“Love & Wisdom in Christian Marriage” Cole & Alicia Schuster’s Wedding Sermon / Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Ecclesiastes 4:9–12; 9:9–10

Cole & Alicia Schuster's Wedding Sermon / Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Saturday June 6th 2026: Season of Pentecost / Ecclesiastes 4:9–12; 9:9–10 “Love & Wisdom in Christian Marriage”

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that He has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

                         Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.                                        

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Cole and Alicia; Good Christian friends and family of Cole and Alicia: Wise King Solomon, King David’s son, was blessed with wisdom as a gift from God,[1] now he didn’t always use his wisdom well and he truly grew into this gift of wisdom over time through the school of experience. His book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible was written later in his life after many adventures and misadventures and this is one of the wonderful things about it and his other works like the Song of Songs which he wrote when he was younger and the Book of Proverbs which he wrote in his middle years, in each stage of his life the Lord, through Solomon, doesn’t just provide Solomon with wisdom but provides us with wisdom too, if we take the time to consider and study it.

Part of this wisdom deals with marriage and married life, the passage we heard today about how “two are better than one,” and about keeping warm together, about having each other’s back in times of trouble and how “a threefold cord is not quickly broken,” have long been applied to mirage and married life together.

In the Book of Proverbs Solomon encourages his sons to “rejoice in the wife of [their] youth:”[2] in a time when many people are putting off marriage in favour or living independent lives, not getting married until they are older, or living for years like they are married when they aren’t married, you two are going a different direction, charting a path in your youth that you can both rejoice in today and in the years to come. I hope that you will be trendsetters and an encouragement to others to embrace commitment, to seek the Lord’s blessing on your union with open arms, to receive all the good gifts God has ready to pour out upon you and your family.     

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.” Life alone can be overwhelming, and filled with anxieties especially if you have big responsibilities; Cole and Alicia you both mention how important it is to have each other to turn to and to lean on, and how important this is for you today and for your family moving forward particularly as your family continues to grow. Being married and committed to each other for the long haul — until death do us part — doesn’t mean it will always be smooth sailing or that there won’t be troubles and hardships and challenges, what it means is that you are promising to be there for each other, to have someone right there with you to face all of those challenges together. The temptation is to think your facing it all alone even while you’re together or to want to do it all on your own. Resist these temptations and keep focused on the goal, the World and people around you may want to get between you, don’t let them, stay strong.

For everyone listening maybe you’ve had a hard patch along the way, maybe everything fell apart and you had to start all over again from scratch, maybe being in love wasn’t enough. Its true marriage is more than love. Because love is more than love: let me explain, the World thinks of love too narrowly these days. Saint Paul provides us this more full picture of love when he, with great wisdom, explains how, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” and in this way, “love never ends.”[3] And when this is a challenge for us, especially for those of us who are married remember what we heard in our readings today, particularly that reading from Psalm 100 where the Psalmist writes how “the LORD is good; [how] His steadfast love endures forever, and [how] His faithfulness [extends] to all generations.”[4] This is the same sort of wisdom Solomon is driving at when he says, “A threefold cord is not quickly broken,” even together you are not going it alone, this is one of the promises of a Christian marriage, that the Lord promises to be the Third Cord, the one who’s loves faithfully and whose faithfulness never fails, the source of forgiveness and patient and kindness. Sometimes it’ll be tough love but it is the love that truly “endures all things,” the love that “never ends.” With God in your marriage you can face the World when everything becomes overwhelming and full of anxiety, all the more so when you have God as the foundation and centre of your marriage.

In the Gospel of Saint John Jesus, in love, provides words of encouragement when He calls us to abide in His love, to live in His love, to be steadfast and faithful to Him, He says all of this knowing that He will be more faithful to us than we will ever be to Him or to each other, and as the One who suffered all things even death on His Good Friday cross, He knows that this abiding love is the cord that binds us together in Christian love, in marriage, in family, and so He calls us to love one another as He has loved us,[5] a sacrificial love that gives of self for the needs of the other, for the good of the other. Trusting that He knows what we need and that His heavenly Father knows what we need, that the Holy Spirit will bind us together in faith. These promises are not just for Cole and for Alicia they are for all of us.        

Over the last sixty or so years the World, particularly here in North America, thought it had all the answers when it came to marriage and married life — when to start it, when not to, when to end it, who should be married to who — the World thinks itself wise and as a result encouraged people to step away from the wisdom handed down from generation to generation. To step away from the wisdom we have been given in God’s Word. The World often looks at marriage as toil without reward, but the World is wrong, and in this case it is dead wrong. Marriage keeps us grounded, Marriage gives us a firm footing in life and countess opportunities to selflessly love and care for each other and our families. This alone is a great reward for your toil and is also the reason why it’s a real joy — and something worthy of embracing — when young couples, or couple of any age, chosen a different path from what the World recommends we can rejoice with them; so today there is great wisdom in what Cole and Alicia are doing, may the Lord uphold this through thick and thin blessing their new life together as He knows best, and in the midst of all these blessings of body and soul help the two of them, the two of you, continually grow into this gift of wisdom. Amen.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] 1 Kings 3:3-15
[2] Proverbs 5:18
[3] 1 Corinthians 13:4–8a
[4] Psalm 100:5
[5] John 15:9–12

Photo Credit: Main photo provided by family with background image from rawpixe.