The wedding sermon is a golden opportunity to preach the gospel to people who may not normally attend worship. For this reason alone it is imperative to use a tone that gives the gracious imperatives of the gospel in a warm and inviting way to which a congregation can legitimately respond. The preacher will initially have to decide: who is the primary audience? Is the preacher preaching to the whole world, the congregation, family and friends, or strictly to the couple? I often suggest at the opening of the wedding homily that I am speaking primarily to the couple entering the marriage covenant. However, I invite any others who might be interested to listen as well. This technique invites others to eavesdrop or, as Fred Craddock calls it, "overhear" the gospel. At the same time it places the focus squarely on the couple - where, in my judgment, it should be.

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Thus, the tone of the sermon might be one that is both loving and challenging. No one present fails to understand the risk of making lifelong promises - especially in our culture of provisional contracts and our tendency to deconstruct everything, sacred or not. We speak of love out of the context of God's loving-kindness for God's people. We create a sense of God's purpose through the creating of new families.

Augustine once said something to the effect that "Every family is a little church." For this reason when we create a new family through marriage, or for those with a higher theology of marriage, when God creates a new family, then God creates a new family in the divine image and in divine love. As the epistle of Ephesians reads, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh" (5:31).

When people enter the marriage covenant, God is always the silent third party. Thus, we not only celebrate the marriage covenant, we also hold it up and challenge the couple to remember that they, too, are part of God's marvelous creation. The preacher's tone, therefore, expands the hospitality of God into the marriage. Not only this, but the preacher also invites the couple into the hospitality of God's gracious creation. The tone of a wedding homily holds out the hope of encouraging covenant faithfulness, while at the same time pledging the community of faith's supportive role in the marriage. Is this not why we celebrate marriage in the church - the body of Christ?

A Great Cloud of Witnesses

Clearly we need to sound a pastoral note - but now here is a word about creativity. We live in a culture where everything must be new and shiny. People look upon five-year-old cars with askance. We are the lovers of the new. This cultural tendency will tempt, or dare we say, seduce, those who marry to be novel and original.

Sometimes I encounter couples that say things like, "We don't want anyone to ever forget our wedding." However, the most memorable weddings are distinguished, in my experience, by things most of the participants would rather forget than remember. The memorable wedding event may have been an overly intoxicated groomsman (read here: He is "filled with new wine" [Acts 2:13]), a child who decided to sing during the ceremony, or even, e-gad, the clergyperson forgetting the bride's name. These may be memorable events, but not in the way the couple intended. For this reason, pastoral care for the wedded couple becomes important to their own understanding of both the wedding and, more significantly, for the subsequent marriage.