Monday 3 December 2018

A Wedding Sermon on Soul Mates


Readings from Richard Bach, A Bride Across Forever and 1 Corinthians 13.

M and F, my research leave meant that I got to know you less well than I would have liked. Please accept my apologies in advance if I’ve got the wrong impression of you.
F – I think of you as in charge of the picture-perfect wedding. I relate to that. Not because I made sure that ours was a picture-perfect wedding. I didn’t. I won’t say more about that. It’s been over 25 years ago and I have been forgiven. But I am a perfectionist. I want things to be just right. Being a perfectionist has its good uses but it can be a real threat to any relationship. Love is patient, love is kind... it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
M – I see you as a man of patience and peace. I suspect that you don’t get easily upset; you’re prepared to give way. I can relate to that. People often see me as a man of patience and peace. But in my case the appearance does not always match the reality. And I sometimes forget that peace is an active thing. It’s not sitting back, avoiding confrontation. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. It is an active force.
True, patient, persevering love is what makes a marriage perfect. How do you find true love? Now, you may well think that is an odd question to ask on a wedding day. You have found your true love!
On the first of December my true love gave to me
seven bridesmaids, six usherers, five flower girls – two page boys,
two best men each with a ring to bring
and a still and a rolling camera.
If that’s not true love...
Seriously. Our first reading gave us a glimpse of what true love should give us:
keys to fill our locks.
When we feel safe enough to open the locks,
 our truest selves step out
and we can be completely and honestly who we are;
we can be loved for who we are
and not for who we’re pretending to be.
This is the enchanting part of the story that Dick Bach tells. The Bridge Across Forever: (subtitled: A Love Story) was published in 1984 and is based on his real-life relationship with actor Leslie Parrish whom he had married a few years before that. The couple were also the main characters of his next book, One: A Novel, published in 88. In the late 90s they divorced.
Fans were devastated to discover that this match made in heaven didn't manage to stick. But maybe they should not have been surprised. In 1970 Bach had divorced from his first wife – with whom he had six children which he abandoned along with his wife – on the grounds that he did not believe in marriage.
After his break-up with Leslie Parrish, he explained that lovers don't have to stay married forever in order to be lifetime soul mates.
I don’t know whether Bach thought of his third wife as another soul mate or whether it was a case of “Look, you’re not my soul mate – that’s wife number two – but you’re the one with whom I want to spend my old age.”
Bach didn’t just have a wrong idea about marriage. He also had the wrong idea about soul mates. So let me tell you the truth – as my wedding present to you. In a nutshell: You don’t find a soul mate. You become a soul mate.
If you fall for that lie that soul mates is about finding the perfect fit for you, there is a very high risk that further down the road you end up discovering that you have married the wrong person and that your real soul mate is this new colleague at work or this old school friend with whom you have reconnected. And of course that won’t be true either.
You don’t find a soul mate. You become a soul mate. It is a vocation; it is a commitment; it is something you need to work on day after day and year after year.
Love ... does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. Love is becoming a safe space for someone else:
When we feel safe enough to open the locks,
 our truest selves step out
and we can be completely and honestly who we are;
we can be loved for who we are
and not for who we’re pretending to be.
This is about who we are at the core of our being. Such love will overspill in hospitality. Friends outside your marriage will also be able to be more honestly themselves in your presence if you have love with integrity of the sort that creates that safe space within your marriage.  If you try to create your own little paradise just for yourselves, you’re walking away from love. Love ... is not self-seeking.
But the marriage is a unique, exclusive relation­ship, the place where a man and a woman are fully naked with each other. Shedding your clothes is the easy bit, baring your soul can be a lot harder.
Naked in body and soul we are vulnerable. This is why God tells us that fullest intimacy belongs inside marriage. What difference does marriage make? Marriage is meant to help define that safe space in which you can be truly who you are without getting hurt.
How is marriage meant to do that? Through the vows you make to each other in public. In effect, you commit to being a soul mate. This is the critical point. Being soul mates is not about perfect chemistry between two people, it is not about always being on the same wavelength, about feeling and thinking the same, pursuing the same goals.
Being a soul mate is about commitment.
·         I am there for you – whatever life will throw up.
·         I am for you – whoever you truly are.
I wish someone had told me more clearly when I got married that in ten years time I would be married to a different person.
I am now more than twice the age I was when I got married. The man to whom my wife is married today is not the same who looked at her adoringly in 1992.  And it’s not just the grey hairs...My wife, too, has changed – a great deal.
The thing is, if you believe that today you marry the perfect person, any change in that person is going to be a threat. And if you were to believe that being soul mates is about being perfect for each other, then you may well no longer think of your spouse as a soul mate when they change.
Then the critical question for true love will not be “Is my partner still my soul mate?” but “Am I still a soul mate, a safe space? Do I live by the promises I have made?
Will I actively pursue peace, even when things are not perfect?
Love never fails. This is both a challenge and a promise.
We are not called to be perfectionists, we are called to be perfect. Perfectionists try to make things perfect. But it is not the wedding day that has to be perfect or the time when you have children, it is you who have to be perfect.
Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect, says Jesus in his famous Sermon of the Mount (Matthew 5:48).
What he means is this: that our love must not be limited to those with whom we get on, those who are on our wavelength. Our love, that is our practical action in seeking the good of others, must embrace those from whom we are estranged and those who are hostile to us.
And I’m afraid there are likely occasions in a married life, when this becomes relevant – when your spouse feels like a stranger or even when you perceive them, rightly or wrongly, as hostile towards you. Then you must love. Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).
How do you find true love?
Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Or, as we find it in the Gospel according to Luke (6:36), Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
God alone always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres - his Love never fails. This is why he came to us in Jesus Christ who is ‘The bridge across forever’.
He is the one who loved those who are his so much that he laid down his life for them. He loved us when we were still estranged from him, he loved us after we had messed up He loved us with a love that made us right again and ready to come into God’s presence, the presence of love.
As you grow to maturity in love for another, may you also come to know God’s love for you in ever deeper ways. Amen.