Castles in the Air: A Wedding Homily for My Son and His Bride

Ryan and Teresa Senger

Yesterday I had the great honor to officiate the wedding of my son, Ryan, and his wife Teresa. Here is the homily from that ceremony:

Brenda and I have had the best time
watching Ryan and Teresa get ready for this day,
and we’ve enjoyed getting ready for it ourselves.

One of the things I had to do for the wedding
was pick up the dry cleaning a few days ago
from a place out in the valley, off Pines near Broadway.
After I picked it up,
instead of trying to make a left on Pines,
I went down a side street to get back on Broadway,
and as I turned the corner,
there, in the middle of a residential neighborhood,
was a castle.

I did not know that there was a castle in the Spokane Valley.

But it’s there, on Vercler Road.
You can tell by looking at it that it’s homemade,
that it’s been built slowly, over time,
with its leaning towers, and uneven brickwork.
Some of the towers look unfinished,
as if the builder is still working on it.
And as I drove by, I thought,
thank you, God, for the romantics of the world,
who give us castles
in the middle of the city.
To me, that castle is a sign of creativity, of idealism,
of something bigger.
Some might call it foolish, the work of a dreamer,
but I call it romantic.

I know there are some romantics here today,
and two of them are sitting right over there.
I don’t know if it surprises you to know that they’re romantics,
and maybe it surprises them.
But here’s how I know they’re romantics:
If any of you have seen the pictures that Teresa posts on Facebook,
you might have noticed
that whenever she posts a picture of herself and Ryan,
she adds it to a photo album that she calls
“My Knight in Shining Kevlar.”

Isn’t that romantic?

For Teresa, Ryan is the knight who rescued her
from a life of crime,
that night when they first met
and he found her parked illegally.
He is her knight in shining kevlar.

And if you’ve seen the pictures of the day they got engaged,
Ryan on one knee in the middle of a field of blueberries,
the knight keeling before his lady,
you know that there’s a romantic side to Ryan.

So there’s a bit of the romantic in each one of them.
This became even more clear to me
when I asked both of them
why they had chosen these particular Scripture readings for today.
They both pointed to the last line of the first reading,
where Tobiah and Sarah are praying on their wedding night,
and they end that prayer by asking God,
“allow us to live together to a happy old age.”

That line is important to Ryan and Teresa.
Ryan and Teresa want their story to end with
“and they lived happily ever after.”

It’s a romantic notion,
a notion that some might see as idealistic, unreachable,
like building castles in the air — or in the middle of Spokane.

But it was the American writer Henry David Thoreau who said,
“If you build your castles in the air…
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.”

Today, Ryan and Teresa begin building the foundation
under their castle in the air.

And like that castle in the Spokane Valley,
their wedding this day is something visible, something public.

Just as that castle in the middle of the city
is a sign of something bigger,
every marriage is to be a sign of something bigger.

The love that married couples have for each other
is to be a sacred sign of the way God loves us.

Whenever we see married couples holding hands in the park,
or out on a date,
worried about whether the kids are tying up the babysitter,
we get a tiny glimpse of God’s love for us.
When one spouse is sick and the other makes chicken noodle soup,
or when one has had a bad day and comes home to a sympathetic ear,
we get an echo of the great love God offers us
each and every moment.

Marriage is a sacred sign.
If we want to know how God loves us,
we are to look at couples like you, Ryan and Teresa,
and see your love.

You are called to be a castle in the middle of the city,
an ever-growing monument to God’s love for all to see.

That’s not an easy task.
In fact, it’s quite a challenge.

Like that castle over on Vercler Road,
every marriage needs constant building,
and continual tending.
Those of us who have been married for many years
can tell you all about love’s ups and downs.

But we can also tell you that you are not alone
in building your marriage.
Today as you commit yourselves to each other,
Jesus Christ also promises himself to you.
He promises to walk your journey with you.
He promises to be with you in good times and in bad,
in sickness and in health,
in the hope that you will live together to a happy old age.

There is another castle, now, in the Spokane Valley,
just off Dishman-Mica Road.
This is your castle,
the castle that the two of you will continually build, remodel, and expand on,
a castle to share with the world.

It’s not the house on the lot there,
or the shop, or the home theater, or the kitchen.

It is the interior castle of your hearts,
the place where a knight in shining kevlar and his lady
work together with Christ to live a life happily ever after.