Written on October 31, 2008

For the Lectionary of November 9, 2008: Matthew 25:1-13

“Five of them were foolish and five were wise. When the foolish (bridesmaids) took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil."

READY TO VOW by Larry Patten

My wife frequently warns me to be careful with what I say. She knows me better than anyone and I really should heed her wisdom.

I really should.

I’ll say something humorous. No one laughs.

I’ll write a cute e-mail. No equally cute reply is sent.

I’ll cleverly comment about an event. Silence ensues.

My so-called funny bone can be dry, obscure, arcane, and opaque. So, over the last month-and-a-half, when I’ve mentioned to people that I really don’t like weddings, I was being funny. Glib! Light-hearted!

And, with my wife’s cautionary voice echoing in the recesses of my gray matter, I always had to carefully explain myself.

In the last six weeks I’ve attended three weddings. Twice as a celebrant, standing before two couples and inviting them to “repeat after me.” Once as a brother, settling into a chair with a front row view of my older sister’s ceremony.

Really, I don’t like weddings.

Help a family with a funeral versus a wedding? I’ll take the grave. Prepare parents for infant baptism versus a wedding? Please, let me get wet. Attend a late night trustees meeting versus a wedding? Okay, fine, I’ll choose the ceremony and even help adjust the bride’s frilly train when she swivels to recess.

I’m thinking about weddings for more than my recent attendance. Soon, California voters will determine if there are equal rights for same-gender and different-gender couples daring to make a life-time commitment to each other. And, as a saunter through the lectionary readings, this week Matthew has Jesus tell a tale of bridesmaids.

Why don’t I like weddings? Drunken bachelor parties, mothers making all the arrangements, young people with barely a nickel in the bank going into debt, second mortgages taken out by parents, people in outfits they wouldn’t wear on the darkest Halloween night, pranks played, tears flowing because ______ (you choose: unhappy mother, angry step-father, disgruntled uncle, former best friend) was or was not invited. Want me to continue?

We have heaped so many obligations and odd traditions on weddings that it’s hard to remember it’s a celebration. Just one example, if you will. In 1840 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married in St. James’s Cathedral. In her MARRIAGE, A HISTORY, Stephanie Coontz writes:

When Queen Victoria broke with convention and walked down the aisle to musical accompaniment, wearing pure white instead of the traditional silver and white gown and colored cape, she created an overnight “tradition.”

How many brides followed the Queen, straining their budgets and stressing out their lives, to mimic a moment of royal embellishment? The middle aisle march is less than two centuries old. Traditional? I suppose. But I wince at the endless traditions we claim that are really part of an ongoing creation and recreation of “getting hitched.” Something borrowed, something blue, something old, and always, always something new.

I’m also a hypocrite. I enjoyed the recent ceremonies. I liked the couple I married in a backyard. They were older. No attendants, no fancy clothes. I had met one of them thirty years ago. Wedding as reunion. At my sister’s wedding, I was brother. I watched this woman, once the girl I played Monopoly with, glow and say those risky “I do” words to the one she loved. I always want my sister happy. And then, the third festive occasion: a same-gender couple sharing a tender ceremony on a warm October day. Friends and family created most of their wedding by donating time, food, and place.

Of course, a fourth wedding teases my mind. Only in Matthew does Jesus supposedly tell the tale of the bridesmaids. Those radical spoilsports, the Jesus Seminar scholars, point out (in THE FIVE GOSPELS) that Matthew 25:1-13 . . .

. . . does not have any of the earmarks of Jesus’ authentic parables. It does not cut against the religious and social grain. Rather, it confirms common wisdom: those who are prepared will succeed, those not prepared will fail.

I agree with them. The parable is likely more Matthew warning his early Christian community. So, maybe Jesus didn’t share this story.

And yet, I can imagine those Gospel bridesmaids. Like every wedding, and especially for the two “becoming one,” some are ready, some are not. But unlike the parable, there’s no easy predicting who will be ready and who will not.

Maybe I dislike weddings because we can put such an obscene emphasis on one day. The aisle stroll, ala Queen Victoria. The ideal dress. Guaranteed stress. It’s the best day of your life!

What matters in any relationship is the hard, hard work of each day.

Three weddings. Each different, but all had one similar moment. Two people turned to each other, claiming just enough love and just enough trust in God, to make a vow. I hope all three couples, in this fragile, wonderful, anguished world, take a moment to turn toward each other every day and declare a renewed vow of joy. And then to turn outwards toward the world, as ready as the bridesmaids with flasks of oil, to live out the vow with all they encounter.

in Peace,

Larry