Glue

A few days ago, I had the unique honor of officiating the wedding of a young couple. The wedding was beautiful, as beautiful as the couple themselves. As Rector, I am seldom invited to officiate a destination wedding, and so this was refreshingly unique in many ways. The joy and excitement were through the roof. As with many weddings, everyone shared in the couple's joy.

One of the powerful scenes was watching the bride fold into the arms of the groom, who then lifted her up with a huge sense of joy and pride.

I could touch their sense of hope and love they had for each other and their union. I could feel the positive energy within the space. I could tell of the happiness on each face, and each face told a story about their best wishes for this new couple. 

Marriage is such a beautiful gift to us, and one of the lines in our Prayer Book that always excites me is this: “…union of heart, body and soul is intended for their mutual joy, for help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity…”

The church has long held that marriage is a union. It is a coming together of two individuals from two separate backgrounds, individuals who have been shaped by different circumstances, nurtured in different situations by different people, mentored by different teachers, coaches, and experiences. The coming together of two distinct individuals to form a union is as much a gift to be celebrated as it is a challenging reality. 

There’s this tacit admission that one person cannot form a union, nor can one person form a union by themselves alone. You need another person to form a union, and the fact that there is another person other than you lies life's enduring challenge. 

The marriage and wedding ceremony were a two-day affair. The first day was the traditional marriage, and the second day was the wedding. It may sound a little confusing, but in most African communities, there is a traditional wedding and a church, or official, wedding. 

At the traditional wedding, I read a poem by Maria Popova. It is a beautiful poem, and I really wanted to share it with the couple, with the belief that even in the worst moments, you have to beam the light of love back to the other. Here it is:

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love, whether we call it friendship or family or romance, is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. 

Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work. 

In those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view. 

But there’s still a clear-eyed, loving person to beam it back.

In our best moments, we are that person for one another.

After reading the poem, I shared with the couple that my prayer for each of them is that they may always find more than enough reason to beam that light back to each other. And the reason is, there’s always something, whatever it is, that desires to see separation and disunity, and our task really is to find that glue that would hold things together for us.

I believe that there’s something that holds things together. There’s something that holds organizations together. There’s something that holds communities together. There’s something that holds marriages together. There’s something that holds friendships together. There’s something that holds relationships together. There’s something that holds churches together. There’s something that holds everything and everywhere together because there’s always more than one person involved in it. 

You may choose to call it whatever you like, but it is your glue. What you choose to call it may not matter, but the beauty is that it holds life and limb together so they don’t fall apart.

When I saw the groom lift up the bride with a beaming smile that subtly assured the bride that he’s always going to lift her up and hold her, the beauty of that image led me to ask myself this question: What’s the glue that will hold this together? What’s the glue that holds your life together? What’s the glue that’s holding all the many different pieces together? 

The glue may not necessarily be one particular thing. It may be multiple things, but the gift in discovering them is that all of them come together in a special way to hold life together. And oftentimes our lives bear witness to these manifestations of unity in times of deep division.

Thoughts about the glue that holds things together led me to wonder about what holds Christ Church together. What is the glue that holds us together? We are a very diverse community of people with varying gifts, talents, and resources - we are like the young couple.

Our diversity is our strength, and like the couple, we fold into each other's arms, but what is it that holds us up and glues this diverse community together?

This Sunday, we will host our annual Parish Festival and Ministry Fair after our one service at 10:00 a.m. Ministry Fairs are always an opportunity to learn about the vibrant life of our congregation and what the many different ministries that abound here have to offer. It is also an opportunity for parishioners to learn about the various ways they can deepen their spiritual growth and become involved in our shared life. 

This year’s Ministry Fair would be special. In fact, each year is special because we endeavor to strengthen the glue that bonds us all together. It is my hope, therefore, that you will come and feel a sense of the glue that binds this community together and holds it up.

As a congregation, the glue that holds us all together is our collective faith in God - the God who looks at each of us and loves us unconditionally. The God who loves us, not because of who we are, what we are, where we’ve been, or where we come from. This magnificent and merciful God makes the Self known to us in the small and big things that we do together. Unless you haven’t noticed it yourself, but within those small and big things that we do together, we can feel and touch the glue that holds us together. 

This is where I find my deepest joy; we each bring our individual selves, broken as we are, in response to God’s invitation. And through prayer, fellowship, outreach, worship, and formation, we not only bring to light our expressions of God and the desire to continually seek God’s face, but to always find one more reason to beam back God’s light of love to other people.

The beautiful young couple gave me something to think about - glue. It binds us all together and makes us all fit for God’s purpose.

In our best moments, we beam back more than God's light, we magnify and mirror the glue that holds all of life together.

See you on Sunday,

Manny+