The Wedding

Allan S. Contreras Ríos

1 Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

He 12.1–2.

In order to explain these verses with more clarity, I will use a parable. Jesus liked to explain things this way, so I’m going to give it a shot.

The wedding was to be celebrated 12 hours away from where we live. This wedding was announced with months of anticipation, so there was plenty of time to save money to make the trip. Karla’s family and I got on our pickup truck, were we could barely fit, and traveled to the location a few days before the wedding.

Now, the day of the wedding is the important part of this illustration or parable if you might, so listen carefully.

That day, a few of us got in my pickup truck, the judge took his own vehicle, Karla’s family borrowed another vehicle, and the bridegroom took his own vehicle. At first everything was great, cars were full of gas and ready, the road was nice, the view was beautiful. Until the road was not so nice anymore.

The road became dirt all of the sudden, and not just dirt, it had pointy rocks all over the place. I must say, I thought of maybe not going to the wedding in order to not risk my car on that road. Apparently, I was not the only one who thought about it, the judge got out of his vehicle, left it there and got inside the bridegroom’s truck. Our options were limited now, so I kept driving as everybody else.

Once we got to the end of the road, we got to an entrance. That’s were the walking started. We left our cars behind and began to walk on a little pathway; a slippery, muddy, rocky, pathway. To walk in this was quite the challenge, we had to look down the entire time to avoid falling or hurting ourselves.

According to the bride, it was not going to be a long way to where we were going, and it was not going to be too hard to get there. Suddenly we started going up hill a little bit, things…got harder and it was…getting long as well. My mom, who was behind me, who had her foot injured could not walk any longer. The rest of the group kept going and she encouraged me to do the same.

The bride looked at us and said “we are close.” My mom looked at me, and I knew she could no longer keep going. I looked at her and said “I will keep walking, if in 10 minutes I am not back, it means that were we are going for this wedding, is a lot longer than we think.”

I kept going with the rest of the group. We started going downhill, and 5 minutes later, the pathway got a little easier. I was sweating, as everybody else was. Not the best presentation for a wedding, I know. We were…getting a little smelly too. Another 5 minutes passed and we were nowhere near to our destination. I decided to run back to warn my mom about it. I ran uphill as fast as I could to where I left her, but she was no longer there, she had gone back to were we left the truck. I ran downhill again to try to catch up with the group, which I did, almost at the same spot where I had started to run toward my mom. The pathway was that difficult to walk on… again. Since we left the vehicles, an hour had passed by already. We kept walking downhill.

My father-in-law was helping my mother-in-law walk through all of this. Someone was carrying a baby through all of this. I was a little bit injured, so the mud and the rocks were not making it easy for me to walk. The judge suffered vertigo, and the bridegroom had to help him most of our way down.

Suddenly the pathway was replaced by some stairs. Now, these were some tiny stairs, and I mean really tiny. They only had a handrail on one side, so that made walking on them extremely difficult, and it made us feel unsafe. You can imagine the judge, with vertigo on unsafe stairs…

But, after walking for at least another 10 minutes we arrived to a flat piece of land, on the other side of it there was a river. If you followed the opposite of that river’s current you could see a huge waterfall. The view was majestic. It looked like…paradise. Like Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs trying to eat us. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen.

The bride and the bridegroom stood in a position where the waterfall was behind them. And while the judge was performing the ceremony, many of us were just in awe at such a spectacular view. It was definitely a wedding to remember.

But what does this have to with what we read earlier…?

The Wedding of the Lamb has been announced with years of anticipation, so there has been plenty of time to prepare for it. And as I said before, the day of the wedding is the most important part of this, so, as Jesus would often say: “let anyone who has ears to hear listen…,” in other words, listen carefully.

The first verse told us to lay aside everything that keeps us from running the race. In this parable, the judge left his car behind in order to keep going, and the only way he could keep going was with the help of the bridegroom who took him in his truck. Sometimes you just have to let someone else do the driving. Like Carrie Underwood’s song says: Jesus take the wheel.

Now, we must understand that the Christian path is not that easy, it has its obstacles every now and then, just like the pathway we were walking on. But sometimes we focus so much on the difficult part of it that we miss what is happening around us. On this pathway we focused so much on the ground in order not to fall, that we missed the beauty that was surrounding us. All of God’s Creation making way to the amazing waterfall. This life might seem difficult and almost impossible at times, and it’s true, it is difficult. But when we focus on the bad, we sometimes miss the good. That is why the author of Hebrews tells us to keep our eyes on Jesus. Keep your eyes on the goal, not on the hardship, not on your burdens, but on the source and perfecter of our faith.

Some people, like my mom, will stay behind even though they encouraged us to keep going. There might have been people in your life that introduced you to Jesus that died without Him. It happens, and it’s sad. My mom missed the waterfall, and missed the wedding, she was only able to see it through pictures. Some people see the paradise in the Bible’s descriptions, but that’s all they see, unfortunately. All because they focus on the difficulties instead of the paradise in front of them. All because they do not lay aside the sin that ensnares them and stop running the race that lies before them.

Some of us carry others or help others through this difficult path. The bridegroom helped the judge with vertigo. Karla’s dad was helping her mom, someone was helping the baby get there. And this is what the Bible tells us to do in verses like 1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up as you are already doing.” Specially with newborn Christians, baby Christians. This is not a path to walk alone, we have help on each other, and on God. Jesus tells us to look for Him for help in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Notice that Jesus does not tell us that He will do all by Himself, we still have to take up His yoke, we still have to do some lifting, but it is easier when someone else is helping with the load.

Jesus has finished the race, the second verse tells us that He already endured the cross, despised the shame, and sat down at the throne of God. He has set the example to follow, but He also helps us get there. The problem might be that we are so focused on an individualistic Christianity that we miss the community that God intended it to be. See, the people in my parable, who were going through all this trouble to witness the wedding, were not random strangers, it was family and close friends. People who helped each other get there. People who were full of joy when witnessing such an event. That is what the Church must be, that is what the Church is described as in the Bible, a family.

Help each other get to the Wedding. It is going to happen. It will be paradise. It will be worth all the hard trouble. It will be majestic! And it is also your decision to get there. God has sent the invitation. Will you make it to the Wedding?