I did a wedding last week for a young couple who lives in
Massachusetts. The bride was from Lexington. She and her new
husband attended the University of Vermont at the same time some years ago and
then both received Master’s degrees from Columbia. They only met later,
though, while living and working in New York. She wrote for the New York Times. He is a
writer of children’s books. They later moved to the Boston area to pursue
another course, Teach for America in his case. She plans to enter Harvard
Divinity School in the fall.
I
first knew the bride as a very engaged and inquisitive high school student at
the Episcopal camp in Lexington. She had lots of questions. She
still does. And a lot of them, both then and now, have to do with
faith. And, both then and now, a lot of them have helped me understand my
own faith better. The Vermont wedding was such an occasion.
She
has good Episcopal instincts, even if she is more enamored of Buddhism at the
moment than Christianity. She worked with me to construct a service, in
accordance with the rubrics of the Prayer Book, mind you, that was respectful
of guests of many different faith traditions as well as those of none at
all. None of it was inconsistent with Christianity. It just wasn’t
always explicitly Christian.
The
final blessing, however, was. I suggested using the Nuptial Blessing from
the Prayer Book. It is quite beautiful in its realism about married life,
and it is distinctly Christian, Eastern Orthodox in origin. But the bride
wanted to make one final change.
She
was not comfortable be with the line, “We give you thanks for your tender love
in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to
make the way of the cross to be the way of life.” The way of the cross,
she said, would not be understood by many of those present, especially her
non-Christian friends. It is admittedly a difficult concept.
We
worked on finding just the right language that would work. Finally we
came up with “sacrificial love” to get at the idea. “We give you thanks
for sending Jesus Christ . . . to make the way of sacrificial love to be
the way of life.” And that, I think, hits the nail right on the
head.
The
way of sacrificial love is indeed something I learned something about from
marriage, the most life-giving experience of my life. It is something I
have learned a bit about from being a parent, from which I have found more life
than I can say. It is something I have learned from friendship, which has
been a great blessing indeed. It is something I have learned from being a
pastor, as in helping a young couple figuring out life and faith find a way to
make a traditional liturgy work for them with integrity (well, fairly
traditional).
I
think that is what Jesus says in the Gospel for this week when he talks about
the bread of life, another metaphor I think my young friends would have struggled
with. Jesus said to the crowd, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me
will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (Jn.
6:36). The bread of life is the way of sacrificial love. Those who
receive it and live it, lack for nothing that matters for life.
In
fact, the Jesus way, over and over, turns out to be the way of sacrificial
love. It is the way of life. It is a mystery that faith sees.
My young friends had the faith, by whatever name, to see it. And they
found a way to invite others to see it in their own way, too. And, of
course, they gave the same gift to me.
Peace,
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