A memorable Aussie wedding….hay bales, hot summers day and a really diverse crowd sitting in a circle in the ‘bush’, (including heaps of people from the open meals they run at their church). This was the rant that I gave at Phil and Leanne’s Wedding early this year which was based on their 3 chosen texts and some Hauerwas reading I’d been doing via Gordon Preece.
A Taste of Marriage and Discipleship: Phil and Leanne’s Wedding Homily
1 Cor 13:1-13 : “Love Is…” ; Matthew 5:1-10 “The Beatitudes” ; Matt 9:9-15 “The Call of Levi”…
As I have gathered with Leanne and Phil we have thought and spoken and prayed about what this event means for them. It is captured in the three readings we have heard today about which I want to speak very briefly
Stanley Hauerwas, the rather grumpy American theologian, says.
“The wedding day does not mark the beginning of a new family. It is not a whole community of two but a particular kind of grace filled friendship within the fellowship of the church.”
“Interpersonal intimacy is not the foundation and purpose of marriage. Although communion between husband and wife is considered the centre of marriage by the mainstream Church, this focus is a well meaning mistake. The practices of common life in the church and the virtues of discipleship are the foundation and purpose of marriage, which then form a fertile place for the cultivation of interpersonal intimacy.”
(Matt 5-7, 18:15-35, 25:31-36)
The first foundation is stated as the practices of common life in the church. Community is an important value for Phil and Leanne. Our first reading was from I Corinthians 13 on the nature of Love. Its a traditional wedding reading with a poetic flow that can easily wash over us when we are feeling romantic at weddings. Ah Love is this, love is that….. We rarely hear at weddings that this chapter comes in the midst of a whole lot of chapters where the apostle paul is desperately trying to hang together his community in Corinth that is being torn apart by the forces of the world around it and tearing itself apart with egos, competing egos power plays, spiritual, economic and sexual abuse. Some things never change in the church!
BUT It is in this context that we hear these statements about love. Phil and Leanne, Marriage and the promises you make today are not simply for each other, they hang communities together. They connect you with the generations of family from which you come, they connect us with the earth and the forces of nature through sexuality and the economic life of our household. Food and sex. Unless these forces are understood within vows of fidelity to the values of love they can easily, like in Corinth, become desturcitve and exploit others. I know the community around Ascot Vale and ‘The Cave’ have sought to be a community who lives a life faith, hope and love, together. Like in Corinth this is hard. You know how hard and messy community. Your promises today strengthen communal bonds between your families, your biological and you spiritual one. Read the rest of this entry »
