The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
January 17, 2010
Vol. 13 no. 03

Everything But...

The water has dried from baptism, so now it’s on to the wine flowing at a wedding. I have seen it done, but just for the record there will be no wedding taking place during worship this Sunday. Instead, we’ll talk about marriage, remember a few and imagine what will be.

Wedding language is utilized by Jesus in the Gospels in several ways. He refers to himself as “the bridegroom” and his disciples as those who are attending the wedding, along with the famous parable about the wise and foolish maidens waiting for a wedding to happen. Of course, Jesus also was clear that there is no marriage in heaven (Luke 20: 34-36). In other words, you can’t take it with you.

But there is Cana in Galilee. How many weddings have you heard that locale mentioned. Jesus went to a wedding and so did his mother. Because he had deigned to attend such an event, weddings have been forever after blessed events. You may have noticed that there is no mention of the wedding itself; just the party with its problem with the wine supply that Mary pointed out rather bluntly. I figure that is like a lot of today’s weddings: no one remembers the ceremony, but they don’t forget the party.

The Roman Catholic Church counts weddings as one of the seven sacraments, but for us Protestants, it’s simply a real important occasion. Luther and others did notice that there were no specific wedding details - Jesus did not perform one, nor was he ever married - so that did not meet their Biblical standards for a sacrament in the church. Come to think of it, marriage was not a universally defined status in life in the Bible. More different kinds of marriages are blessed in the Bible than we would care to hear. Dare we try to define marriage now?