Wedding Script

Written for the wedding of Luke Benzing and Lauren Wasilchuk, June 21st, 2019

Introduction

Me: Dearly beloved, we meet here today to witness: the union of Lauren Marie Wasilchuk and Luke Wolfgang Benzing.

I’ve known Luke a very long time, ever since we met one July morning in 1991, at Fort Hamilton Hospital in Hamilton, Ohio. Deborah and I have come to know and love Lauren also over the last several years and are proud to welcome her into our family, and we welcome all of you and thank you for joining us as she and Luke take this step into the sacred mystery of marriage.

Me: Who gives Lauren to be wed?

Bride's Father: I do.

Me: A wedding ceremony is an occasion of joy, but also a matter of utmost seriousness. Not something to be taken lightly. If anyone has cause to object to the forming of this union, speak now or forever hold your peace.

Wedding Sermon

Me:  

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

These are the familiar words of St. Paul, read at many a wedding, and with good reason.

Wedding ceremonies have existed in all eras and all cultures. In the Christian tradition Jesus began his ministry at a wedding, and the book of Revelation pictures heaven as a wedding between God and the human soul. Weddings are beautiful, joyous events, a celebration of love.

But there are many kinds of love. We associate weddings with romantic love, the kind they write songs about. But there is also the love between parent and  child, the love of a pet, the love of one’s country. The love of God, The love of a friend.

A wedding is like the beginning of a fire, and romantic love is the spark that ignites and flares into a roaring flame. But after the wedding dress has been stored away, the remainder of the cake frozen, the tuxes returned and the bills paid what remains are the burning embers of friendship; not as showy or as exciting as the open flame; but those embers are the real source of warmth, and they can last as long as you both shall live.

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages", wrote Frederich Nietzsche, and the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes says:

Two are better than one…  For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone?

Luke and Lauren began their journey as friends. Meeting through their mutual pal Julie, finding they had common interests, learning that they both were from the capital region, even discovering that they each had a loyal dog named Winston (one bigger one smaller) waiting at home. They learned during their time at SUNY Cortland to trust and rely on each other and to make sacrifices for each other…Luke by watching Lauren’s favorite game shows with her, Lauren by converting to the Church of Cam Newton.

My charge to you is to maintain that friendship, to cherish it, to help it grow. There are no his and hers in marriage, no separate worlds. Your separate friends are still your friends but they fall into relief as your bond takes the foreground. In the book of Genesis, the Biblical authors step back from the creation stories to tell their audience in an aside that married couples “cleave” to each other, that they leave their individual dwellings and that “they shall be two in one flesh”.

The Christian conception of God is based on mutual love and support; the members of the trinity in an eternal flow of love, one surging into another until there is no point at which you can say that one begins and the other ends. So it is with marriage, ordained by God for our mutual comfort and joy. May you find that joy and comfort in each other always.

Consecration

Me:  Now we transform this venue into a sacred space, and I invite you Luke, and you Lauren to enter into the bonds of Holy Matrimony, taking the vows that so many others have taken before you, standing with all your ancestors as you bring your family histories together.

Vows

Me:  Please face each other.

Lauren, repeat after me.

I Lauren, take thee Luke
to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, cherish, and to obey,
forsaking all others, till death us do part,
I give thee my pledge

Luke, repeat after me.

I Luke take thee Lauren,
to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love, cherish, and to obey,
forsaking all others,
till death us do part,
I give thee my pledge

Me: Lauren and Luke please join hands.

Luke, do you take Lauren to be your lawfully wedded wife?
Do you promise to keep the vows you made today, so long as you both shall live?

Luke: I do.

Me:  Lauren, do you take Luke to be your lawfully wedded husband?
Do you promise to keep the vows you made today, so long as you both shall live?

Lauren: I do.

Me: And so we make these vows tangible through the exchanging of rings.

Ring Exchange

Me:  As a circle the ring symbolizes eternity, the everlasting love you share we each other, and the seamlessness of your union. In marriage you will flow into one another, until there is no sense of where one of you begins and one ends.

Luke, Please repeat after me as you place the ring on Lauren’s hand.

With this ring I thee wed,
with my body I thee worship,
and with all my worldly goods I thee endow:
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.

Lauren, Please repeat after me as you place the ring on Lauren’s hand.

With this ring I thee wed,
with my body I thee worship,
and with all my worldly goods I thee endow:
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.

Prayer

Almighty God, may you cause your face to shine upon Luke and Lauren even as the sun is now shining on this congregation, and may you grant them a long and joyous life together.

Presentation

Me: By the power vested in me, by the great state of New York and by the Universal Life Church, I pronounce you, Luke and Lauren as lawfully wedded husband and wife. One in name, one in aim, and one we trust in a happy destiny.

Son, you may kiss the bride.

Me: Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Luke and Lauren Benzing!!

A Mighty Fortress Was Our Hedge

Published in the Albany Times-Union, September 7, 2008

Hosea 2:6 Behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall…

I grew up surrounded by a hedge. My family owned a small house on two acres of land; my father bought it when he returned from World War II. There were few other houses around and no city water and or sewer. He dug his own wells and put his own septic tank in the backyard.

He also planted a thick row of a tough, thorny bush called multiflora around the edges of the property. He had read about multiflora in a government pamphlet that promoted its use as a "living fence". It grew ten feet high and five feet thick. It was green and dense in the summer. In the winter it was brown and sparse enough to see through in places, but still impenetrable. Every spring it tried to soften its look with a spray of white blossoms, but the thorns remained.

My parents already had four kids when dad planted it; four more came along in the years after; then me. The hedge was a fact of life for us. When my brothers would lose a ball in it they would argue about who had to go in and get it back; the loser could look forward to emerging covered with painful scratches. It was easier to buy a new ball. Other things disappeared into the hedge: when my brothers started bringing rock and roll 45s home in the sixties, my Dad would confiscate any he could find and send them sailing into the hedge.

By the time I came along the neighborhood had grown up around us, but you would never know it from inside the hedge. There were only two ways in or out: the driveway and a gate set into a clearing that my dad had hacked open. The gate led to the Baptist church next door. After my dad decided that the church had gone astray he stopped hacking and let the hedge consume the gate.

We had changed churches five times before I was twelve. We belonged to a fiercely independent sect called the Bible Baptist Fellowship, but sometimes even their churches could be too lax for my dad. My dad believed that a good church was a barricade against the forces of sin and corruption; the second one showed signs of being breached the only thing to do was to fall back to another stronghold that looked more secure. A church might seem safe on first glance: men and boys with short hair, the traditional King James translation of the Bible in the pews, Christian and American flags at the front, an altar call at the end of every service...but then something would happen. A preacher might slip in a reading from a modern translation, or allow that some things in the Bible shouldn't be taken literally; if so we left and didn't come back. 

I didn't meet any of the neighborhood kids until I started school. After school I would see them walking or riding bikes down the road. I couldn't imagine doing such a thing. One day a kid on the bus invited himself over to play. Mom and Dad agreed but looked him over intently. He taught me how to ride his two wheeler around our driveway, perched behind me as I wobbled and pedaled in jerks. I started to gain stability as we turned and headed for the road. "Go! Go!" the kid yelled, but as I came to the border of the hedge I slammed on the brakes and almost sent us tumbling. I saw my Dad hurrying over as I got off. The kid gave me a funny look and rode away.

Preacher's Stew Was Too Hard to Swallow

Published in the Albany Times-Union, October 12, 2008

One Friday night in 1980, when other teenagers were playing in video arcades, going to dances and going out on dates, I was sitting at my kitchen table listening to my Dad and our preacher talk about the evils of rock and roll, boys with long hair and the disgraceful uniforms that the cheerleaders at the high school wore. Although I did have some interest in the last topic, I mostly moped and examined the big, ugly horseradish root that Preacher Rogers had brought with him. At the previous Wednesday Prayer Meeting, Rogers had caught me off guard. I was sitting quietly in my pew, mentally composing a prayer, just in case I was called on to close the service. Rogers called people at random to do this; since I was a male and over 12, I knew that I was eligible and that my turn would come. I realized he was looking right at me, but he didn't ask me to pray.

Instead he said, "I know we don't have many young people, but we've got a start. And I'd rather have one fine young man who truly loves the Lord, like Matthew there, than a whole bus full of worldly teenagers!" He was exaggerating when he said that we didn't have many young people. We didn't have any young people. Out of a church of about 30 people, I was the only person under 20. Rogers had hopes, though. He had been a leader of a medium-sized youth group at a church in Kentucky years earlier, and believed he could duplicate that success by transplanting some of their fun yet wholesome activities to the fertile soil of our small Ohio town. One of these was the stew party. A stew party required each guest to bring a different stew ingredient, without knowing what the other guests were bringing. All of the ingredients were to be cooked together, and then everyone had to have some of the stew, no matter how outrageous it ended up. He had everyone invite their teen relatives. I was supposed to invite people from school. I was not enthusiastic about this. I had few friends and didn't want to risk losing those; the stew party didn't sound like the sort of thing that would generate excitement in my school. Even worse, the invitations were printed on the back of Gospel tracts that explained that the reader was bound for hell and that the only way out was to accept Jesus. I spent most of the day with the tracts stuffed in my pockets, feeling guilty for damning all these kids by not sharing God's love with them.

The stew party may have gone over in Kentucky, but on our side of the river, it was a bust. My dad had offered our house for the party, so of course I was there. Rogers showed up with a big smile on his face; and with a magician's flourish he produced his big horseradish root. The only other person who came was a twenty-something named Gwen who lived with her widowed mother in the town's only trailer park. Since she was the church's lone adult single, she didn't have much of a peer group either. Rogers tried to be upbeat, but his smile didn't reach his eyes. Finally he said, "Well, I guess we just didn't pick a good night." Gwen nodded in agreement, excused herself and left.

Later that night, I heard my parents talking about the failed party.
My Mom's voice: "I think Matthew needs to be in a church with more young people."
Dad's answer: "Rogers needs us. There aren't many preachers who'll really preach the Word anymore. We're not giving up on him."

And so we stayed. But Rogers was wrong about me. I wasn't spiritual -- I was just afraid. I was afraid of rebelling. I was afraid of going to Hell. I was afraid of missing the Rapture. Although I told myself that my peers were mindless, shallow and sinful, they seemed happy. Happier than me. I envied their freedom. Those foolish kids, their minds distracted with proms and dances and dates and other frivolities while eternity's maw was opening beneath them. How I envied their shortsightedness, their ignorance. They looked forward into a unwritten future, a future where anything could happen, where they could hope to grow and love and find themselves.

In my world the future was preordained; disaster and calamity, with the only hope a secret rapture into a sterile heaven. And if the Lord tarried, my years were to be spent converting others and cultivating disdain for the world and its vain amusements, stewing in righteous indignation and wondering why the people sitting in darkness were disregarding such a great light.

Now, over thirty years have gone by, and as far as I can tell, the elect have not been raptured, and the world has not gone up in flames. I left fundamentalism long ago, traded the clarity of an artificial light for an uncertain twilight, struggling with fear and doubt and nearly drowning in toxic excess before coming to the conclusion that I will never have the absolute certainty that I was promised in my youth. Instead of certainty, I have faith. Not in a God who thunders commands from the mountain, or a God who holds the future hostage to ancient visions. I have faith in a God who speaks softly from within, and who dwells in mystery. Who inspires but does not wrest control of our destiny; who sets us free to create our own future.