Happy New Year! What joins us here together on this New Year’s Day is to celebrate this great, this momentous day – this special day – and to celebrate this love, this union, this family.
As the psalm we just read together as a congregation says, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the Earth.” I love this: “Let the rivers clap their hands, let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord.”
On such a glorious, bright, sunny, warm day today, with such an amazing gathered community and congregation, how could we be anything but joyful about this day?
First, my thanks to Drew and Lisa, for the invitation to speak — to preach — at this ceremony, and my heartfelt thanks to Reverend Dowling, the vestry, and to the congregation of Trinity Episcopal Church. In preparing for this service it became clear to me how welcoming — how positive — how supportive a church home this has been for Drew, for Lisa, and their family. Thank you, Trinity, for your openness — your witness — to our wider community; for your view that in Christ’s calling, there are no outcasts; for your broad-ranging commitment to justice, including for those who seek healing, who seek a home in a foreign land in a different language, for those who yearn for housing, for those who seek recovery, for those who want a place where they are welcome, in the radical reach of God’s open-hearted love for us all. Thank you, Trinity, for showing what the Gospel can mean in daily practice to our community and our world.
This, today, is a different sort of celebration, on a special sort of day. You know, I’ve never before preached at a ceremony where there are “best persons.” When Drew and Lisa shared with me that their children were to serve as their “best persons,” I just had to smile. How perfect. How fitting. How “Drew and Lisa.”
They challenge conventions in a way that is warm, inclusive, positive and I know it reflects how grateful they are to have the support of their family: those who raised them, those who have loved them, and those in the broader circle of family that they have built together.
In the ceremony, as we have already spoken, Reverend Dowling has asked for the consent and support of all of us — family, witnesses, the congregation. I know that in this case, more than most, your shouted affirmation reflects the constant encouragement, love, and support of this community — this congregation — that has helped to build and sustain their love and their life together.
Let me, if I can, for a moment, reflect on the Scripture passages this remarkable couple has chosen to be a part of this historic ceremony. Reaching back into one of the great prophets in Micah, we are reminded of their great commitment to justice — to a vision of a world where swords will be hammered into plowshares, where spears are turned into pruning hooks, where all will sit under their own vines and fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid. In their personal and professional lives together, Drew and Lisa have taken this ancient part of Scripture and turned it into an animated commitment to justice, to challenging those things in our world that are, and to instead calling us to work towards those things that should be.
Psalm 98, with which we opened this celebration, called us in its very first words, to “sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things.” Today, we do indeed sing a new song rooted in an ancient tune, for today in this civil union and this coming together in celebration — in this sanctification and this recognition — we take a variation from the ancient tune of love between two people.
In their choice of Colossians and Luke, for the epistle and the Gospel, I can add but little, but urge us to go through them and reflect for a moment about the messages embedded in these remarkable passages. First, in Colossians: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” What great advice, not just for a couple on their day of wedding together, but for all of us.
Back to Paul’s ancient writings, back to the epistle, this most simple, central message is a great reminder to us of how this couple has woven their families together, and how we are all called and challenged to live.
Let me draw your attention to the Gospel reading, as well. For a couple that has had a long journey to this day, for a couple that has, at times, had to endure a culture that, in some places, has not respected them, has not regarded them, has not lifted them up as you have, they chose a Gospel that essentially says this: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.” The generosity of spirit, the kindness, the open-heartedness with which they chose that as their central Scripture from the Gospel, resonates, I think, with all of us who know them, of their tireless commitment to kindness, matched with an equally fearless insistence on justice.
Rarely have I known two people whose hearts have been so entwined in balance and so willing to witness to the broader world from their own experience informed by grace.
Let me, last, reflect on this. All three of us are lawyers — a confession that may not surprise any of you. And as such, we have spent most of our adult lives wrestling with the law. Working with the law. Trying to change it, challenge it, interpreting it, writing it. To those who would, in my view, misinterpret the law in a spiritual, Scriptural context, to prohibit this union, I would point them to one last passage, if I might. At a moment in the Gospel, when Christ is being challenged unsuccessfully by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when they ask Him to do an interpretation on a piece of law that is designed to get Him in trouble, He deftly moves from their trap. This is a passage of Matthew in the 22nd chapter, where after a series of encounters, Christ challenges us and the law.
Let me read, if I might, from Matthew 22. “When the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them — a lawyer — asked Him a question to test Him. Teacher, what commandment of the law is the greatest?” He said, “you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the Prophets.”
Then I say, to those who would miss this most fundamental message — this radical message — of inclusion, of hope, of welcoming, and of love, in the Gospel, in my view, we are called to build the beautiful community in this life not through subtraction, but through addition, not through exclusion, but by inclusion. By listening to that most fundamental relationship. By challenging our definition of neighbor, and by opening our heart to the radical love offered to us.
Today begins a new chapter not only for Drew and for Lisa, but for Delaware. Our state is, today, taking another great and bold step forward. And, in my view, the love we celebrate today, between Lisa and Drew, is no less real and ought to be no less respected in the law, and our community, than the love my wife and I share.
Just as every marriage performed in this church has been, this union is about two people who proudly and passionately love each other celebrating that love and demonstrating their commitment to one another in front of God, their families, their friends, and their community.
Drew and Lisa, my advice to you as a couple is to be patient, be forgiving and be joyful together. To listen to the remarkable Scriptures, which together, you have chosen. To remember to make time for each other in the midst of a life together so given over to making a real difference for others, and for justice in the world.
Unlike many couples on their wedding day, you have already learned the early lessons of life together. You’ve already fought through the adjustments and differences, the disappointments and the forgiveness necessary not just to start, but to sustain a committed relationship, and give it life. And what a remarkable life you have given to it, through your menagerie at your home – a sprawling combination of pets, guinea fowls, peacocks, honeybees and koi. From the remarkable strands of your separate lives, you have woven together a beautiful cloth that is strong and wonderful to behold.
I know in many ways, the past years for you have been hard. And to get to this point, to this day, has been a hard climb, and there remains even more to do ahead so that not just this state, but all states, and not just this state, but this country, recognize, celebrate, empower the love, which we recognize between you two today.
So, just as any climber on a long, hard journey pauses, turns, and gauges their elevation at a moment in the climb, I invite you to also take in the view. Take a moment — I’m not kidding — literally, pause and turn, at the congregation that is assembled here today. Look out, and really, take it all in (while I fumble for my next page!).
This assembled group of witnesses is here today out of real love and support for you, as people, and as a loving, committed couple. Remember our faces. When you have times that are difficult, demanding or just human, when your love goes through the seasons as it inevitably will, remember that just as there is a fall and a winter, there is always a spring. And recall that there is a cheering squad in the hundreds urging you onward, praying for you, supporting you, and celebrating you.
Now look to each other, and realize that you have found in each other what is so rare in this life – someone truly willing to know you, to accept you and to love you – as you are, for who you are – for all the rest of the days of your life.
Earlier, I cited Matthew and suggested that the central message of the Gospel is Christ’s liberating us from merely observing the law, of putting love and justice ahead of narrow literalism. Let me return to that point, if I might, and close. I was friends with a couple for many years who, although they lived together in a committed relationship, chose not to be legally married. The man among them, my neighbor, said, “Why do I need a piece of paper from the government to confirm what we already know, that I love my female partner?” He had that choice.
Today, we recognize that for those who, for many years — too many years — have been denied the choice to affirm their relationship in the law, we recognize, we solemnize, and we celebrate.
Some might say, “it’s just another piece of paper,” as my neighbor long ago did, but just as the Declaration of Independence was “just another piece of paper” — just as the Emancipation Proclamation was “just another piece of paper” — but, in fact, both put to paper the most deeply held hopes and aspirations for a new nation, for a steady journey toward greater justice, so, too, today, your license from the Clerk of the Peace, and your certificate to be signed later today, while they merely reflect on paper the love, the commitment and the lives that you have pledged to build together, they are so much more than “just pieces of paper” – they are solid bricks in the steps to a country where it does get better, where liberty and justice for all, means for all.
Thank you, and God bless you.