rough draft of wedding ceremony eben ezer

8/13/2019 Rough Draft of Wedding Ceremony Eben Ezer

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Today we celebrate and witness the vows of fidelity spoken

between Nathan Thompson and Denise Sebasigari. What an honor

it is for me for us to witness the joining of this couple. Your heart

has been turned toward God for as long as we have known you and

we believe that God has prepared you both for this day and for oneanother. To the Audience: Join with me in an ancient Jewish

blessing upon the bride and groom:

We praise you, O God of heaven with pure blessings.

May you be praised forever!

May you be praised because you have given us joy!

Things have turned out better than we had expected,

You have shown us your great mercy.

We praise you for having mercy on these two children.O Master, give them mercy and safety.

May their lives be filled with joy and mercy.

As I struggled to come up with some word for this occasion I was

reminded of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. The

Scripture says, And the LORD God formed a mans body from

the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life.And man became a living person. The Hebrew word for man

in the story is Adam, the reason he is called Adam, and it sounds

like the word for dirt. Some may appreciate this as an appropriate

symbol for boys and men, but the idea is that without Gods breath

Adam was nothing more than lifeless dirt. So we might say that

God was Adams first helper, his first rescuer, the power that

breathed life into his lifeless body. And God was Adams first

companion. Besides giving him life as an abstract quality, he

blessed him with a place, Eden , and ajob, caring for the garden. It

is interesting to note that the word used to describe the work givento Adam is the same word often used for worship in the Hebrew

Bible. The first man was blessed with work, which was also

received as worship by the God who had created him. But just as

Gods creation of the human being was incomplete when he made

the lifeless body of Adam from dust, it was incomplete without a


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companion for the man. The Scripture tells us that God said, It is

not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion who

will help him. We learn from the New Testament that God is not

alone, but lives in eternal, joyful, ecstatic companionship of the

Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And if we are to be in theimage of God, companionship and fellowship with others is the

way we must travel. We cannot be fully human and fully alive

without this deep cry within us being fulfilled. This tells us that

none of us are fully human as God intends for us to be without the

companionship of a community, family and friends. It is a second

breath of life. It is not good for a person to be alone. So God said,

I will make him a companion who will help him. Now, most

people use the older English phrase help meet for him instead ofcompanion who will help him. Meet for means appropriate

to. Sometimes I hear these two words transformed into one

helpmate. And I have even seen it spelled help meat M-E-A-T,

God help us! The Hebrew phrase is ezer knegedo which means

power equal to or helper suitable for. But in English when we

use the word helper we usually think of someone inferior or

lower in rank. In Hebrew, however, the word ezer is never used for

someone inferior and almost always used to describe God as the

one who helps by rescuing Gods people. For example, when

Israel against all the odds defeated the superior Philistine armies

they commemorated their victory by setting up a stone pillar in

honor of Yahweh, the God who had given them victory in war and

they called the stoneEben Ezer, meaning Monument Dedicated to

our Helper. So, when God said he would make a companion to

helpAdam, he meant that he would make someone who would

represent or re-presentGod to the man. The helper would

represent God to him, just as he would represent God to the helper.So the LORD God formed from the soil every kind of animal and

bird. He brought them to Adam to see what he would call them,

and Adam chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the

livestock, birds, and wild animals. But still there was no

companion suitable for him. The Bible story is meant to be


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seriously funny at this point as we imagine Adam trying to see if

his deepest needs could be met with the owl, the rhino, the zebra or

a giraffe! So, the Bible says, the LORD God caused Adam to

fall into a deep sleep. He took one of Adams ribs and closed up

the place from which he had taken it. Then, the Hebrew Biblesays, the LORD God built a woman from the rib and brought

her to Adam. When the man saw her, a spontaneous show of

praise to God came out of his lips: At last! She is part of my

own flesh and bone! She will be called woman because she

was taken out of man, which might be translated, Finally, God,

this one is it! Man o man o man! This is woman! That explains,

by the way, according to the Bible, why a man would leave his

father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two becomeunited as one person. It is no accident, then that Adam named his

wife Eve, which means Life Giver, for just as God had breathed a

breath of life into his lifeless form, now God had put Eve, the Life

Giver into his life and rescued him from loneliness. So, in this

story of the first couple each one re-presents God to the other and

in their intimacy they re-present God to the world, both now more

fully exhibiting the image of God than either could alone.

Nathan tells the story of meeting Denise as part of his

search for God. In that search he had decided that it would be best

for him to be alone. Yet into that aloneness God put Denise.

Denise told her grandfather, I have fallen in love with a monk and

he doesnt even notice me. But the day came when Nathan

noticed her and began to desire her companionship. He prayed, I

thought it was just going to be you and me, Lord! Give me

fidelity! Today we witness the amazing way that God has

answered that prayer. I dont mean to minimize Nathans request at

all. Fidelity to God is beautifully expressed in fidelity to the helperhe gives you.

As I prayed about what to say today, I believe the Lord led

me to consider the old Anabaptist tradition of wedding ceremonies.

Anabaptists were a persecuted and marginalized group of peace

loving Christians which got its start the 16thcentury. Little survives


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of records about their first generations since many died as martyrs.

But what the limited records of their wedding services show is that

into the nineteenth century wedding vows were most often

celebrated as an appendix to the regular Sunday assembly. The

couple would come forward in order to hear an admonition by theminister concerning the joys and pitfalls of conjugal life. The text

most often chosen was taken from the 8thchapter of the apocryphal

Jewish book of Tobit. The story of Tobit is a wonderful tale of a

man who dedicated himself to practical acts of charity at great cost

to himself. When he became old, poor, and blind he cried out to

God for help at the same time that a young girl, Sarah, who had

seen seven prospective husbands die, was also crying out for

deliverance from the demon that was killing every one of herwould be husbands. God sent his Angel Raphael to answer the

prayer of both at the same time. Tobit sent his son Tobiah on a

quest to recover the family fortune. On the way he finds Sarah and

marries her, and breaks the power of the demon in her life. The tale

of their wedding night reaches back to the story of Adam and Eve.

After they had feasted, Tobiah wanted to go to bed with his bride.

So the young womans parents took him to the bedroom When

the parents had left and shut the bedroom door, Tobiah got up from

the bed and said to Sarah, Stand up, dear wife. We must pray to

our Lord and ask him to grant us mercy and deliverance. So she

got up, and they began to pray, asking God for deliverance. Tobiah

said,

We praise you, God of our ancestors.

May your name be praised in all generations forever.

Let the heavens and all creation praise you forever.

You made Adam, and then you made Eve,

As his helper and support.And the entire human race has come from them.

You said, It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a companion who will help him.

I do not take this woman as my wife for any lustful

reason,


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But to show my fidelity.

Grant us your mercy,

And may she and I grow old together.And they both said, Amen, Amen. Then they went to bed and

slept together. The story ends with Tobiah being the man God usesto heal his fathers blindness and restore the family fortune.

Nathan Hudson Thompson, God wants you to know that he

is granting you your prayer for fidelity to him by sending Denise as

your helper. She re-presents God to you. God has sent her into

your life to rescue you from being alone and so that together you

may re-present the light of God in the midst of a wicked, perverse

and evil world. There may come times when you feel crowded,

burdened or frustrated. Today Denise is dressed in the finest gownshe has ever worn and has especially prepared herself for you, but

you will wake up some morning and she may have frazzled hair

and saggy---pajamas, (you get the picture). The cares of supporting

a family may seem heavy, but remember that the way to God is

together. A Haitian wise man once said, If you want to go far, you

must go together with others. If you want to go fast, you will not

get far.

Denise Sebasigari, you may have heard from someone that

God never gives us more that we can handle. But I dont think that

is true at all. The only way we can know God as a Savior and

Helper is when we get in over our heads and are forced to cry out

to him. There is no test of faith so universally available and so

effective as marriage. Marriage is uniquely suited to send us to

God, to take us to the cross and reveal our weaknesses. Marriage is

also a place to find the resurrection power of God when we come

to the end of ourselves. God willsend you trials too big for you to

handle so that together you can trust him for his help and rescueyou out of the darkest times. I encourage you both to ask God to

show you the missions to which he is calling you and to

accomplish them together relying upon Gods help.

Charge:


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Hand in Hand you enter marriage, hand in hand you step out in

faith. The hand you freely give to each other, is both the strongest

and the most tender part of your body. In the years ahead you will

need both strength and tenderness. Be firm in your commitment.

Don't let your grip become weak. And yet, be flexible as you gothrough change. Don't let your hold become intolerable. Strength

and tenderness, firm commitment and flexibility, of such is a

marriage made, hand in hand:

Also remember that you don't walk this path alone. Don't be afraid

to reach out to others when together you face difficulty. Other

hands are there: friends, family, and the church. To accept an

outreached hand is not an admission of failure, but an act of faith.

For behind us, underneath us, around us all, are the outstretchedarms of the Lord. It is into his hand, the hands of God in Jesus

Christ, that, above all else, we commit this union of husband and

wife. Amen.

Pledge:

Nathan, will you have Denise to be your wedded wife, to live

together in the covenant of faith, hope, and love according to the

intention of God for your lives together in Jesus Christ? Will you

listen to her inmost thoughts, be considerate and tender in your

care of her, and stand by her faithfully in sickness and in health,

and, preferring her above all others, accept full responsibility for

her in every necessity for as long as you both shall live?

Denise, will you have Nathan to be your wedded husband, to live

together in the covenant of faith, hope, and love according to the

intention of God for your lives together in Jesus Christ? Will you

listen to his inmost thoughts, be considerate and tender in your careof him, and stand by him faithfully in sickness and in health, and,

preferring him above all others, accept full responsibility for him

in every necessity for as long as you both shall live?

Exchange of Vows


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In the name of Jesus, I ___ take you, ___, to be my (husband/wife),

to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to

cherish, for as long as we both shall live. This is my solemn vow.

Lighting of the Unity CandleDenise and Nathan will now light a candle to symbolize the end of

their separate existence and the beginning of their new life as one

together. The two outside candles have been lighted to represent

both your lives in this moment. They are two distinct lights, each

capable of going their separate ways. As you join now in marriage,

there is a merging of these two lights into one light. This is what

the Lord meant when He said, "On this account a man shall leavehis father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall be

one flesh." From now on your thoughts shall be for each other

rather than your individual selves.

Your plans shall be mutual, your joys and sorrows shall be shared

alike. As you each take a candle and together light the center one,

you will extinguish your own candles, thus letting the center

candle represent the union of your lives into one flesh. As this one

light cannot be divided, neither shall your lives be divided but a

united testimony in a Christian home. May the radiance of this one

light be a testimony of your unity in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Exchange of Rings"May I have the rings. Let us pray.

Bless, O Lord, the giving and receiving of these rings. May Denise

and Nathan abide in Your peace and grow in their knowledge of

Your presence through their loving union. May the seamless circle

of these rings become the symbol of their endless love and serve to

remind them of the holy covenant they have entered into today tobe faithful, loving, and kind to each other. Dear God, may they live

in Your grace and be forever true to this union. Amen." Groom:

"Denise, I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows, and with all

that I am, and all that I have, I honor you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.


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With this ring, I thee wed." Bride: "Nathan, I give you this ring

as a symbol of our vows, and with all that I am, and all that I have,

I honor you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the

Holy Spirit. With this ring, I thee wed."

PronouncementBecause Nathan and Denise have desired each other in marriage,

and have witnessed this before God and our gathering, affirming

their acceptance of the responsibilities of such a union, and have

pledged their love and faith to each other, sealing their vows in the

giving and receiving of rings, I do proclaim that they are husband

and wife in the sight of God and man. Let all people here and

everywhere recognize and respect this holy union, now andforever.

Holy CommunionAs their first act as husband and wife together, Nathan and Denise

will now share Holy Communion together. According to the

biblical teaching of the priesthood of all believers, in the home

they will be priest to one another and to God for one another.

Closing PrayerThe Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine

upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of

his continence upon you, and give you peace.

KissNathan, you may now kiss your Bride.

Presentation of the Couple:It is now my privilege to introduce to you for the first time, Mr.

Nathan and Mrs. Denise Thompson.

rough draft of wedding ceremony eben ezer

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