Wedding Homily for Shane & Liz's Wedding

This was my "inaugural address" at Shane and Liz's wedding! I thought it would make an excellent blog post!

It is a great honor to be here today to deliver God’s message here at Shane and Liz’s wedding. For those who don’t me, I was Shane’s roommate throughout college. We were very good roommates for each other in terms of our cleanliness.

Actually Shane’s dad and I were reminiscing of Shane and my days at Gordon the other day and he remembered one time freshman year when he walked into our room and saw a carpet of clothes about 2 feet deep from wall to wall. My wife Bethany said, “Well Peter is still the same way.” I guess we will have to wait to see if Shane will also improve his laundry skills by being married.

Shane and Liz actually told me about a week and half ago that I would be speaking at their wedding. My wife commented that it wasn’t a whole lot of time to prepare. Then she thought for a moment and said, “Well even if he had given you a whole year to prepare Shane should know by now, from being your roommate that you wouldn’t start preparing until 4am on that day anyway. This was often the custom for my studies in college with my desk light shining on my roommate’s face unintentionally waking him. Shane certainly knew this custom, and now my wife has also experienced it from time to time.

So Liz, I wish you all the best in getting to know all of Shane’s fascinating roommate habits.

The scriptures that I want to look at today are the verses we just read in Matthew 5. This section of text is called “the beatitudes.” The name comes from the Latin meaning “blessed.” This word “blessed” that is given to each person is a hard word to translate. “Blessed” is really an obscure word in our culture today, we don’t really use it unless someone sneezes. So some translators use the word “happy” but this also is a hard translation to work with because happiness is so subjective in our culture. I think a good translation for each one of these “blesseds” would be “eternally hopeful and joyful” are these people because of the kingdom of God. One scholar has called these beatitudes “sacred paradoxes” meaning that they point to both present realities and future vindication when The Kingdom of God is finally fully established.

This is a hard concept to understand. However, we can find a very great parallel in the meaning of these verses to the marriage that we celebrate today. In the days before Bethany and I got married we pondered when would be the exact moment in time when we would be officially married.

Was it when we said “I do?” Was it our first kiss as a “married” couple? Was it when the pastor declared us husband and wife? Or perhaps like in Lord of the Rings at the very instant when Frodo puts the ring on his finger he turns invisible, we were married right when we put the rings on fingers. Or was it simply when we signed the paper saying we were married.

A case could probably be made for each of these symbolic acts. But in the ancient world, the real moment of a marriage is when the couple would be alone for the first time and “become one flesh” as it says in the book of Genesis. Now if you need clarification on what this means come talk to me at the reception….

Actually it’s from this tradition where we get the term to “consummate a marriage.”

We can speak of in this way. A marriage is inaugurated during the ceremony but it is not consummated until the wedding night. Our beloved couple will experience this today…All through the reception they will be already married, they will already have the rings, already have said “I do,” already have been announced, already signed their marriage papers…but not yet will they have experienced the fullness of the consummation of their marriage.

This is the great parallel to the passage of scripture we read today. Actually we see this parallel all over the New Testament. Scholars actually refer to this as the “already/not yet” tension. What they mean by this is that Jesus Christ has already come to earth, already dealt with the powers of sin and evil. With Christ’s ministry, death, and resurrection the Kingdom of God has already been enacted on the earth. But not yet has it been fully consummated. We are still waiting for the final day when God will fix everything that is wrong in the world. And so Christians today live in the overlap between two ages. The age of fallenness and sin, and the age of the final victory of God.

So to elaborate on some of these beatitudes: blessed (or eternally joyful) are the poor, now, even though they are poor, now, because they will be vindicated in the consummation of the Kingdom of God.

Eternally joyful are those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God to finally be demonstrated over the world, for they will be satisfied in the consummation of the Kingdom of God.

Eternally joyful are the peacemakers, those who bring about the reign of God, for they will be called sons of God in the consummation of the Kingdom.

Eternally joyful are those who are persecuted for the righteousness of God they do. for they will be vindicated in the consummation of the Kingdom.

Jesus here paints a very beautiful picture of what the consummation of the Kingdom of God will look like for all who are a part of that kingdom. If anyone here today has not entered into this kingdom, the great message of the whole New Testament is that while we were still sinners, Christ died for our sins. If you believe this and live life accordingly, you can enter into this great kingdom and have access to God.

And now to Shane and Liz, who will soon experience the joy of a consummated marriage, the beatitudes also provide for us an ethic for those living within this Kingdom of God. They all deal with how people relate to God, and how people relate to others. This mirrors what Jesus says are the 2 greatest commandments, summarized as love God, and love others.

“Love.” It is another word we have real trouble with in culture. I love Chinese food, but I would never die for Chinese food. The night before Jesus was crucified he told his disciples.

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jn 15:13

This is not only for Shane and Liz but for myself, my wife, and any other married person here. You may not ever need to die physically for the one you love. But everyday you should be self-sacrificing, emulating Christ’s actions for us, and thus helping to issue fourth the coming consummation of the Kingdom of God.

Shane and Liz, I wish you long years filled with health and prosperity, as members of this Kingdom

Yes, many people inquired of my knowledge at the reception!

Yes, I Have a Blog! And Here's Why...

I wonder how many blogs actually start like this: "Well, I have finally decided to start a blog..." I know of at least one. Alas, here also am I; starting a blog which I hope will be very fruitful and help me to accomplish certain objectives and goals that I (and I believe God) have for my life. My wife Bethany told me this morning that there is nothing like the need to study, that motivates me to do other things. My blog has actually been created now for about a week, but because of a class that I am taking right now, I haven't had the chance to get the first post up. Since my exam for the class is quickly approaching, I decided that now would be the perfect time to get my initial thoughts about my new blog onto my new blog.

I think that the true purpose of this blog is yet to be seen and will be discovered as time goes on. At the outset, my ambitions for this literary endeavor are both simple yet profound. One of the main reasons I have created this blog is to give potential employers a place where they can see what I am all about. Because of my desired career path, I think that the blog will naturally take on some other qualities (yet to be seen). I want this to be a venue where authentic theological discussion can take place. I don't like how there can be a divide between one's "faith journey," and "real life." Therefore, this forum is not going to be limited to being a "Christian" blog, though most everything will have a certain perspective. This is ok to acknowledge. A perfect way to introduce the title of my blog.

"Greater Things" came to me as an idea for the blogs title when I was brainstorming some different ideas. I settled on this as a title because I saw great potential in these words for what I wanted to accomplish by creating a blog in the first place. For those who don't recognize the phrase it comes from John 14:12. I would very much like to look at more in depth exegesis for this passage in the future. But put simply, Jesus said his followers would do bigger and better things than he did. Another main purpose of this blog will be to explore what this means for daily life today in 2009. This is why this will be a free forum blog, not just limited to the things of theological discourse. This is why I have links like Get Rich Slowly posted to my blog (more on this later). It is always my goal in life to engage the world in which I live with my faith. I try to live out the two slogans that were used frequently at Gordon College "freedom within a framework of faith" and "faith seeking understanding."

So as my first post comes to a completion, I wait with eager anticipation to see what greater things can be accomplished, both on this blog and in real life. I invite anyone and everyone to engage with me in this endeavor as we pursue greater things.