A Muddy Wedding
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”
Ephesians 5:25-27
Occasionally, I have this little scenario play in my mind. Like an Instagram Reel gone wrong. I could call it a vision (and truthfully it might well be) but often when you say vision, people tend to act somewhat fanatical, in one extreme or another. So, we will just stick with calling it a mental reel. In the reel, I find myself sitting at a traditional style wedding. Up at the front you have you have the groom awaiting his bride. In this scenario, Christ is the Groom. And there is the representation of God the Father and God the Spirit and a huge congregation of angelic host filling the place.
But the wedding hasn’t started yet. Everyone is waiting for something. Or rather someone. It is the moment of anticipation before the bride is revealed in all her gorgeous array. Everyone is waiting on Christ’s bride to walk down the aisle. I notice that the church, where I find myself seated, has not one central aisle but rather has multiple aisles running through its midst. It isn’t just two large sections of seating with one major aisle down the middle. Instead, it is divided into five sections of seating with four aisles.
Suddenly you see four different brides emerge at the exact same time. Each beginning their respective walk towards the altar. At first, they are oblivious to one another. However, when they get about a third of the way down the aisle, they take notice of each other. What happens next is truly astounding. After realizing that they are not the only one, each of the brides reach for the floor, which has become this kind of muddy pit. The brides reach down and grab fistfuls of mud and begin slinging them at one another. All in an effort to deface one another. Each must truly “believe” that they are the prettiest and the cleanest. However, they want to ensure that everyone else shares their opinion. Their strategy? To make themselves look better by degrading and attacking others that make similar claims.
This is the picture that I see of the church today. A fractured bride slinging mud and hate at anyone and everyone that claims to be a part of the church but doesn’t conform to their ideology. Unfortunately, we have gotten to a place to where we want to disarm, discredit and attack everybody so that we look the cleanest. This is our loophole. Our effort to avoid operating with holiness. We act like God is going to grade on a curbed scale. Like He’s going to let us slide because we just happen to be the best-looking bride at the mud-throwing contest. Is this what kind of bride Christ is looking for? Is this a church that is truly deserving of the title “A Church Called Beautiful”?