As we have seen in recent blog posts, our marriage liturgy is bursting with meaning and significance for this important covenantal relationship. Nestled between the powerful, insightful prayers and the pronouncement of peace, the blessing takes its rightful place in the marriage service. The bride and groom kneel side by side before the altar and under the cross as the officiant prays a powerful prayer and blessing over the couple.
Words fail me as I have tried to write a response to the shootings in Squirrel Hill on Saturday. I want to express deep sorrow for the pain that the families of those who were killed and the whole Jewish community are experiencing during these days of mourning. I want to explain that those of us who follow Jesus renounce the anti-Semitic hatred of the shooter. I want to reach out in some sort of solidarity. All of my words, however, are completely inadequate.
I usually leave a satisfying conference with copious notes and a lengthy to do list. Rarely have I left a conference stunned, challenged, changed. The Call and Response Conference was that kind of conference. The conference planners (including Fr. Esau McCaulley, an Anglican priest) called folks together to explore the past, present and future of the Black Church.
In the opening words of the liturgy for Holy Matrimony, the couple presenting themselves to be married, are each asked to declare their commitment to love one another in these reciprocal words, “will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together out of reverence for Christ in the covenant of Holy Matrimony? Will you love her, honor her, comfort and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?” The man answers, “I will.”
Written by The Rev. Bill & Dana Henry
God loves marriage. How do we know this? Because marriage between a man and a woman was God’s idea and his gift to us, it mirrors the relationship between Christ and the Church, and Jesus gave his first sign, his initial miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Our Anglican service of Holy Matrimony affirms this truth in the opening sentences where we read these familiar and beautiful words.
One of the most important and challenging roles for clergy is the preparation of couples for Christian marriage.
Archbishop Beach asked the Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America to highlight marriage in our dioceses this year. As a way of doing that, I’ve asked a group of folks to reflect on what the marriage rite in our new prayer book teaches us about the covenant couples make on their wedding day.
I grew up in an isolated village in Guatemala. Back then, our mail was brought to us twice a week by a man walking across the Cuchumutanes Mountain range to get to us. Urgent communication came to our door as a telegram, sent by Morse code to the local post office. Personal notes and letters, rare though they were, were treasures of gold, savored and saved. To get medical help of any kind, we had to leave the village and drive a day to the “city,” presuming the one-lane mountain dirt roads were passable and not covered by a landslide.
Late last summer, I wrote to our vestry at Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church, “I have just gotten off the phone with the Rev. Anita Lovell senior pastor of our neighbors around the corner at Mt. Olive Baptist Church. She has invited us to come over to her church for a joint worship service at 10:45 am on October 29. She will lead worship and I will preach.
