This last post before lent brings the conclusion to my recent sermon series through the Song of Songs. Tomorrow, I will start a new lenten series on communal spiritual disciplines.
In the movie, The Story of Us, Michelle Pfeiffer and Bruce Willis play a married couple’s whose marriage is unraveling in painful disappointment. 
There is a scene in the movie, when Willis’ says “No matter what we went through, I knew we’d be alright if at the end of the day, we could just find each other’s feet under the covers.” Then one day, we see the perspective just from their feet, when he reaches his foot over, she moves her's away. And the effect is devastating. At that moment of the movie, it seems as if there is no hope for them.
Marriage experts like John Gottman have said that most enduring marriages are simply those where both partners continue to turn back toward each other, usually with simple gestures and gentle words. My friends, let us be a community of people who develop the character to continue to endure.
Our marriages depend on it. Keep turning toward each other. Keep reconnecting, keep building the bonds of affection, respect and forgiveness. And above all, if things are going badly, get help early.
Let me give you a frightening statistic that I have mentioned before. In science, there is something called “the delay effect”. That is the amount of time from when a person sense that there is something wrong in their lives and they seek help. The delay effect for heart disease is 4 weeks. The delay effect for cancer symptoms is 6 weeks. Do you know what the delay effect is for people who have sensed that there is something wrong in their marriage? Do you know how long people wait before they seek help for the one relationship that makes the greatest difference in life? 6 years. We have built our entire approach to pre-marital counseling on interrupting the delay-effect.
When a couple comes to us to get wedding, the single greatest expense is mandatory marriage counseling with our Parish Associate and pastoral counselor, Charlie Campbell. Now, not only does the couple learn a lot of good stuff about themselves, their partners and marriage, but they also develop a relationship with Charlie.
As I tell every couple, the single greatest mistake couples make in their marriages is trying to do it alone. If you know Charlie, then when things get tough, and they get tough for everyone, you won’t have to say, “Do you think we should go to a counselor?” But instead you’ll say, “Let’s go talk to Charlie.” And believe me that’s a lot easier.
The pleasure of love, as God intended it, reveals a simple, shared pattern for a lifetime of love; he adores, she invites, they endure.
Conclusion: Nat was right.
My friends, as we bring this series to a close we can see that God has great interest in our love lives. He made us with bodies that delight in the good things of the world and feel pleasure and crave intimacy. He made us so that we could bond for a lifetime through good times and bad. He gave us his word to guide our living and right in the middle of it is a whole series of erotic poems to guide our loving.
All because he wants us to have love for each other that looks like his love for us. A love of promises, protection, passion and a shared pattern.
At our wedding, the first song that Beth and I danced to was an old song by Nat King Cole. The first line was then a promise and is now a reminder. “When I fall in love, it will be forever, or I’ll never fall in love.” Nat was right my friends, love is meant to last.
Throughout this series we have been trying to learn what means to fall in love forever, for a lifetime, until death parts us. In the old English marriage liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, in addition to vows of love, honor and cherish there is another line, that maybe we need to recover. It is a line that makes the explicit connection that what we are doing when we give ourselves to another, is inextricable to what we are doing when we offer ourselves to God.
“With this ring, I thee wed, with my body, I thee worship…”
And in essence that is what we have been learning to do through this series. We are learning that love and passion, romance and affection was never meant to be expressed to casually, given to cheaply. Our bodies so tender, our emotions so fragile and our hearts so vulnerable are meant to be protected and honored. We are learning to give our bodies as an act of worship, of devotion, love and service to one person until death parts us.
This is what the wisdom of the Song of Songs is trying to display for us, to show us. This is the instruction for those who have yet to marry, it’s the correction for those of us who have taken wayward paths, its encouragement for those of us in the middle of marriage where kids and carpools, and climbing the corporate ladder can pull us from each other, and it’s the affirmation for those who fulfilled their vows and loved another until death parted them.
It is also, my friends, the great gift of God for us. The God who created us with souls that hunger for him, also created us with bodies and emotions that hunger for healthy touch and honest affection. May we be a community that together helps every person enjoy the kind of love that God intended.
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