The Holy Marriage of Micah Zerbst & Abigail Rausch

The Holy Marriage of Micah Zerbst and Abigail Rausch

Messiah Lutheran Church, Seattle, Washington

May 22, 2026

Text: 1 Cor. 13:4-7; John 15:9-13

We’re all very confused about love these days.  We keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what we think it means.  In fact, it seems to me, we have the concept precisely backwards.  Love, to us, has come to have no objective meaning.  It means whatever I want it to mean, and that means love is all about me.  What gives me pleasure?  What do I find comfortable?  What do I think will bring me fulfillment?  What will keep me true to  my self-created self-identity?  Now, I’m not against some good old fashioned romance (and I hope you enjoy some in your marriage), but even the romantic things we say betray us.  To give just one example, “You make me happy.”  Okay, I hope that’s true, and you should probably say that sometimes.  But what about when you’re not happy with me?  That will be the case, sometimes, you know.  Is that the end of love?  Because I’m not living up to whatever it is that makes you happy?

St. Paul has a different definition of love.  Love is patient and kind.  See how that already turns the focus 180 degrees, from me to you?  From self to other?  Because patience and kindness require, not self-obsession, but self-sacrifice.  If love means me being patient with you, that necessarily means that you, my beloved, do and say things, and sometimes simply exist in ways that try my patience.  That do not bring me pleasure, or make me comfortable, or fulfilled.  

Kindness?  That’s all about the other.  I have to get over myself long enough to be kind to you.  To be focused on you, and what is good for you.

How about the other things Paul says about love?  That it does not envy or boast.  That means giving up my own pride and self-interest, and instead rejoicing in, and promoting, what is good for you.  It is not arrogant or rude.  What bothers us so much about another’s arrogance or rudeness?  Their self-absorption, that’s what.  See, love is the opposite of self-absorption.  

How about this?  It does not insist on its own way.  Actually, you know what love does?  Real love, not our confused and backwards definition of it?  Love insists on the way of the other.  Love sacrifices its own way… Love sacrifices itself… its pleasure, its comfort, its fulfillment… for the sake of the other.  And so, yeah, it is not irritable, or resentful toward the other.  And when the Christian lover is irritable or resentful toward the beloved, or arrogant, or rude, or envious, or boastful… When the Christian lover is curved in on the self, instead of lazer-focused on the beloved, and what is good for the beloved, even at great cost to the lover… that Christian repents.   

That’s Christian marriage.  That’ll be you.  Here is the ideal: What St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13.  Striving to live up to that.  Constantly failing.  Always repenting.  Immersed in God’s forgiveness and mercy.  Covered in the blood of Christ.  Dying to self.  Praying for help to do better.  For strength.  For the Holy Spirit.  Covering over one another with the same mercy and forgiveness and blood of Christ (that is what it means that “love covers a multitude of sins” [1 Peter 4:8]).  Praying for each other.  Holding each other up.  Patiently and kindly.  

Recognizing above all else that Christ is the true Lover, by St. Paul’s definition.  He is the only One who fulfills this Chapter.  And you are the Beloved on whom He pours out His 1 Corinthians 13 love.  

How does He love?  Total and complete self-sacrifice on the cross.  He loves you to death on the cross for your redemption, to make you His own.  He loves you to death, to cover over your sins… against Him, and against each other.  He loves you to death, so that you can be plunged into His death and life at the font, bodied and blooded at the holy altar, and spirited with His Spirit by His Word constantly ringing in your ears, and set before your eyes, and therefore churning in your mind, and burning in your heart.

Of course, He didn’t only die.  He is risen, and lives.  In you.  And you live.  In Him.  And so He gives you to love with His love.  Not self-love.  That’s all part of this world’s whirling mass of ever-lovin’ confusion.  But one another.  Love one another.  Love flowing from God, filling you up, and overflowing, not just in your marriage, but through your marriage, to children (God-willing), and family, and neighbor, and Church, and community.  

Self-sacrifice.  That’s what that love is.  That’s what He means when He says to abide in His love, and love one another as He has loved you (John 15:9, 12).  Abide in His self-sacrifice, and so, sacrifice yourself.  The last verse of our Holy Gospel is rather important: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (v. 13; ESV).  That goes for spouses, too.  And it is to say, love… real love… is cruciform.  

Micah and Abigail, your marriage is going to be full of joy, and adventure, and God grant it, a whole bunch of good old fashioned romance.  But don’t kid yourselves.  There will be times when you aren’t particularly happy with each other.  When his way isn’t your way, and your way isn’t her way.  When you sin against each other (that will be daily, just to warn you).  

But love is patient with that.  And kind toward it.  In fact, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.  That’s the love you’ve been folded into.  The love of God.  The love of Jesus Christ for you.  Forgiven and forgiving.  Let that be the love with which you love one another.  Because, while it isn’t always pleasant… or comfortable, or fulfilling… it is the love that never ends.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.