Pulpit Voices

A Wedding Homily

By Wesley D. Tracy

Dr. Tracy is well known to Nazarene preachers. As a professor and as former editor of this publication, he has influenced many of us greatly in our proclamation of the gospel. Here is a another creative wedding homily from the pen of one of our best writers.

The Wedded Life: Melisma, Yes, Miasma, No

Sermon text: 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13—14:1, neb

“Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins. . . . There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.

“Love will never come to an end. . . . There are three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.

“Put love first.”

Melisma. What a lovely word. It is a technical term referring to a “thrill of soul” that one experiences in some music, poetry, or art. It is primarily a musical term. Specifically a melisma is one syllable sung over many notes such as in Gregorian chants. Many experience melisma in Handel’s Messiah when the choir sings “He is the King of glooooo-ry!”

But I adapt melisma or melisma-like to mean any experience that “thrills the soul” or sends the heart soaring. I extend melisma to mean the “thrill of soul” that happens when one experiences an uplifting insight, a sweet memory, a soul-inspiring religious experience such as when a phrase of scripture takes on a new glow that sends the heart soaring.

Recently I attended the Glendale Church of the Nazarene in Arizona along with about 1,000 other people. The service began with the houselights low and a spotlight on stage showed a harpist who began to play the old Presbyterian hymn “Morning Has Broken—like the first morning, / Blackbird has spoken like the first day . . .” I experienced a soaring of soul, a melisma-like experience, as I savored again the greatness and goodness of the God of new beginnings.

A soldier returned to Kansas City from the bitter war in Afghanistan. I watched his welcome on television. The soldier’s wife met him at the airport. She laughed and cried her eyes out at the same time. She danced up and down, she hugged, she kissed, while the tears rained down. A melisma experience indeed. That reunion was a song with the note of love sung over and over in every tone of their experience together—joy, love, trials, suffering, separation, intimacy, hope, faith, and delight—every tone of that song was evident in that melisma moment!

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul presents a melisma of love. He holds love up like a diamond until the many-splendored facets glow like lamps guiding us in paths of love. Paul holds up for our melismic viewing agape love, self-forgetting love.

If I counted right, “gloooooooooooria” has 15 tones. In verses 4-7 alone Paul identifies 15 facets of agape love. Today we will glance at just four of them.

“Love Is . . . Never Selfish” (vv. 4-5, NEB).

This phrase is translated “Love . . . isn’t always ‘me first’” (tm); “Love . . . does not insist on its own way” (RSV).

In marriage it looks like the O. Henry story “The Gift of the Magi.” Jim and Della are newlyweds. Money is tight; but Christmas is upon them. They have nothing of value in the household—except Jim’s platinum watch that was his father’s and his grandfather’s—and there is Della’s gorgeous hair that cascades below her knees. She has stopped by the store window more than once to gaze at the bejeweled tortoiseshell set of three combs. Oh, what she could do with her hair if she had that comb set. But there was no money for such frivolities. So she does without. Jim needs a platinum watch chain for his treasured watch. But there is no money; so he does without. And you remember, Della sells her hair to the wigmaker and buys the watch chain—a Christmas gift for Jim. On Christmas Eve she discovers that Jim has sold his precious watch to buy her the set of combs for the long hair that she no longer has.

Love—wedded love—is “never selfish.” Rather it is self-forgetful, self-sacrificing.

“Love Is Patient and Kind” (v. 4, RSV).

Melding two lives into one requires a lot of these commodities: patience and kindness. Speak with patience and kindness, for Proverbs 18:21 reminds us that the tongue has the power of life and death. When patience and kindness are abandoned, melisma exits and miasma enters.

Miasma is a negative word, a murky word. It refers to a foggy vapor arising from a marsh where dead plants and dead fish are rotting. In more modern usage it means a befogging and unwholesome atmosphere that defiles or corrupts. Metaphorically speaking, it is like when someone who has a bad disease blows a contagious breath in your face. And that is just the kind of atmosphere that grows like mold in a marriage when patience and kindness are dismissed. Sometimes couples say “I do” at the altar, but pretty soon they “don’t.”

Once there was a woman who always got sick with a cold at the first snowfall—every year. On her honeymoon an early snow fell. Sure enough she was sick in bed with a cold. Her husband said to her, “Sugar dumpling, this cold is making you suffer so much. Why don’t your let your lover man take his baby doll to the doctor to get rid of that painful cough?”

Well, year after year at the first snowfall she would come down again with a bad cold. You heard how the husband responded on the honeymoon. But seven years later, first snow—sniffles, cold, hacking cough. The husband says, “Woman, do something about that cough before you give me pneumonia.”

Love is patient and kind—year after year and not just on the honeymoon.

“Love Keeps No Score of Wrongs” (v. 5, NEB).

“Love is . . . not quick to take offense” (vv. 4-5, neb). “Love . . . does not gloat over” the failures of others (vv. 5-6, neb). That is, in a good marriage you won’t hear a lot of “I knew it. I knew you would mess up again.”

We all come to marriage with strengths and graces and gifts and potential all aching to be shared. Part of the mystery of becoming one in marriage is celebrating those gifts and strengths. But we also come to marriage with excess baggage—with weaknesses, excesses, past wounds, blind spots, and rough edges. We all have gaps. Part of the mystery of becoming one in marriage is helping each other smooth out the rough edges, temper excesses, and fill in gaps.

Remember the original Rocky film? Sylvester Stallone was in love with a woman named Adrienne. She was a mousy little wallflower who worked in a pet shop. She was Pauly’s sister. And Pauly couldn’t understand why Rocky was attracted to Adrienne.

“I don’t see it,” he said. “What’s the attraction?”

Rocky said, “I don’t know—fills gaps, I guess.”

“What gaps?”

“She’s got gaps; I got gaps. Together we fill gaps.”

Genesis 2:18 puts it this way: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a . . . partner” (NRSV).

One of the melismic aspects of love is the way that a husband and wife work to fill in the gaps. Strengths are celebrated, gifts honored, potential released. Wounds are salved—there is no healing force like love. Blind spots illuminated—despair drenched with hope. Filling in the gaps. This is the way love makes two into one. As the lovers help each other toward greater wholeness, they become one: 1 + 1 = 1.
Instead of keeping score of wrongs—wedded love fills gaps.

“Love Will Never Come to an End” v. 8, NEB).

Love is one of “three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love” (v. 13, neb). Self-forgetting love endures: “There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance” (v. 7, NEB).

In the blockbuster movie Twister there is a thrilling scene where the two researchers are chasing a tornado when it suddenly turns toward them. Running for their lives, they dart into a water system shed. They spot pipes that go 30 feet into the ground. Frantically, they strap themselves together, then strap themselves to the pipes. And not a second too soon! The tornado pulverizes the shed, and they are both lifted off the ground flapping in the wind like flags. They stare into the eye of the tornado—yet they survive. They were strapped to the anchor—the pipes held them, scared but safe, in the midst of the cyclone.

That is a picture of what God can do for the bride and groom who strap their mutual life to Christ. God becomes the sure anchor—no matter how hard the wind blows. In any storm God can hold you safe, heart to heart.

“Love never ends” (v. 8, NRSV).