Modern love, ancient faith, and a little bit of disco

Early last summer, my wife and I celebrated the midmorning send-off of my cousin’s son and new wife the day after their destination wedding in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Well-wishers gathered in the hotel lobby to say goodbye, shaking hands, careful not to trip over suitcases.

This impromptu celebration didn’t make it onto the hotel calendar, so the custodian, scheduled to tidy the lobby, politely commenced running his vacuum, creating a sort of dance that consisted of his pushing and pulling the vacuum between our legs like a metronome, and we, amenably, nodding and smiling, stepping gingerly out of his way. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. He nodded and smiled back, grooving triangles into the carpet.

A lot was happening on multiple layers. The groom’s parents were poignantly closing a chapter as their only son, who left home a decade ago, was now leaving for good thanks to the covenant of marriage.

Friends, many of whom lived in the same town, were making plans for the next gathering back home. Cousins schemed upcoming beach reunions.

And the efficient custodian, almost transparent, dutifully ran his vacuum.

All of us were grateful in a hazy, after-party kind of way.

The morning light was exceptionally bright. Jumping up and down on the dance floor the previous night to loud music had loosened the sweaty wires in my nervous system. Choruses from dance songs were printed like Sanskrit on the surface of my soft brain.

Mama mia!

We hugged The Couple, and two by two we took our leave upon the Great Ark of Interstate-93 that bore us home.

Nuptials and gravesides reel in distant cousins and kin like honey does ants. I wondered which would next draw our family together?

I remain perplexed that the wedding ceremony never mentioned God.

The liturgy, as it were, was all about the grandeur of human love. It felt like a sing-along Beatles song. But the feast of beautiful words about undying love was a little like a meal at a baseball game. Hot dogs, Cokes, peanuts, cotton candy. I hungered for more.

Many religions believe that it isn’t our love for each other that will win the day; it is God’s love for us that transforms our feebler love. This wedding missed celebrating that broader, deeper love.

I remind couples at the weddings I officiate that the ceremony isn’t about them despite their fancy clothes and how they are the star of every photograph. The focus of the ceremony is God.

The couple’s love is the poignant reminder of God’s greater love. And God’s love is part of a wider, communal love from which the couple draws and to which the couple contributes.

What is essential for me in a wedding (worship, God, prayer), obviously wasn’t essential for my dear, Roman Catholic-raised cousin and fiancée.

I know, I know. Every couple needs to plan their own wedding ceremony their own way. I am curious about and open to what they come up with. What can I learn from other traditions? from non-traditions?

Protestant theologian Ernst Troelsch (1865-1923), a pioneer of “historicism,” believed that all religious phenomena — including Christian worship — are part of an evolving historical process.

Because of this, he argued that worship and theology must be continually revised to make sense to the present age. Putting on the clothes of our parents’ faith doesn’t cut it. Rather than trying to claim one form of worship, he believed that the church should adapt to modern culture while maintaining core spiritual ethics of the Christian faith.

He’s probably right. My cousin’s non-religious wedding ceremony was an adaptation of the faith their parents handed them, not an abdication of it. Their ethic was love, minus God-language.

While modern culture sometimes perplexes me, this is certain. The next wedding I attend, I’ll be less surprised (maybe) when God isn’t front and center.

If I am the officiating pastor at a wedding, I will remain true to our Christian tradition that weddings are a service of worship in which God is praised.

The couple may share vows and will be blessed, prayed over, and commissioned to spread God’s love with the world. God is good.

If I am a wedding guest and not officiating, I will join others in promising my support. And I’ll say a hundred silent but happy prayers for the couple as I gladly make my way to the cake and punch. God is still good.

The dancing after this ceremony and dinner provided necessary release from modern constructs of meaning-making. It got a little wild. My shoulders unknotted.

Lights.

The jumping up and down.

Throwing up of the arms.

A wiggling of the hip bones.

Abba. The Bee Gees. Journey. I danced like a dervish.

The DJ revved this exuberant playlist louder than jet engines. The moderns on the dance floor hadn’t even been born when those songs topped the charts.

Historic, religious liturgy of all bents may morph and fade.

But “Dancing Queen” is eternal.

“Stayin’ Alive” will outlast us all.