THE ROYAL WEDDING FEAST

A communion meditation for May 6, 2018

                A big royal wedding is coming. Do you have your invitation and have you figured out what you will wear? No?  Oh, you probably think I am referring to Harry and Meghan who are soon to be married.  No, I refer to a much bigger, more significant wedding. One that you definitly are invited to and for which your wedding attire is already set. We read about it in Rev. 19:6-9. John writes:

Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder saying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”  Then he said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’”

                John uses his imagery freely enough to allow the church to be both the bride and the guests invited to the wedding party.  “Hallelujah!”  Its party time; its exciting, joyful because the bridegroom has come.

                In contrast to this great joy there is a very sad picture in Rev. 3. It’s the picture of a church closed to the presence of the Lord.  John shows us the Lord, the bridegroom, standing alone at the closed door of the church and saying, “Look! I’m standing here, knocking at the door. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into them and eat with them, and they with me.” N.T. Wright says “no early Christian could have heard those words without thinking of the regular meal, the bread-breaking, at which Jesus would come powerfully and personally to give himself to his people. Such meals anticipate the final messianic banquet. They are advance ‘comings’ of the one who will one day come fully and forever” (Revelation for Everyone, 36-40). 

                We are at one of those “advanced comings” now.  Someday the Lord will come again and there will be a great party – a messianic banquet – a royal wedding feast.  And we are all invited.  In the meantime, he comes to us now in the Lord’s Supper, as a foretaste of that great banquet that is to come.  Have we opened the door to him? If we have he has promised to come in and eat with us now.