Keeping your vows

One Friday night, during a wedding rehearsal, the couple and I were examining the vows they would make on the following day.

The groom said, “Hey, wait a minute! I don’t see anything about obedience. Where’s that part?”

I informed him that the vow of obedience hadn’t been in the Order of Worship for quite some time.

He said, “Well, I don’t care, I want it in my wedding.”

I replied, “Son, you’re going to obey her anyway. Are you sure that you want to promise to do it in front of all those people?”

These days, I wonder if anyone anywhere takes any vow seriously. What are the promises made at a service of Holy Matrimony?

In our communion, people are not permitted to write their own vows, a prohibition I think is marvelous.

Over the years, I have been present at some of the home-made vows and, in the main, they are shallow at best and, at worst, horrific. I prefer those vows that have stood the test of time, meaning centuries, not weeks or months.

I ask the couple if they will “live together in the covenant of marriage,” and I will ask if they will “forsake all others ... and be faithful.”

That means they will live together as man and wife (we don’t do “man and man” or “wife and wife”) not “shack-up buddies” and it means that they forever close the door on all past and all future romantic relationships with anyone except each other.

We ask if they will “love, comfort, and honor” each other, which they are most willing to do on the day of the wedding but a task they will have to work at mightily in the years to come.

We ask them if they will commit to each other for life, not just until the “buzz” wears off. In fact, I require them to sign a document stating that they understand that marriage is a life-long commitment. If they won’t sign it, they can go elsewhere to get married.

I further ask them to promise to hold to their commitment in better days, richer days, and in healthier days because, at the moment of their wedding they are, for the most part, healthy, in great spirits, and have their most prosperous money-making days ahead of them.

But they also must commit to stand with each other in times that are “worse,” times that may hold financial hardship, and during times of sickness, terrible illness, or impairment.

They commit not only to love each other — and love is found in actions, not emotions — but, for the rest of their days, to cherish each other. The word, “cherish,” by the way, means, “to treat with affection and tenderness; hold dear” and “be fond of; be attached to.”

It eliminates and rules out the option of harshness, ridicule, name-calling, physical, verbal, sexual, or emotional abuse.

To cherish each other means to consider the feelings, thoughts, and well-being of the other party — even before your own. It means that one will not hurt, damage, or injure the spouse who is to be the beloved one. And the most important person — not the kids and not the in-laws or parents — in all of life is to be the spouse.

We have a couple in our congregation, Don and Kay Mustic, who, in just a few days, will celebrate their 69th wedding anniversary. On July 31, 1937, this young couple, so full of hope and trusting in each other, in God, and in the future, made vows to each other.

Ahead of them were the days of the Great Depression, World War II, and all of the conflicts, changes, and catastrophes that have occurred in nearly seven decades.

But here’s the thing I see each Sunday when they come into the church building: They still cherish each other. They are still affectionate to one another, they are tender with each other, and they are, by all indications, quite fond of each other.

Have there been difficult days? I’m sure there have been. Yet, they stand as a quiet beacon of hope for all the young and not-so-young couples who also have taken vows of their own. They have kept and are keeping the vows they made 69 years ago.

This Sept. 6, I will celebrate 35 years of married life with my first and only wife. Last year, on our 34th anniversary, I said to her, “Well, in spite of all those folks who thought we wouldn’t last, it looks like we made it!”

She looked at me and said, “Well — so far.”

How true that is because, each day, married people must choose to keep or violate their vows. Each day they must love, comfort, honor and, above all, cherish each other.

Cindy did not take a vow to obey me. But if she and I determine each day to keep the vows we did make, we, too, have the joyous hope of seeing 69 years together.

I don’t care if she obeys me. If a man is loved and cherished ... if a woman is loved and cherished ... what more could one possibly ask?