3-14-15

With 100% chance of rain this morning and a few sprinkles while we were putting up the flowers up outside, it looked like it was going to be a wet ceremony.  The prayer, "Thank you for disappointments that lead us to depend on You truly" was one that I thought about this morning when we were gathering at the house getting ready.  The pitter patter of rain gave us all a chance to rise to the occasion and to be flexible.  And then, prayers were answered and God gave us the gift of morning glory with the rain that stopped, the fog that held off and the sun that began peeking through the clouds....  Amazing grace indeed.... 

In many ways, the morning felt like a race morning with all of us running on little sleep and a lot of adrenaline pumping through us to get to the start line...  And what a fabulous race it was with cheers all around at the finish line... 

Below is the wedding message I delivered on the beach this glorious morning.... (Huge thanks to Dan Cravy who shared with me his wedding sermons from which I have adapted this one for Jens and Abby's wedding this morning.   I am also so grateful to Tina Sellers whose emails to me after our marriage retreat last year were ones I quoted in this message.  I was also inspired by a letter that Shauna Niequist wrote to a bride in her book Bittersweet.  And finally, some of you will also recognize some language from Sally Lloyd Jones from the Jesus Storybook Bible. It was such fun to piece things together from all these amazing resources and craft something that would fit the bill for  Abby and Jens today.)  

"Abby & Jens, I want to say what a gift it is to be a part of this day of celebration with the two of you. It’s so special to be here with all of the people you consider to be your home team. And it fills my heart with such joy to get to stand with you to celebrate the gift God is giving to each of you in the other.

Little did you know the adventure the next five years would hold for you both and how you would experience the wonder and wildness of life together.  Today is an extraordinary day indeed.  And on this day, it is hard to imagine the beautiful, life-altering, soul-shaping things ahead of you. This is just the beginning.

From this day on, you will cry together, laugh together, pray together, wash dishes and move furniture together. You will learn and unlearn things, make a home together, hurt each other’s feelings without meaning to, and sometimes even on purpose. You will learn over time that the heart of marriage is forgiveness. You will learn how much forgiveness the other requires, and then you will also realize just how much forgiveness you yourself need.

Today is about the promise of the future and all the great moments of the past and, indeed, this beautiful present where you stand together, surrounded by people who love you and who are praying that your marriage is one of the great ones. It can be-- if you work hard and forgive often, and get over yourself and your selfishness over and over again. It can be one of the stories people tell, when they want to believe in love’s power and life’s richness. 

  

Abby, when I asked you to share what you love about Jens, you said 

 “I love Jens for the way that he is patient and always listens- to me and the world- with all that he has, with openness, and with grace. He believes the best in people, and aspires to always act with love and kindness and to give the best to people- to me, to the kids he served in Americorps to his friends and to his medical staff. I love Jens because he believes there's good in me and there's something worth learning from me as we learn and grow together. He makes every day fun, and I am so thankful I get to call him my best friend and to spend forever together.

Jens, when I asked you what you love about Abby, you said:

“I love that she hasn't given up on me. Clearly, I come with plenty of obstacles, but she has stuck with me.  I love her kindness towards people and her devotion to each of her students. ...the way she laughs at her own jokes (even if I'm not) or when she can't contain her laughter to the point it turns to tears....when she lets go and just acts silly....that she likes to learn or try new things-she's usually up for a new adventure...that she enjoys sports, at least enough to deal with me. She makes things fun and keeps me going on tough days.”

You love each other. And you are each so very grateful to discover in the other someone who longs to live into the Story centered around God’s Never Stopping, Never Giving-Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.  

  

That is where this extraordinary passage of Scripture you’ve chosen for your marriage begins and ends, with the extravagant and amazing love of God.

As those God chooses and sets apart as beloved, clothe yourselves with his compassion, kindness, patience. Bear with one another. Forgive each other as the Lord forgives you. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

The day of your wedding is a fitting day to speak of putting on new attire—of starting fresh, of clothing yourselves every day with the qualities that make marriage lasting and beautiful.

   

There are a couple truths from this Scripture I want to hold up today, 

1.     It’s Jesus who reveals to us what love truly is. If we’re to see the clothing we were created to wear, the life that fits us well, we’re meant to look to Him

2.     When we put on the love of Christ, we become part of what God is doing to redress the world (part of the whole new tapestry he is stitching across the earth)

We must recognize that we’re living in a world where there’s so much shallowness that masquerades as love.

Love is portrayed as a mere feeling. An emotion. A gushy romantic sentimentality. It’s so often conditional - on youth, attractiveness, money, health, convenience, success.

It lasts until feelings fade and things get hard. Until disappointment comes.

But, God’s affirmation in Colossians is that conditional notions of love are not the clothing of love at all. That they’re only costumes pretending to be the real thing.

Rather, if we’re to know what real love looks like—if we’re to know how to clothe ourselves with love—we look to Jesus– to how he lived for us.

And Jesus…

--befriended outcasts

 --touched lepers

--washed feet

--cried with those who were grieving

--celebrated w/ those who were celebrating   

--spoke truth in love 

--forgave & forgave & forgave until…

--his body was broken/his blood poured out

--came back to forgive even those who had driven nails 

This is what the love of God looks like. Compassionate. Patient. Kind. Self-sacrificial. Unconditional. Unto death.

Not merely a feeling, but a forever promise. Fitting clothing. Costly clothing. The very stuff we were made for!

  

So when we clothe ourselves with Christ for one another, we make real love known to the world and transformation is manifest.   

Caterpillars have to die to themselves in order to put on the spectacular colors of the butterfly. It turns out that even before this transformation from death to new life, even as caterpillars, they have butterfly parts within them. They have wings waiting to happen. 

And we, too are made for transformation from self-seeking to self-giving. We were meant to wear the spectacular clothing of Christ from the beginning. We were meant to fly. But to wear those colors, to truly fly, means dying to ourselves. 

  

And if anyone understands this deeper picture of love, it’s you two. The way you’ve given to each other in the last 5 years has been remarkable and is one that has inspired me to try breathe through a straw while running to try to understand what CF was like (I don’t recommend it) and you’ve inspired me to run – not one but two marathons in your honor. You did not know what you were saying yes to when you went on your first date, but God had in store for you much change, growth, discovery, and transformation, and He kept expanding your vision of what was possible.  Through it all, He helped you to face the challenges at every step as you learned to breathe again.  The sacrifice, the risk, the stepping out in faith, the stamina and strength through the journey of the transplant is something that has made your foundation incredibly strong. You two have an anchor that has holds.  

Christian relationships are meant to be a parable of God’s love to the world. And when we love each other with the surprising love of Christ, with his dying to self, with his commitment through adversity, then people come to experience in us a taste of hope that God is truly alive, that they can forgive and endure, too. And the kingdom of God grows. 

And that is what your story has shown to me and to all of us here…

The love of Christian marriage is the love of Christ’s self-sacrifice. His costly forgiveness. A life of giving of Himself over and over and over. 

Your marriage will be a covenant, a sacred promise grounded in the love of God.   Marriage is the avenue God teaches us to learn to love…. 

It will endure in joy & sorrow, sickness & health, plenty & want…

There will be times 

--when you just wish he could read your mind

--when you just wish she could see how right you really are

--when you discover together again and again that what’s obvious to you, is obvious only to you

But in all the times when you’d like to throw in the towel, you have a choice to be the light and love of Christ to the other, to be bread and wine for the other…. To offer a life poured out over and over for the other…. 

You will find there is great joy in choosing to cheer your spouse on to risk becoming all that the Lord intends

In making a Christian marriage covenant, you’re promising something as huge as the heart of God: to love and forgive as the Lord loves and forgives you. 

Then people will see your marriage as a reflection of something far larger than you. 

Marriage is a path that teaches us to love ourselves and love someone else better … especially when it is most difficult to do.  When we extend grace to ourselves and to our partner, we seek to understand instead of condemn and we learn to love. God’s shaping of our character is made manifest in this open hearted, courageous, vulnerable daily practice of love.

I believe in the way God knits two people together like this as you are standing before Him today on your wedding day.  Something sacred is happening in this moment, something that will, with grace and intention and faith and hard work, build upon itself and grow in power and beauty and durability with each passing year.

It is our prayer that your marriage would be centered on Christ so that you might be dressed in his love for one another, that you would practice a costly life of forgiveness that requires you to die to yourself over and over again on behalf of taking flight with new beginnings, and that as you wear the clothing of Christ, your marriage might bear witness to God’s Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love for which our world is desperate! 

Bless you both as you walk together loving forth the image of God in each other. 

Make your love story one worth telling. Make it one worth living, every day, as long as you both shall live."