09-To Join this Man and this Woman
IX. To Join this Man and this Woman
THERE ABE MANY TERMS USED RELATIVE TO A Minister’s part in a marriage service. He solemnizes a marriage; he performs a ceremony; he reads the marriage lines; he marries a couple; he officiates at a wedding. We may prefer one term above the other; but whatever words are used to indicate his official capacity, the minister serves in a threefold relationship: as the legal representative of the state, a priestly representative of the church, and as counselor and adviser to the man and woman whom he joins in marriage. As the legal representative of the state, the minister must conform to its laws and regulations.
State laws are varied as to persons performing marriages. Legal residence is usually required.
Sometimes the minister must give bond. In every instance a license is required on the part of those to be married. The minister must not only require the presentation of the license and ascertain that it is in proper form before he performs the ceremony, but must, without fail, return the proper forms to the county clerk for official registration of the marriage. This is required by law, and- is an obligation due the persons married, that their legal standing as a married couple may be officially recorded. Most licenses indicate a penalty upon the minister for failure to return the paper to the county clerk, and any laxness in its enforcement does not excuse the minister from his obligation to the parties married to see that their marriage is legally registered. The license contains information as to age, and, if minors, the consent of parents, and status of participating parties whether single, or whether previously married and separated by death or divorce. As to the wedding ceremony itself, there is no set form. There are. set forms of marriage services, but these may be modified or changed as the minister chooses, except that the questions as to consent from both parties must not be omitted. The ceremony may be memorized or read. Probably the service that is read suggests something more of authority than a memorized one, just as reading the Scriptures is preferable to a memorized recitation of them. Our personal opinion is that restraint should be exercised in the matter of interpolations on the part of the minister.
Simplicity in the service is to be sought rather than flowery forms of extended advice to the bride and groom. It is not unknown for ministers to conduct this service as if they were the main participants in the ceremony. When changes are made in the service, let them be in the direction of simplicity and clarity, such as in the words used in the giving of the ring. The words, “This ring I give thee, in token and pledge of our constant faith and abiding love,” are preferable to the older form, “With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” The latter is difficult to repeat after the minister, and I know of one instance when the groom said, “With this ring I thee wed, and with all thy worldly goods I me endow.” Whatever form of service is used, let it be dignified, scriptural, and impressive.
Both church weddings and formal home weddings require a rehearsal. There are no unvarying rules as to formation or procession of the bridal party, except that the bride stand at the left of the groom. In the rehearsal the minister can be of helpful assistance as his advice is sought as to arrangements. He does not direct the rehearsal, but should be ready to help carry out the bride’s wishes; and in the presence of some officious volunteer director, relative or otherwise, who overrules the bride, as sometimes happens, he can tactfully support the bride that she may have her wedding the way she wants it. A brief resume of the ceremony and the responses of the bride and groom will acquaint them with the proper procedure. It is helpful in the actual ceremony for the minister to repeat clearly the instructions, such as when to join hands, that the bride and groom do not have to carry in their minds when in the service they are to do what, and may be able better to appreciate the significance of the service itself. The suggestion in advance that the bride and groom look at each other as they repeat their vows, and not at the minister, will help in the impressiveness of the service. Whatever manifests a true personal interest in the wedding on the part of the minister will not only help in the preparation for the ceremony, but will be deeply appreciated on the part of the bride and groom, and thus help to make the church’s part in their wedding significant to them. The choice of whether there shall be a church or a home wedding is naturally a matter for the bride and her family to decide. The determining reason for home weddings may often be the prohibitive costs of elaborate church decorations. We may be able to do something toward increasing the number of church weddings through discouraging, as far as possible, elaborate decorations and such expenses as that, which make church weddings so costly. If the wedding is solemnized at home, let it be truly solemnized. The minister can do much to make a home wedding as sacred as that in the church, and sometimes, because of its greater privacy and less stagey effects, truly more significant as a religious ceremony. Of late years there has been great emphasis placed on educational preparation for marriage in its religious, psychological, and physical aspects. It is undoubtedly needed. There are two forms in which this is advocated general education and personal counseling. It is obvious that there should be general education in preparation for marriage. In this the home, the school, the church, and other character-building agencies should participate. The instruction should deal, as the Committee on Marriage and the Home of the Federal Council of Churches has suggested, “with the principles of happy and successful marriage such as ideals for the home, wise choice of partners, the wide range of marital adjustments, home management, children and their nurture, and especially with the place of religion in individual and family life.”
Premarital interviews are also advocated as preparation for marriage. Some ministers have made it a rule not to marry any couple with whom they have not had a premarital conference. There is a wide difference of opinion and practice regarding such interviews. Their value would naturally depend on the voluntary participation of the young people to be married. Some ministers feel that no rule can be properly laid down as to required counseling with the minister. Most young people seem to be as definitely serious and as religiously grounded as ever their parents were. If a minister has no set rule for premarital counseling, he can, and should, so establish himself in the life of youth that they will naturally seek him out for such counseling if they desire it, and he should be able to speak frankly and understandingly to them when they come to him. Ignorance and maladjustment of the sex relation is a frequent cause of unhappy marriage. As the minister has opportunity, he can suggest literature that deals helpfully and frankly, but in the Christian spirit, with such matters. It is of doubtful wisdom for a minister to insist arbitrarily that such information be given to every couple he is to marry, but there can be no doubt that he must be prepared to give it as opportunity naturally presents itself. No true minister will do anything to encourage the commercialization of marriage. Stunt weddings, and any use of them for advertising purposes, are “out” for any true representative of the church. They have no more place in the sacredness of things than a stunt funeral at a county fair, or the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper held in the open street.
One of the forms of pastoral ministry often neglected is the later pastoral service given to the married couple. A call upon them helps to continue their feeling that the minister has had a vital part in the founding of their home, and that his interest is real and abiding. And as he continues to share with them in the happenings of that home, he is in a normal relationship for them to turn to him, or for him to volunteer to help them should difficulties arise between them.
Couples who make their homes in other communities may be helped to make satisfactory contacts with churches in the communities to which they go. And as the children come into the home, let the minister be sure to share their joy and anxiety with them, whether they, be near or far away. In every way possible he should quicken their conviction that he did not merely perform a ceremony for them, but that he is one with them in their hopes and desires for the happiness of their continued marriage. The most disturbing thing for the minister and marriage is the problem of the remarriage of divorced persons. It seems simplified for the minister of churches which have rigid rules against remarriage except for the innocent party in a divorce secured on the grounds of adultery. All he has to do, it would seem, is to state the rule of his church. But for many men in such churches this is not too satisfactory a method, for it does not meet the real factors involved. We are not too consistent in adherence to scriptural warrant when, upon the remarriage of divorced persons by someone else, the church freely offers them every other sacred service of the altar. No Protestant church, at least, refuses the Lord’s Supper to a couple it has refused to marry. We seem to say, “We will not break our rule, but we won’t let it make any difference anyway.” Moreover, divorce papers do not invariably give the true reason for a divorce, and therefore they cannot be relied upon as a final judgment as to the scriptural status of divorced persons.
Most of us wish that some church law could be laid down that is just and considerate, and worthy of the sacredness of the institution of marriage, and that sustains its spiritual character. It is obvious that it is difficult to apply an arbitrary rule. On the other hand, no minister wants to have the individual responsibility of decision as to whom he may, or may not, properly remarry. The matter of divorce and remarriage is a perplexing one indeed. There are so many times when, whatever decision is rendered, a haunting doubt remains that, as ministers, we have not met the situation for the best good of either marriage in general or the individuals involved. The minister must be true to his ordination vows in the church of which he is a minister. If his church has rigid rules on the matter of remarriage of divorced persons, he can only obey them. If he is a minister of a church that has less rigid church law and practice, let him remember that he has an allegiance and responsibility to God. For the Protestant minister marriage is not a sacrament, but it is none the less a sacred rite. He can never take his relationship to it lightly. If he is free to exercise his own judgment, let it be done through counsel with the Most High ’ ’who sanctifies marriage and hallows it.” And, above all, let him scorn being known as a “ marrying parson.” Ten marriages a year may not produce as many fees as fifty, but the smaller number may be a truer indication of the minister’s sense of his holy calling, and offer him a peace of mind and heart that a prostitution of his ministry for fees must inevitably destroy. Ministerial integrity is essential always, and in no place more than in the disturbing question as to whom, under Grod, he is privileged to marry.
Fortunately the perplexities of the divorce situation are not always present. And it is well to remember that participation in a marriage is normally one of the happy things in our ministry.
We are often weighed down with a sense of obligations, problems, and duties. Both ourselves and our ministry are the poorer for it. It would be well if, in regard to our ministry, we would often declare a moratorium on the word duty, and in its stead think, and use, the word privilege. There can be no question but that it is a privilege for the minister to be called in to share in the happiness and joy of a wedding. Too often the church is considered by many as an instrument of restraint, the advocate for all things beyond the range of common life, and ever giving tongue to duty, that “Stern Daughter of the Voice of G-od!” But at a wedding the church and minister are included as partners in one of life’s high occasions of gladness and lofty expectations. Jesus was a guest at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. He added to the joy of the feast. It is the privilege of the minister to be something more than simply the officiating clergyman. Let him participate in such a way that his calling, and his church, and his Lord, may be brought into a fitting relationship with one of life’s most gladsome moments.