Neil and Jane's Wedding

Marriage is a pub quiz

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Marriage is like a pub quiz,

At first, you sign up expecting to know a thing or two, the confidence is high, everyone is smiling, the drinks are freshly poured.

And like every pub quiz team, you have a passing thought of, hey we might actually win this thing. Hoping to see your team name at the top of the leader board for all to see how much you crushed it.

Which incidentally is pretty much what the beginning of marriage feels like.

You sign up expecting to know a thing or two, you have great confidence, and you both start out with great big smiles and fresh supplies.

And at some point after the honeymoon phase has passed, you have a passing thought of, hey we might actually have the best marriage ever known to the world, we are going to crush this.

And then the quiz host holds up the microphone to announce the quiz has begun, question number one comes out easy, then the next three or four aren’t so bad, and all of a sudden your team is in the zone crushing the quiz.

Until that is, when the results for round one are displayed on the screen. At that point all the confident suggestions of that pushy team mate are suddenly realised. Which can be a humbling process, or it can be affirming if you actually got things right.

Now, you might be wondering, what on earth are you going on about Joe? what has this got to do with marriage?

Well the passage we just read is much like the results screen in a pub quiz.

The author of this passage, is a guy called Paul who is writing to a church in Corinth that is a group of people struggling to get along with one another for a variety of reasons.

The arguement Paul is making here is that love is the bond that holds the church together. But it’s really not enough to simply say Love holds us together, Paul has to explain what love is.

Now Paul’s intention here is to unite a church to love one another by getting everyone to work with the same definition of love.

And what we see is this beautiful list of qualifiers, patient, kind, does not envy or boast, not arrogant, or rude, doesn’t insist on it’s own way, not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice at wrongdoing, rejoices with truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never ends.

So if you were wanting to make marriage out to be a pub quiz, then what you are reading here is the answer sheet for how to navigate life in marriage.

Much like when Neil confidently places an answer on the quiz sheet, assuring everyone that he does in fact know the answer, or when the team looks to Jane because the question has something to do with the Bible,

what ever is written on the team’s page will be marked according to the answers and the results will be displayed for all to see.

Which is much the same as living our lives in marriage. Because whether we confidently make choices in our marriage or wether we turn to the other for what to do. Our actions, our words, our thoughts will be marked against the criteria of love and the results will be evident.

Except unlike a pub quiz, marriage doesn’t have a host who makes fun of the answers you write down on the page, rather, in a marraige it is both bride and groom who evaluate the other.

Which is Paul’s concern for the church in Corinth, because unless there is clarity of what unites everyone, then love becomes subjective and independent. Which is what was being experienced by the people recieving this letter.

The people had forgotten what love is, they had sought to serve themselves and seek their own way, rejoicing in lies, resentful of one another.

And this reality that faced the church in Corinth is something that we’ve all witnessed the pub quiz person or team that struggle under pressure.

You know, the person who gets angry and overly passionate, the one who drinks far too much and gets too loud. The one who hogs the pen and doesn’t listen to anyone else on the team.

Such is the reality of the difficulty we all face in our relationships, especially in marraige. If we forget what love is, if we forget to love. Then marriage is no longer fun for anyone.

So don’t forget. Better yet, pursue love at all cost.

Pursue love because, this passage speaks of a truth resonates in everyone, because everyone here today will be able to confidently know when we have been loved, and also a time when we gave love.

See there is a deep truth to what love is, that is common to all people. A truth that we all kind of understand, which is that we seem to all be made to enjoy love. It’s universal, love crosses cultures and language.

The reason this deep truth resonates, as the Bible explains, is that we are all made with the character of the God of the world. The God who out of an abundance of his love, created the world and each of us, to experience the goodness of his love. See this passage that we’ve read today describes Jesus.

If you add up all of what love is from the Bible, not leaving out a single statement, the sum total is Jesus, who out of his love for the world, gave up his life on a cross and rose to life again, that all who believe in him will live with his love forever.

Paul, our author is saying to the church in Corinth, to love one another as Jesus loves us. Knowing that Jesus gave up his life and suffered painfully for our sake. Therefore we are to do the same for one another.

Which means that in the marriage is a pub quiz metaphor that I’m running with. Love is not actually about getting all the answers correct in every round of the quiz, or every season of life.

Rather, love is the moment when someone gets it wrong and the other person is patient and kind. Love is knowing and sharing the right answer to a question, but not insisting on having it written down.

Because whether you have a marriage that tops the charts at the end of the quiz, or one that sits closer to the bottom.

The high or low scores don’t define the love you have, rather what defines your love is whether you’re looking forward to next weeks quiz to do it all over again with the same partner.

So Neil and Jane, be encouraged to love one another as Paul describes in this passage, beginning your quiz team of marriage on the goal of love, not high scores.

Let’s pray.