Any experienced wedding-goer knows what to expect. After the preliminaries are over, it’s time for the preacher to inch forward. Time to hear about noisy gongs. To listen again to Paul’s familiar words about patience (they think patiently) and kindness (they think kindly) and to be reminded that love does not “insist on its own way.” They’re a captive audience so their own way doesn’t really come into it, of course. They settle back. Maybe they’ll read it from the King James this time, they think. Such nice Shakespearean English.
It’s at this point that I like to mix things up. It’s not that I don’t enjoy doing weddings. Performing weddings is a privilege and especially so when you are fond of the folks who are plighting their troth. It’s a tender thing to stand so close to two faces pouring off light and pheromones. Far from not enjoying weddings, I am grateful for the chance. And I relish the challenge.
Well, I relish it — but in all fairness I have to say I don’t always meet it. I’m talking, of course, about getting something heard. Something that the couple has a chance of remembering and the congregation might find useful. That’s why I like to mix things up by throwing Colossians 3 into the mix and especially by focusing on verse 13’s big word: forgive.
The Colossians text is a good one for weddings because of its hearability and its capacity for introducing a note of realism into an occasion awash in candlelight and tulle. Mature couples know that if they are going to have a good life together, they are going to need more than poetry; they are going to need the ability to forgive. However, it hurts no one to be reminded of the fact. Or to think a bit more about what the biblical writers mean by the word.
A couple of years ago I heard a great biblical studies scholar comment about the Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek words that get translated as forgive. He said that in his opinion forgive is not the best English word to capture the meaning of the biblical languages. I recall being a bit scandalized as he spoke. Isn’t the concept of forgiveness at the very heart of Christianity? Isn’t our radical view of forgiveness one of the things that make Christianity distinct or even unique among the religions of the world? Yes, he nodded, it is key, but the English word can be a little misleading to contemporary ears. It can sound too accounting oriented, too tit-for-tat. To some people it has a mechanical sound. In the original languages, he explained, the words have more the sense of lifting or taking away. You can see it in John’s famous line about Jesus, “the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). It’s this lifting part of the word that can get lost, he said. I liked the image and have been recommending it to couples and the congregations that gather around them ever since.
“As you lift your eyes and say your vows to each other, as you lift your glass tonight, may you be reminded of the forgiveness you have received.” As we lift our hearts at Communion, when we lift the covers each night, whenever we lift a hand to brush back a strand of hair from a loved one’s face, may we remember. In the lifting may we remember again the miracle of being forgiven. And may we know – may we all know – God’s grace fueling and funding us to do the same.
Jana Childers is dean and vice president for academic affairs at San Francisco Theological Seminary.
