I have been asked by some friends to officiate at their wedding, which is something I don’t often get the opportunity to do.
There will be limits to what I can say to the couple. Long sermons at a wedding are never welcome or memorable. Couples invariably suffer from retrograde amnesia.
Whatever might end up in the sermon, the process of preparing always leaves me feeling there is more to say. It is hard to explain to couples — especially young couples — how significant the choice of a partner is spiritually. They are enthralled with one another, on their best behavior, blind to the tangled reality that is the other person, and distracted by the arrangements for the wedding itself. And, yet, they are about to make a commitment that will shape what they believe is possible in life.
Their partner will powerfully shape what they believe is most important. They will reflect back to them impressions of their value and worth. They will expand or limit their horizons. They will reinforce or erode their sense of being loved and cherished. They can free their partners or smother them.
It could be argued that we all should possess the strength of character to own those possibilities for ourselves before we ever enter into an intimate relationship like marriage; and there is a lot of truth to that argument. But a partner granted that kind of intimacy exercises enormous power and, at a minimum, the power to live into life’s possibilities.
That is a spiritual issue.
The possibilities of life are larger or smaller depending upon the extent to which a relationship like marriage nurtures the presence of God, the confidence that God loves us, and the courage to believe that God wants the best for us. It is the hope that grounds all other hopes.
Marriage partners can foreclose on those possibilities and often do: through relentless criticism, controlling behavior, and unyielding bullying. When they do they indulge in the oldest form of domestic terrorism.
They strangle the ability to sense the love of God. They leave their partners fighting to believe that they can be forgiven; and they make it difficult for their partners to imagine that their lives can achieve the glory God intends.
In other words, marriage loses its sacramental character.
Don’t marry a domestic terrorist.
So true, but fortunately God can rescue one from the terrorist’s enclave. Then it is a process of allowing Jesus to heal the wounds inflicted by the terrorist. So much better to avoid!