It is always a major achievement when an entire family gathers together, more so when there are two. This past weekend's wedding was no exception. Robert, my seventy-five year old father-in-law, married Myrtle - two or three years his junior. Both had previously enjoyed long and happy marriages to spouses who had died too young. Such happiness, they concluded, deserves some kind of an encore. Besides, they have fallen in love.
All seven children made it (two preachers, a masterplumber, a country music star, a teacher, a presidential advisor, a financial consultant) - bringing their six spouses and all eleven grandchildren. Every one of Bob and Myrt's siblings showed up, plus various and sundry cousins and a church full of people who simply love the happy couple.
The two preacher children did the honors. "Do you, Dad, take Myrtle...; Myrt, do you promise to love and cherish this man - my dad...." that kind of thing. Rebekah quipped that she didn't know what to say to folk who had 87 successfully married years between them - until she realized that the children were actually more experienced at a combined 93 and counting.
Like all good unions, this one is established in faith and commitment. That is why it is called the "covenant" of marriage, even when you start in your seventies. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that "from now on in it not your love that sustains your marriage, but your marriage that will sustain your love." People must choose to keep their solemn vows, and there is deep power in purposeful promise both conceived in love and grounded in faith.
Like all covenants, though, Bob and Myrt's must be nurtured through deliberate action. Covenant is not a passive concept. That is why it is so important for all of us to surround ourselves with both encouragement and accountability. We need each other, which is why the word "covenant" goes so well with "community," because we were not created to live in isolation.
It does not matter how strong we believe we are, or how perfect we think our marriage is - fact is: we all need each other. Community is one of the things that helps weave the moral fabric of society. Indeed, it is the lack of covenant community that has contributed to so much of our public decline - the misalignment of values, and the isolation of families who flounder with no sense of a world beyond themselves.
When families struggle today, society offers them new debt, easy lawsuits, or quick divorce! Rather than encourage a commitment to responsibility, we admit defeat and then try to cash in on their troubles. What kind of a community is that?
There is another way, and that is the way affirmed so eloquently at Bob and Myrt's happy wedding. The New Testament writer Paul put is like this in his letter to his friends in the Greek town of Thessolonika. "Live in peace with each other; Encourage the timid; Help the weak; Be patient with everyone; Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong; Always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else; Be joyful always; Pray continually; Give thanks in all circumstances; Hold on to what is good." (Chapter 5)
