Incline Our Hearts

Matrimony and God’s Promise

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of officiating at the wedding of my goddaughter and her husband in Missouri. I’ve known Meredith since she was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and I have watched her grow up for 28 years. More recently, I got to know her fiancee, Matt, who is a kind and thoughtful young man. I was touched that they asked me, and it was a joy to be with them and their families.

When I was a parish priest, I officiated at weddings fairly frequently, but as a bishop, I have fewer such opportunities. But as I was officiating, I was reminded again not only how beautiful our wedding liturgy is in the Book of Common Prayer, but also how wonderfully audacious its claims are, and not only in the clear expectation that the marriage will be lifelong. 

In our tradition, a wedding is not just a joining of two people, a legal contract with a few prayers. It has theological and even eschatological dimensions. First, “it signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church” (BCP p. 423). And then, later, in the Prayers, we ask God to “make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair” (429).

In the Church, nothing happens on the surface level only. As a couple is being joined together in holy matrimony, all those present are reminded that human love is not something we create, but is God’s gift to us and flows out of God’s love for us. And so, our human love points not solely to itself, but, ideally, to God. It is part of God’s promise that all divisions will cease, and everything will one day be made whole in God’s perfect kingdom.