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| Caleb & Bethany Stoever |
The old Bethany did not cease to exist. Rather, she was permanently united to another person. In this union, she did not become less, but more.
About a hundred people were present to hear the vows spoken, but they were truly spoken before the whole community—even the whole world. They were anything but private. So, I want to take this opportunity to let you hear them as well. In doing so, I want to reflect on their meaning both for Bethany and Caleb, as well as for our whole community.
Vows Are Open-Ended
The wedding vows, from time immemorial, invite the husband and the wife to repeat these words, “I, Bethany, take you, Caleb, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part, according to God’s holy will, and I pledge you my faithfulness.”
These words are so familiar that we barely give them any notice. It’s easy to treat them like some magical incantation that you have to recite to get married. But they didn’t have to recite them. They fervently wanted to say them.
These vows that we speak at weddings are not spoken under coercion or under duress. "There is something about being in love that induces us to make promises of everlasting fidelity.” That’s what Nathaniel Blake wrote in his article, The Romance of Ordinary Marriage. It’s “as if we know that such fidelity offers a better way of life, whatever the risks may be.”
It’s part of our human instinct that love wants to say, “forever.” You have never received a Valentine’s card with an expiration date. Hallmark couldn’t sell any cards that say, “I will love you until Friday.” That’s simply not the language of love.
Vows Make You a "Hostage"
Even more so the wedding vows. Far from mumbo jumbo, they express a willing and joyful commitment to stay with one’s husband or wife, “till death us do part.” Again, Blake wrote, “Loving another person means giving oneself as a hostage both to fortune and to an alien will.”
By “alien will” he means that, from here on out, neither husband or wife can simply do whatever he or she wants. Each is bound to consider the wants and needs of the other. In fact, each is bound not only to consider the other, but to put the other’s will above his own. Marriage is not a competition to get your own way. It is a competition to give way to the other.
Blake spoke not only of someone else’s will. He also said that marriage is making yourself hostage “to fortune.” By this he is talking about whatever may happen in the future. This aspect of the vows is utterly remarkable! Vows to love, cherish and remain faithful until death, are not in any way conditioned by expectations of the future.
There is no prenuptial escape clause. We do not merely promise to keep loving a person as long as he or she doesn’t change. We promise to keep loving no matter how he or she might change in the future and no matter how any uncontrollable circumstance might change. This is such an outlandish pledge, the vows even spell it out: “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.”
It’s not only that we promise to love in spite of what changes might come down the pike. We should fully expect change. Your wedding day is the birth of wedded love. Just as surely as we expect an embryo to grow into a newborn, and newborn to grow into an adult, so also the irrevocable wedding vows set the stage for a lifetime of growth.
The Riskiness Is the Point!
It is this conscious and deliberate life-long commitment that allows the relationship to move on from the possibility of love to actual love. The uncertainty of the future is part of that commitment. “One can have pleasure while maintaining control and safety, but one cannot have love. And pleasure without love will grow stale,” says Blake.
The risk is real. The risk is necessary. In fact, we know going into marriage that we have a 50/50 chance of having our hearts broken. But the only way your heart can be broken at the death of your spouse, is if that heart truly loved. That’s the risk of love.
In spite of all these dangers, people still long to get married. This is more than a social custom. There are many good reasons for marriage.
Reasons to Risk It
One reason is for the sake of the children. Children have an innate need to see their father and their mother loving each other. No child ever sees this perfectly and fully, but all children feel this need in the deepest place of the soul. Governments don’t have any business caring about your hearts, but they have every business caring about your kids. That’s the reason the state is involved.
On top of this, marriage also protects spouses. Love is vulnerable enough as it is. Nobody should have to endure the additional vulnerability of a spouse that breaks the vow. Think of it this way. If someone promised only to love you for seven years, would you marry him at all?
But ultimately, it is not just for the children and for protection that people get married. It is for the sake of our own humanity. Not all people want or need to marry to fulfill their human need to love. But for those drawn to married love, there is no other way to have it.
Promises Make Us Human
In the very act of making a vow, you are asserting yourself against all the forces of the world, even all the forces of hell itself. The ultimate human freedom is not simply to do whatever you feel like doing at any given moment. That is the freedom of the animals.
No. The ultimate human freedom is the freedom to make a promise and to keep it, to do what we said we were going to do. It is the victory of your true humanity when you resist the lusts of the flesh, when you ignore the allure of worldly fortune and defy every force—internal or external—that would have you break that vow.
Blake says, “In the making and keeping of promises, we assert ourselves against the world and the future as acting agents, not mere reactive beings responding to circumstance. The power of oaths in legend, literature, and law is due to their assertion of free human choice and will within the cosmos.”
To defy our own baseness, to defy all the forces of the universe and to defy Satan himself is an impossible task, except for one thing. God Himself has made a vow as well. God has promised to keep and sustain everyone who enters into this holy estate. With God, nothing is impossible.
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