Tag Archives: wedding

The Wedding of Caleb Abshire and Failenn O’Donnell

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

The Wedding of Nolan Charlton and Beka Brigleb

“Old and New”

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

Marriage is the oldest story in the world, and it’s the newest story. It’s the oldest story in the world, after creation itself. The very first relationship between two people in God’s good creation is what we call marriage, and what Adam called, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Adam had been all day at the naming of the animals, seeing a whole series of animals with male and female paraded in front of him. But none of them was his pair, none of them was his fulfillment, none of them was his complement. Even in God’s good creation, it was not good that the man should be alone, singular, a sort of human island in the mass of creatures. So while Adam slept—while Adam did nothing—God did everything, and made another to fit side-by-side with Adam. This is the oldest human story, and it has continued throughout every culture, every country, every nation, every people. Jesus took this story of the creation of Adam and Eve and said, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh; He said, whatever else human sinners do with marriage, this is how God created it.

And sinners have done quite a lot with marriage. Some do the sinning, some are the sinned-against, but none of us is innocent. None of us is untouched. All of our hearts are hard or hardening, which is why Jesus said that Moses allowed Israelites to give each other certificates of divorce. Eve may have come from Adam’s side, but very often what separates husbands and wives seems more powerful than anything that joins them together. I say all of this not to bring you down on this day, but to make sure you know what you’re getting into (and from our conversations, I think you do). But even with all the pressure on marriages from within and without, even with all of the attempts to tear apart what God has joined together, the Lord didn’t just let that old story go on, returning to the same broken tune like a damaged record. The eternal Son of God entered flesh, and the very first public sign that He did after His baptism was a blessing spoken over a wedding. The wedding was good, but it wasn’t good enough. They ran out of wine, and Mary seems to hint that Jesus should do something about it. It is not yet the time for Jesus to do His most important work on the cross, but nevertheless, He makes more wine than all the people at the wedding could ever drink. So while the people were running on empty and drunk on the Lord’s gifts, the Lord began to write a new story, His work of new creation: an unending feast for the people of God, whatever sinners might do with it. Even so, John says, His disciples believed in Him when they saw the sign.

And so it is that God continues to make old things new. He continues to bless men and women with wives and husbands. He keeps doing it in spite of us; while we are looking for ways to satisfy our own selfish desires, He blesses us with someone to turn our eyes away from ourselves. He blesses you, Nolan, with Beka; and you, Beka, with Nolan. And it is not just to make you happy, although marriage certainly does that. It’s not just to complete you, so that either of you can say of the other, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Those things are true, and they happen. But just as the wine wasn’t the main point of Jesus’ work in Cana, so there is something deeper at work in your lives than what most people think about when they consider marriage. There is a great mystery here, St. Paul says, so that marriage becomes a sign of God’s action in the world. This is what Paul means when he talks about husbands loving their wives as Christ loves the Church and wives submitting to their husbands as the Church submits to Christ. Do sinners mess this up? Do husbands sometimes abuse the responsibility that God gives? Yes. Do wives sometimes refuse to accept the gift that God gives in their husbands as head? Yes. Will you fail Beka? Will you fail Nolan? Without a doubt. But that’s why this mystery is not so much about marriage as it is about Christ and the Church. Because as even while we refused to submit to God, Christ loved us with an everlasting love. Husbands cannot save their wives, but Christ has saved His Bride. Husbands can’t make their wives holy, but Christ gave Himself to make His Bride holy. Wives ought to respect their husbands, and husbands ought to love their wives, but in the midst of the mess that sinners make of marriage, you are both together part of the Bride of Christ, and He has joined Himself to you in an unbreakable bond that no one can ever put asunder. And while death may part you from each other for a while, not even death can separate you both from the love of God that is Christ Jesus our Lord.

The old story of marriage in a perfect creation was always meant to point toward the new and eternal story of Christ’s marriage to the Church. In that marriage, too, the Bride and the Groom give each other everything that once belonged to each of them alone: the Church gives Christ all her sin, and Christ gives the Church all His holiness and a life that does not end in death. In your life together, Nolan and Beka, you will have the opportunity to exercise the promise of Christ as a sign to this world. You will sin against each other, but because you have all the forgiveness of Christ, you have more than enough to share with each other. You will question whether your vows can hold, but because Christ never breaks His promise, you can hold fast to each other in the hope of His mercy in your life. You will be tested and tempted and sometimes it will seem like it’s just too much. In those times, take refuge in Jesus, who loved the Church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, having cleansed her in Holy Baptism so that He might present the Church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. In that promise, in that grace, in that Man, the story of your marriage will be new every day, and finally, you will both be made new forever.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 7/23/14