On the rare occasions when people ask me to do a reaffirmation of their wedding vows, after some years of marriage, I like that even more than weddings because I know that those people deserve a celebration much more than the so-easily loveable newlyweds.

The man and woman who stood before me recently to reaffirm their marriage of 10 years had literally been through hell together. They and their three children were all in tears of joy because they had made it through, with hope and grace still on their team, and they had too much of an investment in it now to ever turn back. Hallmark didn't even know what to tell the couple celebrating their 70th Anniversary here last year. They were off the charts to make their witness in holding fast to what is good!

The time "after the shouting" is the time of maturity and true testing and best possibilities ... in all relationships. Whatever persons we hold dearest should get the best of us, not the worst.

The wine glass broken in the Jewish wedding originally symbolized the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. It's there in the ceremony as a reminder that if the temple is to be rebuilt, it must happen now in temples of human beings, in our own lives, as we constantly pick up the pieces and make them stronger by letting grace find ways to fit them back together and build each other up again.

Everyone has troubles and some shouting. But may people envy us even our troubles, for how we face them. When Robert Browning whisked his beloved Elizabeth Barrett out of her troubled seclusion into marriage with him he began one of the greatest love stories of all time.

Inspired by the vision of their mature love, begun in the fullness of their years, he wrote: "Grow old along with me!/ The best is yet to be,/ The last of life, for which the first was made./ Our times are in his hand/ Who said, 'A whole I planned.'/ Trust God, see all, nor be afraid." The kind of love Paul calls us to is just this kind, sturdily grown up into the rich harvest of love's labors fulfilled. (Kathy Peterson)

Proper 18 (A)

September 8, 2002

Working It Out

Matthew 18:15-20

Matthew is teaching us today that much more is required in committed relationships than passivity and endurance. He's talking specifically about relationships in the church. But his advice applies to all significant, close relationships. He's showing us that we cannot back away from problems, tiptoe around them or pretend they're not there. We have to deal with them and work them out and in that process there is great possibility for positive growth and change.

This is one of two passages in the Gospels (both in Matthew, cf. 16:18) where the word "church" is used. Jesus had told them to shake the sand of any village that rejected them off of their sandals. Walk away.

But after His death, when His people gathered together in the church, how were they to deal with rejection and trouble makers then? Unrepentant sins against God and other church members could not be left behind in the dust then. The early church had to find a way to deal with this, something that the church has been struggling with ever since, with little attention to the process suggested here.