In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Caleb and Failenn, family and friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Savior Jesus Christ, and the joy of the Holy Spirit be yours today and every day. What a joyous day! I am as confident as I can be that this is a once-in-your-lifetime opportunity, which is what everyone wants—once-in-a-lifetime wedding, a perfect day, nothing goes wrong, everything is right and good and exactly as you planned it to be.

            It is common advice before a wedding—I’ve given it myself—to take everything in stride, not get too stressed out, if not everything goes as planned. Things happen. Breathe. Let things go as they will. At my own wedding reception, I had one of those multiple-cd players, and I had spent more than a few hours programming that thing to play exactly the songs I wanted. And then someone moved the stereo and all the cds fell out of their slots, and so I had to pick one song to play during our slide show. It should have been a romantic song, but after it had played three or four times in a row, it began to take on more of a…funeral slide-show feel, like we were watching the end of a life’s pictures, rather than the beginning! But that’s how it goes.

            That’s how it goes sometimes at weddings, that’s how it goes in life, and that’s how it goes with marriage. The Gospel reading from Matthew 19 picks up in the middle of a conversation between the Pharisees and Jesus. But it’s not a conversation you want to hear at a wedding, because it’s a conversation about divorce. The fact is, we don’t get to start at the very beginning, when everything was perfect and nice and nothing gets messed up. As happy and perfect as today might be—God grant it!—this is not Eden. We live in the kind of world where the question the Pharisees ask isn’t about marriage, but about divorce. We come into a world that is already messed up, as people who are already messed up. And messed-up people in a messed-up world living together in the same house is not a recipe for the success of living together until death parts you!

            The Pharisees start at the wrong end, where we all tend to start: with what’s gone wrong, and how much we can get away with. How much do I need to give? How much before I get what I deserve? How can I be satisfied and happy and content, and how can this other person help me in my pursuit of self-fulfillment? But Jesus goes back to the beginning, to creation, to when God created the first man and the first woman for each other, and for that reason, ever since, a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are no longer two, but one flesh. That’s God’s good design, which you are seeking for yourselves and for your life together. In your love for each other, you have chosen to be here today, entering this one-flesh life together.

            That free choice is about as far as anyone usually gets when it comes to marriage. We love each other, and despite all rational evidence that it is a huge risk, and often a disaster, people keep getting married! People think that their current desire for each other will overcome all the odds. We are different. There are very few people, I think, who enter marriage expecting to get divorced. And yet, when their desire runs out, the feeling they mistakenly call “love,” they make other choices and go looking for another person with whom they can keep those good feelings going.

            But for you, a son of Adam and a daughter of Eve, who are, even more, the children of God in Jesus Christ, there is more than just your free choice to get married to each other. There is, above and behind that, the work of God by which He joins you together and makes you one flesh. And this makes all the difference. Certainly, people who do not believe Jesus often stay married for a long time, or even until death parts them. But you know why you might. Your love brought you to this wedding, but the love of God in the Body of Jesus is what will make your marriage. Your love has sustained you to this point but, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in a wedding sermon for his niece, from now on, it will be your marriage that will sustain your love. People think that the freedom by which humans enter and leave romantic relationships with each other is the essence of love and marriage. But it is the blessing of God in His Word, by which He joins husbands and wives to each other for life, that is the true essence and meaning of love, marriage, and life.

            So St. Paul can spend time talking about the love and service, the submission and the sacrifice, that belong to the relationship between husbands and wives. But at the end of that, he says, what I’m really talking about is not the mystery of marriage, but the mystery of Christ and the Church. And that’s the conclusion of the marriage story that He began in the Garden: Christ, the Bridegroom, whose side was opened on the cross to make a new and pure Bride, the Church, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh, so that you each, you together, and all people might be joined to the Body of Jesus as one flesh. And nothing in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, to whom He has joined you both in Holy Baptism. That is a foundation for a lasting, life-long marriage. Because you have each been forgiven all your many sins by God in Christ, you know that you also must forgive the other. Because your identity is in Christ, above all, you can freely give yourself to the other. Because God did not just love you with nice feelings as long as you lived up to His expectations, you can love each other unconditionally with a love that flows from Jesus Himself. His baptismal grace and Spirit will sustain you through every difficulty. His absolution will continue to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. His body and blood will continue to bind you to Him, as you kneel together before His altar.

            We’re not in Eden anymore! But your house together can be a pleasant garden of the truth of Christian love, of learning how to love the one who is not like you, who brings sins and insecurities and burdens different from your own. Because God has joins you together at this moment of your choice for each other, there will be glimpses of paradise for the sake of children God may grant you, for the community in which you find your place, and for the sake of the world, which so badly needs to see an image of Christ and the Church in the midst of its messes and hollow desires. God grant it, according to His creation blessing for this life and according to His eternal blessing for the life to come. Caleb and Failenn, what a joy to be here with you today! God continuously grant His blessing in Christ to you, whatever may come.           

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 11/18/25