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.
