Fragile Vows of Love

Homily for Thursday,August 8, 2024
The Marriage of Tim Coull and Amanda Hu

Tim and Amanda, it has been a long journey to come to this morning.  You’ve done a lot of work, both internally and with each other.  You’ve built a life together and experienced all that comes with that: you’ve had conflict,you’ve hurt each other, you’ve disappointed each other; and yet you’ve come through it, you’ve managed to heal, and you still hold each other in love and respect.  You’ve been through much together,and now you’ve come to make vows to each other.

We tend to think of vows as something strong.  “Vows that are intended to last a life-time, ‘until we are parted by death,’ must be strong if they are to last so long,” we tell ourselves.  But the opposite is true.  Even though “In the Name of God”we take each other “to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death,” vows are actually fragile.  All here who are married or who have been married, we know that vows are fragile and need regular and frequent tending.

The marriage rite and also the reading we just heard from Paul’s letter to the Colossians offer some things we can do to help take care of our marriage vows.  For example, towards the beginning of our liturgy today, I asked if all of us witnessing these promises will do all in our power to uphold these two persons in their marriage, and all of us responded, “We will.” Having friends helps to tend to our marriage vows.  [Also in our liturgy today, we’ve been praying.  For example, we prayed:

O gracious and everliving God… Look mercifully upon this man and this woman… and assist them with your grace, that with true fidelity and steadfast love they may honor and keep the promises and vows they make.

Prayer will help tend to our marriage vows.]  And shortly, we will pray for “grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours.” Notice how we don’t ask God for grace if they hurt each other,but when... Learning how to apologize and also to forgive helps to tend our marriage vows.

And the reading from Colossians is filled with ways in which we can tend a marriage. The author writes:

Clothe yourselves with compassion,kindness, humility, meekness and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other…. Above all [he continues]clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And it may seem counterintuitive that, in order to more fully love each other, in order to better make the other a priority in your life, we are to make someone else an even greater priority.  The author continues:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly… and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

If there is to be harmony in a relationship, writes the author, if we are to be compassionate, kind, humble, patient, forgiving and truly loving to one other, it helps to first love God and to tend to our relationship with God.  Remember when someone asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest?  Jesus replied:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (Matt 22:37)

The first and greatest commandment, says Jesus, is to love God “with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind.” If we do this, an ability to truly love each other tends to follow.  I’ve heard it said that we can only love others to the extent that we love God.  And if it seems hard to love God – if, for example, we do not feel worthy of God,or if we find ourselves in some way resisting God (which, by the way, is a common and normal reaction to God) – [if we find it hard to love God,] know that God loved us first.  “In this is love,” John writes, “not that we loved God, but that God loved us” (1 John 4:10); and again, “We love because God first loved us” (I John 4:19).

So, Tim and Amanda – and all of us who are married – our vows are not strong but rather fragile, and they need a lot of tending if they are to flourish.  Our friends can support us in our vows, learning how better to apologize and to forgive will tend to our vows, but perhaps the greatest thing we can do to sustain and nurture our vows to love and cherish one another is to first love and cherish God.  Or, rather, to let God love us.  For when we love God – when we allow God near, when we allow God to be compassionate, kind, humble, patient, forgiving and loving to us – that compassion, kindness, patience, forgiveness and love is the source of our capacity to love each other.  May God give you the grace – may God give all of us the grace – to allow God to be patient with us, to be compassionate, to be humble and meek with us, to love us with all his heart and soul and mind, so that in return we might love God and each other.

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