Tag: material

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Wedding Homily for Parker and Hannah

Parker and Hannah,

You are not entering into an abstract idea or movement today; you are entering into a concrete union as man and woman. There is undoubtedly a mystical union that occurs in matrimony, but I want to focus a bit on the materiality and concreteness of marriage.

God created a material world, and he placed man and woman on top of that material world. But after the Fall, man was seduced by material gods, and built unholy material cities, and served material creatures rather than the Creator. In the Fall, man ate from the wrong Table and thrust his relationships into false alliances around perverted materialism.

As King David says, their tables are stumbling blocks, and their meals lead them to worship at the altar of idols who have mouths but do not speak and eyes but do not see.

Marriage, as Christ taught us, is the concrete/material response to false tables.

On this day, our Lord offers you a tangible table in the presence of your enemies.

Marriage in submission to Messiah Jesus is best served around a true table. The gift of a table is a gift that Christ freely offers you because the Table is the symbol of life and feasting and nourishment, and satisfaction. You will need the gift of the material table because it is there where God will form you through bread, drink, and word.

It is at the Table where the rhetoric of patience and kindness and goodness and self-control are manifested; it is at the Table where life begins with the mercies of God in the morning breakfast and ends with the same mercies at evening dinner; it is at the Table where decisions are made, where eyes meet, and where the Lord is host.

Parker and Hannah, you regain dominion over the material when the Table is restored to its proper place in your home, when it becomes the domain of the good and when the good becomes the domain of the holy.

Eat, drink, and be merry together, for in Christ you shall live.

It is imperative that your Table takes a central place in the formation of your new house, and it should take a prominent place in at least three ways:

First, your Table must become a place for refuge to you and to others. It cannot be a place of material selfishness but a place of material self-giving. The Apostle Paul says, “Seek to show hospitality without grumbling,” which is another way of saying, “Offer your table as unto the Lord.” In the Fall, tables were carved to feed demons, but in Christ, your table will be used to orchestrate feasts of love in your home. Let your Table be a place of refuge to the weary in their thirst, the grieving in their despair, and the lonely in their isolation. Use your Table to bring light to others and honor to God and in doing so, the Table will form you into lovers of truth, and matter will be used rightly in your home.

  • Your Table must become a source of constant renewal for you. Throughout marriage, you will eat thousands and thousands of meals together. You will argue over things; you will disagree over trivial points of art, poetry, and toothpaste. You will find yourselves looking at each in utter amazement at the foolishness of your last argument, and when things get tense, let the baked bread, the glass of wine, the apple pie at your Table be the instruments and the place where you are renewed in the presence of one another and of God himself. Let your Table be a sign that the God who made heaven and earth has restored his material world into good order beginning in your household.
  • Finally, remember that your table, the place which you will bless the weak and feed the hungry, is a material table, not an abstract philosophical table; it must be a table redeemed in every meal, in every expression of words by the God who entered our material world and who received a material body. Christ is the embodied feast of love, the one who offered his body for us so that we may eat around his Table covered by his peace; a peace secured on the materiality of Calvary’s cross.

We live, and move, and have our being in Him, and in him, your Table, Parker and Hannah, will be a benediction to you and it will remind everyone who eats around it, that this marriage is not the fruit of an abstract idea or movement, but the fruit of a concrete union of a faithful man and woman in the sight of God and these witnesses.

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

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Heaven is not a perfect place

Note: It’s not very common to post writings from others on my own blog, but I have done it a few times in the past as a way of revealing my joy in exposing the profound observations of others. Tom is a dear friend, parishioner, and a capable student of the Bible. He took a single thought from a sermon of mine and developed it to something much better than I could have written.

Guest post by Tom Robertson

“…as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” –The Apostle Paul

“Heaven is the blueprint; earth the raw material.” Uri Brito

Uri Brito is the pastor (my pastor) at Providence Church in Pensacola. The quotation above comes from a sermon he preached a few Sundays ago. The Apostle Paul is familiar to you all. His words were written nearly 2000 years ago from an Ephesian prison. I believe Uri’s illustration may be a little unsettling to the average Christian, especially when compared with Paul’s description of Heaven as “gain” and “far better.” Now, no one believes Pastor Brito is talking about mere drawings and measurements. However, he is at a minimum suggesting that Heaven is a kind of starting point and not the finished product. After all, a blueprint is the plan, not the dwelling place. If this is true, then it follows that Heaven is imperfect. And this sounds a bit alarming.

A Place Where No Storm Clouds Rise?

Most of us – at least most of us in “the South” – grew up singing songs that promised we’d leave this world and fly to a place of eternal and undiminished joy. Our understanding was that Earth is toilsome, a place where we must spend “just a few more weary days.” We all thought Heaven to be a place where “no storm clouds rise”, where “joy shall never end”, “no tears ever come again.” Heaven was not a mere temporary lodging. Yet, scripture teaches that Christians will live in a new heavens and a new earth forever and ever. In fact, all things will be made new (Rev 21:5). We ourselves will be made new; our resurrected and glorified bodies will be fit to enjoy a renewed cosmos (Phil 3:21).

So, we will not live forever in Heaven. In fact, Heaven and Earth were never intended to exist forever as separate places. The plan was always for a unity (See Gen 1 and 2, Acts 4:21, Phil 3:20-21, Col 1:20, Rev 21 and 22). At the moment, however, we are in the midst of a cosmos which has undergone what C.S. Lewis described as The Great Divorce. When Adam sinned creation “fell”; Heaven and earth were “torn asunder” with all the resulting pain and consequences of a divorce.

The Coming Unity

It was Ephesians 1:9-10 – “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth” – which occasioned Pastor Brito’s comment “Heaven is the blueprint; earth is the raw materials.” God’s plan, said my Pastor – said the Apostle Paul, no less – is to unite all things in Christ, both in heaven and on earth. It has always been the plan, which is why Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Neither Heaven nor Earth is meant to be alone.

Heaven is Imperfect

Does this mean that heaven is not a pleasant place? Certainly not! Paul’s confession, that to “die is” not only “gain”, but “far better” (Phil 1:21-23), settles that. To be sure, the comfortable accommodations of heaven are preferable to a sin-ravaged world. Yet, Heaven separated from Earth is imperfect – imperfect, but not defective. Neither was Adam defective. Yet, He was not perfect until joined to Eve. Just as it was not good for Adam to be alone, it is not good for Heaven or Earth to be alone. The ink pen resting on the desk is not defective, but when taken in hand, put to paper and employed by a master poet it becomes perfect. Similarly, Heaven will become perfect when it is intertwined with a gloriously liberated Earth.

So, until then, we are to do what we can to “heavenify” earth, so says my Pastor – “Heaven is the blueprint; earth the raw materials.” And if we happen to leave this Earth before Christ speaks into existence a new cosmos, we’ve been told by a reliable source that our temporary accommodations will be quite comfortable. For to depart and be with Christ is “far better” says Paul – far better, but not perfect.