A Wedding Homily Part 1: Evil Professors, The Impossible Promises, and The Reason We're Here

[This past weekend I had the privilege of preaching my first wedding homily at two former students' wedding, Eric and Cristina (now!) Stam. Below is the first in a series.]

It was really just a handful of weeks ago that the two of you had a different kind of celebration—you graduated from Carolina! Go Heels!

And if you’re like me when I was at Carolina, there was probably at least one class where you experienced first day, syllabus shock—it’s like sticker shock, only slightly more personal and invasive.

Some professors enjoy making sport of undergrads by trying to scare them out of their classes with a syllabus that you look at and instantaneously break out into a cold sweat.

You look at it and your gut reaction is this visceral cry:

“This is impossible! The only way to get this amount of work done would be to drop all friends, drop all my other classes, quit all other activities, give up on eating and sleeping and going to the bathroom, hook up a permanent caffeine drip on my arm and work this class 24/7 for the entire semester!!”

And if you’re at all like me, there was probably at least one class where the professors evil intentions worked and you dropped the class at the earliest possible moment because he had scared you away with his impossible, impossible syllabus.

Well, here’s the deal, in about five minutes you guys are about to subscribe to a syllabus that’s way more impossible and intimidating than any syllabus you were handed in college.

See, we’ve all gathered here to watch and celebrate you two making promises to each other that are outrageous.

And if we’re going to be perfectly honest, they are promises that are beyond your ability to keep.

If it’s just up to the two of you, no matter how warm and fuzzy your love looks now and no matter how beautiful this day is, the promises that you’re about to make are utterly absurd.

That's why it's critical for us to understand what we're doing here. This is a worship service.

And it can get confusing because there’s so much about you two in the midst of all of this, it can start to feel like we’re worshiping you or worshiping the potential of human love or something equally as sentimental and vacuous and empty as that.

But the reality is far different and it’s far better news. We’re not worshiping you two, nor are we worshiping the potential of human love.

We’re here to worship Jesus, we’re celebrating the two of you. It’s a subtle but important distinction.