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27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Fr. Chad VanHoose October 7, 2018

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Over the last two weekends I've had the great joy to celebrate two weddings. And in both instances these were weddings of friends of mine from over a decade ago and I've got three more weddings in the hopper before the end of the year. So I think it's safe to say that I've got marriage and L U V,  love on my brain this weekend. And marriage, weddings, these are happy things, these are exciting things that actually inspire us. When we see a man and a woman give themselves in that sacrament of marriage, to give themselves totally to one another, this is an inspiration for us. And in the wedding that I celebrated last weekend two of the readings were read today in our mass. The first reading from Genesis and then the gospel from Mark and these readings speak to a lasting covenantal commitment that we find in marriage. Two become one in a bond that is so strong it can only be broken by death. You see marriage is more than a contract. A contract is this exchange of goods between persons; I give you something, you give me something, we sign on the dotted line, shake hands, we've made a contract. But if I fail in the terms of that contract it's broken pretty easily. Marriage is more than a contract. 
We call marriage a covenant and a covenant is not an exchange of goods but an exchange of persons. A person gives themselves totally in a covenant and they receive the other person totally as well. And covenants are so strong that they can only be broken by death. Civil divorce cannot break the sacramental bond that happens in the covenant of marriage and this is what we hear today in the gospel from our lord Jesus. Now we must acknowledge that many people suffer from civil divorce. Many even in our own church have had very difficult situations. Maybe they were born into a divorced family or they've had a civil divorce themselves and so we must acknowledge that these are very difficult situations and the church is here to help them. The church is here to walk with you if you're in that situation. We want to love you and to be with you, to have that conversation of how we can help with healing. Yet we still must hold to the permanence of marriage. The stakes are too high here to let that go. 
Jesus establishes the sacramental covenant as permanent and this is a beautiful thing. It's a thing to be celebrated, because marriage reveals the identity for which we were made. We hear in Genesis 2 today. “It is not good for the man to be alone.” This speaks to a very deep reality for us brothers and sisters, that we were made for communion. We were made for another. In Genesis 1 we hear a litany of things that are good. When God created the heavens and the Earth He called them good, when He created light and darkness He called them good, when He created kangaroo's and whales and chinchillas and furry creatures He called them good. When He created man and woman He called them good. Yet here in Genesis 2, for the first time in sacred scripture, we hear that something is not good. It says it is not good for the man to be alone. Adam in his original loneliness, that's not good and so we could say in a certain way that Adam was not complete without the woman, without Eve. He needed someone like himself, yet perfectly complementary, to whom he could give his life away. To whom he could make a total gift of himself in that concrete covenantal exchange of persons. Adam needed somebody to love and so God gave him Eve. This woman formed from his rib, formed from his side and marriage them brothers and sisters reveals to us this need that we have for companionship. Yet it reveals an even deeper reality for us that we all experience. There is a deeper loneliness in the human heart that can be satisfied only by a Divine person, only with communion with God. No ordinary human relationship, whether it's a marriage or other relationship can satisfy the deepest longings of a human heart. Our deepest loneliness. And God wants to be so intimately bound to us He actually wants to marry us. 
This is the reality that we hear all throughout scriptures. That God good loves you and God loves me so much He actually wants to marry us, to invite us into this sacred covenant and God won't quit on us. God won’t run away.  He won't abandon us in that covenant. He will be faithful. We hear it all throughout scriptures. He woo’s His people. He wants to invite them into his covenant of love and we were made for this level of commitment, to give our lives back to God. The lives that He gave us, He wants us to give those back in this covenantal way. Yet a commitment like this must be lived in a concrete way.
You see just as a person cannot experience the concept of marriage apart from an actual spouse, we can't experience this covenantal, sacramental bond with our God apart from a concrete commitment with the church. That's why He establishes this church for us. It's a concrete place where we can experience the covenantal love of God. It's lived on this level, on the level of a parish, that here at All Saints you and I experience the love of God. This is the place then we're called to invest our lives, to give our lives over to God. And this investment in a parish actually look like the investment expressed in marriage vows and it may have been a while since you've heard marriage vows, so I wanted to read them to you tonight. And I'll put in my name as if I were making these vows. This is what that investment could look like:
 I father Chad take you all Saints to be my wife. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life. 
This is that commitment that each of us are called into. A commitment to God through His church and it's a total commitment. It takes my body, it takes my mind, my giftedness, my giftedness in the ways that I serve the parish. That’s in there in a total way, even my possessions, even my finances. We give ourselves in a total way to God here through the parish so that we would live this covenant of love. The covenant of marriage is certainly more than a union of checking accounts, but it does include that financial commitment and a promise to be faithful. As we hear in the vows for richer for poorer, there's that level of financial commitment that we give to ourselves in a total gift and this is the level of stewardship that we want to ask you to consider here at All Saints. As we complete our season of discipleship commitment I invite you to commit your life to Jesus in a covenant way. That you would make a total gift of your life, including your checkbook, including every part of you, because when I give my life away I cannot do it with reservation. I can't hold parts of me back. A total gift gives everything in each part. Jesus calls us to give ourselves to Him totally, in order that we would receive and enjoy that fruitfulness of missionary discipleship. So brothers and sisters today in this Mass, as we come before the altar, the place of sacrifice, the place where vows are made, the place of covenants, I invite you to give your life to God and to receive His life in you.

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