Only Lovers Sing | A Homily for my Friends Tom & John on Their Wedding Day
A Homily by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin for The Celebration and Blessing of the Marriage of Thomas Patrick Smith and John Carrington Barnes IV at Christ Church, Georgetown, May 28, 2022.
Good morning and what a blessed morning it is.
Tom and John, I know that you’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time. That even before you began planning in fact for this day, you thought about it, and longed for it, in theory.
How could you not, given how many of us bothered you about it over the years –asking, sometimes quite inappropriately I might add, “When is this happening, already? When are two getting married?” I was one of those people –I’m sorry about that, by the way –I was simply angling for an invitation once this day finally arrived. And I got one (and a good seat too). So, it worked out for me.
All joking aside, here we are, my friends. May this day be everything you hoped for and more.
The “and more” part is important, as you both know, because we can plan, prepare, pray, and, well, don’t we all know how sideways things can go. How little control we really have. And yet, there is a gift there. A certain sort of freedom. An opportunity to “let go and let God” as they say in more Southern parts. You will no doubt find some of that blessed unexpectedness –the gifts of imperfection –today and in your life together moving forward. Embrace them.
It is a true joy to be here, to be preaching on this momentous day for you and for those who love you, myself included in that number. Tom and John, you are surrounded by a such a great cloud of witnesses. Just look around. All these people, all these lives, intersecting at this place and at this time for love of you, a communion of profound adoration and support.
It is a testament to your partnership –to the quality of your character and your life- that this place is so filled with joy, talent, faithfulness, friendship, beauty, and, of course, love.
But that’s enough about you. Sure, it’s your day, and yet, it’s not really about you. It’s about God. You both know that. (But sometimes we forget, so it’s good to be reminded.)
Your love for one another is not of your own making. It is not something that you created on your own nor sustained on your own. Instead, your love was conceived of in God and of God. It did not begin the day you met or even after a period of getting to know one another. The roots of your love run much deeper, to the very heart of God.
And this God, known in the Blessed Trinity –Father, Son, and Holy Spirit –this God is relational and dynamic, this God loved so intensely that this love spilled out into creation and brought forth this miraculous world –a world through which you have walked as individuals and yet have always been known to God as a chosen pair –Thomas & John.
You are channels of God’s love for one another and today you are made a living sacrament of God’s love for the world.
This love that we speak of here today, this love written about in Scripture, this love that will hold and sustain you, remember that this love is not just any love, but a love that is based on the command of Christ: that ye love one another, as I have loved you (Jn. 15:12).
As I have loved you.
The immensity of this love is overwhelming; it has a quality that is ineffable.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known (1 Cor. 13:12). These words of Saint Paul capture what we all sense to be true:
That though we cannot quite fully comprehend our own belovedness to God, from time to time the truth of it is made known deep within us, embedded as it is in our very being like a roadmap home.
Many things provoke this knowing, call it to the surface, including beauty. The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky once reflected that “the world will be saved by beauty,” and, of course, he speaks not of a certain worldly and passing aesthetic, but a heartrending response to the wondrous and eternal love of God made known through human expression.
In the words of the late Thomas Troeger: “Beauty is one of the transcendental realities of God and a primary means by which God draws us to what is true and good.”
To what is ultimately and always of God.
The hymn we just sang together knows something of our soul’s longing for what is true and good; for what is of God:
Come down, O Love divine! We sang,
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing (The Hymnal 1982, #516).
In and through beauty, the Holy Spirit seeks to convert our misguided desires to those which are of God; to draw us into blessed communion with our fellow man and our God; to lift the film from our eyes, even for a moment, so that we might see how much more God wants for us and from us.
Tom and John, you both know this and both of you have had a hand in awakening this knowledge within me and within so many. Music is an act of beauty; music is your particular offering to a hurting world.
I’m taking a risk speaking of music in this crowd, I know. Particularly because I know so very little about it really. I mean, my favorite song for a long time was Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus. I know . . .
And yet, you don’t need to know much about music, do you, for it to speak to you. That’s the beauty of it.
It is a universal language speaking to our deepest knowings, our deepest longings. As composer Julia Perry noted:
Music touches the central mystery of aliveness more deeply and more purely than any of the human labels we impose on life, or on each other, on these miraculous triumphs over night and nothingness that we each are [1].
Perhaps this is why Saint Augustine observed that “only he who loves can sing.” And that German philosopher Josef Pieper remarked that:
Music, the fine arts, poetry –anything that actively raises up human existence and thereby constitutes its true riches –all derive their life from a hidden root, and this root is a contemplation which is turned toward God and the world so as to affirm them. [2]
Music, the arts, all things of beauty, all expand our capacity for love and draw us closer to the one who is love, God.
And so the yearning strong
With which the soul will long
Shall far surpass the power of human telling (#516).
Music, the arts, beauty, all meet our yearning as they build a bridge where human telling fails us. They allow us a moment of eternal perspective, one that is sorely needed these days, opening each of us to being conduits of God’s love.
Only lover’s sing.
Tom and John, your marriage, and all Holy Matrimony, does not just acknowledge the truth of our belovedness, but it sings of God’s eternal faithfulness to each of us.
Because God has committed Himself to each of us in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s supreme and ultimate display of love. And, as one preacher puts it:
To say God is love is correct, but imprecise. God is a certain sort of love, the certain sort revealed in the story of Jesus. In Jesus, in the Gospel, we receive the great good news that the living God not only shows but is self-giving love.
Our own fidelity to ourselves, our partners, and even to God may stray in thought, word, and deed, but the tie that binds holds fast regardless, for it is Jesus that “embodies the marriage that does not end. Jesus is the marriage that we were made for and that truly lasts forever.”
Tom and John, this is what your marriage reflects. A beauty beyond human telling. A love that sings a song eternal. Grace upon grace. This is what your marriage testifies to. This is what your marriage is about. It is a reminder of God’s commitment and faithfulness to each of us. Forevermore.
In just a few minutes, I’ll stop talking. I promise. And we will get you married. But, and here’s a secret, your marriage is not this moment, not this ceremony, not even this day. Your marriage is what comes next. Your marriage is what you do, what you choose, tomorrow, and the next day, and the following weeks and months and years. Your marriage is not an “I do,” it is an “I will.” There’s a difference. Every day you must continue to give yourselves to one another and to God.
If this sounds like work, well, it’s because it is. And yet, it is the best kind of work, a work that is also perfect freedom.
For none can guess its grace
Till we become the place
In which the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling (#516).
This love, your love for one another, it is of God; it is what you were meant for; it is the place in which the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.
So let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord (Col. 3:16).
Amen.
*Image courtesy of Taylor Mickal Photography
[1] Maria Popova, “Trailblazing Composer Julia Perry on Music as the Universal Language of Love and Mutual Understanding,” The Marginalian, https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/11/21/julia-perry-music.
[2] Josef Pieper, “Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation,” translated by Lothar Krauth (San Fransico: Ignatius Press, 1988), 12.
