Note: This entry is a bit unusual for this blog. It will not have pictures alongside the text. It doesn't need them. Oh, there are images, to be sure, but I'll let you, reader, fill them in as you consider what these words look like in real life.
A few weeks ago a couple got married in our church. They went to their Senior Prom and they have dated a while, but they certainly don't have the typical story.
I don't have a music prelude to set the tone for you, or cake and punch to serve to you afterward. This isn't a fancy pastel two-enveloped invitation and most of you won't ever meet Phil and Margie, but I invite you nonetheless to their ceremony because it was beautiful. It was strong. And we all
so need to hear these words.
If you are married, please come. If you aren't, well, you come too, for these words aren't just for couples. They are for any two human beings in
any kind of relationship--parent and child, siblings, friend and friend, and yes, husband and wife. So come, have a seat. The bride came down the aisle a moment ago...
Phil and Margie, you’ve chosen 1 Corinthians 13 as your wedding chapter. It’s a doozy. Listen:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
"Love is patient, love is kind.
"It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
"It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
"Love never fails."
In the middle of a tough letter to a church that had a lot of problems, that’s a profound treatise on what love really is. The Christians in Corinth thought they knew love. They didn’t. And a lot of damage resulted from insufficient or wrong ideas about what it means to love each other. So Paul sketches them a picture of what God’s kind of love looks like. It’s
amazing stuff. Who can
do that?
Phil and Margie, you two are not starry-eyed teenagers anymore. Still some stars, yes, yes.
You’ve experienced some wonderful things in life. Some aspects of real, genuine love, but also some things that seemed to be love but weren’t. You’re not naïve anymore.
You know that love is tough. It’s hard work. It’s always a risk. It can hurt. None of us do it perfectly. You are, to date, the most mature couple I’ve ever married.
So…as you enter married life at this point—fifty years after your Senior Prom, let me charge you in this way:
Make it your ambition to explore together for the rest of your married days what God’s kind of love is like. Don’t let the past, however good or bad it was, be the grid that you look through to love each other from here on out. God’s doing a new thing in you now. He’s got new things to show you, to teach you, and ways that He will change you in what it means to love. You’re not young in that sense anymore, but be young in this way: ready to learn from Him what His kind of love is like.
Beware of falling back into subtle habits, some of them bad, some of them just old settled habits, instead of taking on the challenge, day by day, to be a better lover today than yesterday, more like Jesus toward each other.
It’s sad that in our society, too often, being young is held up as the Golden Age, and the older you get the more irrelevant you’re told you are. Well that’s just plain wrong.
Phil and Margie, we—all the rest of us—we need you. We need to see you loving each other. Show us how it’s done, with wisdom and with grace, with maturity and with expansive generosity, with love left over to share with others, with humility and courage, with steady loyalty, with good humor, with hope and faith. There’s not a lot of that in the world to inspire and teach and encourage the rest of us. But you’re stepping up today to say, “This is how we want to live. This is how we want to love, you can watch us. No, you won’t do it perfectly, but aim here—1 Corinthians 13.”
No matter how high and lofty that kind of loving is, show us how it’s done. Inspire us. And in doing that, you’ll also be delighting Jesus. You’ll do Him proud, making Him be able to say, “Now
that’s more like it. That’s what
I call love. That’s how a man should love a woman and a woman should love a man. That’s got Me written all over it.”
All of this—life, marriage, loving each other—in a sense it’s rehearsal. It’s preparation for that day when we all get to see Him face to face. Then we’ll be able to love fully, perfectly, completely. Until that day, Phil, Margie, love each other more and more like this—a taste of Heaven in advance.
