Monday, July 27, 2015

A Vermont Wedding


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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