This is a sermon for Epiphany 2C, prepared for a class. Hopefully I'll get to preach it someday!
Isaiah 62:1-5
For
Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a
burning torch. 2The nations shall see your vindication, and all the
kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. 3You shall be a crown of beauty in
the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of
your God. 4You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall
no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and
your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your
land shall be married. 5For as a young man marries a young woman, so
shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so
shall your God rejoice over you.
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." Now in its eighteenth season,
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]
Why is the dress such a big deal? Why is
this show so popular? As one TV critic points out, "it's one of the only
programs whose premise centers around a woman feeling pleasure in her body, in
her choices."[2]
You see, in the "right" dress, the bride feels good about herself.
For a little while, she feels utterly desirable.
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."[3]
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."[4]
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.[5] Even our liturgy wants to
dress up the bride. The proper preface for marriage in our Prayer Book 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."[6]
There are definitely gender expectations
at play here. We have 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 seen through the
bridegroom's eyes.
Even
more shocking, 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![7]
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.[8]
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.[9]
If the men among us are feeling left out, you might want to look at some
Northern Renaissance art.[10]
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.[11]
Here, the bride is male, but still submissive in posture and held in the dying
bridegroom's loving gaze.
Hmmm
… we have a bridegroom condemned to death by the state, a wedding under threat
of violence, a submissive bride cloaked in her bridegroom's gaze … I see some
similar patterns in a strange and disturbing modern phenomenon: women who marry
death-row inmates. This happens more often than you might think! White, lonely,
often well-to-do women begin corresponding with violent offenders on death row.
They hope to do a good deed by providing these men with a friendly pen pal. But
they fall in love! They marry, but by proxy. The women indulge in the purchase
of a gorgeous white wedding gown and, with a stand-in for the incarcerated groom,
they are wed. They then stick by their man until his execution, continuing
their romance mainly through letters and photos. For love of these men, the new
brides are willing to risk ostracism, loss of custody of their children, and
even possible harm at the hands of their new husband. Psychologists point out
that these women suffer from low self-esteem and a sense of powerlessness in
their lives. In death row marriages, they find new and intoxicating power as
the "savior" of their imprisoned spouse.[12]
And their self-image is boosted through the elaborate letters of their
bridegroom. The men's letters are typically filled with "over-the-top
schmaltz and declarations of undying love."[13] As one woman bubbles with
new-found confidence: “When I see [my husband at the prison] he always says I
look beautiful. I am the love of his life."[14]
I am not saying that our God is a
charmingly manipulative serial killer. But I do believe that this phenomenon
shows how desperate we human beings are to be upheld in a loving gaze, how desperate
we are for the affirmation of a Bridegroom. Like the awkward teens binge-watching,
"Say Yes to the Dress," we are all frantic to be seen in our true
beauty—yet we doubt that we are worthy of being named with delight. We are like
the battered woman in a church-run shelter who looks around at the richly
"dressed" sanctuary after Eucharist. Taking in the adornments of silver,
stained-glass, candles, hymns, and rich liturgy, she gasps in almost
disbelieving amazement, "Oh, it's so pretty. All these pretty things—and they're
here for me!"[15] Can it be that all of the
extravagant love that adorns us in the eyes of our Bridegroom is real? It is so
hard for us to believe.
My friend Judy believed it, though, and
she was buried in her wedding dress. Judy was never a bride, as society would
conceive it. She never had a church wedding, and her bridegroom was also a
proxy. But Judy, like many born with Down Syndrome, had been given the gift of
seeing the love and beauty in all of our souls, even her own. She 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 her pastor brother 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.
The
Bridegroom sings to us, his Church, in Bach's Advent Cantata, "Forget …
now the fear, the pain which you have had to suffer; upon My left hand you
shall rest, and My right hand shall kiss you."[16]
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]Ibid.
[3]
Psalm 45, All citations are from the NRSV.
[4]
Revelation 19:7-8.
[5]
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.
[6]
The Book of Common Prayer (New York:
Church Publishing, 1986), 381.
[7]
Marianne Blickenstaff, "Bridegroom," The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Katharine Doob
Sakenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 503.
[9]
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.
[10]
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.
[11]
Found at https://favourite-paintings.blogspot.com/2011/04/francisco-ribalta-christ-embracing-st.html,
accessed June 25, 2018.
[12]
Julie Bindel, "In Love with a Death Row
Dandy," New Statesman, 29
November 2012, https://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/lifestyle/2012/11/love-death-row-dandy.
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Jay Emerson Johnson, Divine Communion: A
Eucharistic Theology of Sexual Intimacy (New York: Seabury Books, 2013),
111.
[16]
JS Bach, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme," BWV 140, http://www.emmanuelmusic.org/notes_translations/translations_cantata/t_bwv140.htm,
accessed June 17, 2018.
