Wedding Homily... Given by John Mark Reynolds
Never Turning Back: The Creation of a New Family
Delivered by Dr. John Mark Reynolds (a close friend of the Bride and Groom)
Thoughts at the 2/25/2006 Prehn-Ellis Wedding
A sign you are getting old is when you can say that you have known the bride and groom since they were children. That is not quite true of our relationship to the bride since we first talked with her when she was a senior in high school, but is essentially true of our relationship with Jimmy. . .first met as a very young and very eager apologetics student. Hope and I have watched Jimmy and Sara mature and grow . . . first in Torrey Honors at Biola University and later as adults. Jimmy in particular has been a good friend in these latter years . . . helping us around our home and in ministry. They stand before us no longer as students or learners, but as peers.
I am proud of both of you and grateful for the honor of speaking to you on this day when you enter the “halls of highest human happiness.”
The wisdom of Sacred Scripture is always unexpected. As I prayed about what to share with you, Scriptures related to the creation of families came to my mind.
First we hear from Genesis 2 about the reaction of the first man on seeing the first woman.
23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman, [k] ‘
for she was taken out of man.”
Moses comments on this reaction.
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
How far does this leaving go? Since later in Genesis we see the importance of the extended family the modern notion that the husband and wife start a totally new, rootless, family cannot be correct. Instead, this message seems addressed to a culture where the opposite problem could be true. It warns that the husband and wife are starting their own offshoot of the husband’s family and that the husband cannot allow his relationship with his mother and father to smother this new planting. He must leave the tent of his father and have his own tent even though it is in the paternal camp.
Jimmy: must not forget your roots even as you grow. You are still a Prehn, but at the same time you are starting a new Prehn off-shoot full of hope and opportunity. You begin anew. . . to paraphrase Anne of Green Gables the page is fresh with no mistakes. Don’t be afraid of the past!
Carry the best of it with you and leave the rest behind in the privacy of your fellowship with Sara. Do not let Sara be overwhelmed by the Prehn-ishness of her new state and never let any prior commitment to father or mother come between you. When choices are to be made, Sara is now your first and greatest love. You will honor your ancestors, but you will love your wife as Christ loved the Church laying down your life for her.
This image of a new family that remains connected to the paternal line in honor, if not in obedience carries beautiful implications for the bride as we can see in the book of Ruth.
15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” 16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
Sometimes it shocks folk to discover that this set of verses frequently used in weddings is addressed from a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. This is not the sort of relationship that we usually imagine with our mothers-in-law! But having lost her husband, Ruth modeled the deeper truth of her new social status and not what was easy and most comfortable. Naomi freed her from her need to stay, but Ruth loved her new family so dearly that she refused to break covenant. As a result she become one of the mothers of our Lord.
Ruth had become part of Naomi’s family when she married her son and this was an honor she did not intend to lose! Today Sara will become a Prehn . . . a change that our culture wisely symbolizes with the change of her name. The implications for both of you are profound.
Sara, you must realize that God will use Jimmy to speak to you. In this present age, the American temptation is always to make our relationship with God wholly private and combined with our pride this is a dangerous thing.
You have entered into a new community and your deep roots, though they come with you, are being transplanted. As the father of two daughters, I know that someday, if God wills it, they will cease to be called by the name of my family and be called by a new name. That is not sad to me, because that is the job of the father of girls. I have raised them to be the Sara for some future Abraham.
Daughters leave father and mother and join their husband’s family. So one family gives its best treasure to another family in the greater Family of God to enrich its line.
That is why it is so necessary that children marry within the Faith. Ruth adopted the “gods” of her new family and fortunately for her the god of her new family was the true God. By staying within the family of God, the bride makes this great change in a smooth and natural way. She moves to a new off shoot of the family of God and does not really leave the deeper communion with her parents. They are transplanted, as you are being today, not ripped up and place in foreign soil.
And in a sense Sara, you are to be the mother of a new people with your husband . . . a symbol of Abraham to you.
Jimmy you cannot earn the love a woman as magnificent as Sara. You can only glory in it and love her. Why are men chosen for this role? You can be sure it is not for merit, but despite it. You have become the spiritual head of a new home not because of your qualifications, but because of grace.
The very arbitrary nature of the Divine choice of men as heads of homes (as it seems to us) prevents any pride or domination. “Why me?” you will often wonder when you are pressed to leave and cleave to Sara. Sometime that will be the “Why me?” of a leader in despair and very often (I promise!) the wonder of a man who feels infinitely lucky! At those times remind yourself that the “Why me?” is a reminder to look to the One who chose you.
Of course no human family is perfect. All of us carry baggage from the mistakes of our parents which we then (too often!) perpetuate as parents ourselves. I am thankful for my own parents and beg the indulgence of my own children. . . Our culture focuses so much on dysfunction that we often forget to thank our parents for the good that they have done. Sara was brought to this lovely place by her parents. Jimmy was nourished by his family more than any other set of individuals on the planet. The good that they have, the truth that they know, and the beauty that they share is in great measure the cumulative gift of generations of Ellis and Prehn family members stretching back into history.
You join together two lines, but more than that you join together as a son of Adam and a daughter of Eve. You are fully human and yet there is the hope and potential for something more.
The marriage service says that “death will part” and that is a wise warning. This new family, this new unit, will not last forever. It has a purpose and that purpose knows an end. The day will come when the shadows will vanish and the types will find their fulfillment. All families will find their end and fulfillment in a greater wedding and in a greater union when every family will give itself, its best treasure, as a Bride to God. We shall all finally leave the cursed stock of Adam fully and be joined to Jesus Christ at last. In that shining moment, the wedding that has taken place here and that unfolds in the years to come will find its fulfillment.
In this wedding, Jimmy and Sara, you have reminded us that some glad day we will stand with you as members of Christ’s church in a spiritual union so mysterious, so beautiful, and so profound that only the joy of your wedding day can imitate it. And there in that moment we will know perfect peace, perfect acceptance into an undying and fully functional family, locked forever in magnificent love with God.
posted by Yours Truly @ 9:13 AM
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