For a young bride, it's all about the dress. I know, since my teenage daughter used to make me watch hours of the TLC reality show, "Say Yes to the Dress." In case you’ve never seen it, the show follows the ups and downs of a bride choosing her wedding dress. As friends cheer her on, the bride works with a consultant from the store to select THE perfect dress for her big day. It's a dress that will make her feel beautiful, a dress that will make her parents weep to see their baby all grown up. Most of all, it's a dress that will soon make the waiting groom swoon with desire as his beloved walks down the aisle. Only when she finds the perfect dress will the bride exult, "Yes!" and hand over her credit card. Some of these dresses can cost as much as $10,000.[1]
In the Bible, too, there is just something about the dress. The Psalmist sings of the regal bride "decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes; in many-colored robes she is led to the king."[2] In the Book of Revelation, the Church-as-bride has also "made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints."[3] In today's reading from the prophet Isaiah, war-scarred Jerusalem is to be adorned for the delight of her Bridegroom. She will become a jeweled crown, "a royal diadem" in God's hand. No longer undesirable and unwanted, she will become the recipient of God's delight. No longer barren and abandoned, she will be the joy of her Bridegroom.[4] Even our Book of Common Prayer wants to dress up the bride. The proper preface for marriage offers thanksgiving to God, "because in the love of wife and husband, you have given us an image of the heavenly Jerusalem, adorned as a bride for her bridegroom, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord."[5]
There are definitely gender expectations at play here. There’s no TV series about a groom saying "Right-o" to the tuxedo. Neither do descriptions of weddings in the Bible center on what the groom is wearing. In the biblical bride and groom metaphor, God is always the desiring groom, and we human beings are the female bride. Our beauty and adornment are always seen through the bridegroom's eyes. When we investigate the biblical image further, we’re in for a bit of a shock. The word for "groom" in the Hebrew Scriptures is often associated with violence. Bridegrooms can be portrayed either as victims or as perpetrators. Moreover, most are eventually separated from or abandon their brides![6] Even Jesus, when comparing himself to a bridegroom, points out in Matthew that one day the bridegroom will be taken from the wedding guests, and their joy will turn to fasting.[7]
Continuing in that vein, we Christians tend to see the divine bridegroom through the lens of the violence and sacrifice of the Cross. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Christians spend each day of Holy Week immersed in the liturgy of the Bridegroom Matins, preparing themselves for the crucifixion of their groom. The medieval mystic Catherine of Siena imagines herself betrothed to Christ with a wedding ring of his bloody foreskin. Her crucified bridegroom clothes her not in beauty, but in the raiment of suffering. Her new bridal gown allows her to join the Crucified Groom in his sacrifice, for the sake of the world.[8] If the men among us are feeling left out, take a look at some Northern Renaissance art.[9] In these paintings, St. John is portrayed as Jesus' bride. And in one painting of St. Bernard, we see Jesus perched on the Cross. He gazes with love down upon St. Bernard, who rests his head contentedly on his crucified bridegroom's outstretched arm.[10] Here, the bride is male, but still submissive in posture and held in the dying bridegroom's loving gaze.
Our Gospel reading from John can be seen, too, as a prelude to crucifixion. Yes, Jesus creates joy at the wedding in Cana. He takes humdrum water and turns it into the finest wine, into a source of pleasure and rejoicing. Jesus loves a feast! And yet, even the wine that Jesus produces sours over time. On the cross, Jesus is given wine: the sour wine that moistens his dying lips. The love of our Bridegroom holds us through both joy and suffering. As Frederick Niedner writes, the wine at Cana and the wine at the crucifixion “come from the same cup, the one we share with the Bridegroom who takes us as his own for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and in whose arms we shall rest when death comes … Accordingly, we dress even now in wedding attire. We drink his wine and give our hearts away in the breathtaking risk of believing—a form of falling in love, really.”[11]
Don’s sister Judy was never a bride, as society would conceive it. She never had a church wedding, But she had a dress. Judy, born with Down Syndrome, watched her siblings get married, one by one, and she knew that the joy of the wedding feast belonged to her, too. She talked with delight about her invisible bridegroom Jim, and she planned her wedding often. Her parents bought her a beautiful white gown and veil, and Don would recite the words of the ceremony and sing the "Wedding Song" to her. Other siblings would stand in for Jim, and they would celebrate afterwards with sparkling apple "champagne." Her family remembers those oft repeated weddings with awe: Judy sparkled with love in her wedding dress, a sign of our Beloved's delight. I didn't meet Judy until a form of Alzheimer's had robbed her of her memory and of her ability to speak. But it had not robbed her of the crown of beauty that Love bestowed on her at their marriage. Dressed one last time in her wedding gown, she went to meet the Bridegroom in his chamber, firm in the faith that he is waiting with anticipation for her arrival.
In joy and in sorrow, in life and in death, we too are Christ’s beloved. Join the Bridegroom in saying, "Yes" to the dress of his delight. Come to the wedding feast, prepared for you—for you—from the foundation of the world.
[1] Allie Volpe, "The Radical Way 'Yes to the Dress' Speaks to Women," April 16, 2018, accessed June 25, 2018, https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/say-yes-to-the-dress-kleinfeld-bridals-empowering.
[2] Psalm 45, All citations are from the NRSV.
[3] Revelation 19:7-8.
[4] In the Hebrew Scriptures, this word "forsaken" usually refers to a woman forsaken by her husband. "Desolate" refers to a childless woman. See John D. Watts, "Isaiah 34-66,"The Word Biblical Commentary, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2005), 882.
[5] The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 1986), 381.
[6] Marianne Blickenstaff, "Bridegroom," The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 503.
[8] Catherine of Siena, Saint Catherine of Siena as Seen in Her Letters, ed. and trans. Vida D. Scudder (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1905), 160. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=LWNjf0Z4lyQC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PR1.
[9] Kathleen Kamerick, review of Saintly Brides and Bridegrooms: The Mystic Marriage in Northern Renaissance Art, by Diskant Muir, Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 216, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676177.
[10] Found at https://favourite-paintings.blogspot.com/2011/04/francisco-ribalta-christ-embracing-st.html, accessed June 25, 2018.
[11] Frederick A. Niedner, “Sunday, January 14 (John 2: 1-11), December 20, 2000. Found at www. christiancentury.org/article/Sunday-january-14-john-21-11.
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