Raids, Riots, and a Wedding

While one nation is becoming two, on Saturday, two are becoming one

Our city has been host to raids and riots this week. We have witnessed disruptions devastating, and differences on dramatic display, so that the only thing we might all agree on is that we are a deeply wounded people who need more than a superficial dressing (Jeremiah 6.14).

Our city will also be host to a wedding on Saturday. You have all been invited (Trinity congregation) to be a witness to a beloved bride and bridegroom as they, voice-trembling, hand-holding, vow themselves to each other “until death parts” them. They have asked for our prayers.

Is it appropriate to eat, drink, and be merry on a week like this? Is it escapist for us to sing joyful songs with all our hearts, knowing that some families in our city weep as they are being forcibly separated while others scream in pain as they are struck with an agitator’s stone? Do Geoffrey and Christy have any business making covenant promises to one another when the world around them is quaking?

Yes, they must. We must.

I don’t mean that they have to get married to prove something or to make some point. I mean that even when there aren’t cultural convulsions happening, the conditions are still not ideal for marriage. We live in a covenant-assailing world, unfriendly to promises. It is much easier to break than to build, to intensify conflict than to make peace, to cancel than to commit. Covenant-making, especially public covenant-making, is the most striking contrast to a breaking and broken world.

One nation is turning into two. Familial oneness is damaged by the prioritization of partisan identity. Church unity is exchanged for further schism, as walking only with those who agree with us is easier than going together. All around us and within us, one are becoming two (or more). On Saturday, two will become one. What a miracle!

Why should we come, and pray, and sing, and rejoice at this wedding? Because we LOVE Geoffrey and Christy and want them to know that in this covenant-unfriendly world, we are going to be praying and rooting for them. Because we LOVE marriage, after all, God made it and makes it! Because going to a wedding is not escaping the world and all its problems, but bearing witness to that world of a promise-making and promise-keeping God. Because going to weddings have the power to enflame bridal love for our bridegroom who is on his way. He says, “I am coming soon” (Revelation 22.7).

What a protest! A singing, praying, laughing, crying, applauding, benedicting, dancing, kissing protest in a world that has forgotten how to celebrate and embrace the other. Too often, we are under the impression that we will solve our problems by throwing—throwing stones or throwing people out. Rowan Williams says, “A great deal of our politics, our ecclesiastical life, often our personal life as well, is dominated by the assumption that everything would be all right if only some people would go away” (The Way of St. Benedict, 27). God solves problems by throwing parties (Matthew 22), inviting outsiders in (Luke 14), showing up at weddings and turning water into wine (John 2).

Jeremiah sent a letter to upset exiles in a city and prophesied the Divine strategy for transformation of the city—not riots nor raids, but weddings, and babies, and gardening, and working and praying for shalom.

Jeremiah 29.5-7 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.

So, put down your stones and shields, it is time for a wedding!