Readings: Num 21:4b-9; Phil 2:6-11; Jn 3:13-17
I don’t think couples
generally get married
because they want to suffer.
They get married because love
has moved each of them
to join their life
to the life of another.
And this is a joyous thing.
But the very vows by which
a couple joins their lives
speak of suffering that will come
intertwined and entangled with joy:
the worse with the better,
poverty with riches
sickness with health.
And this suffering is not something
incidental to their joining.
It is suffering they experience
precisely because of their joining:
for the poverty of the one
becomes the poverty of the other;
and the sickness of the one
becomes the sickness of the other.
No one marries because they want to suffer,
but they know that suffering will come
because they have opened their hearts
to one another.
generally get married
because they want to suffer.
They get married because love
has moved each of them
to join their life
to the life of another.
And this is a joyous thing.
But the very vows by which
a couple joins their lives
speak of suffering that will come
intertwined and entangled with joy:
the worse with the better,
poverty with riches
sickness with health.
And this suffering is not something
incidental to their joining.
It is suffering they experience
precisely because of their joining:
for the poverty of the one
becomes the poverty of the other;
and the sickness of the one
becomes the sickness of the other.
No one marries because they want to suffer,
but they know that suffering will come
because they have opened their hearts
to one another.
And it is the same way with Jesus.
Jesus did not join himself to our humanity
because he wanted to suffer,
but he knew that suffering would come,
because he had opened his heart
to suffering, sinful humanity.
He made himself vulnerable,
just as we are vulnerable,
knowing that in a world of sin,
in which our fear of each other
turns us into predators,
the vulnerable are preyed upon.
He could have come
as the kind of king who reigns
by being the apex predator,
but instead he became a king
whose throne was the cross.
Because God so loved the world
he sent his only son,
who emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave.
He became “obedient to death,
even death on a cross”—
because he had bound himself to us,
and even the torment of the Cross
could not separate him from us:
what God had joined together,
no human being could put asunder.
But, of course, that is not the end of the story.
We call this feast the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,
not the degradation of the Cross;
because it is about the joy of triumph,
not the sorrow of defeat.
It is about how through the Cross
that Jesus bears for our sake out of love,
God has exalted him above all creatures,
so that he is worshipped
as Lord of the universe.
Even on the Cross
God is raising Jesus up
as the sign of his love for us.
Sorrow and joy,
poverty and riches,
pain and healing
are intertwined in the Cross,
but after the Cross and tomb
there is resurrection,
when sorrow and joy are untangled,
when poverty and pain are banished,
when the richness of God’s healing love
rises again in the person of Jesus.
And it is the same way with marriage.
In their vows, a couple acknowledges
the reality of the sorrows they will face,
the poverty and sickness intertwined
with richness and health,
the worse with the better.
But they make their vows in faith
that sorrow and joy will one day be untangled
and there will be nothing but the joy
of the wedding feast of the Lamb.
And even now, as they share in Christ’s cross,
they, like him, are a sign of God’s love for the world.
They, like him, are a sign
of fidelity to the bond that love creates.
They, like him, are a sign
of the joy that awaits
our sorrowing world.
In their vows, a couple acknowledges
the reality of the sorrows they will face,
the poverty and sickness intertwined
with richness and health,
the worse with the better.
But they make their vows in faith
that sorrow and joy will one day be untangled
and there will be nothing but the joy
of the wedding feast of the Lamb.
And even now, as they share in Christ’s cross,
they, like him, are a sign of God’s love for the world.
They, like him, are a sign
of fidelity to the bond that love creates.
They, like him, are a sign
of the joy that awaits
our sorrowing world.
Typically, at a wedding,
I say these kinds of thing
presuming that the couple has no idea
what it is that they are getting into,
or what it is that I’m trying to say.
In the case of Justin and Gabriela,
who this past week celebrated
the tenth anniversary of their civil wedding,
I know that they know
exactly what I am talking about.
I know that they know because they have lived it:
how the worse and better are always entangled,
sickness with health,
sorrow with joy.
I also know that they have faith
that the great untangling awaits us all,
because they have glimpsed it
over their past ten years together:
in their own baptisms
into Christ’s death and resurrection,
in the birth of their daughter,
in the slow spreading forth
of faith, hope, and love in their lives.
They have seen the sorrow of the Cross,
but they have also seen its exaltation.
And in coming today to have their vows to each other
recognized and blessed by the Church,
they become for us all
a sign of the triumph that awaits us
at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
I say these kinds of thing
presuming that the couple has no idea
what it is that they are getting into,
or what it is that I’m trying to say.
In the case of Justin and Gabriela,
who this past week celebrated
the tenth anniversary of their civil wedding,
I know that they know
exactly what I am talking about.
I know that they know because they have lived it:
how the worse and better are always entangled,
sickness with health,
sorrow with joy.
I also know that they have faith
that the great untangling awaits us all,
because they have glimpsed it
over their past ten years together:
in their own baptisms
into Christ’s death and resurrection,
in the birth of their daughter,
in the slow spreading forth
of faith, hope, and love in their lives.
They have seen the sorrow of the Cross,
but they have also seen its exaltation.
And in coming today to have their vows to each other
recognized and blessed by the Church,
they become for us all
a sign of the triumph that awaits us
at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
Gabriela and Justin,
may God bless your family this day,
and may God bless us all
through your love for each other,
and may God in his mercy
have mercy on us all.
may God bless your family this day,
and may God bless us all
through your love for each other,
and may God in his mercy
have mercy on us all.
