Colossians 1.12-18

Matthew 22.1-14

The LORD says: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven resembles a King who arranged a marriage for His Son.’ The verb translated as arranged or gave is the verb of Gn 1.1: ‘In the beginning, God created or made heaven and earth.’ But the root of this verb is also the root for a ‘poem,’ and for a poet. God made the world a poem; the world is a ‘work’ of art, of beauty, and God is the Great Poet and Artist.

The verb takes us back to Gn 1.1. If we accept that link from this verb, ‘to create,’ then this morning’s parable is a light that reveals the hidden meaning of Gn 1.1. It’s saying that, in the beginning, God created heaven and earth for a wedding. The world was created as a Church, as God’s Holy Temple; it was made, arranged, for the wedding of His Son, the Heavenly Bridegroom, and His bride, the human soul, that would be celebrated at the wedding feast, the Church’s Holy Eucharist. As it says in our epistle this morning: ‘All things were created for Christ’ (Col 1.16).

When we contemplate this morning’s parable in this light, what do we begin to see?

If the world was made for the wedding of God’s Son, the Heavenly Bridegroom, and His bride, the human soul, then the Church’s Holy Eucharist is the celebration of the true purpose of human life. But it also means that the creation is a love poem, and it’s about the love of the Bridegroom for His Bride, the human soul, and it’s about the human soul as the beautiful Bride of the King’s Son (cf. Eze 16). That means that the LORD Jesus Christ is not some God out there we’re supposed to believe in, or else. He is our lover, the ‘only Lover of mankind,’ so that He is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.

When, therefore, we hear from our epistle this morning: ‘We give thanks to the Father – to the King – who made us strong enough to become partakers of the Inheritance of the saints in Light, who delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us to the Kingdom of His Beloved Son,’ we are hearing that the Only Lover of Mankind, by becoming bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh, and cleaving to us even in our death – we are hearing that the only Lover of Mankind, the Heavenly Bridegroom, has ‘restored us to our original beauty.’ He has translated us from the darkness of our misery in death and corruption to the Life of His Heavenly Kingdom in Light and joy, because we are His beloved bride. We are not strange to Him at all, nor is He strange to us. For we were created in His Image. To be like Him, to live in Him, is the very principle of our nature, and that means that in our primordial essence, we are beautiful, sacred, good, pure – because, as children of God, we are in the image and in the likeness of God.

Look into this ‘icon,’ this ‘mirror’ of this morning’s parable, and study your reflection. There is a spiritual depth to you that goes way beyond you. In those spiritual depths, you are in Christ; you are in the Icon of the invisible God. If Christ to you is just a name or an idea, then you are blind to yourself. You do not know who you are or why you are. You are in darkness.

When Christ, our Heavenly Bridegroom, saw that we gave ourselves to other lovers who stripped us naked, cut our souls to pieces with swords, and left us by the road half dead, He clothed Himself in the garment of our flesh and blood. He sowed Himself as a Divine Seed in the ground of our death, in the root of our soul, in the tomb of our heart, where we were dead in our sins and trespasses, and He did not cease to do all things until He had destroyed our death by His death and given life to us who were in the tombs. By His death and burial, He filled our death with Himself; He cleansed and illumined the tomb with the Light of Resurrection and Life, and He restored our heart to its original beauty as the Bridal Chamber where we may be married to Christ the Heavenly Bridegroom, and become one Spirit with Him who became bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh.

The Bridal Chamber – the Church yearns for us to wake up and understand this – the Bridal Chamber wherein we may become one with the LORD as His Bride, is not in the world, it’s not in the sky somewhere. It’s within us, it’s real, and it is accessible to everyone. And the invitation to come to the wedding of the King’s Son has gone out into all the world.

But if our marriage to Christ is consummated in the bridal chamber of our heart, then to come to the wedding we must take the road that leads to the bridal chamber of our heart. That means we must forsake the world in repentance, and begin making our way to the bridal chamber that is within us by learning how to deny ourselves and to take up our cross in order to crucify our love for the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. For it is the tomb of our heart, transfigured by the LORD’s death and resurrection into the bridal chamber, that we are united to Christ in His death and resurrection.

The LORD’s Robe of Light is fire. It is the wedding garment that unites us to Christ. Therefore, the wedding garment destroys our impurities as fire burns dry grass; but if we choose to love our impurities, the wedding garment will burn us with our impurities, and we will be cast out, with our impurities, into the outer darkness because that’s what we will have chosen to love. But if we repent, if we turn away from our impurities and strive to crucify them out of longing to become one with the Heavenly Bridegroom, then the fire of that Robe of Light purges us and makes us clean, and it begins to restore us to our original beauty as we walk in the Light of that Fire. We become fire; we become light, we become strong enough to share in the Inheritance of the saints, which is the Light of Christ Himself. Amen!