Karl Bachman generously invited Hawaii organists to a cocktail and pupu reception for my former student Joey Fala and Sarah Jones on their honeymoon!

Back row: Paul Lillie, Guy Merola, Mark Wong, Karl Bachman. Front row: Sarah Jones, Joey Fala, Erin Richardson Severin, Steven Severin (Karl apologized for the lighting!)

 

Sarah’s mom, The Rev. Susan Pendleton Jones, was also kind to send a copy of the homily which she delivered at the wedding—I have a feeling those people who have followed Joey’s career will enjoy reading it! 

What a beautiful day!! Beautiful children! Beautiful weather! A beautiful setting, beautiful music, a beautiful couple. Beauty is what has drawn the two of you together. The beauty of a shared love of music, as well as the beauty of space and design, both of which combine to draw us into the beauty of the Transcendent. And it is God as the source of all beauty and Jesus as Beauty Incarnate that lifts your souls heavenward and brings you to this altar today.

For just a minute, I want you not to look at me– and I don’t even want you to look at each other (you’ll have the rest of your lives to do that, God willing!). I want you to turn around and for the next few minutes, I want you to look out at the people surrounding you. Never again will this same group of people – most of your family and friends – be gathered together. They are here to celebrate the two of you – and I want you to see them and appreciate their presence.

There are people here who have given each of you amazing gifts – the gift of music, both vocally and on the organ and piano – they have been some of your best teachers. There are others here who have shared with you a love of design and architecture, who have fostered in you, creativity and imagination. There are others gathered here who have given you the gift of vacations and time away with family, others with whom you have shared the gift of laughter over the years – even crazy giggling when you were young children – some folks here even babysat for you – all are friends who have shared with you the gift of love and deep friendship. There are also some women here tonight who have been like mothers to both of you, who love you almost as much as Patsy and I do. We give thanks for them all. What a beautiful gathering. Take it in.

Sarah, Joey, you both ARE truly blessed. And the passages of scripture you chose for your wedding today reflect that blessing – both Jesus’s words in the Beatitudes in Matt 5 and Paul’s writings in Romans 12. These passages describe what it means to be blessed, but they don’t stop there. They quickly turn from “being blessed” to what it means to be a blessing – from the passive (what you receive and experience in being blessed) – to the active (how you, then, are to live, in being a blessing to others.) And this is what I hope will shape your marriage. At the very end of the Beatitudes Jesus adds two images to the beautiful words he has spoken about being blessed – the words Salt and Light. These two images represent how we then are to live as a blessing.

SALT doesn’t exist for itself; we would never sit down and eat a bowl of salt! Salt only has purpose in relation to other things – it calls forth, it draws out the good in what it touches. It is a flavor enhancer. One definition of “blessing” is to speak well of, to call forth the good in another person – to draw out the good that is there but might be latent or hidden, even from the other person. That is how Salt represents blessing – it draws out the flavors of the food it touches, calling forth the good in other things. LIGHT is the same. You don’t wake up in the morning, look at the sun and say, “Thank you for rising today!” No, you look at all the things around you that the sun illumines, the beauty of the world, and you give thanks. The sun doesn’t exist for itself. It exists to enhance, warm and illumine the beauty of God’s creation. Light exists to be a blessing – to call forth the good in whatever it touches, whatever it illumines.

We hear very similar echoes in Romans 12 –themes of blessing and goodness. The injunction to “cling” to what is good in the Romans 12 passage has the same root as the Hebrew word in the Genesis 2:24 creation passage that says a “man shall leave his father and mother and cleave (or cling) to his wife.” The deep connection of clinging to what is good is bound to the deep connection of clinging (or cleaving) to one another in marriage. It’s not a smothering or a selfish clinging – it’s a clinging that is devoted to one another in love, as Paul puts it. And ironically, that clinging is primarily outward facing – beyond the two people and toward the world: serving the Lord, sharing with those in need, and practicing hospitality, as the end of this passage reminds us. But immediately Paul warns that it’s not always easy to be hospitable. Here he quotes the beatitudes in Matthew 5 and says “bless those who persecute you” – he wouldn’t say that if it weren’t difficult at times. Then he builds to a crescendo with the command to overcome evil with good. Again these two passages speak to each other: Cling to what is good. Cleave to one another as you practice risk-taking and hospitality, of blessing others through your marriage.

Marriage is soul-tending work. It takes cultivation, patience and great care. Just as Joey spends hour after hour practicing the organ and Sarah works diligently in the garden, weeding, watering, and tending, so, too, you have to cultivate your relationship. Take the time you need to care for your marriage. You are building an institution – an institution whose real purpose is not only to cleave to each other, but to cling to the good – to the world that God has made and called Good. And I think you’ll find as you focus beyond yourselves you discover that in that process you’re actually cultivating your own marriage. One thing Dad and I have learned over our 35 plus years of marriage is that we are at our best when we jointly focus on people and things beyond ourselves – the church, the Divinity School, raising our kids, even designing and building this building together. These have been some our shared projects that have helped build our marriage, in part, because they were a means of reaching out beyond ourselves. 

So I hope you will find those things that are unique for you as a couple – those shared practices and projects that are mutually fun and life-giving, while also being outward facing, blessing others. I can already picture what some of them might be for your new life together – flipping a house, building a habitat house, maybe someday leading a church together, or maybe someday one of your shared projects will have 2 little feet with 10 little toes (you can’t give me the mic and then not expect me to work that in!!).

Given your mutual love of music I would like to close with a story about a concert by the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston. Several months ago, just after the concert ended, when the audience normally would sit in awe, and silence would fill the hall, a 9 year-old little boy was so overwhelmed by the beautiful music he had just heard, that he shouted out into the silence –“Wow”!! This was not only surprising to the other concert goers, but also to Ronan’s grandfather who had taken him to the concert. You see, Ronan is not only autistic, he is also non-verbal. The beauty of music had cracked through the self-enclosed shell that had surrounded this little boy for 9 years. That night, Ronan was overwhelmed by beauty. So today as I stand here in this beautiful place, on this solemn and beautiful occasion, looking at the two of you pledging your life and your love to each other before God and God’s people, there is no more beautiful sight: Wow!!

Susan Pendleton Jones