Matthew 5:1-10
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
This gospel lesson of “the Beatitudes” that Richard just read to us is my very favorite of all the possible gospel readings The Book of Common Prayer suggests for weddings. You see, I never tire of hearing the Beatitudes read. I love the way that they continue to surprise us in their preposterous declarations about people with nothing being blessed, about people who have every right to feel unlucky named as the fortunate ones or the ones who will somehow be satisfied or fulfilled.
Bob and I chose this very gospel lesson for our own wedding ten years ago, not because we understood what it had to do with marriage but because we wanted to learn what it had to do with marriage. And learn we did that very day. And the story is instructive of what I would like to offer Robin and Denise today as they embark on their marriage.
Bob and I got married in a little off-the-beaten-track Episcopal Church in Trenton, New Jersey. There, Bob had begun a small alternative congregation called “The Community of Julian of Norwich.” One of the norms in that congregation was the sharing of the homily during the liturgy. It worked like this: the person officially giving the homily would begin things with his or her thoughts on the lessons and then after about ten minutes, others were invited in a kind of Quaker-meeting-style format offer their own thoughts.
The person officiating and preaching at our wedding was my then boss, a high-profile bishop of the church: tall, blond, good-looking and attired in all his finery for the occasion. And so after the gospel reading (the Beatitudes), he began his homily. Now it may have been a fine homily for all I know, but what Bob and I remember is that we have no remembrance of what he said, and it wasn’t because we were too giddy to hear anything. No, Bob and I, having both been divorced, were hungry for any insights that he or others might offer us about how to live together in a committed partnership that would last and that had meaning within our Christian tradition.
At any rate, it was then time for others to be invited to speak, and so, one by one, people offered their thoughts. Again, I’m sure they were fine thoughts, but somehow they did not register. Finally, Jack Egan, a dear friend of ours, a thin Irishman with perpetually unkempt hair, spoke. He was, if fact, the last person to speak. Jack was a former Roman Catholic priest who had been active in the peace movement in the 1960’s and who had left the priesthood and had married a strong-minded woman dedicated to the poor.
This is what Jack said—something that immediately struck me as true, something that I remember to this day:
“When I hear these readings,” he said, “I think about how marriage invites two people and keeps inviting them to walk the path of humility with each other—to experience things like being poor in spirit, being peacemakers, being meek, and being merciful to one another—discovering that this way of being is not a curse or an inconvenience but is a blessing and a source of lasting joy. But it doesn’t stop there—it isn’t meant to stop there. The two together become a new way that God pours out these very blessings onto the world—poverty of spirit, peacemaking, meekness, forgiveness and mercy.”
Today we’re here to celebrate Robin and Denise’s marriage. Unlike some couples who get married, Robin and Denise are seasoned: they know each other well and know something about marriage. They’ve already walked the path of humility (to use Jack’s word’s) with each other for a while. Today they’re choosing both to deepen that path through their public commitment to one another and to broaden that path through standing up before all of us as their community and as representatives of the world that this marriage has a role in blessing and redeeming.
And how will this deepening of their lives and this blessing of the world happen? As Jack put it, it’s through the ongoing discovery that all the things that would seem to give satisfaction in a relationship—things like being right, or being the powerful one, are not blessings at all. No, the blessings of marriage for the couple and for the rest of us come when two walk the daily path of humility, humility being a word based on the Latin word for earth, the solid unassuming ground we walk on, the earth on which all good things grow.
There is a wonderful tradition in the marriage liturgies of the Eastern Church. In the most expressive moment in the marriage ritual, ornate, colorful crowns are placed upon the heads of marriage couple and they are “crowned in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” You will hear a reference to this ritual act on the blessing of the married couple after Robin and Denise exchange their vows.
Within the Eastern Church, the crowns are said to represent a number of things:
First, they are crowns of royalty connected to the kingship of Christ, for in marriage the husband and wife become king and queen of a new unit of society, a blessed household that expresses the kingdom values of humility, mercy and forgiveness that Christ proclaimed to all through his teaching, his death and resurrection.
And, second, as in the ancient Church, the crowns are a symbol of martyrdom. The word "martyr" means witness. In giving themselves to one another and in giving of themselves to the world, the married couple bears witness to God’s self-giving love in Christ to all of humanity and all of creation.
