Sky," just small but brilliant moments woven together to bring us to this day where you can look at each other and say, I long to have “Your Hand in Mine.” And now today is finally here. J, it just might be the GDE, the “greatest day ever.” It probably seems like you are a long way from the Taekwondo dojo and the dance studio, from talking art and music with friends and from singing with musical groups, but you’re here.
You are joined today by people who love you, who have come to celebrate with you and share in this covenant and who by their own presence promise to help you honor one another and keep the vows you are making today.
J, you’ve spent plenty of nights at our house, gathering with the “Thank Gorlad It’s Friday” gang to dive deeply in the mysteries of friendship and life and faith. We’ve watched you grow deeper in love with God and wrestle to discern the direction of your life with the support of godly friends and mentors. These were holy moments, moments shaped by the fellowship of the Spirit.
E, We’ve seen the deep love and care and concern you have for your family… We’ve watched you selflessly set aside your own preferences, plans, and prerogatives to support your friends. When they’ve been in desperate need of someone to listen and understand, you’ve poured out the love and consolation of God into their lives. These were holy moments, moments shaped by the fellowship of the Spirit.
Together you’ve been shaped by the love and support of old and new friends, of your families, and of communities of faith that have walked with you as you figured out how to prepare for this day and for a lifetime together…. These were holy moments, moments shaped by the fellowship of the Spirit.
I think that this is one of the reasons I love the way Paul starts the beginning of today’s passage. “If you have any…” “If you have any encouragement, any solace, any fellowship…” “If you have any…” I’m convinced that Paul isn’t doubting the bonds he shares with the Philippian Christian community. I definitely do not think he is questioning their common experience of being “in Christ.” In fact, I think it’s much the opposite. Paul is confident that this is safe ground for him to walk on. He is certain that they’ve drunk deeply of the goodness of life in Christ, that they’ve started faithfully on this journey, that they’ve tasted the sweetness of benefits and blessings of life together with one another in the Lord.
So Paul daringly begins,
If Christ is any encouragement to you at all… and of course he is!
If you’ve experienced the solace of love… and of course you have!
If the Spirit has enabled and empowered your fellowship with one another… and of course she has!
If God’s compassion and mercy have encountered you… and of course they have!
And as that community hears these words read, they look around at the other faces in that little house church and memories begin to flood their minds, memories of times when they’ve encountered Christ, when they’ve shared together in the compassion and mercy of God, when they’ve fellowshipped deeply in God’s Spirit. And just like that little church, you can look at the faces around this room, and as you look, you begin to remember some amazing stories. And so, like Paul, we confidently affirm today that you’ve experienced this type of life, you’ve tasted the reality of this beautiful unity in God.
NM:
This unity does not happen on its own. It takes effort. We are to go about participating in life with God with such intent that we engage each day, as Paul later says, “with fear and trembling.” This text demonstrates the seriousness with which Jesus took his calling. He chose to empty himself to a degree beyond what we can imagine.
So if we are to have the same mind as Christ, if we are to embody the pattern he has set forth, what does it look like? I believe Paul offers us the starting point…of our relationships with others. We are not to be driven by our selfishness and arrogance. To borrow a bit of language from another text, we are to “clothe ourselves” in humility and see others as better than ourselves. Rather than looking after our own interests, we are to discern the interests of others and restlessly pursue just that.
Marriage…seems like a natural opportunity to learn how to step into this passage. Now, I recognize that today you have nothing but positive and loving feelings for one another, so what I am saying does not seem like this is really all that difficult. But there will be a day, soon enough, when your selfishness seems to come out of nowhere! If you are anything like us, which I suspect you are since you’re human, you will have many occasions in the years to come where letting go of yourself for the other is the last thing you want to do; when you won’t really feel more love for the other than you do for yourself. (For us I think it hit on about day three!)
So as you begin your lives together, make it your goal to live out this kind of love more and more each day. Seek to let go when you feel yourself frantically trying to manipulate and get your way. Strive to love one another in the self-emptying manner that you each has felt and received from Christ.
EM:
This could be a bit overwhelming, especially in the toughest of moments, when everything inside of you is fighting the call to empty yourself, when the temptation for self-preservation and looking out for your own interest seems too strong to avoid. But don’t despair for you are never doing it alone. (Don’t analyze, calculate, and over-think it all.) In fact, you can give of yourselves with reckless abandon. As you move more fully into the life of the triune God together, as you give of yourself and work out this salvation, God is working in you, partnering with you, pouring God’s own life into you…
We remember that Christ’s death on the cross wasn’t the final word. It was a surprising moment of revealing both the heart and the strange economy of God. So you can always understand your own lives in God’s economy, in which God is constantly working, empowering, redeeming, and resurrecting things according to God’s ultimate purposes. You can give of yourselves freely to one another because you affirm God’s continued care and activity in your own lives and you trust in the surprising and grace-filled work of God that is continually breaking in all around you.
It is that very power of God that will empower you to live for each other out of the super-abundance of love, rather than out of lack. And as you partner with God for one another’s sake, you can also be sure that God is making you holy!
NM:
J and E, although this day is very much about the two of you, it is really about God who has brought you together and who will sustain you. It is about bearing witness to the world of a self-emptying love that only comes from God. In this kind of love, you will certainly stand out; As Paul says, you will shine like stars in, an extremely dark world. People will be drawn to the awe-inspiring love of the Trinity that is lived out between you.
And not only are you to seek to embody this passage with one another, but you are to extend love to all people, even the unlovable…the annoying...the enemy. E, you are to love those patients who are incredibly mean to you. J you are to love those classmates and authors who think a bit more highly of themselves than they ought. And as you move into your first home together, you are to seek ways of extending love and hospitality to neighbors who may drastically differ from you.
So in light of the ways that you will reflect the love of God in your own relationship and in interactions with others, I believe it is symbolic that you are facing the audience as you make this covenant today. As you remember this day in years to come, I hope that you will recall that your very orientation right now represents the outward aspect of your relationship. I pray that the self-emptying love that God gives you for one another will not be kept just for yourselves but that you will seek to join God’s work of redemption in the world and tirelessly pour love out on all whom you encounter.
So now, facing outward before this wonderful crowd of family and friends, you have the opportunity to exchange the vows that you have written for one another and for God.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Negative Space in Scripture
This Sunday in a class on Jonah 3, I tried to press people a bit on their assumptions about what is and is not present in the text. One brilliant facet of Hebrew narrative is the great economy authors use in their story-telling. This leaves a lot of room for midrash, or examining and retelling the stories to fill in the gaps according to our assumptions.
In the wake of the class I got the following unexpected but welcome email from someone who was in the class. I hope to explore this idea a bit more in the coming weeks, as well as it's connection to apophatic and kataphatic spirituality.
For now, read this email piece and reflect on your own reading of Scripture. How could reading in the negative space transform your reading of Scripture? How might looking at what is not said, especially in comparison to your assumptions about a passage, change the way you understand God, yourself, and the world?
I just wanted to thank you for the little jewel in class this morning....when you started talking about focusing on what is not written in Jonah...it connected immediately in my mind with the use of negative space in art and photography! Focusing on what is not there helps you to see more clearly what you are looking at...it is so easy to be lulled into a false image of what you expect the thing to look like because of your familiarity with the object...when you pay more attention to what is not there (the negative space) it helps you to more clearly define what you are really seeing.
So often when I am reading scripture, I am lulled into "seeing" it the way I always have...looking at the negative space (what is not being said) may lead me to re-examine what that passage may have to say to me...I realize that this may be a very simple and routine practice for you but for me it was one of those ah-hah moments and I thank you for it!
In the wake of the class I got the following unexpected but welcome email from someone who was in the class. I hope to explore this idea a bit more in the coming weeks, as well as it's connection to apophatic and kataphatic spirituality.
For now, read this email piece and reflect on your own reading of Scripture. How could reading in the negative space transform your reading of Scripture? How might looking at what is not said, especially in comparison to your assumptions about a passage, change the way you understand God, yourself, and the world?I just wanted to thank you for the little jewel in class this morning....when you started talking about focusing on what is not written in Jonah...it connected immediately in my mind with the use of negative space in art and photography! Focusing on what is not there helps you to see more clearly what you are looking at...it is so easy to be lulled into a false image of what you expect the thing to look like because of your familiarity with the object...when you pay more attention to what is not there (the negative space) it helps you to more clearly define what you are really seeing.
So often when I am reading scripture, I am lulled into "seeing" it the way I always have...looking at the negative space (what is not being said) may lead me to re-examine what that passage may have to say to me...I realize that this may be a very simple and routine practice for you but for me it was one of those ah-hah moments and I thank you for it!
A Little Child Shall Lead...
Some kids destroyed M's pumpkin bucket last night. She'd been making 'mud cakes' outside, and last night someone kicked the bucket, shattering it.
On the phone today she told me, "I want to tell them what Jesus would, 'I still love you, but you hurt my feelings by doing that. But I forgive you."
Haven't I read something somewhere about a little child leading....
Thursday, August 19, 2010
This Is No Fairytale: A Wedding Homily
(This is the homily from my little sister's wedding this past weekend.)
Scripture for the day: 2 Corinthians 3:17-4:16a.
Well, here we are. K, we’ve come along way from the Carebears and Strawberry Shortcake. (I do think I remember that those Carebears soccer uniforms were purple too though!) No more duets of “another time and another place,” where you totally outshine my feeble attempts to sing…. No more crazy cheerleading costumes…. No more sneaking sunshine packages to unassuming students on the HU and OC campuses… To be honest, I’m not quite sure when my baby sister grew up, but you did…. And we all get to bear witness to that beautiful and mysterious work of God today! You are truly gorgeous….
I want the two of you to take just a minute and look around this room. Seriously, just look around. Don’t be shy…. You are joined today by people who love you, who have come to celebrate with you and share in this covenant and who by their own presence promise to help you honor one another and keep the vows you are making today.
K, you’ve had a lot of practice getting ready for days like today. I still remember like it was yesterday, all of the surprise parties that you and KA would plan behind the scenes in 2 & 3 grade. I mean, how could Mrs. Gary really resist, much less shut down, all those parties you threw in “her honor”? You’ve been planning and throwing parties a long time, and this one is the biggest yet!
And this party has been a long time coming, hasn’t it. I’m not sure that either of you could have ever imagined the journeys that brought you to this day. K, when you were planning all those parties in 3rd grade, could you ever have imagined all that’s happened in the past twenty years? N, could you?
Fairytale or Gospel?
And looking here at the two of you is sort of a fairytale experience. You both look incredible. The whole picture is almost surreal. N, you clean up pretty well now, don’t you? And K, in my lifetime I’ve only seen one bride more enchanting than you!
The scene is perfect… gathered by a lovely court of attendants… the candles lit with gentle flames romantically dancing… the flowers splashing the space with a perfect palette of color and leaving a hint of the fragrance of love wafting through the air…. Yes, this is fairytale type stuff.
But then, I’m not much for fairytales…. I know that probably sounds a bit stuffy, like I’m a crotchety ole cynic at the age of 35. I mean, I’m the father of two little girls for goodness’ sake. You’d think I’d have a Walt Disney kind-o’-heart.
But here’s the thing. I may be a cynic, but I’m a hopeful cynic. I just don’t think that fairytales get the story quite right for me. In fact, I think they tell it all wrong. They aren’t beautiful enough. They aren’t profound enough. And they just don’t get the ending right.
I guess that is one of the reasons we’ve heard this rather strange text from Paul today. I love the heart of Paul’s language in this passage…. “We have this brilliant treasure of God in fragile clay jars, so that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us…. We are always carrying around the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” You see, for me fairytales have this false assumption that this moment is the best there ever is or will be, that the shimmer and shine is eternal, that the brilliance and beauty of this moment reigns supreme.
Fairytales don’t take the journey of the past seriously enough…. The fairy tales would have us believe that today is the ultimate escape from the past. In fairytales the struggles of life aren’t beautiful enough, so they must be overcome and forgotten. They just can’t imagine that there is anything redemptive there. But we don’t gather today in spite of life’s struggles, hardships, and trials. In fact we’ve come to celebrate them. They are a part of the ongoing presence and faithfulness of God throughout both of your lives, preparing you for this very moment. Everything from the past is vital to today. God’s good news is that every bump, blip, and breakdown is transformed and redeemed because of the Spirit’s powerful presence with us. In fact, Paul dares us to imagine that it is actually through the cracks, through the places of our brokenness and fragility that the glorious light of God’s Spirit shines through us most powerfully. So we celebrate every moment of the past today!
Fairytales don’t take the future seriously enough either…. For the fairytales, there’s not much more to the story after this. From here on, it’s just a sunset and a “happily ever after.” But for us, this isn’t the pinnacle. No, this is only one moment in time. It’s a beautiful moment, for sure; and it’s a vital moment, or we wouldn’t all be celebrating with you today. But it’s far more important than the fairy tales would have us believe. We are here today because we believe that this is a holy moment, a sacramental moment. God is here. God is doing something. God is starting something. It’s not the end of this tale. It’s more like a new beginning.
Today we cling to the promise that God isn’t content with a “happily ever after,” but longs to transform you and to change the world through you! We recognize and celebrate the beauty of this moment, but we do it because we recognize the presence and work of God here.
So we don’t deny the reality of the tough journeys that have brought you here and we don’t just sugar coat what is ahead. Instead, we remember and celebrate that God is present in every moment, holding you both together, refusing to let you be crushed,… driven to despair,… forsaken,… or destroyed…. But promising to hold you together through the Spirit.
And that is why both everything that has brought you to this point and everything that happens from here is so important. Today, you pledge to live as witnesses of this story, a living letter of this incredibly good news. You covenant to one another to live lives of rich integrity for each other’s sake. You refuse to throw in the towel…. You refuse proclaim yourselves as most important…. You choose the way of radical honesty and humility….
This can be a strange way of living in a world that wants to look out for its own interests and advantage above most anything else. But today you pledge to live to the rhythms of a very different wisdom, the way of Christ’s cruciform love….
I know that this could be a bit overwhelming, especially in the toughest of moments, when everything inside of you is fighting the call to empty yourself and serve one another, when the temptation for self-preservation and looking out for your own interest seems too strong to avoid. But don’t despair for you are never doing it alone. God is working in you, partnering with you, pouring God’s own life into you, so that the light of new creation shines brilliantly into darkness!!!
There will be times when you may not feel the giddiness and emotion that you do today. There will be moments, and they’ll come soon enough, when you won’t feel like loving each other. There will be moments when you want to manipulate things or assert your own will to get your way. But especially in those moments, trust in the economy of God, who is constantly working, to redeem and resurrect things according to God’s ultimate purposes. Believe that you can still give of yourselves freely to one another because you affirm God’s continued care and activity in your own lives and you trust in the surprising and grace-filled work of God that is continually breaking in all around you. You are participating in the very life of God, so you can give of yourselves with reckless abandon.
And that brings us back to where our Scripture started today. As you partner with God for one another’s sake, you can also be sure that God is making you holy! At times it may be imperceptible. But marriage is a crucible of holiness and the Spirit is always there, doing God’s transformative work. And nothing in a fairytale ending comes close to matching that. This isn’t just “happily ever after”… this is transformation together into the image and likeness of God!
It may seem like foolishness, but by choosing to become slaves of Christ for one another today, you are embracing the ultimate freedom. You are opening your life so fully to one another in the Lord that the Spirit can transform both of you into the image of God day after day and from one degree of glory to the next…. As you give of yourselves in love for each other, God’s creative light will shine from your hearts as it shined out of darkness at the dawn of creation. People will be compelled by the awe-inspiring image of the Trinity that is lived out between you. And you will partner with God together in the healing and redemption of the world!
So always remember… please, never forget. For all of the beauty and elegance and perfection of this moment, today isn’t a fairytale…. No, that just wouldn’t do justice to today. Today is no fairytale… today is God’s work, today is gospel!
Scripture for the day: 2 Corinthians 3:17-4:16a.
Well, here we are. K, we’ve come along way from the Carebears and Strawberry Shortcake. (I do think I remember that those Carebears soccer uniforms were purple too though!) No more duets of “another time and another place,” where you totally outshine my feeble attempts to sing…. No more crazy cheerleading costumes…. No more sneaking sunshine packages to unassuming students on the HU and OC campuses… To be honest, I’m not quite sure when my baby sister grew up, but you did…. And we all get to bear witness to that beautiful and mysterious work of God today! You are truly gorgeous….
I want the two of you to take just a minute and look around this room. Seriously, just look around. Don’t be shy…. You are joined today by people who love you, who have come to celebrate with you and share in this covenant and who by their own presence promise to help you honor one another and keep the vows you are making today.
K, you’ve had a lot of practice getting ready for days like today. I still remember like it was yesterday, all of the surprise parties that you and KA would plan behind the scenes in 2 & 3 grade. I mean, how could Mrs. Gary really resist, much less shut down, all those parties you threw in “her honor”? You’ve been planning and throwing parties a long time, and this one is the biggest yet!
And this party has been a long time coming, hasn’t it. I’m not sure that either of you could have ever imagined the journeys that brought you to this day. K, when you were planning all those parties in 3rd grade, could you ever have imagined all that’s happened in the past twenty years? N, could you?
Fairytale or Gospel?
And looking here at the two of you is sort of a fairytale experience. You both look incredible. The whole picture is almost surreal. N, you clean up pretty well now, don’t you? And K, in my lifetime I’ve only seen one bride more enchanting than you!
The scene is perfect… gathered by a lovely court of attendants… the candles lit with gentle flames romantically dancing… the flowers splashing the space with a perfect palette of color and leaving a hint of the fragrance of love wafting through the air…. Yes, this is fairytale type stuff.
But then, I’m not much for fairytales…. I know that probably sounds a bit stuffy, like I’m a crotchety ole cynic at the age of 35. I mean, I’m the father of two little girls for goodness’ sake. You’d think I’d have a Walt Disney kind-o’-heart.
But here’s the thing. I may be a cynic, but I’m a hopeful cynic. I just don’t think that fairytales get the story quite right for me. In fact, I think they tell it all wrong. They aren’t beautiful enough. They aren’t profound enough. And they just don’t get the ending right.
I guess that is one of the reasons we’ve heard this rather strange text from Paul today. I love the heart of Paul’s language in this passage…. “We have this brilliant treasure of God in fragile clay jars, so that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us…. We are always carrying around the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” You see, for me fairytales have this false assumption that this moment is the best there ever is or will be, that the shimmer and shine is eternal, that the brilliance and beauty of this moment reigns supreme.
Fairytales don’t take the journey of the past seriously enough…. The fairy tales would have us believe that today is the ultimate escape from the past. In fairytales the struggles of life aren’t beautiful enough, so they must be overcome and forgotten. They just can’t imagine that there is anything redemptive there. But we don’t gather today in spite of life’s struggles, hardships, and trials. In fact we’ve come to celebrate them. They are a part of the ongoing presence and faithfulness of God throughout both of your lives, preparing you for this very moment. Everything from the past is vital to today. God’s good news is that every bump, blip, and breakdown is transformed and redeemed because of the Spirit’s powerful presence with us. In fact, Paul dares us to imagine that it is actually through the cracks, through the places of our brokenness and fragility that the glorious light of God’s Spirit shines through us most powerfully. So we celebrate every moment of the past today!
Fairytales don’t take the future seriously enough either…. For the fairytales, there’s not much more to the story after this. From here on, it’s just a sunset and a “happily ever after.” But for us, this isn’t the pinnacle. No, this is only one moment in time. It’s a beautiful moment, for sure; and it’s a vital moment, or we wouldn’t all be celebrating with you today. But it’s far more important than the fairy tales would have us believe. We are here today because we believe that this is a holy moment, a sacramental moment. God is here. God is doing something. God is starting something. It’s not the end of this tale. It’s more like a new beginning.
Today we cling to the promise that God isn’t content with a “happily ever after,” but longs to transform you and to change the world through you! We recognize and celebrate the beauty of this moment, but we do it because we recognize the presence and work of God here.
So we don’t deny the reality of the tough journeys that have brought you here and we don’t just sugar coat what is ahead. Instead, we remember and celebrate that God is present in every moment, holding you both together, refusing to let you be crushed,… driven to despair,… forsaken,… or destroyed…. But promising to hold you together through the Spirit.
And that is why both everything that has brought you to this point and everything that happens from here is so important. Today, you pledge to live as witnesses of this story, a living letter of this incredibly good news. You covenant to one another to live lives of rich integrity for each other’s sake. You refuse to throw in the towel…. You refuse proclaim yourselves as most important…. You choose the way of radical honesty and humility….
This can be a strange way of living in a world that wants to look out for its own interests and advantage above most anything else. But today you pledge to live to the rhythms of a very different wisdom, the way of Christ’s cruciform love….
I know that this could be a bit overwhelming, especially in the toughest of moments, when everything inside of you is fighting the call to empty yourself and serve one another, when the temptation for self-preservation and looking out for your own interest seems too strong to avoid. But don’t despair for you are never doing it alone. God is working in you, partnering with you, pouring God’s own life into you, so that the light of new creation shines brilliantly into darkness!!!
There will be times when you may not feel the giddiness and emotion that you do today. There will be moments, and they’ll come soon enough, when you won’t feel like loving each other. There will be moments when you want to manipulate things or assert your own will to get your way. But especially in those moments, trust in the economy of God, who is constantly working, to redeem and resurrect things according to God’s ultimate purposes. Believe that you can still give of yourselves freely to one another because you affirm God’s continued care and activity in your own lives and you trust in the surprising and grace-filled work of God that is continually breaking in all around you. You are participating in the very life of God, so you can give of yourselves with reckless abandon.
And that brings us back to where our Scripture started today. As you partner with God for one another’s sake, you can also be sure that God is making you holy! At times it may be imperceptible. But marriage is a crucible of holiness and the Spirit is always there, doing God’s transformative work. And nothing in a fairytale ending comes close to matching that. This isn’t just “happily ever after”… this is transformation together into the image and likeness of God!
It may seem like foolishness, but by choosing to become slaves of Christ for one another today, you are embracing the ultimate freedom. You are opening your life so fully to one another in the Lord that the Spirit can transform both of you into the image of God day after day and from one degree of glory to the next…. As you give of yourselves in love for each other, God’s creative light will shine from your hearts as it shined out of darkness at the dawn of creation. People will be compelled by the awe-inspiring image of the Trinity that is lived out between you. And you will partner with God together in the healing and redemption of the world!
So always remember… please, never forget. For all of the beauty and elegance and perfection of this moment, today isn’t a fairytale…. No, that just wouldn’t do justice to today. Today is no fairytale… today is God’s work, today is gospel!
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