50th Wedding Anniversary for Bob and Marlene Martin

1 Corinthians 13:4-13  ⁴ Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not brag. It is not arrogant. ⁵ It does not behave indecently. It is not selfish. It is not irritable. It does not keep a record of wrongs. ⁶ It does not rejoice over unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never comes to an end. But if there are prophetic gifts, they will be done away with; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be done away with. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, ¹⁰ but when that which is complete has come, that which is partial will be done away with. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. ¹² Now we see indirectly using a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I was fully known.

¹³ So now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Triune God, who comes to us today in love. Amen.

Dear friends and family, and especially you, Bob and Marlene, at the celebration of your fiftieth wedding anniversary.

1968 was the year that the first episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood aired. Led Zepplin performed for the first time. Planet of the Apes was in movie theaters.

1968 saw the assassination of two major political figures – Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

1968 was an important year for space exploration. Apollo 7 was the first manned Apollo mission and an important step toward the moon landing. Apollo 8 followed not long after, when astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders orbited the moon. They became the first humans to see the far side of the moon.

I know that you knew all of these things, but, it was great for me to review all these events from 1968, because they all happened two years before I was born.

Something else great happened in 1968. Robert Martin and Marlene Ninmer stood before the Lord’s altar on August 4 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Kiel. There, they made their vows of faithfulness to each other. Out of commitment to each other and to their Lord, who brought them together, they are celebrating fifty years of marriage.

I use the word “commitment” on purpose. Commitment is a stronger word than our English word “love.” You can love your spouse and your kids. But, you can also love your puppy, the Green Bay Packers and hot fudge sundaes. Love can mean many things in our current culture. What St. Paul talks about in the sermon text you chose for today is commitment.

Listen to it again: Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not brag. It is not arrogant. It does not behave indecently. It is not selfish. It is not irritable. It does not keep a record of wrongs. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Our present culture is all about feelings. It doesn’t matter what the truth is or what is logical. All that matters is how you “feel” about something. But, notice how St. Paul describes love here. He isn’t talking about feelings or emotions. He is describing actions and behaviors. This is what love “looks like.”

Love, at its best is far more than emotion. It’s action. It’s something you do. God tells us: “Love is ... love does … love does not”! All actions! Love is more than a feeling it is a verb, it’s an action, it’s an act of our wills.

These words of God in 1 Corinthians aren’t deep theological concepts:

Love is patient (when Marlene learns that Bob is spending long hours playing with his bugs at work).

Love is kind (when Bob quickly realized that Marlene doesn’t cook like mom).

Love does not envy (when Bob realizes that Marlene is a tad bit more outgoing than he is in conversations).

Love does not brag and is not arrogant (it is not easily threatened or cruel, critical and manipulative).

Love does not behave indecently (you’ve learned that neither one of you has a right to be disrespectful and thoughtless to the other).

Love is not selfish or irritable (you’ve learned – probably the hard way – that you shouldn’t be moody or have to walk around each other afraid of saying something that will “set the other person off”).

Love keeps no record of wrongs (once you have forgiven the other, you don’t bring it up in an argument again).

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth (the truth of God’s Word that is so important that you’ve raised your children in God’s house of worship, to remain part of the Bride of Christ).

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (demonstrating love when the other was sick or immobile with a broken wrist or after a knee surgery or a heart attack. Sacrificing for the other and not complaining. Even if that meant going out in the wee hours of the morning to get stronger medication or putting compression socks on the other. That qualifies as love!)

Love never fails. You have learned through fifty years of experience, that no matter how many difficult times you had in your marriage, if you have God in that marriage, you cannot fail. Without God in the center, your marriage becomes self-centered and self-focused. But with God’s love in the middle, you cannot go wrong. 

God’s love for you has made your love for one another last a lifetime.

So, what is God’s love? Again, God defines love as commitment, as an action, as a sacrifice.

Listen to the Bible’s definition of love: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:10-11) 

If you walk through the doors of the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, you can view artifacts and documents from some of the most consequential years in the 20th Century. In room after room, on shelf after shelf, you can research the end of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, the rebuilding of Europe, the Korean War, and everything in between.

Somewhere in that library, you also will find a collection of over 1,300 letters. These letters, however, have little to do with historic events of the 20th Century. They are, nevertheless, something extraordinary. You see, President Truman made it a point to write a letter to his wife, Bess, every day they were apart for any reason.

Many of the letters are simple updates on minor things. Others, of course, do mention world leaders. But it's the sheer number of letters that makes the real impact. To see those letters all together is to see the evidence of one man's steady, faithful love for his wife.

Jesus Christ, your Savior, God’s Son, fought this world’s dictator. He entered into a World War that has lasted thousands of years. He even bled and died to crush that devilish dictator once and for all. Jesus was committed. He acted. He sacrificed himself. He died so that we might live eternally.

God demonstrated His great love for you with His Son on the cross. But, God’s love for you is often not in the big and the dramatic. Very often, His love for you is in the regular routine of life. He's the One who sees to it that you get something to eat. He's the One who sees to it that you have a place to sleep and something to wear. He's the One who sees to it that you receive an encouraging word when you need it. Most of all, He's the One who sees to it that His forgiveness of your sin is fresh and new for you every day.

Through faith in Jesus, that’s the faithful, steady, committed love God has for you. It's a love that is at work in your life every single day. It’s a love that has allowed you to love each other for over fifty years.

“Commitment” – that is the definition of Christ’s love for you. “Commitment” – that is the definition of your love for one another. Amen.