Christ the Bridegroom

I was given the topic Christ the Bridegroom last week and there is a famous book on this
topic called “Jesus the Bridegroom: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told” by Brant Pitre, that I
haven’t had time to read but if you can find it somewhere and read it then I think it is a
great book.

In the gospels, the relationship between Christ and his disciples and by extension us the
church is described in many different ways and it changes throughout the gospels.
- Servants/workers: just before he sends out his disciples to preach he tells them ‘Then He
said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore
pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”’ (Matthew 9:37-38), St
Paul introduced his letters as servant or co-worker of Christ
- Friends: then later he calls them his friends read John 15:13-15 ‘Greater love has no one
than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do
whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know
what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My
Father I have made known to you.’ (John 15:13-15). That relationship was also seen
between God and some people in the Old Testament – St James says ‘“Abraham believed
God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of
God’. ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing’
- Bride and Bridegroom: the most common description of the relationship between God
and Israel in the Old Testament is bridegroom and bride, and it is seen a lot ofcourse in
the New Testament

When God talks about his relationship with Israel in the Old Testament we see this very
clearly.
Read Hosea 2:14-15 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Will bring her into the wilderness,
And speak [g]comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there, And the Valley of
Achor as a door of hope; She shall sing there, As in the days of her youth, As in the day when
she came up from the land of Egypt.”
And then when Israel sins, there is this language of adultery. That Israel left God and
committed adultery, and there is only adultery when there has been a marriage.
Read Hosea 1:2 When the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea: “Go, take
yourself a wife of harlotry And children of harlotry, For the land has committed great
[a]harlotry By departing from the Lord.”
So there is a marriage covenant set up between God and his bride Israel in the desert when
they came out of Egypt through Moses and then everytime they sinned they cheated on
God and committed adultery.

What about in the New Testament where do we see this imagery of bride and
bridegroom?
For the rest of the talk we will focus on a seemingly unrelated passage from John 14:1-6,
look at the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony and then go back and read the passage
again.
Context first: John 12 – Palm Sunday, John 13 – Passover, John 17 – prayer in Gethsemane,
John 13-16 is a conversation between Jesus and his disciples, last one before his death, it is
like a farewell, they are called the chapters of the Paraclete because he talks a lot about the
Holy Spirit
Read John 14:1-6

How did Jewish weddings work in the time of Jesus.

Two families would agree that their kids should get married. The groom and his family go
and pay a dowry for the bride and this is the betrothal, the girl is taken, the price is paid.
This is the engagement period. The groom goes back to his father’s house and spends 12
months building a little apartment for them next door, or like an extra room in the house.
When he finishes, he grabs all his friends and they shout and start a procession to the house
of the bride. So, the bride doesn’t know when the groom is coming and she grabs all the
bridesmaids, does her hair and makeup and stuff and they wait for the groom to come. He
comes, they get married, he takes her back to the father’s house, and they have 7 days of
celebration. In that celebration the groom is always responsible for bringing the wine.

So let us go back and read John 14

The story of our salvation is one big love story, Christ left the Father’s house came to our
land, established the covenant with us, and the dowry he paid was his blood. Then he goes
back to the Father’s house to prepare a place for us, and then he will come back and receive
us to himself that where I am, there you may be also.
Why do you think Jesus says in the Wedding of Cana of Galilee ‘Woman, my hour has not
yet come’? Some people say it is not time for him to do miracles, but he is also talking about
his Passion. What St Mary was asking him to do essentially is assume the role of the
bridegroom, by providing the wine. And so he is telling her it is not yet time for me to
provide the wine, I am not yet the bridegroom. At the beginning of the Passover narrative in
the Gospel of John, he writes ‘Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that
His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His
own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.’ (John 13:1). Now his hour has come
to be the bridegroom, to propose to his bride the church and to offer the wine of his blood.

So then what is this wedding, when are wedded to Christ? In heaven.

Let us read Revelation 19:6-8 ‘And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the
sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, “Alleluia! For the
Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage
of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.” And to her it was granted to
be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the
saints.’
Then where are we now, we are in the engagement period. Abouna Mark said in one of his
talk “that Christianity is simple, it is a relationship of love, a marriage relationship between
us and Christ the bridegroom, nothing more or less”. And there is no better time than in lent
to work on our relationship with God. When the focus is away from the things of the world
(gossip, lust, social media, financial problems), then we can focus fully on our love
relationship with the bridegroom

Summarise

What do we take away from this? In my opinion, if we are now in the engagement period
with Christ then we have to live like an engaged couple, speaking to myself first and
foremost:
1) Cling to Christ, stick to him, see him everyday: We will look at a passage from the Song of
Songs, the whole of song of songs is about the story of a couple getting to know each
other, then getting engaged and married and it is really a symbol of the relationship
between the soul and God. At the beginning of chapter 3, the bride thinks she lost the
guy, she wakes up and doesn’t find him. So let us read what happens. Read Song of
Songs 3:1-4. When she finds herself without her groom she panics and looks for him, and
when she finds him she won’t let him go. Are we like that with God? In this time of lent,
let us search for him, in prayer, in fasting, in reading our bible, search for God’s voice in
your life and when you find him you don’t let him go.
In Pope Shenouda’s famous sermon ‘Come back to God’ he says that every night I have to
say to God I will not let you go, I won’t let you go until you bless me.
St Jerome talks about this and says ‘Happy is the person in whose heart Jesus sets his feet
every day! If only he would set his feet in my heart! If only his footsteps would cling to
my heart forever! If only I may say with the spouse, “I took hold of him and would not let
him go.’
2) Prepare for the wedding: let us look at two other wedding parables quickly:
The parable of the ten virgins Matthew 25:1-13, St Augustine says that the oil symbolises
our virtues, good works that we do. Carry your oil always
The parable of the wedding feast Matthew 22:1-14, St Gregory the Dalogist ‘what then
must we understand by the wedding garment but love? That person that enters the
marriage feast, but without wearing a wedding garment, is one who is present in the holy
church. He may have faith, but he does not have love. We are correct when we say that
love is the wedding garment because this is what our Creator himself possessed when he
came to the marriage feast to join the church to himself’