For years I never really liked the hymn we sang earlier: “Let It Be a Dance.”  It wasn’t until I was in seminary and had the most amazing nun as a teacher that it at last made sense.  To Sister Alexandra, everything is a dance.  All of life … a dance – with all that that implies.  And suddenly the hymn made sense.  “Let it be a dance we do.  May I have this dance with you?  Through the good times and the bad times too, let it be a dance.” 

An interfaith marriage is indeed a dance.  It is a wonderful, sometimes challenging dance.  And it is that dance that we want to explore just a little bit this morning.  We want to explore it because with such diversity in this great country, and with, as more and more people are recognizing, our increasingly pluralistic approach to religion, what once seemed almost unimaginable has increasingly become almost common place.  Interfaith marriage.  Yet we still have questions, questions left over, perhaps, from a more isolated time.

Our very use of “inter” within a word tells us about our dividing lines.  Where we use “inter” tells us where our walls are.  As example, if someone from the United States and someone, say from Poland get married, we don’t call them an inter-continental couple.  If someone from Canada marries someone from the United States we don’t call them an inter-national couple.  And if someone with brown eyes marries someone with blue eyes, we don’t call them an inter-ocular couple.  These “inter” differences are not dividing lines. 

Yet if a person with brown skin marries someone who has what society calls white skin, we call that couple inter-racial.  And if a person who follows one faith path marries someone from a different faith path we call that an inter-faith couple.  A mixed marriage.

Not that I’m pointing out anything we don’t already know, but I think it’s worth taking a step back and pondering a moment just what our culture assumes is important – by our language.  Much too often we don’t take that moment.  This morning let’s.   Let’s take a moment even though, believe me, I know I’m preaching to the choir.  But I’ve been asked, and over time I’m pretty sure you’ll be asked, “What about interfaith marriage?”  So, what about it?

When I was in college, I used to describe myself as coming from a mixed marriage.  I loved to watch the reaction.  Then I told them the truth: that mom was a Democrat, and dad a Republican.  A mixed marriage.  It got a lot of laughs.  But why does the marriage of a Democrat and a Republican, two differing political points of view, get a laugh when described as a mixed marriage, when the marriage of person of one faith with a person of a differing faith described as a mixed marriage is taken with considerable seriousness?  It has always struck me as rather strange.

How we divide ourselves, tells us a lot about who we are. … Or at least who we’ve been.

We humans excel at building walls.  We excel at dividing ourselves.  And a step, just the first step, away from that is to become aware of the walls we have built that have become so commonplace, so much a part of the landscape that we no longer even recognize them as walls. 

A part of what we are doing today is examining one of these walls and then seeing if, ever so nonviolently, we can knock the darn thing down.

The first question that occurs to me is why do we even bother with the category: interfaith marriage?  Isn’t an inter-economic marriage more difficult than inter-faith?  If she, for example, comes from a save every nickel, count every penny tradition, and he comes from a buy a new car, buy a new home, buy the best imported clothes tradition, isn’t this marriage more likely to be headed for trouble than if she believes Jesus was the son of God and he believes that Jesus was a great prophet? 

Isn’t an inter-action marriage more difficult than inter-faith? If he comes from a spend your life serving others tradition and she comes from a what’s in it for me tradition, isn’t this marriage headed for a rockier road than if she believes Muhammad was the final prophet and he believes the Buddha was the Enlightened one?

I bring this up only to illustrate that we make assumptions.  And one of those assumptions is that we should marry someone who is “our own kind.”  And for a very long time, fundamental to that idea has been the belief that “our own kind” is largely to be defined not by the kind of person we are, not by how we treat others, not by how we live our lives, but by the color of our skin, and our assumptions about God.  And that is a belief that has long outlived its usefulness. 

How important is it, that both partners in the marriage believe precisely the same things about God?  We should be honest.  For some, still, what you believe about God trumps everything else.  But that number is shrinking.  And I would suggest that what two people believe is not nearly as important as it is that each respect, not tolerate but respect the other’s beliefs. 

For the truth of it is … no two of us approach the sacred in exactly the same way.  Every marriage, every marriage is an interfaith marriage.  And every marriage, one way or another, must come up with an interfaith answer. 

It’s really the problems of the world writ small and very personal.  How do two people who love each other grow together rather than grow apart, respecting and learning from one another, rather than attempting to convert or convince their partner to become more like they are? 

Cary Grant, who played an angel in one of my favorite movies, “The Bishop’s Wife”, and no they don’t make angels like that any more, has a line in that movie that has always deeply resonated with me.  We are, he says, all “other worldly.”   We each and all come from our own planet – each and every one of us.  I agree.  I think every marriage, every marriage is the coming together of two aliens, who, through love, have resolved to live together.

Humanity, throughout history has thrown up walls regarding marriage.  Who you should and should not marry.  Taboos. 

At Living Interfaith, obviously, we do not believe that interfaith relationships and marriages are taboo … challenging perhaps, as all relationships are challenging, but not taboo.  Indeed, coming to an Interfaith understanding of interfaith marriage may be hugely helpful in finding success in marriage far beyond any question of faith.

Interfaith asks of us to recognize that we are all human, whatever world we come from, whatever faith we hew to.  Interfaith requires respect and love for “the other”, whomever that other may be.  Spouse.  Child.  Parent.  Friend.  And … not so much friend.  But it certainly has its most intimate relevance to our spouse.

I guess a part of what we are looking at today is whether in a marriage, as once thought by most cultures, worldwide: that two become one.  In which case there can only be one faith.  Or is it that two covenant to lovingly share who they are, and lovingly respect who their spouse is?  I don’t imagine that it is a shock to learn that I lean towards the latter.

This is not a uniquely Interfaith ideal.  But it is a foundational Interfaith ideal.  That we draw joy, and not fear, from our diversity.  That we grow and blossom as we get to know each other, and are not threatened by the fact that we are not one.  Even in marriage, two do not become one.  The journey is towards realized love, not oneness. 

There is in the Hindu path a Veda of which I am quite fond.  It celebrates the “twoness” of a husband and wife, rather than the “oneness.” 

“I am he, and you are she;

I am song, and you are verse,

I am heaven, you are earth.

And here we two shall dwell together,

becoming parents of children.”

And here we two shall dwell together.  You being you, and me being me.

The point of the exercise is not what class do you belong to? 

The question is, do you love?

The point of the exercise is not what color is your skin? 

The question is, do you love? 

The point of the exercise is not what do you do for a living? 

The question is, do you love?

The point of the exercise is not what faith do you follow? 

The question is, do you love? 

The choir sang today a setting of one of my favorite passages from Christian Scripture.  1^st Corinthians 13.  I can be brilliant.  It doesn’t matter.   I can do all sorts of things, good things.  It doesn’t matter.  If I do not do these things with love and from love, I am nothing. 

And of particular interest to Interfaith marriage, from that same passage in 1^st Corinthians.  “Love does not insist on its own way.”  What a concept! … What an important and profound concept.  “Love does not insist on its own way.” “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  “Prophecies will pass away.  Love never ends.”   Whether he knew it or not, Paul was at heart a practitioner of Interfaith.

But again, interfaith marriage.  How do we honor and celebrate each other’s spiritual paths?   How do we make that work in our everyday lives – together, in marriage?  One way, and I was a choir director for thirty years before I became a minister, and I’ve seen this way a lot, is for him to go to his place of worship and she goes to hers.  Another way is for them to go together and to alternate, honoring her spiritual path one weekend and his the next.  Sort of like alternating visiting the in-laws.  But another is the path we offer here.  The chance to come and celebrate your path, your spouse’s path, your neighbor’s path, and the path of those you may have never met – all in the same house.

As an Interfaith Church we who come have an amazing and important opportunity to attend a sacred space that is not only church, but mosque and synagogue and temple and fellowship. 

A quick digression for those who have joined us more recently.  We call ourselves a church to reclaim the original meaning of “church.”  The original meaning was a circle.  A church was a circle of people.  Over time, a church became the name for where that  circle met.  It had no other ecclesiastical meaning.  We are an Interfaith church.  An Interfaith circle.  And we use the word Interfaith with a capital “I.”  Interfaith is our path.  We are Christian, we are Jewish, we are Buddhist, we are Baha’i, we are Muslim, we are Humanist.  All of these and so many others are a valued part of our Interfaith path.  End of brief digression.

We come back to the realization that, first and foremost, all marriages are interfaith.  You bring who you are into the relationship.  And an Interfaith marriage, founded in love, that recognizes and respects the humanity of the other will be a strong marriage indeed. 

We return to what we talked about two weeks ago when we spoke of love.  Love is not all you need.  Sorry Beatles.  But as each and every one of our spiritual paths have taught us, we are called to stand on love as the foundation for who we are and what we do. 

Let us engage each other and the world with love.

And let it be a dance!!   

Amen.