Multiply Love

2-24-19 

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

We made it. We are at the end of the time after Epiphany, at the end of our Season of Baptism. Next week is Transfiguration Sunday, or aka Day-Glo Jesus Sunday, and the week after that starts Lent! Between last Epiphany and Today we covered a lot of ground, haven’t week? Let’s see if we all remember way back to January, and all of our letters… B = Born From Above…. A = Affirmed …. P = Empowered…. T = Trust… I = Inspired….. S = Serve….

Very good! And today we finish with M = which is for Multiply! BY the way, in the back of the bulletin each week, did anyone find where the letters where listed every week, including the one that Sunday?... It was buried like a little seed for you to discover. And today, that seed has grown and now blooms in our last word in BAPTISM, multiply.

Not a word you usually hear in a sermon, at least not mine. How many of you loved doing math in school? How many of you hated it? I was one of those kids who was good at math, but I didn’t enjoy it. But for many kids – and adults still – math is scary. Apparently, it’s more common than you think for a story making the news when a kid calls 911 over his math homework.  

Math seems like magic – it seems like: you get it, or you don’t. There are rules that we follow but we don’t always understand them. On an NPR segment about math that I heard in the car recently, Alex Stern from WHYY shared how her dad helped her learn the multiplication times table. He had flashcards, and together they would sit on the couch and practice. The one’s that she solved correctly, she didn’t have to practice, but the ones she struggled with went into a “let’s do it again” pile.

Not many of us face times tables or flash cards every day… but I think that most of us are familiar with another kind of multiplication. This one happens during many of our interactions with one another – strangers, family, friends, co-workers, people at church. I’m talking about one-upmanship.

We’ve all been in a situation where we have shared sad news with a “friend,” and they have responded with “Oh, well, you think THAT’S bad? Let me tell you about….”  Or you share some good news, and this person has to share something that is EVEN BETTER.

We’ve all be in situations where we feel like someone has hurt us in some way, and all we want to do is make them feel the same as WE feel… and maybe we also want them to feel a little bit worse. Not only have we all seen this happen on a personal scale, but we see it play out across the world daily in the news – one group of people harms another, communication breaks down, and the tension and violence of the situation escalates… or you could say, multiplies.

A friend told me about a study where human participants are (gently) pushed by a robot, then the humans are asked to push the robots back with the same amount of force THEY felt. And, without exception, the people pushed back on the robots with about 10% more force than was actually used on THEM. That means, if I push you, and you push me back with what you THINK is “getting even” with me, it will really be 10% harder….and then I will push back with 10% more… and the spiral of violence gets out of control. In other words, getting even is never actually getting even.

Kindness begets kindness, violence begetting violence. How do we get over this gut instinct of ours, our reflex to mirror back what has been done to us? psychologists call “mirroring” or “complimentary behavior.” This is the script that we are far more familiar with – you’re mean, so I’m mean back.  Sometimes, though, the script DOES get flipped, and someone responds to harm with kindness, and that feels like a miracle.

In another podcast, I heard the story of a man with a gun who interrupted a dinner party demanding money from the guests. Instead, they offered him a glass of wine and cheese, and after eating, the would-be thief asked for a hug, said he was sorry, and left.

Amazing, right? Or is it?

What Jesus is proposing in his continuation his Sermon on the Plain, would be categorized by these same psychologists as “non-complimentary behavior.” And it’s extremely hard to do. In this part of his sermon, Jesus “ups the ante” for people who would follow him - Don’t just mirror the good that you have received – flip the script on hostility, break the cycle of escalating violence, multiply love instead of hate. This is a new and uncomfortable kind of ethics Jesus is proposing, and we tend to resist it.

It's a nice thought... but it's not enough
to "just get along."

I seem captions on Facebook all the time that say things like, “I don't care [who you are]. If you're nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. Simple as that!” That sure sounds nice, but it is not actually revolutionary or loving. It’s actually perpetuating behavior we already are prone to – the mirroring thing - and Jesus here is making it very clear that this is NOT ENOUGH. Jesus does not say, wait for someone to be nice to do in order to be nice back. Instead, he says “DO unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Do “nice” FIRST. Respond with love.

But at the same time, not very many of us are going to find ourselves at a dinner party about to be robbed at gunpoint. We might not ever face someone demanding our coat. But some of us HAVE been cursed at, abused, harmed physically and emotionally. Some of us have been taken advantage of. Does this give a pass to everyone who has done us harm?

The preachers throughout the ages who have said so are wrong. Love is not enabling. Forgiveness is not being a doormat. Sometimes “non-complimentary behavior” is not passivity, but to leave a situation, or to ask for help.

Jesus is speaking primarily to people who have some agency in these situations – they have a coat and a shirt to give. They have goods to lend. If they are getting slapped, in Jesus’s time, turning the cheek to the others side was a demand to be slapped as an equal with the open palm, rather than the back of the hand, as was used for women and slaves.

But what does Jesus say about those who ARE powerless? What does Jesus have to say to those who are women, children, slaves, servants… people who have NO power in any situation? Jesus says that they deserve love, non-judgement, and help from people who DO have something to give, with no expectation of return. Because we ALL deserve love, non-judgment, and help when we need it.

Jesus charged his disciples with the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, to “Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And so, his disciples, few in number, preached and taught and healed and baptized in a world filled with the never-ending cycles of hate and fear…. And we are the results of how this kingdom is multiplied in the face of these odds, by our very presence. And so, we too are commissioned in OUR baptisms to do the same. To share the radical ethics of God’s kingdom, to break the cycle of escalating violence and hate, to plant the seeds of the Gospel wherever we go, and to the expand the Family of God beyond these walls.

As one of my pastor friend reflected, after she also heard the story of the gunman and the dinner party: "Love looks like inviting our enemies to join the celebration, handing them a glass of wine (or a cup of grape juice) and a hunk of bread, saying 'This is Christ's body and blood, broken and poured out for you.'"

This is Kingdom Math we’re called to do: Water plus a promise equals baptism. 

Bread and wine equal the presence of Jesus.

We are 100% sinner and 100% saint at the same time. 

we subtract our egos and add love to the world, divide our sorrows and multiply our communities of faith. Thanks be to God. Amen.

S is for Service, and an actual Baptism!

2-17-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit Amen.

On this day, in the middle of our Season of Baptism we welcomed Michael into Family of God, and also into the ENTIRE family of God in all of space and time. We welcomed him into the community of all faithful people who have gone on before, and into the community of Christ which makes us one.

But little Michael was born into an imperfect and unhappy world. I’m sure that if Michael's parents would have had a say in what kind of environment their son would grow up in, this would not have been their first choice. Michael is held captive by this world, by his own body’s limitations, bound by time, whose steady march will cause both joy and pain in his life. His world, his peers, his friends, his family, even his body will betray her someday. But through his baptism, God has promised to never leave his side.

The Bible is brimming with stories where God has delivered on this promise in both small and big ways…. Often involving water in some way. When God sent a flood to the whole world, God saved Noah and his family, and promised to never do it again.

When the enslaved Israelites cried out under their heavy chains, God heard them, liberated them, and brought them to safety through the waters of the Red Sea.

When the prophet Jonah lamented his lot in the belly of that big fish, God heard him too from under the waters.

In the Jordan River, God revealed to all of creation that Jesus is God’s beloved son, sent to save us.

And God is here with us now and is especially present in this holy moment we call baptism. When the waters were poured over Michael’s head, his old self: bound by the limitations and constraints of this world, was washed away. He then rose up the waters as a new person, claimed by God as a beloved child, no longer held captive by the chains of the world he has been born into. The forces of evil in this world was rejected and sent packing. The traps, chains, shackles, and locks of the world will be broken open. Michael is now free. But free to do what? That’s what our next letter will tell us.

We are nearly to the end of our series on baptism, and have gotten all the way to S, which stands for Serve. In our Baptisms, we are Born Anew, Affirmed by God, Empowered by the Holy Spirit, called to trust God and, today with S, serve our neighbor. You’ll have to come back next week to find out what the last letter stands for!

Martin Luther was reputed to have said something like, “God does not need our good works…. but our neighbor does” (Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 10). And so, we serve our neighbors, not because we need to prove our worth, or earn our way into eternal life, but because our neighbors need us, and Jesus himself modeled this as a way of life.

This is the year we hear from the Gospel of Luke, and you may have been surprised at how familiar this passage feels. It SOUNDS a LOT like the part of the Sermon on the Mount we call the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew. Similar… but just a little bit off. For one thing, Jesus HERE is speaking on a plain, not from a mountain … “Jesus came down with them….to a level place…. And Jesus looked up at his disciples” when he started speaking.

The next thing you might have noticed is that there are some WOES that go along with the blessings… and even these blessings looked a bit different. Blessed are the poor. Full Stop. Not poor in spirit, like in Matthew. And blessed are the hungry. Full Stop. Not those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In Luke, Jesus is blessing those who work 3 part-time jobs and still can’t afford health care. Blessed are the people who are hungry because their SNAP benefits were withheld because of the government shutdown. Jesus is saying, blessed are the ACTUAL poor and the ACTUAL hungry.

For those who were listening, this was bonkers! Their minds were exploding. Their whole lives, they were told, that the RICH, the powerful, the nobility, and the insiders were blessed. The world was clearly divided into Haves and Have Notes, into Blessed and Blessed-Nots. And the people listening were clearly the Blessed Nots – the sick, the foreigners, the demon-possessed, those in needing to hear the good news… plus Jesus’ own inner circle, filled with rough-neck fishermen, a despised tax collector, a political extremist, and the man who would one day betray him to his death. All being healed, and all listening to a radical message of reversal and inclusion, when the rest of the world excludes clearly excluded them.

What Jesus has listed in his Woes, clearly seem to be blessings by the rest of the world’s standards. Really, come on… who WOULDN’T WANT to be rich instead of poor, be full instead of hungry, laugh instead of weep, and have people speak well of you? But what if all these things do not actually give us life… but instead give us death. What if we have been sneakily trapped by them, tricked into thinking these things will make us secure and keep us comfortable? Because what if all these things actually BLIND us and BIND us? – BLIND us to God’s presence, and BIND us into being possessed BY them.

For all our seeking after security, we are still insecure. For all our comfort in our possessions, we may find they possess us.

Earlier in today’s service, during Michael’s baptism, we “renounced” a few things before we said the Apostles Creed together. We renounced - or turned our back on - the forces in the world that defy God, rebel against God, and draw us from God. It’s a neat throwback to ancient rituals of exorcism, where harmful evil spirits were cast out, and the person suffering was freed.  

For most of us, we are not possessed by actual evil spirits. Instead, we are possessed by institutions that give benefits to some and harms others. Many of us are possessed by the demons of fear, white privilege, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, agism, able-ism, shame, violence, xenophobia, and others. These demons cause us to act in ways that are harmful to the body of Christ.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ““As long as there is poverty in the world, I can never be rich… as long as diseases are rampant … I can never be totally healthy.... I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be…”  As we heard from earlier in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, if one part of the Body of Christ suffers, we all do. When one of us is denied our human dignity, we all are.

We have been baptized into the Body of Christ – freed from the demons of fear and the powers of the world which seek to keep us bound. We have been freed from the belief that there is a finite amount of God’s love and grace in the world. We have been freed to serve our neighbor who might be struggling with poverty, hunger, and injustice.

We can serve our neighbor by giving away the power we HAVE been given – or use that power to lift those who have been dis-empowered. We can serve our neighbors by giving them coats in the winter, and also by asking why some people can’t afford such a basic need. We can serve our neighbor by feeding them, and also by advocating for them so they no longer struggle to afford food. We can serve our neighbor by comforting those who weep, and also by removing the stigma of mental illness.

To be clear, We don’t serve others because they have NOT been blessed by God … we’re doing it because they HAVE. But because all of us have been created by a loving God. We are blessed because we are loved. And woe to any of us who forget that – about other people, AND about ourselves. Thanks be to God. Amen.

I is for Inspired to Talk about Things We Don't Normally Talk About In Church.

Content warning: This sermon contains references to sex, sexual violence, abortion, and purity culture. 

Sermon 2-10-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

The good news is that we are over half way through our season of baptism! We’ve covered a lot of ground so far, so let’s do a quick review of all the letters we’ve done:

B = Born anew, A = Affirmed, P = EmPowered, T = Trust.

Today is… Inspired. I thought of the word Inspired way before I read Rachel Held Even’s great new book about the Bible by the verysame name. I will be using it heavily during Lent for our “Eat, Pray, Learn” series on the Bible every Thursday night. In her book, Evans writes about the Bible’s inception –it did not fall out of the sky in perfectly complete English. The Bible was actually written by imperfect people over a period of centuries, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is inspired, or “pneustros”, a Greek word meaning “God breathed.”

Evens explains, “Inspiration….  is rooted in the imagery of divine breath, the eternal rhythm of inhale and exhale… Inspiration is not some disembodied ethereal voice dictating words or notes…. It’s a collaborative process… [and] God is still breathing. The Bible is both inspired and inspiring.” (xxiii)

In the beginning, God soared on the wind over the raging waters of creation… and breathed creation into being by saying the words, “let there be life…” At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the first followers of Jesus in a great rush of wind and mysterious tongues of flame. Jesus the son of God came to earth as a person with a body – with lungs, a windpipe, and a diaphragm, and used his breath to tell people the good news, teach about the kingdom of God, to cast out demons, and to heal.

When God breathes and speaks… stuff happens. That’s inspiration… IN – SPIRE… IN – SPIRIT…. The spirit of God dwells in us, gives us life, and creation responds.

Imagine, at that lakeshore, Peter and his fellow fishermen huffing and puffing, out of breath as they ended a long and unproductive night of fishing – exhausted – literally with their breath drained out. Along comes Jesus, who tells them to go into the deep waters and try again. They do, somewhat reluctantly, but then are shocked at the size of their catch – so big, their boat starts to sink from the weight of all that fish!

At this miracle before their very eyes, Peter makes a correct assumption – this man must be from God. When Jesus commands, stuff happens. But this realization terrifies Peter. Jesus is holy. Peter is not. Sacred does not mix with profane. Pure does not mix with impure. Jesus should not be hanging out with Peter, or Jesus will get tarnished by association. Surely, this man of God wants nothing to do with a sinner like Peter.

This makes me wonder – what kind of sinner was Peter? We are given exactly zero details. Was he a gambler, did he drink to much, was he a compulsive liar, did he steal, was he a murderer? We have no idea.

And yet, just a few chapters later, in Luke chapter 7, we meet another person who is ALSO deeply regretful of her past sins, like Peter. Jesus is at a dinner party, and a woman described as “living a sinful life” prostrates herself at Jesus’ feet, sobbing. The hosts of the party are aghast. They agree with Peter – Jesus should not hang out with “sinful” people!

I would like to point out that nothing is said about the woman’s sin either. And yet, in many commentaries and sermons throughout the centuries, this WOMAN was describes as having a sinful SEXUAL past, and Peter is not saddled with this stigma AT ALL. That is a big problem… and says more about US than it does about Peter or this woman.

If you follow the news, you may have noticed that Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber has made the news again. She just published a book called Shameless: A SexualReformation, where she lays out a new kind of sexual ethic within Christianity, based on grace, that is inspired by Luther himself. If each one of us was created with a body that is infused by the breath of God, our bodies are created good. Her manifesto challenges the prevailing notion that sex is a dangerous and terrible thing outside of heterosexual marriage, but WITHIN THAT TINY CORRAL it’s great!! But the experience of many faithful Christians tells us this is a one-size-fits all approach does severe damage to those who do not fit this mold.

Uncomfortable yet? Bolz-Weber takes on all kinds of topics in her book we don’t normally talk about in the church – sex, abortion, pleasure, pastors who are transgender, birth control, and body-shaming. But her book is also filled with things that we DO talk about in church… stewardship, holiness, purity, grace, creation, sin, and the Bible. She is very clear on one point though: purity is not the same as holiness, and for two long the church has conflated the two.

She reminds us that purity is the separation FROM something, and there is no way that any kind of purity system makes us holy and worthy of God’s love. Not the purity codes of Leviticus, nor the purity codes of books like“I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and the “True Love Waits” movement. Purity of any kind does not make us Holy… Jesus does. Over and over again Jesus is extending grace and holiness into places and to people that others deem to be “impure.”

Because the truth is, no one is really “pure” in any form. We have all been tainted in some way or another by the sin and brokenness and realness of the world. Life is complicated – a mixture of both good and bad, sin and holiness, imperfect people doing the will of a perfect God to the best of their ability.

But when institutions perpetuate to vulnerable people that certain actions are beyond even God’s redemption, this flies in the face of who our God has revealed Godself to be.

You may have heard a couple of other things in the news lately. The state of New York recently passed a law to decriminalize legal abortions after 24 weeks performed by medical professionals when it has been determined that either the woman’s life is in imminent danger, or the fetus has no chance of survival beyond birth. 24 weeks is the “magic number” because that is the point in a woman’s pregnancy that a fetus can likely physically live outside of the womb. This has been a struggle for many Christians, because of our mandate in the 10 commandments, “though shalt not murder.” Which seems self-explanatory.  As Luther explains: “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all of life’s needs.” 

But life is complex, and so is the magic moment of when life begins. When is that, exactly? At conception? At 24 weeks when the fetus is “viable,” .... when a fetus can feel pain?  The Bible is not actually clear on this. In fact, In the ancient rabbinic tradition, life begins at birth, when a baby takes his or her first breath. That is when they believed that the soul entered the body. And before 1968, that is when conservative evangelical Christians agrees. It’s not until after the 1960s that the Pro-life movement even got started.

Nadia Bolz-Weber in her book writes about her own experience with abortion. According to her: “There are so many varied experiences of conception and pregnancy. Some of us long to conceive and never do; some of us have babies we did not want, some of us miscarried babies we desperately wanted…. There are many ways to view the issue and remain faithful.” 

But I think that everyone can agree on one thing, related to something ELSE that has just come up in the news: when a religious institution looks the other way as their leaders take advantage of female adherents and then force them to have abortions, and yet single-mindedly promotes Pro-life as one of its most cherished tenants, this is a level of hypocrisy that Jesus would have no problem vocally opposing – loudly and vehemently.

Nadia writes: “Jesus kept violating the boundaries of decency to get to the people on the other side of that boundary, who had been wounded by it….. the motherless, the sex workers, the victims, and the victimizers.”… and here I would add, fishermen. Jesus “cared about real holiness, the connection between the human and divine, the unity of sinners, the coming together of that which was formerly set apart.” (28)

In our baptisms, we are both set apart for the holy calling of God’s kingdom, and united with our fellow saints and sinners in living out this calling in a complicated world. The breath of God is present in each of us, enlivening and inspiring us. This cannot be diminished or removed, no matter how hard our fellow humans try. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Diamonds Aren't Forever, But Baptism Is.

2-3-19 Sermon, Trust

Grace and peace to you from God our father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

“Love is a patient…. driver. Love merges kindly in traffic. Love does not envy the best parking spots… or boast on getting them. Love does not drive arrogantly or rudely. It does not insist on its right of way all the time; it is not easily irritated or resentful while stuck behind a slow driver; it does not rejoice when it sees other rude drivers getting pulled over. Love bears all traffic conditions, even snow and ice, believes in the best intentions of other drivers, hopes to get to its destination safely no matter how long it takes, and endures all things, even while riding shotgun.”

found at a store

Now, I would bet that you have never heard the “love poem” from First Corinthians in quite that way before. But, I believe, if Paul had a car, he might have chosen to write it like this.

The last time you heard the ORIGINAL passage from 1 Corinthians 13, it was probably in A church SOMEWHERE, (but not this one)… because the last time you heard this was likely at a wedding. … read way too fast or too quietly by a nervous relative of the bride or groom. In fact, there is sort of a joke among pastors that this reading has been so overused in weddings that it has become a cliché. 

But at this time of year, you might also see quotes from this passage in first Corinthians in cards, stores, and in posts on social media, pretty much from the moment that Christmas a New Year’s were over. Red hearts as far as the eye can see, ushering in the “season of love,” so to speak. Here, in the church, though, we’re still in the season of Epiphany, and doing our series on baptism

Today, we have gotten to the letter T in BAPTISM… So far, we have talk about how we are Born from Above, we are Affirmed and emPOWERED, and today, we’re talking about TRUST. Which is of course, very closely related to love… which is present and active in… guess what… our baptisms.

Parents of young children about to be baptized are called to both trust in the grace and love of God, and also are ENTRUSTED with responsibilities to raise their children learn to trust God. That’s all in the first page of our baptism liturgy.

Because we have been chosen by God, claimed as beloved, we can TRUST in God’s promises to forgive our sins, give us new life, and to be with us always. We can rely on God’s guidance and presence forever. In other words, we can trust God, because God loves us.

Our baptism DO NOT guarantee us and easy life as we seek to follow Jesus … We, as children of God, have been called to love other people… and loving people is HARD! I struggle to love people I don’t know, and especially when they do something that I get annoyed with, like not using their turn signal or parallel parking poorly.

I am not a patient driver, and I have a feeling that others might have this struggle too. Had Paul been writing now, he probably should include “If I have the best driving skills in the world, and can parallel park on a dime, but have not love, I am just a honking car horn.”

And that’s just driving. Think about all the other interactions with have with people throughout our day – with our parents, siblings, and spouses. With our children. With our coworkers. With the people in the grocery store and at the bank and at church. How can we show love to all these different kinds of people, especially when they irritate me in all kinds of different ways?

In the words of a slightly different translation of 1 Corinthians 13, “Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always ‘me first,’ doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others… Jesus reveals that God’s love puts up with us, always looks for the best, never looks back, and keeps going to the end.” (The Message Translation)

The bottom line is, God IS love, and God loves you. That love never gets tired of going in search of you, and then grabbing hold of you in the most stubborn grip.  And God loves us so much that God revealed that love to us as love with a body. A person that shows love in all that he says and does.

Just over a month ago at Christmas – wow time flies – we celebrated the coming of this love revealed as helpless infant born in a manger – meaning Jesus. But, of course, Jesus didn’t stay a cute baby. He grew up, and he began to preach, and continued to reveal that God is Love, that God Loves Everyone, and God’s Love is on the MOVE.

Last week, we heard Jesus say that Love releases the captives and preached good news to the people who are forgotten and left behind. That day, the people in Jesus’s hometown wanted to hear that they are God’s beloved favorites. But instead, in his very first sermon, Jesus had the audacity to remind them that God has the annoying habit of showing love to people who are on the outside.  Like helping the widow of the “wrong” nationality and a general from a rival army, when there were plenty of people in need who were more “deserving” of God’s love.

And this is only Luke chapter 4, so Jesus is just getting started. Jesus heals, hangs out with, feeds, and blesses all those people who were considered to be disqualified from God’s love. For those on the outside, this is very good news indeed! But for those on the inside, this was a dangerous message, and must be hushed up.

Little, it seems, has changed since Jesus time. In our human selfish brokenness, we live in a world where some of us are given preferential treatment because of gender, skin color, orientation, education, or economic standing. The people in Jesus’ hometown didn’t want to hear that THEY were not the ONLY people that God loves…  and we don’t want to hear this message either. We would rather go on believe that we, by our own goodness and merit, have earned God’s love. But this is just another sneaky way that we trust in ourselves and not in God.

Martin Luther talked a lot about how we do not have to earn our salvation, and so we are freed to use that energy to help our neighbors. He also once reputedly said that said that our spouses were our closest neighbor. …. So maybe using 1 Corinthians as a text for weddings is not actually that weird.

Love is the basis of trust. And we can trust in our God, who loved us so much that his son Jesus came down to understand how complicated it is to be human. Which sounds like a pretty irrational thing to do. And frankly, so is marriage.  What is more ridiculous that spending thousands of dollars on invitations and  flowers and cake and a dress you’ll only wear once… to stand up in front of your family and friends and say “till death do us part”? Love makes us do some pretty funny things, doesn’t it?

Love is about sacrifice, but nobody wants to hear THAT on their wedding day. This is what I WISH I could say in each and every wedding homily I give from here on out:

Me doing my brother's wedding, which was
really fun!

The feeling that we interpret as being “in love” will fade… so don’t trust it. Trust God instead. Trust that God has chosen you. Trust that God always acts patiently and kindly, God is never rude or arrogant or jealous or resentful. Trust that God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things… including the limitations of OUR capacity to love.

People will fail us, but God never will. Relationships break, our dearest loved ones will reject us or hurt us, but God will always be faithful.

Love and trust hold hands, and form an unbreakable bond, more certain and more permanent than the promise of any wedding ring. Diamonds aren’t forever, but the promises of baptism are. And this is something we can hold on to, as long as we all shall live. Thanks be to God. Amen.