This Is What Is True (A Wedding Homily)

And yet here we are, and two people stand up, and they stand up in a church, and in this church, and they say I love you, they exchange their vows, and somehow, secretly, it moves us and it’s beautiful and it’s right.

    That’s the great thing about weddings.  That they help us steal past “the dragons of reason,” as C.S. Lewis said of fairy tales.  That they help us move from the head to the heart.

     It’s not some sort of theological abstraction up here.  It’s not some impossible-to-believe set of assertions.  It’s Christina and Ryan, these two people we love, and it’s their real and palpable love for each other here and now.  Their courage.  Their tenderness.  We can feel it.  Even those of us who wouldn’t otherwise be caught dead in a church.  Even those of us who wouldn’t otherwise ever admit to a lump in the throat or a catch in the breath.

     And I’m here to say, on behalf of this believing community, as someone who stands within a particular tradition–centuries and centuries of people behind me, praying and believing–that this feeling, this catch, is true.  It’s telling us something that is accurate.  It’s giving us a glimpse of reality, of a reality beyond all fear and despair, beyond all cynicism, beyond all irony.

     We name this Christ, in my tradition.  We name it the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  You may name it in some other way.  You may not name it at all.  But however we name it, today, in this moment, in the presence of these two good people, we sense that it may actually exist.

     Ryan and Christina, you don’t need me to tell you this.  You don’t need me to tell you anything.  You’re in love.  You’re already there.  You’ve stolen past the dragons, and you’ve made the choice to align your love and align what you feel and align what you know is true in your lives with these images and with these metaphors and within this tradition, the tradition of Christ, and to do that publically, in front of all of us.  It’s a rare and thoughtful thing to do, and I think a creative thing to do, a right thing to do.

     Really I’m talking to everybody else, really I’m talking to most of the people here, because we’re the ones who are anxious and tired.  We’re the ones who are discouraged.

     And to all of us I say again, in the name of Christ:  it’s true, it’s all true.  It’s the darkness that’s the lie, not the light.  The fear, not the joy.  There’s an energy flowing out of this marriage, and it can heal us.  There’s an energy that flows out of every real marriage and every true friendship and every genuine community and it can transform the world, if we let it, and it’s the only thing that can.  It can envelope the world.  It’s the salt that brings the savor, it’s the light that shines from the hill, and it can help accomplish the creative and transforming work of the Spirit as it moves through all the universe.

     If we let it.

     The resurrection is real, it happened and it’s still happening, it’s happening now.  It’s only fear that holds us back.  It’s only small-mindedness.  It’s only misconceptions, about religion and religious language, about ourselves, about reality.  Because this is what’s real, and all praise.  This is what’s real, and there’s nothing to fear, nothing to stop us.

     This tenderness.  This courage.  This hope.  This love.