"There is no marriage with out wedding, this is why wedding are often celebrated by a great feast."
"Leave his father and his mother." when I pronounce these words, you will feel a pain in your heart."
"This is certainly not something joyful, where I come from tears are often shed when a wedding takes place."
There was a nodding of head especially among the older women, half out loud, one said,   "It's the same here."
"You would expect that the teaching about marriage begins with some thing more joyful and beautiful, but the is very down to earth and sober."
It says ,  "A man leave his father and his mother." Leaving is the price of happiness, there must be a clean and clear cut, just as new born baby can not grow up unless the umbilical cord is cut, so marriage can not grow up and develop as long as no real leaving, no clear separation from one family, take place.
"This is hard" I say, it is hard for the children to leave their parents, but is it just as hard for the parents to let their children go.
"Parents can  be compared to hens who hatch out ducks," eggs after they are hatched, the duckling walk to the pond and swim away, but the hens can not follow them, they stay on the banks of the pond and cackle."
Even before Daniel had translate the last sentences, there was some laughter in the audience, but it came mostly from the young people.
"you can not get married with out leaving," I repeated.  "If n no real leaving take place, the marriage will be in trouble, if the young couple have no chance to start their own home, completely separate from their families, the danger is great that the in laws will interfere continuously.
"In Africa the custom of bride price is sometimes used as such a means of interference, some parents who do not were to let their daughter go , raise the bride price so high that the young couple remain in debt for a long time, there debts are then used to prevent a real leaving."
There was a complete silence in the church now, in that silence I could feel some resistance, they could read in their faces that they were not able to accept this, Evidently this matter of "leaving" was a good bitter pill for them to swallow, so I explained:
"Now some of you may say: "This is against our Africa tradition, we are taught to love our parents, not to leave them.
We feel an obligation not only to the small family or as it is some times called, the intimate family which is made up of father, mother and children, we also feel an obligation to the greater family, the extended family which takes in all our relatives."
"This is very valuable tradition which by no means should be destroyed, yet my answer is that  "leaving" does not mean to leave in the lunch, leaving does not mean to abandoned one parents.
"On the contrary, only if a couple are given the chance to leave and start their own home will they be able to help their respective families later on, only if they are independent and without debt will they be able to take responsibility for them later on and serve them, the fact that they were able to  "leave " creates a breathing spell in which the love between parents and family can function only so long as the nuclear family is intact and healthy independent.
"Is this a western concept of marriage? It is not, I have not come to you in order to present the western concept of marriage, this biblical concept present a challenge to all cultures."
"Everyone has trouble with "leaving", If you ask a western marriage counsellor which problem he has most frequently to deal with, he will probably answer, "With the mother in- law problem".
There was laughter again _the same kind of laughter and smiles which the mere mentioning of this word causes also in European and America audiences. I continued:
" In Europe and America it is usually the mother of the husband who interferes, she just can not believe that this young girl whom she married is able to take care of her precious son.
 Will she be able to wash his shirt right? will she know how much salt he likes in his soup?  Even if there is no bride price to pay, money is often used as a means to keep the young couple dependent and to force them to live in the same house or even apartment with one of their parents."
"Real leaving and real letting go _not only outwardly, but also inwardly _is difficult for everyone, in Africa I have heard it is more often the mother of the wife who causes trouble, if there is a marriage quarrel, the young wife tries to run home to her mother.
"So one of my Africa friend has claimed that this bible verse should stipulate expressly that a woman shall also leave her father and her mother, why do Africa woman run home so frequently? the answer is because the woman has left her family, while her husband has not, in your country the man stays in his home, or close to his home, and his wife has to join him there.
"Read the book of Genesis and you will find the same kind of society,  there was a matter of course that the woman had to leave and become a member of her husband clan, the unheard of and revolutionary message was that the man also had to leave his family, this must have hurt your ears today.
" It protects the woman rights, it aims toward partnership between husband and wife, the massage is in other words: Both have to leave, not only the wife, but also the husband.
And just as both have to leave, so also must both cleave not only the wife to the husband, but also the husband to the wife, as our Bible verse expressly states.
"This lead us to the second part: