I attended a wedding today. My own, as it happens.
This realization first came to me as I was in the shower this morning. I do a lot of good thinking in the shower. Perhaps that’s why I take such long showers. I was pondering the new dress I was planning to wear to church ($6 on clearance at Meijer – yay!) and trying to decide which shoes to wear with it.
“What about those black strappy high-heeled sandals?” I thought to myself. “They might look very nice with a black and blue dress on a warm Sunday morning in July.”
Then I paused. Those shoes are my dancing shoes. I call them my Ginger Rogers shoes, and ever since I bought them five years ago, I’ve tried to keep them nice. I save them for very special occasions – in particular, occasions where there will be dancing. Weddings, mostly. It’s a rare thing to find a pair of cute, classy high-heeled shoes that are comfortable enough to dance in – so I keep the put away most of the time. They certainly aren’t for ordinary Sunday mornings in July.
But why not?
Foretelling Himself through the words of the Song of Solomon, throughout His ministry and preaching in the Gospels, and in His revelation of eternal splendor to John on Patmos, Christ has strewn his Holy Word with images of weddings and wedding feasts. He is the bridegroom. The church – His holy people, including me – are His bride. It’s a motif that won’t go away.
If the church is the bride (not the wife, mind you, but the perpetual blushing bride) and Christ is the Bridegroom, isn’t it appropriate that the boring old every Sunday worship service that the Church (at least, many manifestations of the Church) has celebrated for ages should, in fact, bring to mind a wedding ceremony? It is, and it does.
At the beginning of the service, in comes the Bridegroom – we see Him in a processional cross, in a robe-adorned pastor who will stand in as His best man and proxy, and in the Trinitarian invocation of his everlasting Name. He takes His place at the front of the sanctuary and waits for His bride to finish getting ready.
Meanwhile, the Bride is preparing herself. At the invocation, she is reminded of her baptism and her soul is bathed in the assurance of her salvation. In the confession and absolution, she casts aside the grungy street clothes she wore in and puts on the spotless wedding dress of Christ’s righteousness.
When the Bridegroom is present and the Bride is prepared, it is time for the vows.
Christ goes first, as He must. In the Bible readings and in the pastor’s sermon, the church hears – I hear – my God’s everlasting promise to love, save, nurture and care for His beloved. Listening to these precious words, I know deeply that He loves me – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health. I know that He has died for me to atone for all my sin, and that He longs for me to be with Him in eternity. Best vows ever.
My response feels so small by comparison, but He has told me the words He wants most to hear: “Believe in God. Believe also in me,” He said. So those are the words I say to him, humbly, reverently, yet also boldly and with all my heart: “I believe in God the Father Almighty… and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord… I believe in the Holy Spirit… Amen!”
At this point in a typical wedding ceremony, the bride and groom exchange rings. And every Sunday morning, in church, both bride and Bridegroom give gifts to one another.
The ushers gather the offering, and they carry our gifts to the altar. My gift today wasn’t much, and it was something that He had first given to me. When I offered it to Him, though, it was as if to say: I love you; I trust your promises to care for me; I desire to give myself to you faithtfully, even as you are faithful to me.
Next, it is His turn to place in my hand and the hands of His whole church a “pledge and token of wedded love and faithfulness.”
Boy, does He ever. I give Him (grudgingly, if I’m going to be brutally honest) a small portion of my money. He gives me His true body and blood hidden in bread and wine. I work half-heartedly for a few hours a week to earn my gift to Him. He sacrificed His throne, His bodily comfort, His entire life to give me this priceless token of His love and affection. It’s as if I give Him a 25 cent vending machine ring and, in return, He puts on my finger the Hope diamond in a Tiffany’s setting of pure platinum. What love!
The vows spoken, the rings exchanged – having sung songs and prayed prayers, as is lovely and proper at any wedding ceremony – we give thanks to God for His indescribable gift, and we depart, basking in His love, radiant with His grace.
Week after week, I – with the whole church on earth – attend this wedding feast, growing ever closer in love and faithfulness to my dear Bridegroom, looking forward to the glorious morning when He will smile and call to me, like the bridegroom in Solomon’s Song: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.”
As the first glimmers of these reflections came to me in the shower this morning, I decided that it would be just fine to wear my special Ginger Rogers wedding shoes to any “ordinary” Sunday morning service. Worship may be ordinary, but it’s magnificent, too.
I didn’t actually end up wearing those wedding shoes today – they didn’t look as right with the dress as I thought they might at first. Maybe I’ll wear them next Sunday instead.
