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Till death do us
part
written by Frederick Neider
AT EVERY WEDDING we
wait for the moment when we witness a bride and groom vow
faithfulness to each other "'til death us do part." We think when
we hear those words, or even more when we speak them ourselves,
that death will come to visit much later, at some far distant
boundary of a marital union begun today with such promise.
But death is already there. It comes to sit with us at the
beginning, else there is no glory, no gravity to the marriages we
make by giving ourselves to each other. We do a weighty thing when
we commit to sharing most intimately with one partner the brief
and precious life each of us gets on this earth. Few of us see the
full truth of this, however, until we reach that inevitable moment
we named in our vows.
Where is the climax of a couple's life together? At what point can
they see the glory of their union? It's not likely to be found in
the swooning that leads them to marry, nor even in the act we call
consummation. Does glory come finally in the fulfillment of
family? Or in the peace that comes when the nest empties?
I believe I have witnessed the moment when marital glory reveals
itself. It appeared during the dark of' night in a dining room
converted temporarily into a hospice center. My father lay in a
bed there, dying, while I spent nights on a couch nearby and kept
watch. Several times in that last week I awakened to see my mother
standing over Dad in the dim light. She hadn't risen from sleep to
perform some ministration. She simply stood for long minutes
looking tenderly down at this sleeping man with whom she had
shared more than half a century.
I closed my eyes and kept still. Children aren't supposed to watch
their parents' most intimate moments. But I wondered.
What filled Mom's mind and heart as she pondered the face, the
body, the person with whom she had spent her life? The whole of
their life together, I think. The full weight and glory of their
marriage now became dear. All they would be together in time and
space, the gift they could offer the world as one flesh, had
grown to fullness and been offered up. All that remained was to
let it rest in God's hands.
John's Gospel says that Jesus revealed his glory in the first of
his signs at a wedding in Cana, and his disciples believed in him.
The narrative doesn't tell us just how much of that glory the
disciples saw or understood at the time of the wedding, for as
Jesus explained to his mother, his hour had not yet come.
In the parlance of John's Gospel, his hour was the time of the
crucifixion. In that hour Jesus would take his own bride and his
glory would be fully revealed. For now, out in Cana, the disciples
and Jesus' mother saw and tasted a new, fine wine that would
revive a failing feast. Glorious though it was, however it was
only the beginning.
Shortly after the wedding, John the Baptizer announced another
wedding, one at which he would serve as Best man, while the
Messiah whom John proclaimed would have the bride and be the
bridegroom (John 3:25-30). Soon after, Jesus arrived at a well at
midday and met a woman (John 4). Many of his forbears had done the
same (Genesis 24 and 29; Exodus 2:15-21), but each of them had
left with both a drink and a wile. Jesus came away with neither.
Another day came Mien Jesus asked for a drink, again precisely at
midday. This time he received it in the form of sour wine, and
with it he took to himself his bride--the whole world of us, whose
sins he bore by uniting as one flesh with us. With his mother and
the beloved disciple watching, Jesus' glory was fulfilled even as
he himself declared, "It is finished."
How fitting that Jesus' glory should commence its epiphany at the
wedding of an anonymous couple in out-of-the-way Cana. Like Jesus'
life and work, our marriages share in the same irony--the full
weight and glory of each appears only Mean death comes to part the
bride and groom.
Outside space and time, the Lamb's high feast takes on eternal
proportions, as we see in the Revelation to St. John (21:1-11).
Adorned in bridal, baptismal white, the new Jerusalem reunites
with her groom and they rejoice forever. Death can come no more to
part them.
Here in the realm where death still appears at every wedding and
sits silently through our feasts, we continue sharing the wine
that Cana's guest brings to our table. Sometimes that wine is
sweet and wondrous beyond all imagination. At other times the wine
proves sour. We sip it from a sponge like those that the hospice
people bring for times when the lips dry up and crack.
Both drinks, however, 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 to close off all our other stories.
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.
Then others see his glory in us, a glory poured like new wine into
old stone jars. Especially, I think, when we take our last sip
from a sponge, the glory of Cana's guest 'appears and, through the
long night of waiting, shows a way toward hope.
Frederick Niedner teaches theology at Valparaiso University in
Valparaiso,Indiana.
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