MARRIAGE CEREMONY SERMON: WHAT IT MEANS TO BUILD A HOME.
John 15:9-15 (NIV)
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy will be in you and that your joy may be complete 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servants does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
David and Edlyn, let me share with a few words on this great day of your wedding ceremony, what it means to build a home as we reflect from God’s Word. I heard this story… Some people ask the secret of our long marriage, says the couple who just celebrated their 50th anniversary. We take time to go out to a restaurant 2 times week. A little candlelight dinner, soft music, and a slow walk home. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.
It’s quite a thing to build a marriage. It’s no easy task. You can build a house, you can even build a garage but it is not easy to build a home. There was a young businesswoman who was approached by a real estate agent, who wanted to sell her a home. “A home?” she said. “Why do I need one? I was born in a hospital, educated in a boarding school, courted in a car and married in a yacht club. My husband and I work in downtown office buildings. On weekends we are at some resorts playing golf or at our club. And if we do have time, we go to the movies, maybe catch a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. And when I die, I’m going to be buried from a funeral parlor. I don’t need a home. All I need is a garage.”
Yes, you can buy all sorts of things - You can buy a house, or a garage but there is one thing u cannot buy. You cannot buy a home. A home is something that exists apart from the physical arrangements of this world. It is a state of being, felt at the core of our humanity. All the money and fame in the world could not buy a home for Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Princess Di, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Many like them tried to make a home BUT they did not find a home. So many become free-agents in marketplace of life looking for home. All across Vancouver, there are many houses, some millions of dollars, but very few are homes. For you see, a home is more than just a postal code or like the Americans would say a zip code. A home is all about the quality of life, i.e. it’s about how u live, it’s about remaining in love as you build one life together out of two. I believe with all your heart today, that is what u seek, as you publicly declare your love for each other here today.
In our text today Jesus speaks of HOME. I like that phrase “remain in Him” which is also translated from the Greek “abide in Him”, to abide or remain in Him is to be at home with God. From the word abide we get the word abode which is another way of saying home. What this text invites is a coming home. For it is from being at home with God, Jesus says you’ll find a joy that is deep and complete, absolutely satisfying, when you find your heart’s true home in the abiding friendship of God. This is where joy is spelt out with capital letters and the intimacy. BUT as one practitioner of prayer puts it:
“Today the heart of God is an open wound of love, He aches over our distance and preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to him. He grieves that we have forgotten him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence. And He is inviting you and me to come home, to come to where we belong, to come home to that for which we were created…He invites us into the living room of his heart where we can put on old slippers and share freely. He invites us into the kitchen of his friendship where chatter and batter mix in good fun. He invites us into the dining room of his strength, we where can feast to our heart’s delight… He invites us into the bedroom of his rest where new peace is found, where we can be naked and vulnerable and free. It is also the place of deepest intimacy, where we know and are known to the fullest ” (Richard Foster in Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home).
The man and the woman in Paradise, the Garden of Eden did not have a house, a hotel nor a garage. But they had a home. According to the Bible, they had God walking with them in the cool of the day – they had a relationship with God based not on physical house in the suburbs of Eden but based on the reality of God’s grace and providence who created them and sustained them for the purpose of love. The Bible tells us that they were created to be one flesh. And as Adam, the man, in the joy of receiving Eve the woman from God as a gift, said “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen.2:23). There is a beauty in that spontaneous phrase of wonder and joy, of two becoming one, that will be the model for years to come of what it means to build a home. The depth and quality of joy, oh you can just feel our hearts are aching and longing for it, is what we created for. Today, David and Edlyn, I urge u to come back home to the spontaneous joy of Eden, as God intended, and allow God in to your life as you build you home. Do not abandon the joys of God’s original paradise, for Jesus desires very much that His joy be in you. He wants very much to have that complete joy in all of us, especially in you David and Edlyn.
Today, such a home of deep abiding love is available, based on nothing less than the good news that Jesus died on the cross to bring sinners back home to Eden, so that our sins and failures will no longer be obstacles to pure joy, but to find a home in God. Yes, such a home is based on the greater love that Jesus spoke of, that he lay down his life for his friends. He’s calling us friends, if we like today’s wedding, make a conscious decision to love and invite God in our hearts. It is God’s gift to you on this day, to be reminded that you are not in danger of being a castaway on a remote island, or an astronaut who crashlanded on a planet crawling with evolved apes but u are called to experience home with God, to remain in His love,
So today I invite u to think about Jesus words “Love each other as I have loved you” i.e. with the giving up of your life to each other, just as He did on the cross for us. God met us where we are at and pulled us out of sin to complete joy. And in the same way, he is saying to you, as u build a home, do likewise. Say to each other, how can I meet u where u are at as God has met my need, how can I forgive and be forgiven as God has forgiven me, how can I be there so that you are not home alone as I am at home with God who loves me and gave Himself for me, how can I let you feel safe, as God has saved me.
To have a true home is to find a full life of true acceptance, worth, and the sheer beauty of the embrace of God in our hearts and lives. This is the stuff a home is built on. So Jesus tells us the stuff of homes is possible, not a mere dream, by receiving His love as a gift and then he tells us to spread it around like butter on piece of toast by loving another person the same way we have come to understand that He loved us and gave Himself for us.
Do not wait till some disaster like the twister that hit a Kansas farmhouse, that lifted up the bed of the farmer and his wife as they slept. And thankfully they landed gently in the next county, but the wife began to cry. “Don’t be scared, Mary”, her husband said. “We’re not hurt.” But Mary continued crying, and in between her sobbing she said, “I’m not scared. It’s just that I am happy.” “Urrhh?” Said husband. “I’m happy cause this is the first time in 15 years that we’ve been out together.” Work at being imaginative as God has done bringing in metaphors of the bride and bridegroom, colors of the rainbow to shine in our hearts that long for intimacy.
I submit to u under the authority of God’s Word, BUILD your home today on the foundation of God’s love. Yes, you can buy a house, but home is always a gift of love from God, not a possession. I trust that you know today home is the love of Jesus Christ which remains in you no matter where u are, as you receive Him as a gift. Then you will have quality of life and joy that will be complete. Then u can share love and take each other out (I don’t mean it the way the Sopranos would say it). Then from that reservoir of the power of love from God, pour your strength, heart and soul in remaining in love with each other with the laser-beam focus of the greater love of God who laid down His life for us. I trust that HOME will become where you heart is. Let’s pray.
Dear God I ask that You will allow David and Edlyn the grace of receiving a Home. Amen.
