Shameful weddings!

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Surely it doesn’t matter what other people think. If you’ve got the wrong room, you’ve got the wrong room – no big deal. Why should you feel shame because you’ve sat down in the high room and now the Groom has told you that you have to give place to another? You just made a mistake, that’s all.

However, Our Lord does say that if you get bumped from the high room, “thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.” Is Jesus saying that we ought to have a sense of social faux-pas? Are we going to be frowned upon in Heaven if we use the butter-knife to eat the fish course?

What if you’re not ashamed of trying to be in the high room at the wedding? It was worth a shot, wasn’t it?

But then, should you be ashamed? There is, of course, the other reaction –that feeling of shame you get when you get there only to find that your socks clash with the bridesmaids’ dresses or that your trousers have the same buttons as the Best Man –unthinkable! Oh the horror!

[PAUSE]

Does it really matter what other people think of us? We’re taught that it doesn’t, yet we live as if it really does. Many of our social interactions are governed by some form of social regulation. It’s interesting to note that much of our sense of the need to conform is imprinted on us as we begin to go to school.

At some level, we do worry what other people think of us. This might be quite acute: we might worry what everybody thinks of us, even the postman who sees us as we step outside the front door. Or we might only worry about our own opinion of ourselves and take nothing into account, yet we do this because we want to provoke a reaction in other people to show that we are in control, not their opinions.

This is not always fair. Indeed the Church is under great pressure from Society to conform to acceptable ways of thinking. There are many issues where we are told that the Church must get rid of out-dated morality and accept more tolerable points of view. We see parts of the Church adopt that view and we see others wrestle against it.

Clearly we want to be acceptable, but to whom? Well, at a wedding, who gets to tell people where to sit?

[PAUSE]

The whole point of a seating arrangement at a wedding is that the Bride and Groom get to choose who they spend the most time with. The high room is for family and close friends, and the bride and groom tend to spend most time there. Of course, they will try to make it around all the rooms but the lower rooms are for friends of the family, or work mates.

If we assume that we are a close friend of the Groom and we are not, then everyone will know this when we are told to make room for someone who is. It doesn’t matter how much we protest that we are a friend of the Groom – if he doesn’t think we are, then we are not.

Humility is about being real. We are to take the lowest room, not through some false modesty, nor because we should see ourselves as being in any way unacceptable. We take the lowest room so that we allow the Groom to make the decision where to put us – it is his opinion, not ours. We attend the wedding, not for ourselves, but to rejoice with the Newly-Married! We are there for them, because they want us to be there. It is not a public opportunity to show off, but an opportunity to share in others’ happiness.

[PAUSE]

It is those who say that they know God best who are shown up for not knowing Him at all. It is those who recognise that they don’t necessarily know what God is thinking who will be find themselves in the right place. They will just be happy to be at the wedding feast of the Lamb because the love Him honestly, and in that happiness they will move closer to Him.