My sister is getting married this weekend, and I've been asked to officiate. I thought I'd post this short talk on love.

My Side of This Story

My wife and I have lived in Manchester, England for the past five years so we don't get to see our family very often. However, my sister is one of the social glues which has kept me in touch with folks back home. The combination of her layovers in airport terminals and extra minutes on her cell phone package has meant that I have received a series of random phone calls where we've been able to catch up on family gossip and chat about  life. At some point (I don't recall just when) she mentioned she had been on a date with some guy and it wasn't half bad. Now this is strange. My sister is, how do you put this, extremely picky with men. She's mentioned that she'd been on a few dates before with some great guys on paper, but they got nowhere with her. So I considered it interesting that she was going on a second date with someone.

About a month later, another call and we go through the routine: how's family, what are you reading, any good films lately, and then a name: Roger. Evidently she's been seeing this Roger fellow and is almost impressed with him. Of course that's not enough for my sister though. I get the impression that she's been asking all sorts of gut wrenching questions to try and explode the myth that marriable men still exist. As it turns out, they had been spending long hours talking through their lives, their tastes, their beliefs, their values, their family and medical histories, etc. Another few weeks go by and I get an email with pictures of Roger, with a note something to the effect of, "he doesn't look half bad does he?"  Now I thought, hmm. Is she really interested in this guy or what? I'm getting pictures, but she's still quite hesitant.

Then things changed. I don't know when or how really. I still got random calls from Char, but now there was little talk of family and books. Our conversations had become long monological odes to this Roger fellow. I hadn't realized before then, but all of a sudden the guy wears his underwear outside his trousers. It's not just Roger, its "ROGER," cape flowing in the wind.

I have to admit, this is just my side of the story, distanced by the Atlantic Ocean and my own idiosyncratic way of interpreting Char's phone calls. But to be honest, it tracks pretty well with the Hollywood chick flick doesn't it? Boy meets girl, girl asks lots of persnickety questions, they play hard to get with each other, but eventually they fall in love.

Falling in Love

This term, "fall in love," is quite interesting to me. I half asked Char whether she'd tripped? Did she mean to? Was she looking where she was going? The answer to all these questions was yes. But we still reserve this kind of "falling in love" language for the early stages of a relationship. We're not always "in love" are we? We tend to reserve this "falling in love" language for the precarious part of new relationships. It's exciting, your stomach may be in knots at times, you don't eat, you spend long, late night hours talking about the romantic films and the nature of toast sweat. Socrates talked about this stage of love at one point in his conversation with a fellow named Phaedrus as a kind of disease. It takes hold of you like the flu and, when you think about it, he's kind of right. I often joked with Char about her sickness. But this was a disease she quite liked.

Loving Someone for the Rest of Your Life

So, Roger and Char fell in love. But now they're here with their families committing themselves to each other in marriage. Often when it comes to marriage however, our language about love changes.  In marriage ceremonies we say something to the effect of "I'm going to love you for the rest of my life." When we say we're going to love someone it can easily imply that it's something we have to give. Love is something we can apply to others. We sometimes forget that moment where we tripped to fall in love. We start to assume that the gooey lovey madness is a permanent  state, or at least it should be. It's almost like our language at this point gives the impression that love is something inside us like adrenaline or dopamine. It's a state of the brain or heart. We start to think love is something we own. Love is something we keep and contain to give to others. The relationship is stable, and now love is stable too. I wonder though, if it might make sense to try and reconcile this way of talking about love in marriage, with our earlier language of "falling in love."  I wonder if we think about it for a few minutes if actually, these two loves are the same.

The Mundanity of Marriage

I know we say we are going to love our spouses for the rest of our lives, but what does this really amount to? I want to suggest that what we actually do to express love in marriage is often rather mundane. In any other circumstance it wouldn't have anything to do with love whatsoever.

Love is to take out the trash. It’s to do the dishes. It’s to save the last cookie, with just enough milk for dipping. Love is to roll the toilet paper over instead of under. It’s to lift the toilet seat into its full upright position before take off. It’s to squeeze the toothpaste from the end (or buy a pump). It’s to give a foot rub when your wrists are killing you. It’s to write that little note and post-it on the mirror. "I love you. I think the world of you. You're brilliant, beautiful, true, and my best friend in all the world. I’ll be thinking of you today.Ps. Pick up your frickin' socks before leaving the bedroom."

But all these little mundane acts aren't necessarily love are they? A foot rub from the podiatrist is just another medical bill. When the garbage man picks up the trash it's just public service. We’re thankful for these acts,  but they're not quite love. In dating, you may love someone, but they don’t necessarily love you back. You buy flowers, you write notes, you share a meal together, but you can’t force someone to love you. These acts may be motivated by your own feelings of love, but they don't enact love between two people. That's something different. That's something that we rightly refer to as "falling in love."

What I’d like to suggest is that you can’t force love in marriage either. You can’t just take it for granted that it’s always going to be there. All you can do is create the context where it's easy to trip. Loving someone is like setting a bunch of traps. It’s about tripping each other up and hoping that they’ll fall for you again and again. That's what I think saying you're going to love someone for the rest of your life really means. I'm gonna do all those little things that you, my spouse and partner in life, like to trip over. 

Love Doesn't Change

Personally, I don't think love changes when we get married. Love is always something beyond ourselves. It’s always something we have to fall into. In the end, we have to accept that love is not something we can take hold of.  Love takes hold of us. This is also why we can say love never dies. It's why falling out of love isn't the end of love. All marriages go through rough times. But the bond of love that we speak of in marriage goes beyond the two people bound in that contract. It is precisely because love is something outside ourselves, outside marriage, beyond both people, that it is something that we can fall into again and again.

This understanding of love is deeply related to the way in which the Christian tradition speaks of love. John puts it best in one of his letters to the early church, "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4.8). Notice that John doesn't say that love is God. The direction of the statement is not from us to God, but from God to us. John doesn't want us to confuse that gooey love feeling with God, nor does he want us to associate something within us that we own with God. No, for Christians, we never get to own God. Christian life is about acknowledging the truth that God owns us.

God is eternal and therefore love is eternal. God is true, and therefore love is true. God is good and therefore love is good. God is holy and therefore love is holy. And all this, this love which is eternal, true, good, and holy is something which takes hold of us as we trip on those little mundane acts which we do for each other. Isn’t it amazing that all the little things that we do for each other in all their mundanity and greatness can become something more when we trip over them and fall into love? Isn't it amazing that this happens to us whether our relationship is six months or sixty years old?

Keep Tripping Each Other Up 

Marriage can be mundane, and comfortable, and that's all good. But for me at least, I've come to think that all the mundanity of marriage adds up to something much, much more. There are things that I can do that my wife loves to trip over. Writing notes, a back rub, these aren't love, but they create the context where she likes to fall in love with me again and again. But the thing is, I keep learning things she likes. I've been married ten years this July and there are always new things that I learn about - new little mundane things to do to keep fostering a context where falling in love is easy. I've come to think that it's really crucial to look for those little games we can play to trip each other up, to encourage each other to fall in love. It can be work, but it can also be amazing.

Marriage can be scary. We all don't feel love all the time. There are dark parts of any marriage, because there are dark parts of ourselves which inevitably come out. As Luther said, marriage is the school for our characters. But even when our love seems gone, we can always hope that love will return once again precisely because it is beyond ourselves.

Really, this understanding of love goes for all of us. Whether we’ve been married for years or are still looking for that right person to trip over or to trip up. Love is always something to fall into. Loving someone is really about doing those little mundane things that our spouses like to trip over. But love is ultimately something which we always recognize is beyond ourselves, which takes hold of us and makes our relationships into something much, much more.

Barbie and I have a prayer we’ve prayed since we were first dating. Maybe you'll find it helpful. "Lord, thank you for who you are, a God of grace, peace, mercy and love. Lord, be our love. Be our love Lord God."

Char and Roger Marriage Ceremony Outline