Judy Bevilacqua
Gracious God, help us examine any absence or distance we feel from you today….and move a little closer. Amen.
I heard a definite theme in our lectionary readings for this morning. One word was unmistakable! It rang in my ear…(from an Anglican pulpit)….right out of the film - The Princess Bride: “MAWAGE!”
Yes! The word “marriage” was everywhere today…from Isaiah’s interceding with God for Israel ~ to a Wedding…where Mary is interceding with Jesus on behalf of thirsty guests! So, this morning, you are invited to join this “wedding party!”
Our OT reading starts with Isaiah the prophet, who seems a bit frustrated, “For Zion's sake, he cries, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake, I will not rest until her vindication shines out like the dawn and her salvation like a burning torch!” You can feel his desperation - or maybe exasperation, in the face of seeing Zion/Israel, still in exile, depressed, homeless & hopeless, a forgotten people. He implores them to trust: “you will no longer be called “forsaken,” your land will no longer be referred to as “a deserted wife!” Then Isaiah, seems to present GOD, down on one knee, proposing…”and you shall be called by a NEW NAME…”My Delight is in her!” and your land: “Happily Married.” For as a young man marries a young woman, God, who formed you, will marry you!….and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice & delight over you!”
Isaiah seems to be acting as a “marriage counselor,” mediating between two lovers, at odds! He is pleading God’s promises & reciting God’s “love letters” aloud to Israel, in the face of God’s “seeming” absence, in the misery of their exile. Reassuring them that NO, God has not ‘ghosted’ you or threatening divorce, in spite of your clear neglect of God’s covenant.
But let’s hold our judgment for a bit! Mahwidge is a complicated covenant!…especially as God and we humans are rather “unequally yoked!” …. I mean, Did God not read our “profile” carefully enough on the dating app ?!! We were not such a good “match!”
You have to ask, what does this message of “marriage” even mean for us today …is this even our mail? Our love letter? We are mostly Gentile believers, grafted into the family, we sit together here; as married or single or divorced, or widows, widowers, some negotiating what this implies as LGBTQ folks…and some resisting the whole “marriage contract” because of its current history of failures; all the litigation, pre-nups and the “transactional” state of the institution today! And of course, add to that the Sea-change in women’s rights over these last thousands of years! Marriage is a prickly metaphor. It really doesn’t fly well as a marketing tool in this 21st century!
How can we ALL of us grasp this “marriage metaphor?” This “sacrament” of promise that is our relationship with our Maker? The God who will keep his vows…who will never forsake us...this marriage that will “outlast” our failures and infidelities. We are all familiar with the traditional vows: “better or worse, richer or poorer…but in this case, It is God’s “better” and our worser, God’s riches, and our poverty, God’s power in our sickness and weakness….God’s promise to love and cherish…’til we are “Facia a facia” - face to face.
This year, Jack & I will be celebrating “55 years of Mawage”…. we still remember the glorious, head-spinning, rapturous part, the poets write about…and it did seem kinda’ easy there, for a while! But emotions are susceptible to road-wear,…disappointments led to disillusion, children came along and a long, ‘til a slow exhaustion sets in, we were pretty poor and life was a scrabble…our “intention” was always to grow, but what energy we had, went into survival; and a marriage w/o “reflection & “maintenance!” by mid-life, can slip into “resignation”…and during that time, our busy “ministry-life” became a convenient “substitute” for working on our own stuff! All this is hard to admit, but neglect of a relationship comes pretty easy....without some work, you just float downstream.
Which is why the word “marriage” has held my attention these weeks.... because, we’ve been working hard on that! AND now, even more, I see the root of this message is that God is calling me, to God’s own self, to renew this “sacrament” with my maker...and ask: how am I doing? AM I living in resurrection or resignation with God?
Recently, I was digging through a stash of family history under the guest bed, and found a box…I opened it and spent most of the afternoon reading my Aunt Dot’s letters to Uncle Ted who was serving in the Philippines, during WWII. They were just married, and those letters were filled with young love and sweetness, pledges of fidelity and longing. They wrote hundreds of love letters that crossed each other over the Pacific, because their desire was to stay connected during those hard years of separation...all of them saved in a treasure box, bundled with ribbons. They were absent from each other but very present to this sacrament of commitment.
Awhile back Jack was counseling a couple in their splintering marriage. He came across this paragraph from Joseph Campbell and shared with the couple…and afterwards with me...cause like I said, we are working our marriage too!
A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But “marriage” is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you’re giving, you’re not giving to the other person: you’re giving to the “relationship!” And if you realize you are “in the relationship,” just as the other person is, then it becomes life-building, a life fostering and enriching experience, not an “impoverishment"….
-Joseph Campbell
It’s more like a joint bank account…you both contribute to and draw upon. This is the challenge of a marriage."
Any “untended” relationship can grow stale. So taking ownership of what seems my very small part of this covenant with God, is crucial. God is not going to lose track of me, but I can lose sight of God…of that sweet mystery of Presence. The covenant I entered long ago, to love and follow after God, can feel just as full of indifference and anger, and resignation as my own marriage because, let’s face it! sometimes God does feel absent, missing in action, ….and I have struggled with this these last hard months of losing Rebekah. Because there was a proposal, and I said YES, I WILL....trust YOU, even when I feel God’s absence, I WILL show mercy, as I am shown mercy, to forgive - as I am forgiven…I will try to be Light, even (and especially), in the darkness. I will try to grow and to not give up on this relationship…and also not give up on your Church….your whole, big, messy, embarrassing Church!
When I cannot discern or sense God anywhere…I WILL remember....this is the “Mystery” I fell in love with! What I see is not all there is. I can barely make out the whole arc of my story, much more fathom God’s meta-story from the “vantage point” of my 5’ 2” frame!
So Isaiah’s plea’s…. are a reminder that the God of the Universe is asking us to review our sacrament…renew our vows! Just Last week, Sara sprinkled us with water…we recited and renewed our Baptismal vows, the water that cleansed us, that water that has been poured into us as God’s vessels, is constantly changing us – just as it was changed into “wine” at Christ’s bidding at the wedding party in Cana…. because he is calling us “married;” the “Bride of Christ,” we have fallen into the strangest courtship ever!
And last, I can’t help but notice the CONTEXT of Isaiah 62. This relationship is trying to be restored, during a time of great testing, of fear, and loss....of EXILE..
Perhaps some of us are feeling this right now, like “exiles”– in our own land, facing huge unknowns, condemned to be under a strange and dangerous “King.” There is a feeling of abandonment, rumors of wars, the safety of the poor, the weak, the sick, those at risks from hate and prejudice, not to mention environmental collapse! Can we lean in and listen for God, “Be not afraid, I am with you..in this darkness. You are my Beloved…my delight is in you!” I am is keeping watch! So, I close with our poem from Hafiz:
In the morning
When I began to wake,
It happened again—
That feeling
That you, Beloved,
Had stood over me all night
Keeping watch,
That feeling
That as soon as I began to stir
You put Your lips on my forehead
And lit a Holy Lamp
Inside my heart.
Amen.
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