I went on a retreat last weekend with Calvary Chapel Spring Valley's women's ministry. We devoted the weekend to the study of the similarities between God's redemptive plan and the Jewish wedding ceremony. Specifically, if you know anything about the Jewish wedding ceremony (which I really didn't), it brings alive much of what Jesus talked about near the end of his life.
For example, the Gospel of the Apostle John, Chapter 14 begins with some words of comfort Jesus gave to his disciples before heading to the garden at Gethsemane. He said
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God - trust also in me. My Father's house has plenty of room; if it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
By any contemporary Jew this would have been recognizable as the speech a bridegroom gave his betrothed after they'd agreed to marry. It signified that the agreement to marry had been sealed and a time of separation had begun. A separation that began when the bridegroom gave that speech and left to make a place for his new wife at his home and ended with their reunification and beginning of their united life together. It was a time of waiting and longing, of anticipation and romance.
This is one of many times in the Bible (either in the Gospels generally, by Jesus himself, or in the Epistles) that the romance of the Jewish wedding ceremony is used to described our place in the Redemptive plan or on world's time line generally. It places us, His church, in the role of the lovestruck, excited virgin bride anxious for the arrival of her new husband and the beginning of our new life together.
This would be fine, of course, if I didn't hate romance. I mean I really hate romance. OK maybe I don't hate romance in the technical sense - some part of me is remembering an advanced English class where my teacher redefined romance and it didn't mean sappy puppy love - but I really do hate that sappy, sickeningly sweet love of teenagers. Seriously, the only thing I appreciate less than the general self-absorbed melodrama of teenagers is the way they experience first love, so deluded and blind.
I honestly can't help but roll my eyes and gag a little bit when I think about Romeo and Juliet, Titanic, the Notebook, Twilight or any other in a long series of ridiculous stories were two young adults are "meant to be", "soulmates" or "complete each other". Yuck, yuck, yuck. Thus, envisioning that a part of my Christian life is to wait on baited breath for Christ's return, wooed by His advances and cooing over how I'll finally be complete when we are together makes me cringe inside.
Ugh! The vulnerability of it all. I remember loving like that, hoping that he would love me in return. Staring anxiously across the gymnasium floor at Michael Casey Jr. (God was he beautiful), hoping, that of all the other 8th grade girls he would think I was the prettiest. Praying desperately that he would ask me to dance. And he did a few times. And my heart melted.
I remember loving like that. The purity of it.
I also remember when Michael Casey Jr broke up with me and dated my best friend. And when, two years later, he told me he "could never see us as anything more than friends" and my heart breaking open with a sickening disappointment that screamed NEVER again. I will NEVER love like that again. I will NEVER buy into that BS again, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN.
Why does God have to heal it all? Isn't it enough that I believe in Him? That I would die for Him? Isn't it enough that I would give my very life to Him? No it's not. He wants it all. I can't even keep this safe, He wants to break it open and heal it.
I gotta tell you, I've never been so reluctant to hand something over to Him. Those moments hurt so, so bad. But I must, mustn't I. That Punk.
My beloved bridegroom,
I give myself to you, broken hearted. It is so hard to love you with all of this history. Take it. Wash me, make me clean again. I trust you.
Amen.
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