When Veronica and I were in our early 20s, it seemed like every weekend we were getting invited to some college friend’s wedding. It was kind of exhausting, to be honest. Then I became a pastor of a young and growing church, which I loved, but I got asked to perform two or three weddings a month. I used to work so hard on my “marriage homily.” On the way home, I’d ask Veronica how I did until finally one day she told me, “Look, you did great … but no one paid attention to what you said one way or the other. At a wedding, everyone is distracted by so many other things, they’re just hoping you won’t go on too long.” Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. So, for any younger pastors out there, wedding sermons are basically a pass/fail assignment. If it’s less than 15 minutes, you pass.
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about different wedding traditions, because couples want these traditions mixed into their ceremony. Some German weddings, for example, incorporate the tradition of “Baumstamm Sägen,” or “log sawing.” At the end of the ceremony, the newly married couple saw through an actual log. It’s supposed to represent the first obstacle they face together, emphasizing the need for communication and teamwork. I’m not sure Veronica and I would have made it through this phase; our marriage might have ended right there.
In Southeast Asia, there’s a growing fad to use fast food restaurants at your wedding. McDonald’s franchises in Indonesia and Hong Kong, for example, now offer wedding packages, which include 50 invitations, rental of the restaurant dining area for two hours, a pair of McDonald’s wedding rings made out of balloons, character gifts for 50 guests, a party emcee, and (best of all) a wedding cake display made entirely out of a McDonald’s Apple Pies. It’s gotten so popular that other fast-food restaurants have followed suit, including Taco Bell. Can we all just stop here for a minute and get our minds around “A Taco Bell Wedding”? Some of you dads might be like, “You know, after getting the bill for my daughter’s wedding, a Taco Bell wedding doesn’t sound that bad. Every guest gets five tacos for a dollar.” As a dad with three daughters, I hear you.
Revelation 19 doesn’t have Baumstamm Sägen or a Taco Bell buffet, but it is laced with Jewish wedding imagery. For modern readers, we miss a lot of the beauty of this passage if we don’t know the cultural background. So let’s dive in!
Jewish weddings went in three phases that stretched out over several months, sometimes even years. And it began with …
Phase 1: Kiddushin
In the Kiddushin phase, the boy asked the girl to marry him. If she said yes, both families signed a marriage contract. The groom and his father also had to pay the bride’s father a “mohar” or “bride price,” which could be substantial. (As a dad with 3 daughters, that’s a tradition I wish we’d kept alive.) They would celebrate with a small party where they would drink a ceremonial cup of wine. This commitment was legally binding; you were basically considered married from that point. Today, we would call this phase the engagement period.
Phase 2: Preparation
The preparation phase (which doesn’t have a fancy Hebrew word to go with it) began when the groom left to go home and prepare a new place for him and his bride to live, usually a room built onto his father’s house. And in a time without cellphones or FaceTime, the bride-to-be didn’t know when he’d come back, so she was supposed to just stay ready. When he showed up, it would be a surprise, and he’d show up with a lot of fanfare, a big entourage with trumpets, torches, and a shout for her to come out and come home with him.
Phase 3: Nissuin
Then followed the wedding itself, the Nissuin. The wedding feast began as a big party, waiting for the bride and groom to return to their new home. This wasn’t just a meal and some awkward dancing with old white people doing the Electric Slide, but a days-long festival with dancing, wine … and gobs and gobs of Taco Bell. (I kid.)
When I lived in Indonesia, their wedding ceremonies were a little bit like this. Traveling wasn’t as easy as it is here, so if people made a journey, they stayed for a while. I’d go to a wedding and after an hour or so, when I just couldn’t handle any more karaoke, I’d be like, “OK, I think I’m done …” and they’d be like, “Done? Everyone else is staying until next Thursday.” I envied them the fun, but I just couldn’t hang.
Revelation 19 is the Jewish Nissuin. Two thousand years ago, Jesus asked us to be his bride when he died on the cross. And when we accept Christ personally, we enter the Kiddushin, or engagement. The mohar, or bride price, was paid when Jesus went to the cross to purchase us back from slavery to sin and death. And this contract is considered binding; Jesus promises never to leave or forsake us. We even celebrate our engagement with a ceremonial cup of wine: Every time we take communion, we’re celebrating our engagement to Jesus.
We then enter phase 2, the time of preparation, which is what we’re in now, when Jesus is away preparing a place for us. So much of New Testament teaching is built on this imagery. In John 14, Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you, and when I’m finished, I will come again, and take you to myself.” In saying that, he is conjuring up images of this marriage phase. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians that Jesus will return for us in the clouds with the sound of the trumpet and shout, drawing on this imagery of the groom showing up unannounced with an entourage, trumpets, and shouting to pick up his bride. And Jesus’ story about the bridesmaids in Matthew 25, some of whom were ready when the groom returned and others who weren’t, is all about this wedding tradition.
Phase 3, the Nissuin, the marriage feast, is what we see in Revelation 19—the feast of all feasts, which celebrates our forever life with Jesus.
Which raises the question: Is this how you see your relationship with Jesus?
I ask that because a lot of people think that becoming a Christian means starting to do religious stuff or reforming themselves morally. The Christian life contains those things, of course, but the essence of being a Christian—start to finish—is falling in love with Jesus. God didn’t create us primarily as servants to get tasks done for him or robots he could program to obey him. He made us as people in his image to love him. My fear is that many people in our churches know little about this part of Christianity. Their Christian life is little more than a series of boxes they check—and they check them quite well!— but it feels like drudgery. Yes, the Christian life is hard; it involves a lot of self-denial and self-sacrifice … but the only thing that makes it worth it is being in love with Jesus.
Love for Jesus is the one thing that can give you the power to do the hard things in the Christian life. In 1 John, the Apostle John (who also wrote Revelation), said that those who anxiously await Jesus’ return keep themselves pure as he is pure. He’s drawing on this wedding imagery. If you’re in love with Jesus, you work hard to keep your heart pure, as he is pure, because you just can’t wait to see him. You live ready for his return, with your bags packed, never getting too attached to the world here because your real home is somewhere else with him, and you just can’t wait for your Divine Groom to come and take you to your new home, because your heart is already there.
An incredible time of joy awaits the followers of Jesus—a feast like you’ve never known, a party to beat all parties, a marriage of love more undying than anything you’ve ever experienced.
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
