Working with college students for fourteen years, I have participated and/or attended a disproportionate number of weddings. Long-term consumption of wedding cake is an occupational hazard of my work, but one that my metabolism has set me up well to deal with.
When it comes to the vows, it would seem that there's two equal and opposite realities that are worth considering.
The first is that vow-making is a good thing. "Make your vows to the Lord and keep them" enjoins the Psalmist.
Vow and promise making runs everything from family life to commerce to politics. And as cynical as we might get about the whole enterprise, we have very little choice but to proceed wisely into relationships built upon vows and promises made--both by us and by the other party.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the reality that drives some of us to cynicism: vows are broken. And the reality is, no vows are more useless than wedding vows in terms of dictating our behavior.
The truth is that every one of us on our respective wedding days lied. We made promises that we were entirely incapable of keeping and that we were destined to fail at.
Of course, this reality has driven many in our culture to give up on the institution of marriage altogether. And I grant that this is one option, but certainly not the preferable one.
We will fail on our wedding vows, to varying degrees (and certainly some degrees have more catastrophic consequences than others). But the point is that our lives are not primarily about our performance. Our lives are about learning to live in radical and reckless dependence on Christ.
One of my former pastors in Richmond, Kevin Greene, used to give the same homily that I must have heard at least a half-dozen times--and each time it was like water to a thirsty and weary soul.
We make wedding vows that we will fail to execute on. And what this reminds us is that we need a very big Savior. We cannot save or redeem ourselves in any area of our lives, our marriages least of all. We need the gospel in real-time in our marriages as we make glorious but ridiculous vows--an act celebrated in Scripture not in the least because it reminds us that we need something outside ourselves to actually fulfill them.
The point of marriage, as Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians, is that it is a picture of Christ's love for his church. And nothing is more true than the base-line reality of our struggles to live up to our own standards, let alone God's, and yet his immeasurable delight in extending forgiveness, offering healing, and bringing redemption to broken and messy people.
So as we head into wedding season--celebrate the glory of love and delight in the vows of those getting married! But let's not kid ourselves: the hope for all of us in any of our marriages is that Jesus delights to take messy people and redeem them.
As for me, I'm just looking forward to more good wedding cake.
1 comment:
Wavelengths synched! We just read Mark 10 together this AM and spent the whole time talking about vows, divorce, marriage... our reach must exceed our grasp. Thanks!
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