Renewal of Marriage Vows

Sermon preached at S George's Hanover Square at a mass with renewal of marriage vows on Sunday 14th July 2019

Readings from the Book of Common Prayer for Trinity 4 which can be read here

Romans 8:18-23
Luke 6:36-42

Romans 8:21 The Glorious Liberty of the Children of God

When we got married it was a very long church service. It was not particularly meant to be, it is just that we had a nuptial Mass and lots of hymns, and lots of communicants and to be honest my father who took the service was a bit ponderous in his delivery and it all went on a bit. I was told afterwards that as the service entered its second hour one of the clergy in the congregation was heard to mutter “how long is this going on for?” To which a another priest sitting nearby said, “this Father, is holy matrimony, it lasts a lifetime.!”

It lasts a lifetime. It is a new way of living and being. It is a gift of God in creation which is more than a human institution or a social tradition. It is a gift given not only to those who are married, but to all humanity: learning more about marriage helps all of us, married or not, to learn more of how we are to come to what S Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God.

The Church is the Body of Christ, a diverse community bound together in Christ. Joseph was old and Mary was scandalously young, and they had the oddest marriage that you could imagine. Our Lady had to go when she was pregnant herself to go and support her elderly cousin who was having a baby. When the Lord was 12 his parents appear to have left him to run off with the other kids, in a form of community parenting. In a society where almost all men married Our Lord was celibate; His followers included people in all kinds of relationships: single parents and childless couples, widows and single people, sisters living together, people who wanted to be married but could not be, adulterers, sex workers and people in all sorts of relationships that would make a Victorian moralist’s hair stand on end.

He called them all to share in the glorious liberty of the children of God. Marriage illustrates two aspects of this liberty and how we are to gain it. It is a liberty which is lived out in the flesh; it is a liberty which is found through obedience to Christ.

Lived out in the flesh.

My Father in law walked my bride up the aisle in the suit in which he had married her mother. Showing off! The truth is that we get old and fat and, well, I am not the strapping attractive chap I was in 1995. Though of course my wife has not changed a bit! Keeping an anniversary reminds us somewhat painfully that we are not now what we were; and we are not yet what we will be. And that means we are all a bit divided up.

St Paul points out that we are subjected to the decay of this world. But he says that we are not subjected in despair but in hope, because we look forward to the redemption of our bodies.

Here is a picture of me on my wedding day. I am not now what I was then. In the resurrection all that I have been will be raised and glorified: that happy bridegroom, but also the baby I was before I was even born and the child I became and the youth I was. The young father I became and the middle aged man I am, and the geriatric that in God’s grace I may become. All of them will contribute to the resurrection in which I shall at last be all that I have been and will be, no longer divided but whole and free: the glorious liberty of the children of God.

And this is not just about me, but is about the community. For while we may joke that grey hair is hereditary – we get it from our children - the fact is that we are made, emotionally, spiritually, physically, by our interaction with others.

The physical and the spiritual are one thing, and whatever our state of life this is proclaimed to us, by the wedding vow: a spiritual thing which makes the couple one flesh. Yes this is about sex: Marriage is given, the prayer book teaches us, as a remedy against sin, to be the proper field for sexual relationships. But it is about more than sex: It is about all that sex properly connotes. It is about children brought up with the support and help of loving parents so that society benefits from the support of families. And it is about the mutual society help and comfort that the one should have the other, which flows out into service of the whole community in hospitality, love, welcome and care.

The glorious liberty of the children of God is lived out in the flesh; and it is found through obedience to Christ.

Found through obedience to Christ.

When I was a pastoral assistant I used to visit an elderly lady who showed me one day the picture of her fiancé. He was a Chief Petty Officer, and he was killed driving a landing craft onto one of the beaches on D-Day. She never married, for she was committed, and she remained committed to the end of her life. And while she had that grief, through her obedience it gave her joy, for she had loved and served many and was the best friend of the children in the church – the family she had not gained through marriage, but received in love through Christ’s Body.  There are many ways in which the glorious liberty of the children of God is worked out in the lives of those who love one another.

The Gospel today sets out a pattern for living: with mercy and lack of condemnation; with forgiveness and humble discipleship – for the disciple is not above the maser. Not seeing specks in my neighbour’s eye but trying to remove the plank in my own. Christ has taught us His church is open and welcoming to all – whatever state of life; but that He challenges us all to be obedient to the vow of love which we have taken: some of us in marriage; all of us in commitment to Christ and His way of living.

None of us come up to the fullness of the freedom of the children of God in this world, but we are all called to be a sign of it. For some of us a special grace is given in the sacrament of marriage, through which we are strengthened to live in a particular way in the church and in society. For all who are in Christ, grace is restored and renewed when we all come together and are made one flesh with one another in the flesh of Christ when He comes to us physically in bread and wine to unite us spiritually with the eternal realities of His love: to give us a taste now of the glorious liberty of the children of God.