I was recently given the privilege of sitting in the pew at a family wedding. What a joyful, exciting, and meaningful event.
The importance of a wedding in our society and throughout history is phenomenal. Whether the wedding is small and relaxed (as relaxed as a wedding can be) or the wedding is a media event, not much can detract or take away from the happiness and celebration that accompanies the exchange of promises one couple makes.
As I was driving home from the wedding, I began pondering and praying about this: The relationship that starts out in a wedding is lived out in the days, the weeks, the months and years, and even the decades that follow.
A wedding truly may be the initial celebration, but a marriage is the 24-7 lifestyle that follows. Every husband and wife experiences this reality: that what starts in the triumph of the wedding soon gives way to the trenches of repentance and forgiveness.
TheBible is full of wedding and marriage imagery. The bringing together of Adam and Eve into one flesh and their life together is followed by Jesus’ attendance and blessing at the wedding of Cana. But more important than these is God’s use of the wedding/ marriage reality in describing the relationship between Jesus and God’s people, His bride – the Church.
Husbands, love your wives,
just as Christ also loved the
church and gave Himself for
her, that He might sanctify and
cleanse her with the washing of
water by the word,
… For no
one ever hated his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes
it, just as the Lord does the
church. (Ephesians 5:25-26, 29)
I’m convinced that God’s institution of marriage between a man and a woman is given as the model that trains us into the experience of being related to God himself.
Now, therefore, you are no
longer strangers and foreigners,
but fellow citizens with
the saints and members of the
household of God, having been
built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Jesus
Christ Himself being the chief
cornerstone. (Ephesians 2:19-
20)
Joy and celebration is at every wedding, but the grease that lubricates the marriage is the husband and wife’s mutual (and daily) repentance, confession and absolution.
I guess this is why Christians of all times and of all places are quietly and readily joining with both the apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, in saying, We ought to obey
God rather than men. TheGod
of our fathers raised up Jesus
whom … God has exalted to
His right hand to be Prince
and Savior, to give repentance
to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
…
“I thank God – through Jesus
Christ our Lord!”
(Acts 5:29-31;
Romans 7:24-25)
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. For
July, our contributor is Rev.
Dennis C. Schutte, pastor of
Life in Christ Lutheran Church.
Pastor Schutte has lived in
Cook County (Lutsen) since
2000 serving as Missionary
and Pastor.
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