This wedding sermon was preached August 13, 2016, for Ryan Budmayr and Molly Willbur, who is the daughter of dear friends from my first call in Pierre, SD.
I’m going to
step out on a limb tonight and take us into some dangerous territory. But I’m
getting older and have less tolerance for preachers standing up front and
spewing religious platitudes and other niceties that out in West River country
where I come from we give a proper name connected to cow flop. So let’s start
with the truth about marriage: : We live in a culture that is suspect. In so
many ways, it presents us a picture of what life should be. Whether it’s a
presidential campaign or an action movie or an inane sitcom on Tuesdays at
eight, our fictional and actual lives hinge on a hoped-for utopia that depends
on our work to achieve it.
That’s what we get in campaign ads on
both sides of the aisle and from any given super-PAC. I get hooked by their
vision of the future, of what could be — as long as I vote the right way. I’m a
sucker for the western or the thriller where the individual hero summons the
resources to escape the enemy’s horrors. Hopeless romantics like me are
susceptible to the bended-knee moment in a romantic comedy when love’s buds
break into bloom. This is all part of our culture’s way of operating. It
depends on the sanctity of the individual, on bootstrap-pulling, and on freedom
as our be-all and end-all. All of these are good things that I’d be hard-put to
let go of.
As far as tonight is concerned is that
there’s a constant temptation to romanticize what’s about to happen and to be
all sentimental and ooey-gooey and googly-eyed. It all shapes our understanding
of marriage — especially in those romantic movies, teen magazines, Cosmo, and
bridal publications. They sell a bill of goods that leads to a goal that can’t
be reached with their suggested tactics.
Instead of a focus-grouped,
trial-ballooned set of actions, though, the great gifts of marriage require
something more. The joy of your relationship will surely be present in the
things you do together. But much more will it arise in the weathering of storms
side-by-side, in the hindsight of years yoked together, and in the promises
born out in the letting go of yourselves for your beloved.
The reality is that not in every arena
of life, the vibrant gifts God intend for us are colored by our unwillingness
to lose control, or do what my pals working a 12-step problem call “letting go
and letting God.” Sin gives us a false picture of life’s purpose and meaning.
It presents an illusion of the possibility of control, of being able to manage
life, and pushes us into our constant need to get ahead of the curve. Our
sinful hearts begin to think the Utopia of our desires is achievable.
The reality, of course, is that life is
this blessed mix of joy and laughter mixed with some messy, gray, hard, stained
days. The reality is more akin to one Thanksgiving of lumpy gravy and dry
turkey after another, each one surrounded by loved ones whose mix is so
important to who you are. Which is why you do well to listen to the words Matt
read from Song of Songs. Although it isn’t as glamorous as romantic comedies, Modern Bride magazine, or sentimental wedding
accoutrements, having a seal set on your heart by your partner’s vows and
promises is way more valuable.
If you offered for love all the wealth of your
house, all your good intentions, all your Utopian hopes and romantic desires,
it wouldn’t be enough. Or as the reading says, “It would be utterly scorned.”
But what we have in the gospel offers way more. We have a God who shows up in
the hard stuff of actual living.
At my little Lutheran college in Iowa I teach a
first-year seminar, and for all kinds of reasons I make my freshmen learn how
to knit. They get a discount at a local knitting shop, and they get their size
9 needles and a skein of yarn, and they have to knit a dishcloth. My freshmen
have all grown up with awards for participation and have been spoon-fed
self-worth and acceptance, so they don’t much like it when their dishcloth
isn’t perfect. And they complain about how awful it is. And my reply is always,
“Relax. It’s a metaphor for your freshman year.”
So I made you two a metaphor for your marriage.
I made you a little lamb. I didn’t have a pattern for a Black Angus heifer, so
this will have to do. This lamb is kind of a mess. It’s misshapen. Its legs
aren’t plumb. Its head is off kilter. It’s got cool dreadlocks, but one in back
is too long. The plump body is out of proportion with everything else. On the
whole it’s a pretty lousy job of knitting. But it was all done in love, each
stitch knitted with the two of you in mind. And, messy as it is, I think it’s
pretty perfect.
This Budmayr/Wilbur lamb is a reminder of the
kind of God you have, who shows up in the knots and tangles and dropped
stitches of your relationship, who keeps loving from beginning to end, from
Alpha to Omega. What’s more, that it’s a lamb and not a knitted Butte County
cow or Bell Fourche bronc, means you get to remember that the Lamb of God
himself is there in the midst of your marriage.
On his account, even with the messes and
brokenness of life, you will stand before God on the Last Day, and he will say
to you, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” He’ll look at the
misshapen marriage lamb you’ll have knit and think it’s the most perfect,
darlingest thing. Ever.
You see, contrary to most of what you see
around you about Christianity and about being married, it isn’t about getting
things right or about being more moral-than-thou, or even about happiness being
found in preventing or fixing messes. It’s about the process of living, being
surrounded by mercy, granting one another a future by offering forgiveness.
Instead of getting all the stitches right, it’s a pattern for gaining life in
spite of the mistakes. My prayer for you is that thirty years from now, as you
talked about at the rehearsal dinner last night, Ryan, the two of you will see
how it all came together and how it started with the seal of your vows today.
So now you’ll start. You’ll use your promises
to each other to make it happen. I bid you to stick with it. Don’t fall for the
cow flop of the world’s picture of life. Grab onto each other and, literally,
love the hell out of each other. Now let’s git ‘er done.
