A Homily for the Reaffirmation of Vows of Jane and Kim

A Homily for the Reaffirmation of Vows of Jane and Kim

All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 12 August, 2023

 

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13.13)

 

Today we gather to give thanks for the work that God has done thus far in the union of Kim and Jane, and to ask God’s blessing that this good work will continue.  It’s been my honour to get to know this couple over the last year, and it’s our pleasure to celebrate with them as they reaffirm their vows and have the wedding day that they’ve always wanted.

 

I have to say that today is a first in my career as a priest.  I’ve married people before, but they’ve always been a man and a woman.    Now Kim has graciously told me the she’s ok being called a dude, but this service did involve some careful rewording of the marriage ceremony, because it is a reaffirmation of vows that have already been made, and, well, let’s face it, there is no real dude involved.   It was a bit of three-dimensional chess getting to this point today.

 

I thought it was a wonderful coincidence that we celebrated Jane’s bridal shower next store at the Rectory the day of Collingwood’s Pride Parade.   Well, maybe that wasn’t a coincidence.  After all, God does have a sense of humour!

 

One of the slogans you see associated with the Pride movement says, simply, “love is love”.   Canadian society understood this truth faster than many Christians did, and it’s taken the church a while to catch up.   In the Anglican Church of Canada we’ve had decades of debates about who can get married, and what marriage is for, and most of us would consent to what happens here today.    

 

I’ve been ordained for twenty years, and like the Church I serve it’s taken me a while to figure our what God is doing with marriage.   I think the witness of faithful couples like Jane and Kim has helped me arrive at a position where I too can say “love is love”.  Just now I listened carefully to the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, and I didn’t hear anything about which kinds of couples can enjoy love.   Love as the church understands it is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and as we know from St. John, the Holy Spirit blows where it will.

 

So what do we mean today when we talk about Pride.   As Canadians, we talk about Pride as our determination to protect people from hate and discrimination.    As a Church, we have our rainbow Safe Space signs at our doors to show we also are determined not to give hate a home within our community.    But, maybe there’s a danger in our church patting itself on the back and saying, “See how diverse and tolerant we are”, because I think Pride as God understands it is bigger than we can imagine.

 

I believe that God takes pride in any couple that shows in their lives together something of the selfless devotion that Kim and Jane, at their best, show to one another.   God takes pride in all marriages that aspire to live out Paul’s words in 1st Corinthians, regardless of gender.  Kim and Jane don’t have some of the advantages of health and wealth that we would all like to have, but they understand something of the selflessness of love.  We as a community take pride in them, as we do in all marriages that show this devotion.

 

Kim and Jane, you are blessed with friends and family that have gathered with you today as a community to celebrate your love for one another.  We are all proud of you, as you are in one another.   May God bless you in the good work that was begun in your marriage, and may God give you many years together to love one another and to be proud of one another, as Christ love you and is proud of you.

 

Amen.

Marriage and Creation: A Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

A Sermon for Sunday, October 3, the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost. Preached at All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto. 

Readings for Proper 27B:  Job 1.1, 2:1-10; Ps 26; Heb 1:1-4,2.5-12; Mk 10:2-16.

 ⁹Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”  (Mk 10.9).

If these words from today’s gospel reading sound familiar to you, it’s because they are used at the end of the marriage liturgy of the Anglican church (BAS p.545).   A few weeks from now, I’ll be reading them to a young bride and groom who will stand before me as they enter into this remarkable state of being that Jesus here describes.   In my experience, it’s a remarkably rare thing now for young adults to seek a wedding in a church and in the Christian tradition.   I suspect that your experience, perhaps with your own adult children, is similar.

That young people seem to have largely abandoned Christian marriage is an index of the predominant secularity of our age.   Civil unions and co-habitation offer other alternatives for life together.  Weddings on beaches and in gardens, with self-written vows, cater to our society’s desire for authenticity and self-expression.  No-fault divorce laws and the idea of the “starter marriage” provide off-ramps for those who become dissatisfied.  

We’ll get to Jesus’ teaching here on divorce towards the end of this homily, but here in the first part I want to talk about what Jesus’ comments say about God’s creative intentionality, and about how Jesus frames marriage as God’s design.

“Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”  (Mk 10.9).  As the capstone of the marriage service, these words of Jesus underscore the seriousness of what the couple are entering into, although to be sure the vows themselves speak eloquently of the stakes of marriage:

“… for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, for the rest of our live, according to God’s holy law.  This is my solemn vow.”  (BAS 544).

Think of the myriads of catastrophes that the newlyweds are vowing to face together: temptation, adultery and betrayal; job loss and economic ruin; life changing illnesses and accidents; dementia and slow, undignified decline.  In part, the marriage service is saying to the newlyweds, buckle up, because you’re going to need God’s help to get through this ride.

Of course, for each of these potential tribulations, the wedding vows point to a concomitant blessing. Sickness and health, joy and sorrow, poverty and wealth are all bound up together in the fullness of our lives.  As the psalmist writes, “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps 30.5).    In his earthly life, Jesus had full experience of the variety of human experience, from sharing the joy of the wedding at Canaan and the hospitality of friends’ houses, to his tears at the grave of his friend Lazarus.   Indeed, the incarnation of Jesus is God’s promise of commitment to our earthly life in all its hills and valleys.   In all this, God says in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, I will go with you and be there for you.

 “Therefore, what God has joined together …”.  In saying that marriage is God’s agency, Jesus is saying something profound about the created nature of our experience.  In quoting Genesis 2:18-24, Jesus God’s desire that marriage is part of the life that is God’s gift to us to enjoy, as well as a participation in God’s work of Creation by continuing it from generation to generation.   All of the things we see in our marriage service – friendship, partnership, community, parenthood – are part of the created order that God gives us to enjoy, and are also resources that God gives us to help us endure the challenges of life.

“… let no one separate”.  These words remind us that Jesus’ teachings here on marriage are within the context of a discussion on divorce.  Here I think the church needs to tread carefully and pastorally, sensitive to the lived experience of many of the faithful.   Some of the alienation from marriage that I described earlier may be attributable to defences of “traditional marriage” mounted by religious conservatives fighting culture wars.   I have no interest in these battles.   If everyone in church had to raise their hands honestly if asked if they were ever divorced, my hand would be first in the air, even though the admission does me no credit and is still a shameful memory.  We are human, and liable to err, as St. Paul writes (Rom 3.23).

It’s often said that Jesus in Mk 10 is speaking up against male-dominated divorce practices of his day which saw wives easily cast off and forced into lives of poverty and prostitution.   I myself think this context is important, because it is entirely congruent with Jesus’ concern for the dignity of women as children of God, seen throughout his ministry.   It would thus be a perversion of the gospel to read Mark 10 as a being a blanket prohibition against all divorce, even in cases of violence or neglect.  My wife is on the board of a shelter for women and children escaping abusive relationships.   Would Jesus condemn her for thus undermining marriage?   I don’t see how any reading of the good news of God in Christ could require a spouse to remain in an abusive relationship.

Our Anglican Church has evolved its thinking on divorce and on marriage.  We have moved towards an understanding of marriage as a means of knowing God’s grace, love, and the communion of the Trinity within matrimony, regardless of the gender of the participants or whether one or both parties have been divorced.  To be sure, these changes break with Christian history and tradition of marriage, and only in the fulness of time will we know if we are right to alter our concept of marriage.  I pray that we are right in these things.  What I do know, with absolute certainty, is that in the mystery of marriage, we are given the power to love, to forgive, and to stand by one another through the darkest hours, all the while within the fulsome love of God in Christ who calls us to renew creation in the communion and community of this mysterious and wonderful way of being.

Notable Quotable: Barney Frank On What's Considered Repugnant Today

US Congressman Barney Frank: “I think my continued sexual attraction to men is more politically acceptable than my attraction to government.”

This rather clever quotation is from a fascinating article in today's NYT documenting the sea change in US popular and political opinion on homosexuality and gay rights.

I'm seeing a lot of articles like this one in the run-up to some important hearings in the US Supreme Court on the definition of marriage. Last week it was widely reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics released a study "saying that allowing gay and lesbian parents to marry if they so choose is in the best interests of their children".

Reading between the lines of the NYT piece on the APA study suggests that the sample size is relatively small and that its findings do not represent a wider medical and sociological consensus. However, the mere fact that a professional association of pediatricians can argue that same-sex unions can be positive envionments for raising children poses theological questions that Christian opponents of same-sex marriage will have to answer. Specifically, the APA finding seems to challenge arguments which privilege male-female marriage for its unique capability to raise (if not conceive)children.

Taking away the procreative function for a moment, if marriage is defined as the place where healthy children are nurtured, then cannot both traditional as well as same-sex marriage meet this definition? I think of Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas (I read a lot his work when I was in seminary) who has argued that the fidelity of two people to the arduous task of remaining faithful and raising children is a sign of God's own commitment and fidelity to the world: for as long as there are people loving and working together, and bringing up children, there is a chance of new life. To take conscious hold on that life, to realize oneself at the heart of it, for others also, is a tremendously vitalizing spiritual experience”.

That quote is from a relatively old work (ca 1980) of Hauerwas on Christian character and community. I would be interested to know what Hauerwas, now in his seventies, is thinking about same-sex marriage in contemporary America, but I suspect he will let his body of work speak for him.