SCRIPTURE LESSON – Genesis 2:18-24
Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken." Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
HOMILY
LOVE IS OVERRATED. I’ve always wanted to start off a wedding sermon that way and I guess doing that for my sister’s wedding, when I’m more among friends and family than just about any other wedding I perform, is the way to go. Yes, I said it, LOVE IS OVERRATED.
Now, I don’t mean that the love of God is overrated or the love a parent feels for a child or a husband for a wife is overrated. I don’t mean the love that Bob feels for Liza or Liza feels for Bob is overrated. I really don’t mean that at all. What I do mean is that how we have understood love…and really marriage…in the world is OVERRRATED.
We make love into a feeling, an emotion that is summarized in a Hallmark card or found in a dozen roses or is there when we look lovingly and longingly into each others’ eyes. And it’s fed by our movies and our books and our television when the guy gets the girl and the girl gets the guy and the star-crossed lovers meet at the top of the Empire State Building or out in the Garden or at the Red Sox Game. The evil villain is defeated. The other suitors fade away. The soldier comes home. Wesley and Buttercup kiss a kiss to end all kisses and we call it “Love. True Love" (said in the style of the priest in The Princess Bride).
I want to say that when you find the one you want to be with for the rest of your life and you see it in their face and you touch elbows in the movie theater and the tingles run up and down your spine and they see it in your eyes when they walk into a room and you can’t wait to see them…that’s a wonderful fringe benefit. But it’s not “Love. True love.”
Paul wrote 1st Corinthians 13 some 2000 years ago…long before Liza and Bob. And it’s been read at thousands of weddings…long before Liza and Bob. And, for that reason it’s not been read today…as per the wishes of Liza and Bob. Sometimes when I read it at weddings, mostly for the young couples, I’m sure they hear very little of it, until I get to the last line which says, “And now Faith, Hope, and Love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is LOVE.” And their eyes light up. And they look at each other with that look that says, “He’s talkin’ about us, Pookie-face!”
And I want to say to those couples, what you’re feeling now is great. It’s a groovy kind of love. But it’s not “Love. True love.” Oftentimes I’m not so sure that persons hear all the rest of it. Stuff like, love is patient and kind, not rude or envious or boastful. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love isn’t all tickles and tingles. It’s garbage day. And job searching. And late nights at work. It’s messes that only your favorite animals can make. It’s not feeling well. It’s “The in-laws are coming! The in-laws are coming!” It’s holding onto each other through the storms…the thunder and lightning outside and the occasional hurt and turmoil inside as well. It’s trying to put on a wedding together and it’s saying you’re nervous that your brother might embarrass you, but together trusting enough to let your brother (or brother-in-law) perform the ceremony. Love is there on bad days, when you don’t feel very loving or loveable. Love is there when you’re very, very sick. The kind of love that recognizes that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns and sunshine…THAT kind of love isn’t overrated.
Now, for this wedding here today we read a little bit from Genesis; a passage which really serves as the foundation for how we understand marriage in the world today. Sometimes as this is read persons turn it into a matter of who came first, “MAN,” or who is the one who shows power over the animals by naming them, “MAN,” or turn “WOMAN” into a little helper around the home. While going in that direction would be entirely inappropriate for a wedding where my sister was included, it’s also entirely wrong, biblically. These all miss the main points. First of all, man is just creature #1, a dirt creature, until woman shows up on the scene. There really is no MAN and WOMAN until both are there. They are incomplete without each other.
But what I think this passage tells us, and the reason “a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” is the concept that started the whole thing… “it is not good that the man should be alone.” God saw that it is not good that this creature be alone. And so all the creatures of the world were made but they were not quite right – although many of us with creatures at home can tell you they can get pretty close at times. And so God made another creature. “Woman” she was called. Now we have Man and Woman. And together they are more than they were apart.
Us dirt creatures that are lovingly created by God are made to exist with others. We are made to be in community. And…so…many of us find ourselves falling in love. Living in love. Acting in love. Working out all the details, in love. Some of us work through the processes quickly. Some of us spend twenty years working out these details…in Marion…at Earlham College…in Germany…on the East Coast…in Indy. Some take a little longer figuring out that, while they are never really alone…they are least alone when they are together…that it is good for them to be together.
This is not a matter of having a help-mate. It’s a matter of recognizing that together they are more than they are apart.
Liza and Bob I will leave you with one of the most powerful illustrations I know of love. It’s a good one. I hope you like it.
It takes place a long time ago and far away. People are falling in love all over the village of Anatevka in Tsarist Russia in 1905. And this is upsetting the village that is so rooted in Tradition, including, for some reason, Fiddlers up on roofs. This love-thing seems to be hitting one household pretty hard and one night the man and woman of the house are in bed, while their traditional world is crashing in around them. And Tevye looks at Golde, his wife and asks, “Do you love me?” And she, unfamiliar with such a question responds, “Do I what?” He again, “Do you love?” “Do I love you?”
What happens next is beautiful. She recounts all of the things she did for him and they’ve done together over 25 years, raising kids, building a house, all of it. And she basically says, “Yeah, I guess I love you.” It’s cute.
What I think is so great about this is not that it downplays the romance and the infatuation and the sappiness of love…but that it recognizes that “Love, True Love” is found in all the details of life: in how you stand by each other, and enjoy each other, and support each other, and care for each other, and work with each other, and how you recognize and celebrate that it is good that you are together—just as, perhaps we all recognize and celebrate that with you today.
You’ve already had a lot of together. I pray that you continue to live into what it means to not be alone…but be joined together as husband and wife.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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