Here is an excerpt from the wedding homily I recently preached:
Second, marriage takes an exercise of the imagination. At this point you might be thinking to yourself: Ben when are you going to get to the practical advice. You know the stuff about the man’s innate right to the T.V. remote and the woman’s right to make the man watch chick flicks. I am sorry to disappoint you but no such cheesy and boring advice is coming from my lips today. But…while I shall avoid the trite and the trivial, I do not intend to leave the practical completely forgotten, like dust swept away under the rug. No, this second reflection is deeply and profoundly practical. It’s practicality being anchored in its necessity as a component to marriage if the goal of a life-long monogamous relationship marked by fidelity, trust, and submission is ever to be achieved. And that is what marriage is – a life-long monogamous relationship marked by fidelity, trust, and submission. American culture scoffs at this sort of language. Life-long and monogamous? … surely not. I am bound to get tired of the same thing. I need to have the latest toys. The old and the same simply will not suffice. Fidelity…a myth, come on our former president cannot even handle this responsibility. Trust…how can anybody be trusted when all we get is spin from the news and image from the cult of celebrity. Submission…submission is nothing more than invitation, an invitation to get walked on like a doormat. No relationships are about power, pleasure, and personal gain. That is just how the world works. It is in the face of this script – a script that we all consume everyday – that your marriage must raise its fist in defiance. The only way to resist is to imagine. Our imaginations are the mechanism by which we are able to transcend our mundane realty. Imagination has the power to take us places. Thus you must let your imagination take you, take you all the way to end, to the end of a beautiful marriage and life spent together. You must create a world with your imaginations, a world marked by fidelity, trust, and submission to one another. A world in which you live out your years whatever they may be in a life-long monogamous commitment to one another. While this is a world that is imagined, it is no fantasy world, but instead a vision. It is the vision of your life and future together by which you must walk each and everyday together. Your marriage must always be characterized by an exercise of your imagination.
8 comments:
hey ben! just wanted to say that these are some wise words! thanks for sharing them here :)
Sounds like a pro!
Ummm...polycarp maybe you should work on your interpretive skills instead of your literacy. If you would have taken the time to read my post carefully you would have noticed that this was simply an excerpt from my homily and not the entire text. So, before you jump to conclusions about the content of my preaching and homily you should exercise your both your reading skills and your critical thinking skills. Maybe you could use a hint of charity in your responses to my blog also, because, correct me if I am wrong, but I do believe that the Scriptures speak about relating to one another with love. Another thing, I have no idea how you would conclude that postmodernism or the ACLU has functioned to shape the content of my homily. If you want to submit such thoughts to the public sphere maybe you should have some sort of cogent, coherent, and logical argument as opposed to utterly hollow rhetoric to make your point.
"charity" is emergent speak for: "hey bro, it's all good. Who am I to suggest that anything is right or wrong anyhow? I'm just not where you are in the conversation yet"
Who is polycarp???
I don't know who this polycarp fellow is, but I can feel the tension. It is thick. Like molasses. I checked, as weird as molasses looks, it is spelled right.
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