Connections

Good morning, it is so wonderful to be here this morning, seeing XXX and XXX so wonderfully dressed…

Sermon Title : Keep Calm (and Carry on?)

Good morning, it is so wonderful to be here this morning, seeing XXX and XXX so wonderfully dressed…

Sermon Title : Keep Calm (and Carry on?)

Occasion : Wedding Service

Location : Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School – Sophia Hall

MPP : You need connections to God, Community and each other to have a successful marriage

Good morning, it is so wonderful to be here this morning, seeing XXX and XXX so wonderfully dressed…

And I think the same goes for all of you in the congregation who are here to support XXX and XXX… you are quite conscious that you want to wear something appropriate to this occasion and to honour the bride and groom this morning…

Yes, it’s true, XXX looks exceptionally handsome this morning and XXX looks exceptionally beautiful this morning… They are handsome and beautiful everyday… it’s just that because of the makeup and the dressing they look exceptionally nice today…

This reminds me of a joke that says

“A little boy looks at his mum at a wedding and says, “Mummy, why is the girl dressed all in white?”

His mum answers, “The girl is called a bride and she is in white because she’s very happy and this is the happiest day of her life.”

The boy nods and then says, “OK, and why is the boy all in black?””

While this is meant to be a joke, but it does bring out the fact that the marriage is difficult and that is why there are so many jokes about marriages out there…

Many people put in a lot of effort into the preparations for the wedding, which is rightly so, because it is an important ceremony which symbolises the radical change in your status in life… and it is also a sacred ceremony that includes not just your family members and friends, but also God Himself….

But you know that you do not wear this everyday right?

However, no matter how amazing the wedding ceremony is, and no matter how much preparations you had made for the wedding, this is but the beginning of a life-long relationship and adjustment…

Part of this adjustment occur because you come from very different worlds, having been brought up in different families, different school environments, having different friends, and having many unspoken expectations perhaps of each other… This is perhaps interestingly encapsulated in the following joke that says…

Newlyweds wake up one morning on their honeymoon and the man suggests: "Darling, why don’t you brew us some coffee?"

Wife looks confused: "But that's your task, honey."

“What? Why?”

"It’s all over the Bible, dearest."

"The Bible says nothing about who’s supposed to be brewing coffee!"

The wife grabs hold of a copy and starts flipping pages at random: "See? Everywhere: Hebrews, Hebrews, Hebrews."

Yes, marriage can be difficult because you come from different backgrounds and according to neuroscientific research, it takes about 10 to 15 years for our minds to adapt to our new life as a married couple, and to unlearn our past habits as singles, and to accept each other and for intimacy to display itself in a marriage…

While the infatuation (or what people usually refer to as the honeymoon phase) lasts typically between twelve to 18 months,[1] and therefore it is natural for the ‘spark’ in the marriage to ‘fizzle out’…

So you have about 8 years in between the sparks going off and adjusting to each others’ habits and trying to sort out who brings the trash out and who makes the coffee… whether it’s he brews or she brews…

So what do you do?

The good news is found in today’s reading, taken from John 15:1-17, which talks about connections…

I guess it’s not to different from the other aspects of our lives…

To live well in this world, you need to be connected…

You have to get your plumbing connected, your electricity, your sewer, your Netflix, your sportify…

Of course, if these things are not connected, things can get quite miserable…

If you flip the switch and the light doesn’t come on…

If you turn the tap and the water doesn’t flow…

If you flush the toilet and either the toilet doesn’t flush or worse, the comes out the other end and overflows onto the floor…

And the worse horrors of all… if you turn on the Netflix and your computer you don’t have any Wifi or internet connections…

Yes, connections are important in our daily lives, and so it is in our marriages as well…

And that’s how you are able to overcome the challenges of marriages… by having good connections…

And I don’t mean taking advice from the world wide web… there are so good advice out there… but they are few and far apart and many times, they are just as clueless as you…

But the first connection I would to talk about, which should be obvious from the context of today’s passage is connection with the third party in the relationship…

This third part is not the intruder, but is in fact the person that brought you two together…

God Himself…

Our Christian marriage is a tri-partite relationship and as with all things in our Christian life, we recognize that without God, all our endeavors in this world are quite futile…

This is illustrated for us Matthew 7, which contrasts between the fool who built his house on sand which came tumbling down when the rain came, and the wise man who built his house upon a rock, which stood the test of the rain…

Be like the wise man and build your marriage upon the rock, so that it can take the stand of time and take the challenges of the world…

Because we are all imperfect, we will all disappoint each other sometimes…

I know you can find it hard to believe right now at the altar, because she looks so perfect… so angelic…

He looks so dashing, so wonderful…

But there will times after the infatuation fades and your spouse does not meet up to your standard, and you find it hard to love your spouse…

That’s when you need to draw form the bottomless pit of love which is Christ Himself…

And that you cannot do only when you are in trouble… but the connectivity with Christ is something that needs to be done regularly and constantly…

You need to constantly bask yourself in God’s love so that you can fulfil the commandment He gave I verse 12 of our passage today which is “Love each other as I have loved you.”

Indeed, He has every right to instruct us to do so because He already demonstrated the greatest and the ultimate form of love, which we read in verse 13, which is to that He laid down His life for us His friends…

That is the ultimate sacrificial love demonstrated for us, and by being connected to Him, from Him flows, Jesus’ forgiveness flows into your life together whenever you make each other sad.

Through your connections with Jesus, hope flows into your life together, whenever things look bad…

Through your connections with Jesus, healing power flows into your life together, whenever hurts and wounds appear in your relationship…

And how you do that practically?

This brings me to the second connection, which naturally is each other…

I think it is quite obvious but you cannot grow in love with each other unless you are connected to each other, but it is something we know cognitively, but tends to forget when we become busy with our lives…

You need to set aside time to spend with each other…

This is especially true when the children come or when career demands even more out of your…

Just like how you need to craft out a sabbath to maintain and grow your relationship with God, you need to craft out and protect your time with your spouse…

It can be a job together, or having breakfast together, or having coffee together, or watching movies together…

It is about spending time together…

But may I suggest that one of the most useful ways for couples to draw closer together, is to spend time with God together…

It doesn’t have to be complicated or long, it can be as simple as whipping out a simple daily devotional book, and read portions of the bible together…

And you can start by doing it once a week… just 15 minutes together…

But the point is that it is a point of open sharing with each other and with God…

The most important aspect is that you need to be honest with each other and must not let doubt or anger or disappointment drive you two apart…

And that’s what makes this arrangement so wonderful… with God in the picture, you are compelled to be honest with one another because God is present…

And because God is in the picture, the connectivity between yourself, yourselves as a couple and God gets reinforced in the process…

The last connectivity is with that of your family members and your church…

Because marriage is something so new to us, it can feel a little overwhelming and lonely sometimes, especially when you encounter something that is unexpected…

Don’t forget you have a community of faith and family that you can always turn to for help, which are the tangible presence of God in your lives…

So the last connectivity is connectivity with your family members and the church…

So even as you begin this new phase of your life as one, do not forget or cut off the old connections that you have already established…

Do not isolate yourselves, but continue to be connected with the community of faith and family and draw from their love and experience…

Spend time with your parents and family members…

Journey with people who are going through the same phase as you…

So, as I bring this homily to a close, even as you leave this sanctuary later as one unit, remember to continue to work on your connections to God, connections to each other, and connections to family and the community of faith. Amen

[1] Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More than to Make Us Happy?, Kindle Edition. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2015), 102.