A Wedding Sermon

The Holy Marriage of Hanna Mawgen Hoffbeck to Timothy David Kern

June 28, 2019

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Millington, Michigan

Text: Gen. 2:7, 18-25; Eph. 5:1-2, 22-33; John 2:1-11

            In the Name of Jesus+.  Amen.

            Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a lot of time to think and read and write in his German prison cell during the war that would make him a martyr at the hands of the Nazis.  Sadly, incarcerated as he was, he could not attend, much less preach, at the wedding of his dear niece, Renate, to his best friend, Eberhard Bethge.  But he did write them a wedding sermon from a prison cell, and that is something you read in preparation for this day.  For Pastor Bonheoeffer makes the vital point that as much as today is about your “Yes” to one another, your love… which, by the way, is not an emotion, but a willing decision on your part to be and act for one another, for the good of each other…  As much as today is about your promise before God and His Church to have and to hold one another from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death you do part… It is not, finally, your vow, your love, that sustains the marriage.  It is God’s promise in Christ.  It is His “Yes” that creates something here today, a marriage of man and wife, a holy matrimony, a household, a home.  And it is God’s “Yes,” His promise in Christ, that will sustain your marriage in the face of every attack from within and without, from the temptations of the flesh, from selfishness and pride, from the world’s hostility to the holy estate of marriage as God has designed it and given it, not to mention the world’s hostility to the Christian Church and her pastors and deaconesses, from the attacks of the devil himself who slithered between the holy union of our first parents in the Garden.  Their marriage, which quickly fell into sin and brokenness, was sustained by one thing only: The Promise.  A Child, the Offspring of the woman, who would crush the serpent’s head.  By suffering his mortal bite.  By dying.  Our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.

            The vows made today are important.  Extraordinarily so.  The serpent, even now writhing in the pains of crushing defeat at the foot of the cross, will nonetheless seek to slither in between you in your union.  I’m going to be honest with you.  There will be times you will be tempted to give up on one another, to put asunder what God has here joined together.  You will hurt one another.  Sometimes very deeply.  You will sin against one another.  When two sinners try to live together, they always end up sinning at the expense of the other.  The grass will look greener elsewhere.  Your eyes and your minds will wander.  If love is an emotion, you’re toast!  Because the emotions that accompany love come and go.  Not only because the newness wears away as married people “get used to” one another, or because “familiarity breeds contempt,” but because marriage isn’t easy.  It is work.  And though it is God’s great blessing, an institution He created even before the Fall into sin, now it bears the burden of the curse.  Thorns and thistles.  The sweat of your brow.  Pain in child-bearing, which is not just the birth, but the whole business of raising a family.  Husbands lording it over wives.  Wives striving against husbands.  The vow, and the work… That is love.  Decision.  Action.  In faithfulness.  For the good of one another.  Even when it means dying to youself.  In fact, particularly dying to yourself.  That is love. 

            At some point in your ministry, Timothy, and probably in your office as Deaconess, Hanna, a couple will come to you and tell you they’ve fallen out of love.  This is where the vows come in.  And this is the Law.  You will say to them, “Tough!  Get over it!  And get over yourself!  So you’ve fallen out of love?  Fall right back into it!  Which is to say, get to work!  And stop looking for feelings in the pitter-pat of your heart.  Those feelings are wonderful gifts from God, but they are not love.  You made a promise!  You made a vow!  Before God and His Church.  For better, for worse.  Remember?  Thick and thin.  Good times and hard times.  Till death.  You must not put asunder what God has joined together.”  Falling out of love is another way of saying, “I’ve decided to love myself more than I love her, instead of her, instead of him.”  This will always be the temptation.  Repent.  And then?  Then go to that which alone will save your marriage.  The Promise.  The Gospel.  Jesus.

            Jesus Himself attends the wedding in Cana, and Jesus is here at this wedding, as surely as He was at that one.  There He was with His disciples at the side of His mother.  Here He is in the apostolic Word, with His Bride, His Body, our mother, the Church.  There He gave the very best wine and joy in abundance where both ran empty.  So He gives to you the wine that is His blood, shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins, and the joy of His Spirit, poured out on you in Baptism.  His death for you.  His resurrection and life for you.  This is the source of your life in Christ, and your life together as Timothy leaves father and mother and cleaves unto Hanna, and the two become one flesh.  And this is what sustains and nourishes that one flesh life together, and gives joy.  Laughter.  Music.  Romance.  Ah, I’ve told you love is not a feeling, but the feelings are great, aren’t they?  Thanks be to God.  And the deeper joys: Friendship.  Mutual support.  Companionship.  Forgiveness, which you will have every opportunity to practice in the Name of Christ.  Fruitfulness, according to God’s will.  We pray His blessing, if it be His will, that you be fruitful and multiply and fill… at least your home with little Kerns.  It’s tough business, raising children.  There is the pain of child-bearing in this fallen world.  But there is the Promise.  You bring them to Baptism.  God is their Father.  Christ has redeemed them by His blood and death.  The Spirit comes upon them in Baptism and abides with them.  God loves them even more than we parents.  It’s worth every heartache, every tear.  They are a tremendous joy.

            And then there is this: The Christian husband and wife, you, have this great privilege of serving in the world as an icon, a living picture, of Christ and His holy Bride, the Church.  That explains the Epistle reading from Ephesians, the one where the unbelieving world puts its fingers in its ears at the mention of wives submitting to husbands.  Everybody listen up a minute.  It’s not about men verses women, superiority and inferiority, oppression or misogyny.  It is about the Christian husband and the Christian wife willingly entering into an office.  The Christian wife willingly submits to her husband as a picture of the Church submitting to Christ.  Which means to place herself under him as the one who protects her, provides for her, and dies for her… physically, if necessary, and certainly to himself.  That is the authority of his office as husband, to be the one who gives himself for the sake of his wife, even unto death.  And in this way, he is the picture of Christ giving Himself into death for the Church, to present the Church to Himself in splendor, a beautiful Bride without spot or wrinkle or any such thing because she is cleansed of her sins by the blood of her Bridegroom, and clothed with His righteousness.  You see, in this way, Hanna and Timothy, your marriage is itself a sermon.  For it calls to mind the precious promises of Christ and His saving work for us, His great love for us, which is not to say that we make His heart go pitter-pat, but that He has made a vow to us: That He forgives all our sins; that He makes us His own dear Bride, children of His heavenly Father; that He takes all our debt upon Himself and pays it with His own blood; that He gives us all that is His… righteousness, holiness, eternal life, the very Kingdom of God, the resurrection of our bodies on the Last Day.  And He follows up His vow with work: His death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead, His giving you His Spirit and all His gifts, by His Word, by the Sacrament of His body and blood.  His vow and work sustain your vow and work.  Which is to say, His love sustains your love.  It is He who makes you one in Holy Matrimony.  What He joins together, let no man put asunder.

            Jesus is the faithful Bridegroom.  The LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Him on the tree of the cross, and while He slept the sleep of death, opened up His side with a Roman spear.  And from His side the LORD God fashioned a woman, Holy Church, born of the water and nourished by the blood that pours out from His riven side into font and chalice.  And the LORD God brought her to His Son, who is risen from the dead, and He has declared, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Holy and Mine, for she was taken from me.  And I will never leave her, nor forsake her.’”

            As beginnings go, you can’t do better than to be begin with that.  God’s “Yes” in Christ.  It gives you to say “Yes” to one another.  So let it be.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.