“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”(Matt. 5:4).
It’s a great pleasure to officiate today at the wedding of Claire Shelnutt and Zachary Berry, and to join with all of you in the celebration and blessing of their marriage. We’re especially grateful on this occasion for the hospitality of the rector, staff, and parishioners of Emmanuel Church, Athens, for their help as our hosts today. Thank you.
We know that weddings bring together people from many different walks of life, united by their common connection to the bride and groom. I began to know Zach as his bishop when I confirmed him at Church of the Advent in Nashville several years ago, during a break from Hampden-Sydney; and I’ve come to know Claire as she has come to know Zach. Watching the two of them as they have journeyed through Divinity School and beyond these last couple of years has been a blessing to me. Thank you, their families and friends, for raising up these two faithful people for the service of the Church, and for Gospel ministry.
Marriage is both intimate and public: a personal and family celebration, no doubt, but also a public act with societal and communal implications. We might even call it political, if that word were not so deadly charged. The family is the basic unit of society, and each of us, whether we are married ourselves or single, is implicated in what we are doing today, in helping to join together this man and this woman. Without the practice of marriage, I venture to say, there would be no society, for some very obvious reasons. Marriage naturally looks to the next generation, and to the building up of community. It is a humane institution in which every thoughtful human being has a stake.
Our service today has an admirable realism stitched into it, in the readings and prayers, and in the vows of the couple. We’re told in the liturgy that marriage is “not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly”: in other words, it’s serious business, worthy of reverence and deliberation. The couple promise to follow through, to forsake all others, and to be faithful to each other as long as they both shall live. In the course of the service they will pledge to take each other “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.” No wonder it is worthy of reflection.
As a congregation today we’ll pray that God will give the couple grace, when they hurt each other (“when” not “if”), to seek forgiveness from God and from each other. St. Gregory the Great, a discerning pastor and shepherd of souls, once wrote that married couples should be advised not to worry so much about what they have to endure from their spouse as to worry about what their spouse has to endure from them (The Book of Pastoral Rule 3.27). Think about it for a moment (especially you married people): truer words were never spoken! Forgiveness is built into the package. Marriage, the business of loving and cherishing, is not for the faint of heart or for the overly sentimental.
It’s when we come to our Gospel today that we find the most bracing challenge. Jesus’ teaching in this section of Matthew’s Gospel is a word for all seasons, of course, but especially in the teaching, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). Some might wonder at this reading’s historic association with marriage. Yes, they are words of challenge for our couple, as they embark on these vows and this vocation of marriage, and likewise for all of us, whatever our situation; but also Gospel words of consolation worthy of the One who rose victorious from the dead.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4) certainly gives us ample room for understanding the challenge. We’re human beings, after all, and in our lives laughter is mixed with tears, joy with sorrow. Show me a family and I will show you folks who have learned how to mourn. We learn these lessons together, in the school of hard knocks. But this school is also a school of charity, of love, as in marriage we learn, not only to forgive, but also to love and comfort each other in the midst of challenge.
“Here is the proper scene of piety and patience,” wrote Bishop Jeremy Taylor almost four hundred years ago about marriage, “of the duty of parents and the charity of relatives; here kindness is spread abroad, and love is united and made firm as a centre… Marriage is the nursery of heaven… and hath in it the labor of love, and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society, and the union of hands and heart… [It] is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful” (XXV Sermons, 1653).
Claire and Zach: today, on an occasion of great joy, we pray for you in the new life you are beginning with one another. May every burden you experience together be a delightful one. We know that God will give you grace to forgive and to comfort each other, no matter what. Our Lord Jesus Christ will be your mainstay in all times and circumstances. May your union, in heart, body, and mind, be graced always by God’s presence and the power of the Spirit, and may you be filled with all joy and happiness in the years to come.