Mark and Carolyn's Wedding Sermon

Introduction

Dearly beloved! We are gathered here today...

I have lost count of how many weddings I have opened with those words, and yet they feel a little bit different today, don’t they?

We have gathered here today!

I don’t know about you but I feel like maybe before this pandemic season hit, I was taking those words for granted.

One of the best things about working with Mark and Carolyn to get ready for today is how far ahead they plan.

I think we were meeting a year and a half ago to plan this wedding!

The procrastinating pastor didn’t know how to handle that exactly!

And while I know for sure that this is not what we were imagining together at the Hello Bistro all that time ago, I think in so many ways this current situation has a lot to teach us about getting married.

So if you’ll give me a moment, there are three lessons that we can learn from a wedding in the midst of a global pandemic.

Three Lessons:

Hardships are a given.

These hardships can come from outside in.

Difficulty at work.

Global pandemics.

Economic or financial difficulties.

Or they can come from within.

Who’s doing the dishes tonight?

How exactly does one load the dishwasher?

What are the proper rules of football?

Wherever they come from, life is never a completely smooth road.

I wish, Mark and Carolyn, that I could stand here and tell you that your journey will be nothing but smooth sailing.

But it’s not wise to lie in God’s house.

But I won’t leave you with the bad news!

Love overcomes hardships.

Paul tells us exactly how to over come our hardships in the passages we read this evening.

Or to quote another Paul, all we need is love.

Love gives us the ability to be patient in the midst of an extremely rushed world.

Love gives us the ability to be kind in the midst of a world drunk on anger.

Love does not insist on its own way, either in our professional lives, or in our political lives, or even might I say in our married lives.

What Paul is encouraging us to do in these passages is to respond in love.

When you’ve been working home together for a while, and there seems to be a little less space in that house than there was a few months ago, instead of reaching for argument, reach for love.

When there is that argument that rises up, the one that seems so very important in the moment, make every single effort to maintain unity Paul says, and love is the way to do it.

When you face difficult decisions, the kind that seem like they don’t have good or easy answers, maybe the right question to ask is “what is the most loving thing we can do.”

The good news is that this love is contagious.

A smile toward a stranger usually leads to a smile in return.

But…we’re all wearing masks, so we might have to try a little bit harder...

If your marriage is strong in patience, others will see it and want to be more patient.

If your marriage is united in the Spirit, it might well lead others toward unity.

If your marriage is saturated in love, Paul tells us that it will be able to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things.

I for one think that the world needs more of that, and a healthy marriage like the one you both are inaugurating today is an unbelievable gift to the world.

Make sure it’s the right kind of love.

The Greek language has four words for love.

Storge- It’s a love of cute things.

Think about the flower girl walking down today.

Or puppy dogs.

Eros- Physical attraction

This is the kind of love that you both experience when catching eyes from across a room takes your breath away.

Phileo- Friendship

This is the kind of love best experienced on a couch on an autumn day with a bowl of popcorn and a Penn State football game on TV.

This is the kind of love you both experience with all those fist bumps...

Each of those kinds of love are present, and vital in any good marriage.

But the kind of love that Paul is writing about here in our texts is a little different.

Agape love- self sacrificial love.

Agape love is patient because it values the needs of the other over your own needs.

Agape love does not insist on it’s own way because it’s too busy insisting on the well being of your spouse.

Agape love maintains unity because as two people value each other over their own interests they continue to be drawn together.

This is actually the reason we get married in a church- Jesus Christ is the greatest example of Agape love.

No matter what we do, Jesus offers us love.

No matter how much we don’t deserve it, Jesus offers us love.

No matter what difficulties, hardships, trials, or even pandemics come our way, Jesus’ love is stronger.

Three Encouragements:

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

In a world where there are legitimate difficulties coming our way, we would do well to let the little things go.

Is it worth a long fight over the dishwasher?

Maybe the laundry can wait another day.

Perhaps a traffic jam isn’t the best time to air your grievances.

Love knows that there are bigger fish to fry, and so my first encouragement today is to let the small stuff go.

You are both going to be together for the rest of your lives. You’ve got time to work out the little things.

Keep your eyes on the big prizes.

Keep your spouse first.

Always seek to love your spouse more in any given moment than your own needs.

Mark, may the love you have for Carolyn over shadow your own desires and ambitions.

May you rejoice in her successes, and comfort her in failures.

May you shower her with affection, both on the big special occasions and on the small, normal, every day moments.

May she be your first thought in the morning, and your last thought before sleep.

And Carolyn, I wish the same love for you toward Mark.

May you rejoice in his successes, and comfort him in failures.

May you make your love and affection known to him each and every single day, in the good times and the bad.

May he be your first thought in the morning, and your last thought before sleep.

Keep Jesus at the center of your marriage.

Truth be told, agape love is hard to live in to, and easy to forget.

We live in a culture where self-sacrificing love is a bit odd and out of place.

My last, and perhaps most important encouragement, is to keep the perfect example of agape love in front of you for the rest of your days.

I encourage you to remind yourself of the love that Jesus has for you, both at your best and at your worst.

I encourage you to pray together, to speak to Jesus and allow him to speak to you.

I encourage you to keep Jesus close to your hearts, because while life can be tough sometimes, a three-fold cord is not easily broken.

Out

Dearly beloved. We ARE gathered here today, because love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

May we celebrate and rejoice in the love between Mark and Carolyn, and the love Jesus showers over them, this day, and all our days.

Amen.