Back to the Garden
A Marriage Homily
For Christine Murray and Richard Marks
August 11, 2007
Not long ago, or very far away, I was sitting at my computer – nothing unusual in that. When I heard a song on CBC. I knew in an instant this had to be the theme for Christine’s wedding. In part it went like this:
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Actually, Joni Mitchell, the inimitable Canadian singer/song writer, never made it to Woodstock. In fact, Woodstock was never held at Woodstock. They couldn’t find a spot big enough there, but the name stuck.
Joni turned up on the Letterman show instead. Just as well, for the idyllic garden that was supposed to be Woodstock turned into a sea of mud and litter –symbolic of how the child of God she wrote about in her first verse keeps getting caught in “the devil’s bargain.”
And here we are several decades later celebrating a marriage seemingly farther and farther away from that primordial garden of Eden that I believe, and assume, Joni had in mind when she wrote that anthem for the 60's.
I never got to Woodstock myself, but I did get to San Francisco just before the decade ended; I got there just as Haight Ashbury, that symbol of flower power was disintegrating. There was still “song and celebration” but the heady days and youthful optimism for a better world were beginning to fade.
By now the wedding party is probably suitably depressed, and wondering where is he taking us?
Well actually I’m going back to the garden, and fittingly, we find ourselves celebrating this wedding in a garden – Mari Ellen’s Garden. Or as Shakespeare’s Gaunt in Richard II would say:
“This other Eden, This demi-paradise of Aspinwall Island, Like England, a fortress nature built for itself,………….This precious stone set in a silver sea.” (2.1.42-44)
For Scripture keeps it alive for us–alive in imagination, and alive as myth – not an untrue story, but a narrative about cosmic and human beginnings that is meaningful and operative in the present. It was for Joni, and it is for me, and I hope by the end of this wedding service it will be for you too.
It was alive too, further along the journey, of salvation history for Ruth who threw in her lot with the Israelites, the people of God, and through marriage became an ancestor and foremother of Jesus.
For maybe we haven’t realized it yet, but the creation story contained the first wedding, a wedding the Creator was matchmaker for, and presided at.
And I just want to thank you Christine and Richard at the outset for making the great leap of faith which is marriage and family life– especially at a time when the scientific consensus is that the presence of the human species on mother earth is precarious to say the least.
One prominent scientist, Tim Flannery, in his bestselling book, – The Weather Makers – basically says we have twenty years to turn it around.
Others, like James Lovelock, the author of A Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back- and How We Can Still Save Humanity, have stated we are nearly toast already–we just haven't recognized it yet. Still, as his title hints at, there is room for hope.
So to launch out into this uncertain future is a great act of faith, of hope, and above all of love. And for that we thank you. There is more to be said. The good news is that the environmental crisis will surely trump the war on terror – at least that's my hope, for you, for me, for all of us here on mother earth.
But you, and we, are not alone. From the beginning there was always a third partner in every marriage, namely God, Yahweh, the Creator, who not only created the sexes for one another, but created them to reflect and witness to that community of persons we have come to know through later revelation as Trinity – though hinted at right here in the beginning: "let us make human beings in our image." (Genesis: 1:26)
From Genesis on to the end of scriptures the relationship between God and his people, Christ and his church was seen as a marital relationship, an intimate partnership of life and love.
But right from the beginning as well, the human couple is charged with responsibilities: Responsibility for one another (as Companions, helpmates), for all living beings,(to name them) for material creation (to be stewards of) – at least in this part of the universe. Responsible too for founding families and peopling the earth – probably the one task the human race has carried out to fulfilment with gusto.
All of this was to take place in that pristine, primordial garden we have known by the name of Eden, the paradise of delight. Alas, as we know, that was not to last. But as a nuptial blessing puts it, all was not lost, as “married life was established as the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood.”
Part and parcel of that blessing is the gift of the nuptial meaning of the body. Getting back to the garden also means for the married couple getting back to that state where Eros and Agape –and the other loves that encompass human life – become one, a gift and a task for a lifetime. Such was the theme we reflected on at Marisa’s and Paul’s wedding celebrated right here on Aspinwall island.
To remind you of this gift and task I have brought with me a small garden. (Something I hardly need in this setting, on this Island, this other Eden as Shakespeare would say). This tiny symbolic garden reminds us that what we long for lies more in the future than the past. There is no going back to that primordial Garden of Eden. Instead we are called to look ahead, and move forward, as we wait for, and hasten The Day of the Lord. (2 Peter 3:12)
Not, of course, in the sense some fundamentalist groups both Christian and Muslim have of precipitating an end times Armageddon – a final battle between the forces of good and evil. For the biblical vision is of a world of untold potential to be actualized by us, the stewards of the earth.
In fact, the book of revelation presents the grand finale as the ultimate wedding scene. Then and there we are invited to celebrate the Wedding feast of the Lamb with his bride the church, the people of God.(Rev. 19ff.) There we will witness the renewed heaven and earth, and the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to meet her husband.”(Rev. 21:2)
And so I am sure you two are prepared and ready. We will now wait in expectation for that moment when you will be called to exchange your vows.*
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*This was a marriage between a Quaker and a Catholic.
We followed the Quaker tradition of waiting in silence until the
Bride and Groom were inspired to exchange their wedding vows.
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