No, after mulling over my options, I figured the safest thing to do would be to preach on the word of God, as it is that word that will sustain Anna and Jason, like manna in the wilderness, through the desert wanderings of their early married life toward the land of milk and honey that awaits them as they grow ever closer to God, to their community, and to each other through Christ.

And what better poetry have I been provided than the immortal words of Saint Paul in his first epistle to the church in Corinth? For there we find: "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

The Apostle's entire ode to love may be summed up in the dictum I learned from a very wise person, and which has informed and enriched every friendship I've ever made. And although I have not yet found a woman gullible enough to marry me (though statistically speaking, I've heard, more young people meet their future spouses at weddings than any place else…so I'm really looking forward to the reception…)-as I say, though I am still an eligible bachelor with a steady income, good with pets and kids…you get the drift… If what I am about to share with you have enriched my friendships, how much more valuable will it be in enriching a marriage?

For all of I Corinthians chapter thirteen may be summed up in the Latin dictum semper ubi sub ubi, "always where under where." Wait a minute, that's not the one. Sorry, I got my mother's advice mixed up with my sermon notes. (Must be nerves.) Ah, yes, here it is-"You can be right…or you can be in relationship. Remember this one the next time you two have a disagreement over whose turn it is to take out the garbage, or how many parachutes to pack in the airplane. (I suggest at least two.)

You can be right, or you can be in relationship. In many ways, this dictum goes against conventional wisdom. In the business world, in religion, in parenting, isn't it better to be right? Guess again. For, as Paul (the Apostle, not my brother) also writes, "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." Wow. And all this from a man who was pretty sure most of the time not only that he was right but that he was speaking for God!

Perhaps the most significant sentence in I Corinthians is "It does not insist on its own way." Eight words. Nine syllables. And yet an immeasurable truth. When the Apostle Paul wrote that love does not insist on its own way, I don't think he meant that love is weak. Rather, I believe he meant that true love means putting not the other person first, but the relationship first. And here I want to make an important distinction: Love does not call us to debase ourselves for the sake of the other, for if it did, it would be like those silly scenes in movies where two characters stand in front of a door saying "You go first." "No, you go first." "No, I insist." "No, really, I couldn't." And then they both try to go through the door at the same time, bumping each other on the noggin and knocking each other out-I do not recommend this as a model for a successful marriage. True love is not a mutual self-effacement, but a mutual exaltation of the relationship first. For love calls us to discover in the relationship of two people to each other and to God a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

In the final analysis, marriage is not about the joining of two "individuals." I am not interested in presiding over the union of two individuals, but over the communion of two families, two communities, who will now be a little more united with each other in this union than any of us were before it. We aren't just witnessing a rite of passage for Anna and Jason, but are participating in a rite of passage that involves all of us. And in this rite of passage, as we negotiate its straits and streams, the ebb and flow of relationships, what is most important is that when we find ourselves in times of stress or conflict (neither of which is a bad word on its own), we have a choice: we can be right, or we can be in relationship.

So, Anna and Jason, Jason and Anna: you can be right, or you can be in relationship. The choice is yours. So far, it looks to me like you're choosing to be in relationship. May that always be true of you, and of all of us. Amen.