Five months and two days
ago, I was so glad to see so many of you at an event that brought
immense joy to my heart and, I hope, joy to yours as well. Since
that day, I think I've scarcely seen anybody without being asked how
I'm liking married life. The answer is, very well, thanks for
asking. It's been a blessed five months and a blessed two days. The
wedding ceremony was, I think, beautiful and profound and every other
good thing I can say about it – the bishop did a wondrous job in
officiating, the bride was breathtaking, every moment rose to the
plan. And the celebration continued for those who could join my new
wife and I at the reception afterwards. Ah, what a reception! So
much laughter, so much dancing, and a truly phenomenal potluck-style
meal spread before us all – I've basically never eaten so well at a
wedding before, and I hope you all enjoyed it too. Now, I am
certainly fond of sampling different sorts of foods and flavors,
especially in the company of family and friends – it's why this
past week, with the local fair, was such a great time, especially
when I got to see quite a number of you there as well. It had all of
those things. And so did that wedding feast. There's something
about a really well-done wedding feast (and its celebratory
festivities) that draws us all in. We love to keep a feast.
In days of old, when the
Jewish people looked forward to the end-times and beyond, a feast was
what they were expecting. After all, the prophet Isaiah had said
that “on this mountain, Yahweh of Hosts will make for all
peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,”
and that “he will swallow up death forever; and the Lord
Yahweh will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his
people he will take away from all the earth”
(Isaiah 25:6-8). So in following the prophet's lead, the rabbis came
to say that this life, this world, is like the little entryway or
antechamber leading into a spacious banquet hall (t.
Berakhot 6.27). And they
understood that prophets like Isaiah were looking forward at “the
banquet prepared in paradise” (Exodus Rabbah
45.6).
Taking
their cues from that vision, some rabbis imagined that the dinner
menu would include the great beasts Behemoth and Leviathan, the
earth-beast and the sea-beast (Leviticus Rabbah
13.3; b. Bava Batra 75a).
And some rabbis commented that Isaiah's 'well-aged wine'
would be made from grapes from the Garden of Eden, grown during the
days of creation itself and fermenting down through the whole history
of the earth (b. Berakhot
34b; b. Sanhedrin 99a)
– the ultimate vintage. The rabbis were excited to think that “the
Holy One will prepare a feast for the righteous in the Garden of
Eden” in the world that God is going to make new, and when they
daydreamed about what it'll be like to sit down at that banquet, they
daydreamed that there'd be no need for any seasonings, because the
fragrant winds blowing through Eden's trees would perfume every
morsel with flavors beyond our wildest imaginations (Numbers
Rabbah 13.2). Best of all, at
this banquet, sanctified Israel and every redeemed nation would all
sit down and eat with the Messiah forever (3 Enoch
48a.10).
When
Jesus came onto the scene, he agreed there'd be a banquet. He said
that “many will come from east and west and recline at
table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven”
(Matthew 8:11). But it was Jesus who added a fantastic twist to the
old expectation. Jesus explained that this wouldn't be just any kind
of banquet we were waiting for. It was going to be a wedding feast.
He told stories about the kingdom of God being like a great king
throwing a feast for his son's wedding, and trying to pack the
wedding hall with all the appropriately dressed guests he can, no
matter who they are (Matthew 22:1-4). In those days, remember, the
betrothal was already a legally binding arrangement. But when the
time came for the wedding feast, the groom and his party met up with
the bride and her party; the marriage contract would be read and
affirmed; and the bride and groom would go off into a room set aside
as a bridal suite, while witnesses waited outside. And they would
listen for the bridegroom's shout after the marriage had been
consummated. With a festive procession, they'd reach the groom's
house to join in the wedding feast. Everyone the groom's family
could afford to support would be invited – the entire city, if
possible – and the feast would last for seven entire days. And
there'd be good food and plentiful wine, and music and dancing, and
everyone would celebrate with the bride and the groom. It was so
important to celebrate with them that not only did the families take
off work entirely for that whole week, but many rabbis said that the
wedding party was even exempt from some of the ordinary requirements
of God's law during that whole time (t. Berakhot
2.9; b. Sukkah 25b).
That's
what a wedding feast, a marriage supper, was all about. It was such
a massive celebration, such a joyous party, such an extensive feast.
Jesus explained that that's what the kingdom of God is going to be
like. And he then insisted that he himself would be the Bridegroom,
while his disciples would be his groomsmen (Matthew 9:15). It's an
audacious claim, really – to say that everything in all of human
history is leading up to a wedding, thrown by God himself for all the
righteous from all of time, and that he
will be the Bridegroom, at the front and center of it all! The only
question left is who's left to be the Bride. And so just as the
prophets talked about the old covenant being a marriage between God
and Israel, the apostles talked about the new covenant being the
marriage agreement between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the
Church: “'Therefore
a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.' This mystery is profound, and I
am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church”
(Ephesians 5:31-32).
Right
now, all of history in the shadow of the cross has been the
betrothal, the engagement period. Binding and deep. But what's
coming is so much more intense and so much more festive. It's with
all this expectation from the prophets and the teachers and the
messiah and the apostles that we come at last to this passage and
hear the tremendously exciting announcement: once Babylon has fallen,
the space will be clear for the Bride to truly come into her own.
And then the thunderous call of a vast crowd can finally declare, to
the delight of every believing ear: “Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns! Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and
his Bride has made herself ready”
(Revelation 19:6-7)!
Aren't
those some of the most thrilling words of scripture? The wedding day
arrives! The Bride is finally ready – after so many twists and
turns, after so many hurdles, after so many temptations and
flirtations and cold feet, the Church is finally ready and dressed in
the finest wedding gown God, with his infinite riches, can afford –
so she's ready to see Jesus her Bridegroom face-to-face, ready to
enter the bridal chamber, ready for the feast that's a satisfying
meal and a honeymoon all in one! The celebration that literally
every nanosecond since the dawn of creation, since the first breath
of Eve took Adam's breath away, has been leading toward! Could that
day ever finally come – descend from the abstract and the
theoretical to the concrete and the practical, come down from out of
heaven to this earth of grit and trial? “These
are the true words of God!”
(Revelation 19:9).
The
true words of God are no fantasy. The true words of God are no empty
foolish dream. The true words of God are no pie-in-the-sky lie. And
the true words of God tell us that the wedding is on, forever on,
guaranteed on! No twist and turn we endure now is going to put a
damper on that wedding day. There will be a wedding, and there will
be a wedding supper. It will be all that prophets and rabbis ever
imagined, and so much more. It will be a feast of perfect joy, with
delights we can't dream up, with flavors beyond imagination, with
appetites forever being perfectly satisfied because this wedding
supper is the measure that all our hungers were designed for. And
that day, that celebration, will commence the full and perfect
intimacy of the Bridegroom and his Bride – who on that day will
truly be known as “the
Bride, the wife of the Lamb”
(Revelation 21:9). Just think – the closest you have ever felt to
Jesus, the dearest grace you have received, the most tender touch of
his love, has all been under a condition of chaste betrothal. The
deepest fulfillments you now find in intimacy with Jesus are only the
beginning. Because the marriage of Christ and the Church is not yet
consummated. More intimacy is promised – something deeper,
something richer, something closer – next to which, every spiritual
delight of your life now will blush in awe. Oh, for the sound of the
Bridegroom's shout!
It's
with good reason that the heavenly message is passed along through
John to us here today: “Blessed
are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb”
(Revelation 19:9). Blessed – how indescribably and unequivocally
blessed – just to have the invitation in hand! Just to know that,
if we RSVP through faith and if we faithfully keep our lives washed
clean in the blood of the Lamb poured out on Calvary, we can be
honored guests at that great feast of God! For if we overcome “by
the blood of the Lamb and the word of [our] testimony”
(Revelation 12:11), then we will have bought “white
garments”
from Jesus like he offered the church at Laodicea (Revelation 3:18),
and we “will
be clothed thus in white garments,”
as Jesus told the church at Sardis (Revelation 3:5), and we will have
“washed [our]
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”
(Revelation 7:14). And we will be dressed and ready for the wedding,
if only we'll commit and go – go by a “faith
working through love”
(Galatians 5:6). For on that day, the Bride's gown will be a gift
from God himself, which she will then put on: “fine
linen, bright, pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the
saints”
(Revelation 19:8). God clothes us in his righteousness, we persevere
in faith, and he will righteously act to vindicate the Church and her
faithful life.
We've
been blessed to be invited – how blessed to actually show and be
there forever! For where the wedding feasts of Jesus' day could
stretch to a full week, this feast will stretch to encompass the full
extent of eternal life in the presence of God. Eternal life will
mean the celebration of the marriage supper of the Lamb! That's our
hope, that's our joy, that's the exciting announcement we're promised
to one day hear – the call that it will finally be ready, finally
be time. Everything you or I now do, it should ultimately come down
to making ourselves ready to hear that announcement and be prepared
to act on it at a moment's notice – be ready to see the glory of
the Bridegroom in full array, ready with a passion for the
Bridegroom, ready with a deep hunger for the supper that satisfies
forever.
This
hope changes everything. And it can also fill our lives now.
Because the fascinating thing about gathering as the church is that,
in a way, we step out of sync with the time we know on the outside.
To gather for worship is not to merely be in our own time and place.
It's to be in every time and place, to be at that heavenly junction
where past and present and future break down. To be gathered here
with the church is to stand at the foot of the cross as Jesus is
crucified. It's to rush into the empty tomb with Peter. It's to
behold the appearance of the risen Christ with the apostles. It's to
marvel with joy at the ascension as Jesus blesses us from above.
It's to be in the crowd of Pentecost, receiving cloven tongues of
fire. It's to be gathered with every saint and martyr in the great
cloud of witnesses. It's to be among the twenty-four elders and the
four living creatures as they sing hallelujahs 'round the throne.
And it's to step, in a way, already into the banquet hall of
paradise. Because when we gather here to worship, we have one foot
through the door into the eternity being woven by our Father in
heaven. And we have the opportunity to sample foretastes of the joy
set before us.
And
those foretastes are on this table, this altar. They are the body
and the blood of the Bridegroom. Hidden beneath the veil of loaf and
cup, the products of earthly grains and earthly grapes, is a heavenly
feast – our first tastes of the marriage supper of the Lamb. For
that reason, St. Ambrose compared this eucharist, this communion meal
of the new covenant, to the Bridegroom's kiss to his Bride. For this
reason, St. Augustine declared that every time we celebrate this meal
at our altar, it's a marriage celebration. It may come now to our
bodies with flavors we deem mundane and in portions that do not fill
– that's why the early church often embedded it in a fuller meal
they called the love feast – but in it, under it, our souls partake
of joys too flavorful to even be recognized by our as-yet-unrefined
spiritual palate. We only await the day we will eat this meal most
fully, and with a whole soul will receive it all. And that day is
coming – the true words of God have sworn a wedding, a feast! The
Bridegroom is decorating the chambers, as the Bride here below makes
herself ready. The Lord God Almighty reigns! “Let
us rejoice and exult and give him the glory”
(Revelation 19:7). Let us come and take, eat and drink, that when
the wedding day at last takes us into the Garden of Delights, we
might eternally keep and celebrate God's feast, at the table for good at the marriage supper
of the Lamb!
“Behold
the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!
Blessed
are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!”
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