It is all too easy for us to perceive the absence of God, and even to feel despair about that absence.
It is all too easy for us, looking at ourselves and the world around us through our post-modern, apocalyptic, existential lenses, to see all that has gone wrong, all that is terrible, all that seems to be pitching everyone over the cliff, dooming everyone to a meaningless death. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,” Jesus tells us today. Well, that part is easy enough: we readily perceive the presence and power of all who can fairly be called “emperor,” and we readily perceive the dreadful imperial damage done to humanity and the earth.
But how do we give to God the things that are God’s, when the very idea of “God” can elude our most basic belief? And even if we could manage to allow for the existence of God, it remains hard to perceive God’s power. It is hard for us to find ourselves not only safely tucked into a cleft in the rock, but placed there by God, so that we might glimpse not God’s face, but just the edge, or the back, or the faintest hint of God’s presence.
The tangible presence of good in the universe eludes us. Why does God hide God’s face from us?, we might ask – we might scream. (If we do scream this, we will only echo several people in the Bible, including Jesus of Nazareth.) But some of us all too easily abandon that question altogether, concluding with ashen resignation that it is not that God hides God’s face from us; it is that there is no God, there is no face of God, there is no glory of God, there is nothing but this wretched world we see and hear, this sorrow-filled world we touch and taste … and that taste is bitter.
If this is where you find yourself today, then I have some Good News for you. Today we can see God’s goodness, if not God’s face; today we can perceive God’s grace, if not God’s tangible presence; today we can glimpse the edge of God’s glory, right here, in this room, in this couple, in their love, in the power and beauty they create as they celebrate the sacrament of Marriage in our midst, supported by our prayers.
Today God tucks all of us in a cleft in the rock, where we can shield our faces from the bright effulgence of God’s glory, and glimpse all the light we can tolerate as these two souls grasp one another and become entwined.
God can be exasperating, dwelling everywhere in a universe pulsing with God’s power, yet always just out of sight, just out of reach. Yet isn’t this what it’s like to interact with Liz? Liz is subtle, quiet, sharp but contained. More than once I’ve texted Liz to get a read on her, to find out her thoughts after a vestry meeting or some other encounter, because Liz has a masterful poker face. And yet Liz is good. Liz is just. Liz is powerful.
Meanwhile, Laurel is perhaps more easily accessible than Liz, but Laurel moves quickly, leaping from one thought to the next, creatively interjecting yet another thought or idea into the discussion, laughing at their own bright insight for a brief maddening moment before they share it with the group. Laurel radiates God’s glory, but in a way that is, in their own distinctive style, also out of reach, just a little beyond our grasp.
Together, this couple is alight with God’s elusive energy, God’s intriguing mystery, God’s enigmatic yet good and nourishing power. And today, right here, in front of all of us, Liz and Laurel will celebrate the sacrament of Marriage.
The sacrament of Marriage: an outward, visible sign of God’s inward, spiritual grace. And there it is again — in the sacraments, God is out of reach, God is just beyond our sight, God is too bright and too overwhelming to be seen full-on; so God must tuck us in the cleft of a rock so that we can ever so hesitatingly turn to the side and glimpse just the edge of God’s glory. This is how sacraments work. This is what Liz and Laurel are up to this morning.
Sacraments: A morsel of bread, not a table laden with splendid foods. A sip of wine, not a giant Jereboam-sized bottle that pops open with fizzy champagne cascading everywhere, filling every glass to the brim. A little splash of water, not a flood or a tide that would drown us beneath its mighty crash. Sacraments are subtle.
The sacrament of Marriage, then, is subtle. The sacrament of Marriage reveals itself slowly. And this makes marriage a perfect fit for the inward genius of Liz and the delicate wit of Laurel. Marriage is not a bonanza of joy unfolding all at once, even though, often enough, we design weddings to pretend to that kind of theatrical grandeur. No, marriage deepens over years, sometimes over the better part of a century. Couples sometimes wake up, look around, and discover that they haven’t really been married, even though they’ve been together for half a lifetime; or sure, of course they’ve been married, but they’re still in the shallower end of a vast pool, with much more to explore together in their work of intimacy, in their labor of love.
But this, I say again, is how all the sacraments work. A morsel of bread and a sip of wine this morning, and next week the same modest repast; and then, decades on, we discover how deeply we have been nourished at this Thanksgiving Table. A splash of water and a dollop of oil, and then, years away, we have yet to climb the high country of our baptismal identity, claiming not just one happy moment of initiation into Christ’s Body, but a lifetime of often-painful incorporation into that Body, our whole lives giving witness to what the mystery of Holy Baptism really means.
Sometimes it takes a century for God’s glory to be revealed. Would the people who prayed in this church one hundred years ago have been able to imagine that this congregation has become a queer space, where the sacrament of Marriage is celebrated by non-binary persons, where women and queer folk are sponsored for the priesthood, and where the community of the baptized that prays here is living out their sacramental identity by taking up the work of anti-racism and reparations? No, I think our forebears long ago would not have been able to imagine all of that, whether it would have delighted them or horrified them.
It takes a long time because sacraments take a long time. And that’s little wonder, because God, the Source of all Being, the One whose grace is mediated to us in the sacraments, God takes all of history to reveal God’s self to all living things, and even on the Last Day, God will not fully submit to our understanding.
So, take your time, as you stand today and witness Liz and Laurel celebrating the sacrament of Marriage. Don’t try to understand it all right now. Some of the sight lines in this room are poor: maybe you’re partially behind a pillar, or someone in front of you is tall; oh well, you can’t see all that’s going on anyway. Neither can I, and I’ll be standing right in front of them!
It will take Liz and Laurel a lifetime to reveal to us — and to themselves — all that this sacrament they celebrate today will mean, all that it will say about God, all that it will do to mend the world, all that it will stand for long after all of us, Liz and Laurel included, have died in the peace of Christ.
Marriage is a novel, not a short story; it’s an ultra-marathon, not a sprint; it’s an epic poem that never ends, but melts into another couple’s sacrament of Marriage, and theirs into another’s, and on and on, blending with the sacramental lives of individuals who are called to ventures other than marriage, blending with the sacramental missions we share as God’s people, until finally we, all of us, including our great great grandchildren, will lift up our heads, look around, and realize that God, the ever-elusive One, the Source of All Being, God has married God’s people, heaven has married earth, and all living things are flourishing beneath the Tree of Life.
On that day all people will sing together an ancient song, a song which we sang this morning, a song that is yet another subtle foretaste of the feast to come. All people will sing, for the umpteenth time, this great song of gladness:
Proclaim the greatness of the Lord our God and worship upon God’s holy hill; for the Lord our God is the Holy One.
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Preached on the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24A), October 22, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington. This liturgy included the marriage of Liz and Laurel Tallent.
Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 99
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22