Cwirla, The Wedding as Pastoral Care

Transcript (edited for readability).

We need to pray before we do anything else. Let us pray. Holy, most gracious God, our heavenly Father, You have ordained and instituted holy marriage for our benefit, for our blessing, for the mutual companionship of man and woman, for the procreation of children, for the upbuilding of our society. We pray that the words that we speak and hear here today would be pleasing in Your sight, would be according to Your holy and gracious Word, and that would serve to the uplifting and the upbuilding of marriage among us. Hear us, we pray, in the name of the Church's Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

So, it is a privilege and a pleasure to be here in this capacity. I feel a bit like the man who sat in back and was invited to a higher place at the front of the feast, so here I am. By way of introduction, what I have to say here today reflects almost 30 years of pastoral practice. Some of that practice I wish I could take back. I don't know about you. I'm turning 66 in March, and I think it's safe to say that I'd love to be 33 again, because 33 was awesome. I was in great health, I was working, I had an income. But one thing that I would not do is, I would like to be 33 knowing what I know, and having gone through what I've gone through, and bring that experience and that wisdom back. And we can't do that. We can only go through the school of experience once and learn from it. So these are my gleanings and reflections from the school of experience after nearly 30 years of pastoring and often presiding, or being the celebrant, at weddings.

I'd like to just do a little quick exercise. We're binary creatures. Like in synodical convention, you can only vote yes or no. We can't decide among three things. We can only decide between two things. And so, which do you prefer, a funeral or a wedding, as an occasional service? How many prefer to do a funeral rather than a wedding? Yes, the overwhelming majority, right? Yeah. Let's try something else, a synodical convention and a wedding. How many would prefer to go to a synodical convention? Okay, see, a little thinner. A root canal without Novocaine? Yeah, that's going to divide the house about 50-50 on that one.

My goal here this morning among you as fellow pastors is to attempt, in my own small way, to bring a measure of joy to your pastoral work as a celebrant at a wedding. To bring joy. I have to confess that for the first probably 10 or 15 years of my work, with a few notable exceptions, weddings were not a joy. They were in some way a burden. I looked forward to them with a great dread. I love funerals, because it was death and resurrection the whole way, but nobody was really listening at a wedding. And one of the things that frustrated me was that they involved a large amount of work. You had to meet with a couple, you had to plan things, you had to deal with the details. You had to be there earlier than you usually are for a divine service and stay later, and there's just a lot of work, and it never seemed like it resulted in any fruit. I never saw a great outpouring of people desiring to be baptized after a wedding service, and it just kind of felt like this is a big waste of pastoral time and energy to walk through the ceremony. And that's about the first 10 or 15 years.

And at some point in my ministry, I began to apply what I had learned previously in the seminary from Dr. Norman Nagel, probably the most influential person in my formation as a pastor, who is kind of echoed by John Kleinig in what we heard last night, the night before. Dr. Nagel used to always say, before you consider anything in its worst light, you need to consider it in its best. It was a little secret among those of us who understood Dr. Nagel deeply, that in order to get an A on a term paper for Dr. Nagel, if you were critiquing another theologian, you simply could not trash that theologian, no matter how heretical he might be. You had to say something nice. You had to identify something that is right, in amongst everything that is wrong. It's from Dr. Nagel that I learned that a heresy is not falsehood. It's just a truth taken to an extreme place, or a truth that has taken over the center of things. And so the key is to find out what that truth is amongst all that error.

And so I think as I began to look at weddings differently, to put a best light and a best construction not only on the practice and the celebration but also on the people that were coming to be married, I began to view this with more joy and anticipation, so that up near the end, they were fun. And I enjoyed every aspect of the wedding. It was a great time for pastoral work. Even in the rehearsal, even at the reception, you're always a pastor. You're always a physician of the soul. And you know how it is when you're, well, you don't know how it is if you're a doctor, but doctors tell me that people are always coming to them for advice. If you're a doctor at a wedding reception and people said, you know, I've got this ache in my ankle, I don't know what it's about, they don't like to do that, and good doctors don't practice medicine like that, but people are always trying to tap in on your knowledge. And they find out you're a pastor, and they'll just lean over and start talking about things. And this happens at wedding receptions too. But I'm kind of jumping ahead.

What I want to do, though, is to restore the joy of the Cana feast to the weddings that you celebrate, and to maybe give you a different way, or a joyful way, of looking at things. Also, by way of prolegomena, I want to just set out at the front that we're living in, obviously, a very difficult time when it comes to marriage, and not just because the meaning of marriage is being wax-nosed, being bent in all kinds of directions, but the ordering of marriage has come out of order. God's Word and will on marriage is that marriage begins a household. The household begins with a vow and a covenant. And so the ordering, as I always told the kids in catechism class and Bible classes, the God-pleasing order is marriage, sex, and family. That's the order. So there's a commitment and a vow, there's intimacy, and there's procreation. That's the order that God gave, and when we don't fight that order, when we walk in that order, it's pleasing to Him and it's a blessing to us.

Unfortunately, the new way, and I think Dr. Kleinig kind of hinted at this, is that these things have gotten out of order, and the new way seems to be sex, family, and marriage. I've known many couples who've lived together for long, have one or two children, and then they decide, it's really time to get married. We should get married. And it's like, you hear that, and you go, yeah, sure, that's good, you should get married. But for many in our culture, marriage is kind of the final sealing of the deal. So we're going to try living together, see if we're compatible. And some, whether accidentally, usually, or intentionally, they wind up having children. It gets increasingly difficult to go back on that. And finally, under pressure of parents, and maybe internal pressure of conscience, and for the good of the children and family, they say, we really need to seal the deal, or just get the legal protections of marriage. Marriage in the civil sphere offers a number of civil protections that other people who are not united as male and female want in on. In the ordo politicus, marriage is a bundle of rights and privileges and tax breaks. But in the ordo ecclesiasticus, in the Church, it's a great mystery. And so we're kind of at loggerheads here. So things are kind of out of order, and we have to deal with that disorder, and in some way try to set things back in order again.

I want to start with Holy Scripture, which is always a good place for us Lutherans to start. And what I've done is I've given you the four passages that deal with the first passage, namely, Genesis 2, specifically verse 24. Dr. Kleinig has gone through a little bit of this, and if we had oodles of time, I would love to sort of do a detailed commentary on this passage, the making of woman from man. I'm not going to read it for the sake of time, and you know it, but that's a trap, never fall into it. You know it, therefore you don't have to read it again carefully. Never do that. There's always a surprise in there somewhere.

But one of the things prior to verse 24 that's, I think, very important in the discussion of marriage is the nature of being male and female. The text is very specific that Adam is from the ground. He's Adam from adamah. And woman is from his side. She curiously was not taken from the ground. God did not make from the ground a male creature and a female creature, but He made Adam, and from Adam He made Chawwah, He made Eve, and so she's a derivative creature. She comes from man, which is an interesting thing. I saw a bumper sticker by a feminist once that said, "Adam was a rough draft." And that would be the case if Eve had been taken from the ground. Indeed, Adam would have been humanity 1.0, and here's the new improved 2.0 in the form of the woman. But it's not. She's derivative of man. Adam, in his sleep, lost something. Something was taken away. Now that something is kind of mysterious, and the word for rib is not really that bone. We have a full complement of ribs, check out the x-ray. So we're not missing one. But side is a good one. I think Luther captures a little bit of that when he said she was not taken from his head, that she would rule over him, or from his feet, that he would have his foot upon her, but from his side, that she would be an ezer kenegdo, a suitable counterpart, a helper, a complement. And so the idea that Adam lost something, and then he got it back, but he got it back in the form of a thou, an other, who is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, the delight of his eyes. But he receives what he lost back. And so there's a reunion again when he embraces the woman. And the languages all show that he is ish, she is ishshah. We say man, we say woman. The current lexicon doesn't like that, and wants to get the "man" out of "woman." You can't escape this. But I think it's very important that woman is derivative of man and is set side by side as an ezer kenegdo, a complementary counterpart. And there's a sense of equality here in Genesis 1. Male and female are co-equally priests before God. Before God, in our priestly dignity, we are equals.

Then, skipping to verse 24, because verse 24 is a commentary on this, because it moves out of what happened in the making of a woman, it makes it a general principle, or a general pattern, that a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh. And so this is kind of the sedes doctrinae of marriage: that there is a leaving, apron strings are cut, a new household is formed. There's a cleaving, a joining together, a reunion. Every marriage is a reunion of man and woman. What was lost in man is regained in woman, in a sense, that when we look at our other, our thou, we have been completed again. It's not the "you complete me" kind of romantic thing. But we together are a completion of humanity. And out of that completion, we procreate, as God wills it. And so this is how then our humanity is furthered. So a man leaves, he severs his ties with the household that birthed him and raised him, and he cleaves to his wife, his ishshah, his Eve. And together they become one flesh.

Now, what "one flesh" means is, who knows, right? This is, as Paul says, a great mystery. It is a great mystery. It's a very layered thing. One flesh is one flesh sexually. I don't like the word "sex" when it applies to human intercourse. I prefer the word "intimacy." Sex is a biological term. Copulation is even more biological. Sexual intercourse is clinical. It's dry, it's dusty. It belongs in a textbook. Intimacy, yada, to know. Adam knew his wife, and she conceived a son. Yada, to know. Curiously, the tree of knowing good and evil is yada too. So yada is not only to know knowledge, but to experience. And so you have this idea of intimate knowing. And of course, the sexual union of man and woman is an intimate knowing, the greatest intimacy that we can experience in this temporal life. This one-flesh union of man and woman is the greatest union we can experience in this temporal life. There is one greater, and that is our union in Christ, as the body of Christ, which is why in the resurrection they are neither married nor given in marriage. The lesser union gives way to the greater union. Or, as some might say, heaven is better than sex. Just ponder that for a while. I'm going to pause. It's like a Kleinig moment, isn't it? I love John. Oh my goodness, I love John. It's an experience.

Okay, so Genesis 2:24 is the sedes doctrinae. And it's carried over in the New Testament in three distinct places for three distinct purposes. And so I've given you the other passages, and I've italicized the passage so you don't miss it. So in Matthew 19, the Pharisees, the religious authorities, want to test Him by testing Him on the principle of divorce and His understanding of Deuteronomy 24. Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And you know the polarization: the conservative Shammai, the school of Shammai, said no, only for infidelity, or if the marriage contract should not have been made in the first place, he's marrying his first cousin, or there's something she lied about, she's married to another, she's not a virgin, whatever. So Shammai was very conservative, the reasons were very narrow. Hillel, who is a bit more liberal, said really for any cause that displeases the man, like she can't cook, she burns the roast every night or something like that. That was sufficient cause to put her away. So there was that polarization. They were testing Jesus, which are you, red or blue, conservative or liberal, and I don't know. And Jesus, of course, never participates in those discussions whatsoever. And so He never really answers the question they ask. Instead, like every good rabbi, He asks them a question. Have you not read that He who made them in the beginning made them male and female? Genesis 1. And He said, this Creator, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Jesus elects to quote from the Septuagint and get the arithmetic down. In Genesis, the Hebrew does not have "two," "they become one flesh." But "the two become one flesh." And then comes the divine commentary. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. And that is His answer to the question, which is not anything that Hillel or Shammai would have thought of.

Then they ask Him, of course, well, why did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and put her away? And the truth is, Moses never commanded that. It was if, if, if, if, it's concessive. If a man's married, if you find something unseemly in her, it's very ambiguous, and if he wishes to put her away, then he gives her a get, a get, a certificate of divorce. It corresponded to the covenant of marriage, it nullified that covenant. It said three times before three rabbis, "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you." And only then could she be put out of the household. Now, with a get, a legal document that says she has been legally severed from her husband, that's her protection. And the legislation in Moses was, well, if she marries somebody else, she can't go back to husband number one. You can't be horse-trading here, boys. And it was very protective of the women of that society in those days. It's very kind of advanced, really. But of course, the Pharisees are looking to test Jesus on this. And so, well, why did Moses permit this get, the certificate of divorce? And then comes the condemning word: for the hardness of your hearts. A hard heart is an uncircumcised heart. It's a Gentile's heart. It's an unbelieving heart. That's why Moses allowed you to divorce, but that wasn't so from the beginning. And the saying, whoever divorces his wife except for unchastity and marries another commits adultery. I heard John say, and I agree with him here, that no matter what happens, divorce, whatever, it will always adulterate the first marriage. And when Jesus says what God has joined together man must not separate, what I take Him to mean there is that even if you file all your paperwork correctly, you can't undo what has been done. One flesh remains, even though you have taken down all the covenantal fences. And that's just the reality of it. That's the reality of sin and fallenness in this world. And those who have had to deal with divorce and remarriage, I best approach it as, Lord, have mercy on me, for I am a sinner. I'm an adulterer. And deal with that. And He became the adulterer in your place and has borne your sin on the cross and washed you white in the robes of His righteousness, and move from there.

But so, on the basis of this, you can undo the covenant, but you cannot undo the one flesh. I think that needs to be brought home to our young people, that all this hooking up and shacking up and whatever else they're doing is one-fleshing all over the place, and you can't undo these things, and you're acquiring a spiritual baggage that just gets heavier and heavier and heavier, and has consequences both emotionally and physically and spiritually for the rest of your life. So consider it deeply. This is not a casual act. Humans are animals, but we're more than animals. The birds do it, the bees do it, in order to make more birds and bees. But we do it to have communion. We do it for intimacy. Intimacy is a spiritual act, and it has consequences spiritually as well. I think we need to reinforce this from the time that discussion begins. If we're talking to people in their 20s who are living together, and they've been in church, there's kind of been a failure of catechesis and ongoing instruction of parents and household and pastors and congregation and everything. You don't just arrive at that point. And I think in a culture that speaks counter to that, we have to double down on the importance, the spiritual importance, of intimacy. That we are not animals. We are animals, according to the biologists, and they are correct, but we are more than animals. We're spiritual animals. We are above the animals in that way. And so what we do has spiritual consequences. What we do in the body is a spiritual thing.

Ephesians 5, familiar, you probably, hopefully, go through this with every couple that you meet. Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Hypotasso is a word out of the military. It's when the military was in marching orders, generals first, privates last. Everybody had their rank. A military that's not in order cannot function. And it's no reflection at all on the goodness, or the competence really, even the competence, you can become a five-star general and not be competent, but that's the way it is in the ordo politicus, I suppose. But there's a ranking and ordering thing that's inescapable. An army has to be ordered. And so it's not, and as John Kleinig also says, "submit" is not being submission, "submit" is a power word. "Be subject" is good. I'd simply like to just go literalistically and say "be ordered under." Hypotasso means to be ordered under. I do not think that verse 21 is a mutual. You can't be ordered under another. Otherwise you're like two Japanese trying to out-bow one another, okay? One has to be ordered under the other. And so wives are ordered under husbands. Paul unpacks this in the next sections. Wives are ordered under husbands. Children under parents. Servants under their masters. He didn't include here, but he could have, citizens under the government. And on it goes. But God has, in the three ordos, placed us under authority structures. Everybody is under some authority structure, in church, in society, and in government. And so this is really an unpacking of the ordos, the first order being the household. And so, wives, be ordered under your husbands, as to the Lord. So the Church is ordered under Christ, our head. Wives are ordered under their husbands.

Now, I'm going to talk more about that, but I'm just going to key in on this verse. So Paul unpacks this. Wives, be ordered under your husbands. Husbands, lay down your lives for your wives. She is to die for. And then he gets to this point in verse 30 where he reminds us that we are all members of the bride of Christ. We're all members of His body under His headship. And then in verse 31 he quotes Genesis, and he says this mystery, this hidden thing revealed, is a profound one. And I'm saying it refers to Christ and the Church. So there's the chewy nougat center. We're looking at marriage and the coupling of man and woman, and Paul unpacks it, goes deeper, goes to the hidden thing that you wouldn't know unless God revealed it, that this is about Christ and the Church. So beneath all of this union of man and woman is Christ and the Church. It also then brings you back to Genesis, and you look at it in a whole new way, and now you see the sleeping second Adam on the cross, and His Eve, the Church, taken from His wounded side, in the water, in the blood, and Him leaving father and mother. He left His throne, emptying Himself of His glory. He leaves His mother, "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy mother," and He dies in order to be joined to His wife, the Church, in the blood, in the water, streaming from His side. Ancient exegesis. Dr. Lockwood, am I right? Thank you. It's all there. Yes, sir.

Right, one clarification. Verse 21. I was writing down, and that kind of thing. How do you deal with the "one another"? I know that's what you were explaining, but I was taking some notes, I guess. Be ordered with respect to one another. Okay. It's relational. Be subject both at the same time. Yeah, it's a nice thought, and I think Philippians 2 has it better: esteem others better than yourselves in all humility, with the humility of Christ. One is always looking outward. But I don't think this passage in its context here is really about that kind of thing. Mutual submission makes no sense to me whatsoever. I was trying to figure out how you, yeah. I mean, of course, your mileage may vary, we're practitioners. We can talk about that, but I like to throw out things with great authority because otherwise you don't trust me.

So in Ephesians, this passage from Genesis 2 refers to a mystery, that is, a hidden spiritual thing that is not apparent to the outside world and to unbelief, but must be revealed by the Word of God, namely, that beneath this marriage business is Christ in the Church, the union of Christ and the Church. Now, one more, which I find really interesting, and it didn't occur to me for many years, this was a latecomer. I started looking at, where's this passage used? And it's used once more. This is the one that's not in the marriage, right? First Corinthians 6, where Paul has to deal with the libertine Corinthians, because they've sort of severed the spiritual and the material, and now the body is just the body. It needs to be fed, and every appetite is just an appetite. So sex with a prostitute is no different than going to Subway for a sandwich, right? All things are lawful, food for the stomach, the stomach for food. And so Paul gets to this point in verse 16. Do you not know? And that's the rhetorical. Oh, yes, you do know. It's not "have you heard?" Yes, you know this, that he who joins himself to a prostitute — that's porneia in its core meaning — becomes one body with her. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. I thought it happened when we marched up the aisle and our friends with their seafoam green dresses were going, then we signed the wedding license, and here it is. He becomes one body with her, for as it is written, they become one flesh. He quotes the same passage, and marriage is nowhere in view. This is union with a prostitute. So this is my big aha, that sexual union is our one-fleshing. Because this is an abomination. This is one-fleshing outside of covenant, outside of community, outside of everything. It's just in isolation, which is what the devil loves to do, take a gift of God, isolate it, make it the big thing, and then make it an idol. And not only that, but it's curved inward, there's no care for the prostitute. This is for self-pleasure. So to become one flesh, but he who is united to the Lord, see, as the bride of Christ, as united to the Lord, becomes one spirit with Him, and therefore shun immorality. And that's the reason why Paul says at the end, you were bought with a price, the blood shed from the body of Christ, glorify God with your bodies, your body's a spiritual thing. And so sex with a prostitute is unthinkable, because you become one flesh with her. So far the Scriptures on that.

Now this will actually get kind of summary as we go along. I think I've actually covered most of it. Now we're just going to kind of tweeze out some things in the marriage, right? And I'm quoting here from the LSB agenda. I love these paragraphs. I read them at the start of every pre-marriage — counseling's the wrong word — pre-marriage conversation, pastoral conversation with the couple. And of course we read it at the wedding rite in the full company of the people gathered. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and before His Church to witness the union of this man and this woman in holy matrimony." I think there's a missing word there. No, there's a missing letter. "Man," not "Anne," man. "This is an honorable estate, instituted and blessed by God in Paradise, before humanity's fall into sin." So that sets things in its context. This is a gift of God, and it's entrusted and given to humanity as a gift before sin entered the picture. "In marriage we see a picture of the communion between Christ and His bride, the Church," Ephesians 5. "Our Lord blessed and honored marriage with His presence and first miracle at Cana in Galilee, and this estate is also commended to us by the apostle Paul as good and honorable." Though interestingly, Paul himself was not married, and probably would have been looked on suspiciously by his fellow Jews, especially because by the time you're age 30, when you are ordained a rabbi, you'd better have a wife. You'd better have a wife. So he's kind of an oddball. Sorry? Yes, they are. Yeah, we know that it's them. I met my wife on vicarage just in the nick of time. "Therefore marriage is not to be entered into inadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God."

The next paragraph is defining. And this is really kind of the outline of what I have to say. The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for a number of things. One, the mutual companionship, help, and support that each person ought to receive from the other, both in prosperity and adversity, and in sickness and in health, that kind of thing. Companionship. That's the ezer kenegdo, a suitable counterpart, one in partnership with. I would tell my couples, you're entering into a family business, really. Because there's accounting, there's finances, there's home, there's food and food preparation. There's a lot of things. You are hanging out a shingle. Bob and Jane, established this day, 2023, kind of thing. But this is for companionship and partnership. Marriage is also ordained so that man and woman might find delight in one another. There you go. That's what happens in the bedroom. Or the kitchen, if your tastes so incline that way, but it's within your household, okay? I'll come back to that later. Don't worry, I'm not going to go full-on Kleinig on you, okay? I'm not, I'm a restrained person in that regard, right? You guys don't, I'm not feeling the trust here, okay? "Therefore all persons who marry shall take a spouse in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, for God has not called us in impurity, but in holiness." I'm going to unpack some of that. So two is find delight in one another, sexual delight, yada, intimacy.

And then third, God has also established marriage for the procreation of children, who are to be brought up in the fear and instruction of the Lord, so that they may offer Him their praise. I love that word "procreation." It is that we are participating in God's creation. The word that said "be fruitful and multiply," that's what creates the sexual impulse, the desire for man and woman, that's what causes the birds to do it and the bees to do it and everything else to do it. It's also what brings sperm and egg together and makes all of that wondrous, fearfully-made stuff happen in the mystery of the womb. It's the singular word spoken, "be fruitful and multiply." That's a word of blessing. It said He blessed them and said, He didn't command them, He blessed them. And so this is why it works. And so in procreation, we are partakers of the creative word and instruments of that creative word. Notice the place, though. It's in third: companionship, delight, and procreation. I had a couple, they were 85 years old and getting married, and we were reading through this at their wedding and everybody kind of chuckled. I said, I think we can gloss over this last sentence here, unless you want to do a Zechariah and Elizabeth for us, but wait for an angel to talk to you. "For these reasons God established the holy estate," and so-and-so and so-and-so wish to marry, they desire prayers, they begin their marriage in the Lord's name and with His blessing. Always read this verbatim in the marriage ceremony, because it establishes that marriage is an institution. It's bigger than all of us. When we enter into marriage, we're entering into this glorious estate that embraces Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebecca and all, and our grandparents who married and great-grandparents. We're joining together in this vast community of the married, and it's way beyond, why we don't write our own vows. We don't write our own services. We don't define our own marriages. We're entering into something way bigger than we are, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. And so this is at the core of our human existence.

So, some thoughts. And I've hinted at it, so I want to kind of lay them out explicitly. First, marriage is intimacy, one-flesh intimacy, that is in the context of covenant, vows, and community. It's public. These vows are lifelong, till death us do part. And it's public. Part of the public is the marriage license that kind of publishes it; in Luther's day you published the banns on the church door, but everybody knows. Everybody knows that you are in this together for life. And so they see you, and you see each other, as husband and wife. Marriage is a context for eros. Eros does not appear in the Bible, but eros is the Greek word for sexual desire, or the attraction of the sexes, and it is a good gift from God. It's not evil or bad or dirty. But sin corrupts eros. Sin plus eros equals lust. Lust is corrupted eros. So whereas eros is focused on the beloved, lust is focused on anything that pleases me. And that's why part of our disorder is that sin has corrupted eros. Sin has taken that impulse, "be fruitful and multiply," and has run amok with it. It's turned us into animals, literally. Marriage tempers eros. It confines it like a wild animal, it puts it into a cage. And it's tempered by agape, by love, by self-sacrificing love. So it puts the other ahead of the self.

Marriage is a celebration of being male and female. Two men, two women, can celebrate a bonded friendship of philos, that in the case of David and Jonathan exceeded that of the love of a woman. But don't sexualize that. That would have destroyed everything. Eros destroys philos. You can't be sexually intimate with your friends. That's a destruction, that's a sin distortion of that. But it is a celebration. Only ish and ishshah, only man and woman, can join together intimately to form one flesh. Anything else is a friendship. Adam and Eve are reunited. It's a celebration of a very primal event in our humanity, the reunion of man and woman. Man lost something and he gets it back as a thou, an "I and thou." Marriage is temporal. It's the first-article gift. Everybody receives it, like air and water and food. And it is not recapitulated in the resurrection. That doesn't mean you don't know your bride. You get her back in an even more intimate way than you have her now. It's true of everything in the resurrection. We get back everything that we lose in death in a greater and more wonderful way.

I like Robert Capon, in his book Bed and Board, published back in 1965. This is a great book. Robert Capon is a fun writer to read. He calls marriage a hierarchy of equals. Which is a nice, yeah. We Lutherans should love paradox like that. A hierarchy. Man and woman before God are priests, or they are equal. And yet in marriage they are voluntarily subordinate. I tell the women, you are giving up a little bit of your equality. You're still equal before God, but you are voluntarily subordinating yourself to your husband. And he is voluntarily laying down his life for you. He will die for you. Kenneth Korby, one of my fathers in the faith, love the man, I quote him all the time, but I'm told by his wife, Jean, that Kenneth was irregular about which side of the bed he slept on. And she could never figure it out. At home he slept on one side. When they were in a hotel, he slept on that side, and she finally figured it out. Kenneth always slept where the most vulnerable part of the room was, the door or the window, should somebody break in. They could only get to Jean over his dead body. He was ready to die for his bride, to lay down his life for her. And that's how he lived. I sensed that from Dr. Kleinig as well. Lay down your life. I always told the guys, if she's not to die for, don't get married. I would tell the girls, if you don't trust him to be the head of your household, don't marry him. It's a catch-and-release program.

It is a communion of man and woman in yada, one-flesh intimacy. It is for the procreation, the nurture, and the care of children. God has ordained it that children be raised by the two that formed them, that were instruments in their creation, in their yada, were conceived in a one-flesh union, and were raised by those people. It is also the building block of community and civil society. It is a protective covenantal fence — this is page 29 on my thing, I forgot to mention, I'm on a page — a protective covenantal fence that is built around this one-flesh union, that says these two are to be considered one, and no one is to drive a wedge between them. No one. And so in a sense we're building a fence around this union of man and woman, or God is building a fence, or they're building a fence with their vows. It's a covenant. There's no biblical rite of marriage per se. Different cultures have different ways of getting married. Nor is there a notion of marriage in the abstract. The Bible never really speaks of marriage as some kind of idea. It is always marrying and being given in marriage. It's always real people, real men, real women, embracing each other, vowing to each other, to be husband and wife before the Lord and before community for their lives. And so it's always an incarnate and concrete and real thing. It's real.

So, just pause for a drink, and any kind of, as Kleinig says, clarification questions. Gary. Fascinating. Not there, other. Hmm. The emphasis on children, that'd be the one-flesh union also, Henry, child. That one question. One question. I think our emphasis, or so in our conversations, should, growing full, so natural, making a mother, this is what this is about. Tell us about making a father. Yeah, no, I appreciate that point. And I think we struggle sometimes in getting the language of this mystery down too, because as you're indicating, this is a multi-layered sort of thing.

Pastoral goals. As pastors, when we're engaged in this, what's the goal? I like what John Kleinig said, that God is the celebrant of your marriage, and I think that's a good theme to have in front of our eyes when we do these occasional services. We are representing the fact that God is the celebrant of your marriage. And so we, as God's representative, are the celebrant of this rite. As I see it, there are at least five goals to this. First, to uphold the authority of the Word of God. This is our office. We are to proclaim the Word of God, the whole counsel of God, and to uphold that authority, especially in an age where that authority is questioned and undermined. Secondly, and this is an important one at a wedding, to maintain the dignity of the pastoral office. I kind of hinted at it in my sermon this morning. It's not a place, not a time, to mug for the cameras. Weddings are kind of silly at times, and they can be. They're a joyful event, and they can sometimes deteriorate into silliness. We can't afford to join that silliness. We are representatives of Christ. We have a solemn duty here to proclaim the Word of God and to bless in the name of God. And so at all times during the course of this business, we have to maintain the dignity of the pastoral office, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the One we represent.

Third, one of the goals is to establish pastoral relationships. This is a prime opportunity to establish an adult-level, eyeball-to-eyeball relationship with the couple. It often deepens relationships or intensifies conversations with the families involved. You'll meet in-laws, you'll meet outlaws, you'll meet all kinds of people in the extended families and friends. You have one of the most marvelous opportunities to extend your pastoral ministry, because you don't normally get to meet that many people outside the church in one event. So this is a prime opportunity to reflect the love of Christ, to be Christ, to those who maybe are even timid about setting foot in a church. For some people, this may be one of the first times they've ever dared to walk through the threshold of a church, and you are the representative they encounter. Great opportunity. It's an opportunity to extol positively the gift of marriage, to lift it up, to let it sparkle with all the shine that comes with the gift of God. I think positive extolling is a far more powerful polemic than negative. To lift up what it is, rather than to beat the drum of what it isn't. And it's an opportunity to proclaim the great mystery, the mystery of the union of Christ the Bridegroom and His Church the bride, to unpack that mystery, and reveal the hidden layers under marriage that are not apparent to the outside world. So there's a lot of pastoral opportunity and a lot of pastoral goals. If I could summarize it, the goal is, you're the bartender, pouring out Cana joy. You're pouring out the joy of Cana into this wedding, that God is the celebrant of your marriage, that Christ is at the core. And you want people outside the church to be envious of this. And you also want all your married people to review their own marriage. My wife always says, when she goes to a wedding, I always think of our wedding day, and I always think of our marriage, and I always think about our life together, every time I hear you preach and every time I see you conduct a wedding. So every married couple should reflect on the gift of marriage that they have.

Pre-marriage planning. It's really kind of a two-part thing in my mind. On the one hand, we're planning a wedding. That's usually what they come in for. We've got to plan our wedding. And I'm interested in planning and helping them plan a marriage. And a marriage is a lifelong thing. A wedding is about 45 minutes and then a party, and you don't remember most of it, but a marriage is for life, until death us do part. What I use for that is the wedding rite, the Small Catechism. LSB was wise to put it in the hymnal, so we just have to turn. I used to have to photocopy the agenda, and now we can just use the hymnal. So the hymnal is our catechism, and we just go through every single verse and every single sentence, and we engage. We converse. It's wonderful conversation. I like Prepare and Enrich as a sort of personal inventory. It's been around for a long, long time. There are others, there have been all kinds of ones similar. They're all fine. I use them for conversation, not for counseling or anything like that. They're not a marriage test to see if you should get married. Although, if you end up like this, you really have a lot to talk about, I think. But I have found these wonderful to get them to talk about the things they haven't talked about or don't want to talk about — children, how we do the finances, concern about his spending or her spending — and it just opens up a deeper conversation. Most of that work occurs away from our meetings, when they talk to each other. There's a great little book called Dollars and Cents that Lutheran Brotherhood put out many years ago. They gave it away for free. I got like two cases of them. It's a great book on just godly financial planning. This was way before Dave Ramsey ever became a cottage industry. It's just a free little book that covers everything from your offerings to how to do a budget, and I don't go through it with them, but I give them that, and we talk about budgeting a little bit, because money is probably one of the leading causes of marital stress. And home devotions. There should be one after budgets, home devotions. We go through the exercise of learning, in the hymnal, the short orders of prayer. And I just have the guys lead the prayers, and teach you, so you've got to establish your home devotions before the kids come, and have something going. Oh, if they don't have one at home, I give away hymnbooks all the time. There's always 25 or 30 lying around, usually they're kind of broken, but it happens. You want a good one, go to CPH. But no, every home should have — Wilhelm Löhe said the three books of the Christian life are the Scriptures, the catechism, the hymnal. Those are everything. Everything else is kind of commentary.

So, regarding the wedding, location, location, location, location. I was blessed with a very unattractive sanctuary, so most of my brides didn't really want to get married there. The ones that did were really serious about getting married in the sanctuary. So I've done weddings at other churches. I do not like location weddings. They're bothersome. I like to say, if you're not going to get married in church, then kind of do it old school and get married in your dad's backyard, because marriage really begins in the home. It's not really the property, the church. It has its origins in the ordo domesticus. So dad's backyard is cool. That's fine. The other locations are irritating and hard to control, but I admit, I've done a few of them. But probably 80% of my weddings have been done in a church, and about 50% in our congregation. When it's off location, I actually charge for that, because you're taking up my time. And I don't charge for weddings otherwise. And also if it's really far away, then you pay transportation for me and my wife and at least one night. So the cost will ratchet up, and I know they pay a lot more for the DJ and all that other stuff. But if you're going to take up my time in this way, when you could just as easily get married at church, then it's going to have to cost, because it's costing me. I've gotten a couple of nice vacations out of that too, but I don't do that for vacations. Regardless of where it's located, it's always done as though it were done in church. I vest. And we do it according to the rite, and we act, because we're still in the presence of the Lord, we act accordingly. That's a non-negotiable.

Music, I leave that to the musicians, but we have a very long conversation about appropriate music. Music should be appropriate for the event, a sacred event. Communion, yes or no? I usually say no. If you want to have communion at your wedding, then get married before church and come into the divine service with your congregation. That's the old Luther marriage booklet. I've offered that. Nobody's ever taken me up on that. But I've offered that one, the Sunday morning wedding. Theme weddings and other nonsense you see on YouTube. No, no, and no again. For some reason, we saw it on YouTube, let's do it. No, we're not going to do that here. That's not how we roll. Dealing with the paparazzi. I've included as an addendum our little throw sheet that I give to the couple and then I give to the photographer, videographer. It's very nicely written. I dabble in photography. I know what they have to do. I respect their job, but I want them to respect where they are. And 99% of them honor this, and we have a delightful conversation. And I always, you know, a little, if you're good, I keep you on file. And then service planning. There really is no service planning. It's planned for us. It's there. So I've included a service that we have. It's kind of a fill-in-the-blank. Oh, you have a favorite psalm? Sure. Have a hymn you want to sing? Great. I have a reading in addition to the three readings specified? Sure. But those three are non-negotiable, because they are the sedes doctrinae of marriage. We can't be doing things without the Word of God.

Oh my. I've taken to asking them, are there any particular prayer requests that they might have that they would get in, various things like that? Yes, those sorts of items to certain data, absolutely. Just because a rite is set and fixed doesn't mean it's not personal. The same can be said of funerals. There's a burial rite, but a person who matters is being buried. People who matter are being married. They have lives, they have histories. And that's important in the sermon. And it's important in their choice of how they want to express that too. They need to have some voice in that, and it's very important. But I think it has to be within a fixed structure, so they understand they're entering into something bigger than themselves. And if you're confident about that, and gentle, you don't have to, you just have to be like a father. The older you get, the easier it gets, because you can be more like an old uncle or dad, just kind of, no, this is how we do things. And it's fine.

I have to, can I grab about five minutes or so? Okay. All right. Hey, I heard that. Five becomes ten. Give an inch. I haven't included my outline, and I'm only going to talk about it briefly. Other speakers have spoken very well on this issue of couples living together. This is for me a case-by-case-by-case basis. For some, I've had couples with kids, that's a different case. If they're living together without covenant, then something has gone wrong way back. And I tend to view — and we can debate and discuss this, but I tend to view — their desire to be married as, first of all, an act of repentance, and second of all, a remedy for the situation. It's the missing piece. They have the intimacy, some even have children, they've formed a household. Now let's consecrate this with the Word of God and prayer. Let's bless this thing and make it a true marriage, kind of thing. That's my front, sort of. I leave a lot — and this is true of everything, it's not just this particular sin and these particular people — but I leave a lot in the hands of the people. I'm like Ezekiel. If you warn them and they don't listen to you, it's their problem. If you don't warn them and they don't listen to you, it's your problem. Don't make it your problem. So I have to speak the truth. And I do. But how they work that truth out, I'm not going to investigate. It's for them to work out, and they work it out one way or another, slowly or more quickly.

The rehearsal. I love rehearsals. I didn't used to like rehearsals. I love rehearsals. I kind of channel the inner rabbi in this, and again, the grayer you get, the easier this gets. But this is the first opportunity where you meet everybody else and you consecrate the whole thing with the Word of God in prayer. You read the Scriptures, you pray. And for some people this is the first time they've ever heard the Scriptures and seen a man pray. And then you walk through the service. I always walk through it twice. And not as a rehearsal, but as haggadah, as commentary, as midrash. And so we're doing this because of this, and this is why, and it's just a walking through the rite, and now it's in the hearing of the wedding party, and the extended family's kind of sitting around, and it's not formal. And it's often fun and funny, but we're going through the rite and we're hearing the Word of God and the whole thing is being unpacked, so that on the next day when they hear it again, they're clued in. They're primed to hear. It's beautiful. It's also an opportunity to kind of set boundaries on the notorious MOB, the mother of the bride. Sometimes they are living out their fantasy world through their daughters, especially, sometimes their sons. And wedding coordinators. I don't mean the one in your congregation. I mean the one they hired, with the clipboard and the earpiece, and they're going around. I had a remote wedding and a very, very energetic wedding coordinator, and she was just busy with everything. I pulled her aside and I said, you're clearly very, very busy. You've got a lot of things going on. Let me assure you that the next hour is completely under my control. You have nothing to worry about. And afterwards, I will entrust this group to you and your capable hands. And she had an honest look of relief on her face. And I had a look of relief on my face too. If you ever want to read a funny essay, read Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. The first essay is on the MOB. Fulghum was a Unitarian minister, so he conducted weddings, and this was the mother of the bride to end all MOBs. And the whole wedding just descends into chaos. The bridal party's fainting, the bride has projectile vomit, they have to clean the wedding dress, and the mother of the bride, it's just a — and the father of the bride is smiling the whole time. Grace upon grace.

I appreciate — if you're supposed to be talking about the fact that, it strikes me that one of the other things in that pre-marriage conversation you're going to have to look like, is to set these kind of precedents about what will happen every step of the way, so that they're able to tell them, or the others, instead of you becoming the cop. At no time — and it just requires proactive action — at no time do you want to come off as being sort of the policeman, because they expect that from religious authorities. They expect that. I know a couple that, the three of us are forming it online. Anybody that comes to me with anything, like a wedding ceremony, they want to change what they want to do, I deal directly with the couple. And I say, the couple are the only people that are allowed to talk to me about any changes, any innovation. That works pretty well. Nice. Nice. I'm not sure I want to lay down battle lines. I like to include. I like to embrace here. So, but yeah, I mean, you sometimes have to. And the bride's parents are paying for a lot of this. They're not paying for the church or me, but — by the way, I don't know if you know this, but most of our customs for weddings come from a high-society wedding in the 1920s, the Vanderbilt wedding. And it made Life magazine, really splashy, and thereafter all the girls wanted a Vanderbilt wedding. And that's what you and I experienced, pretty much, that kind of a wedding. That's where they all get to be rich for a day. They dress up, they have a limousine, they have the whole thing. But apparently the father of the bride did not like the priest. It was an Episcopalian wedding. And so he said, no, no, you come in the side door with the guys, my daughter will process down the aisle. So that's the origins of the bridal procession: he hated the priest. Okay. Humor is indicated. Humor does a lot to put people at ease, and I love the use of humor, especially at times like this. You put people at ease in church and whatnot.

Dave, five more minutes, I'm done. Okay, the purpose of the wedding service is really threefold: to bear witness to the making of a covenant; to bless, as a community and you as the celebrant, as the representative of God, to bless this covenant; and then to pray for this couple in their covenant. I use this as a sort of boilerplate. This is why you turn your cell phones off, and all amateur photographers stop taking pictures during it, because you cannot bear witness, bless, or pray with a cell phone plastered against your face. So that's what everybody is there to do. This is why you cannot attend a wedding that you do not approve of, because your presence is to bless, to bear witness, and to pray. If you cannot bless this union, don't show up. You're a priest, you cannot bless what God has not blessed. Simple as that. Always pray with the bride and groom before the wedding. It's a very tender moment, especially if these girls have grown up in your congregation. There's a very fatherly, tender moment. I always pull the bride aside, the groom aside, let us pray, put your hand on their head, bless them in their new vocation. Exude a relaxed dignity, a fatherly presence — Robert Hovda: strong, loving, wise. Be calm, be calm. The wedding sermon should be shaped for the couple, but you know of them. It should be centered in Christ. It should extol the gifts, unpack the mysteries, and it's not a place for marriage polemics. Be very sensitive. You have people in there who are just, guns are drawn. They're just waiting to hear that condemning word from the religious authority. Don't satisfy that. Extol the gift. Sometimes what's not said is heard more loudly than what is said.

Reception, do I go or not? Yeah, go if invited. F. Dean Lueking is very good about that. He says, you've got to go, be pastor, because you're the pastor. Follow the rule of Augustine. Augustine said, drink one glass of wine to spite the devil; forgo the second glass of wine to honor Christ. You're on duty. You have no idea who's going to corner you. You have no idea. There may be an absolution in the corner of the reception hall about to take place. You have no idea. They'll track you down. I wish you could take your tab out, like, "not in service." I advocate leaving early. I'm an introvert, so I leave parties early anyway, but wedding receptions tend to deteriorate into bacchanalian festivals after a while. You don't want to be there, so I tend to leave before it deteriorates. But I would stay for dinner, though. That's an important one.

Quickly, the honeymoon is over, the now-what pastoral care. I think this is where it really — this is more important. Visiting the new couple in their homes, blessing their home. Having post-wedding conversations, encouraging worship, not only in the congregation, but also in the home, home devotions. That's really the time, because now the wedding's done, and the real stuff begins. And that's a great time to follow up.

Finally, I think it's important to have in place proactive policies in your congregation. I've included this in the appendix. We have a written wedding policy. Our photographer, videographer thing is approved by the elders and the voters. The reason for that is that it protects you. I think policies are the equivalent of the 17th-century Kirchenordnungen, in which congregations specified in detail what goes on in this congregation. And it doesn't become the personal opinion of the pastor. It's a shared community value, shared by all. And I think today, where marriage is challenged, people will come and say, will you marry us? And you say no. If the congregation has a policy on this, this becomes a corporate thing, and everybody understands. So all the shrubbery at the end of this is really stuff that I had. Take it or leave it, use it or not, steal parts of it that are useful and forget the rest, or just use it for scratch paper on the Riverside.

So thank you for the extra time. In conclusion, the Lord bless you as celebrants in weddings, and may He grant you Cana joy, as you pour out His joy with a lavish Cana wrist. Thank you for your attention.