Ring by Spring

I wrote this blog on April 7th, 2012 and posted it to my Facebook. Finally getting around to posting it here too. This was hands down the most popular blog I have posted on my Facebook account. Matters of the heart tend to be a popular topic with people. Blessings on your day, Heidi 

Ring by Spring.” A typical student at Seattle Pacific University entering into their third week of Spring quarter can bet on hearing these three little words on repeat like a broken record or your favorite song. These three words can either bring feelings of dread, challenge, or hope. I tend to firmly place my flag into the ground of the feelings of dread camp. I haveNO desire to get married or have a ring on my finger anytime soon.  You can call me a realist or career driven. I have the radical belief that you shouldn’t date until you are ready or in a place to get married. However, I wouldn’t argue with you if you said I might be scarred, carrying baggage, or scared of relationships and commitments. But, don’t we all in different ways? I am messy and junk-filled recovering sinner like everyone else. Who is daily drenched in the grace of God who makes beautiful things.

I am not against people getting married young; but you won’t find me going around endorsing it. Many of my good friends are getting married this summer or have gotten engaged in the past month. Attending SPU it isn’t abnormal to be in a class with peers who are showing off their engagement rings or married. God calls everyone to different things. I know it cannot be easy getting married young and that is a cross God calls some people to carry. I have the highest respect of people who carry that cross with divine amounts of grace and confidence in the Lord. Most people don’t think it’s wise and/or believe that I should be a Pastor, but I guess that’s my own cross to carry.

Okay, so I would guess by now you are wondering where I am going with this. Yes, part of me is just ranting, but I actually do have a point! As I have been reflecting on the cross and passion of Christ during Lent and especially this Holy Week I came to the revelation that the cross of Christ is a proposal. A personal proposal to me and most importantly to the church—the body of Christ. Jesus completed the most beautiful two-day proposal the world has ever seen (not even a choreographed dance in front of the Magic Kingdom Castle can compare).

The proposal begins on Thursday when Jesus bends down on one knee and washes the feet of His followers. In humility Jesus washes their feet. This is the ultimate forever commitment of selfless love and devotion to His dirty and unfaithful Bride. He washes her physically clean. The dirt is washed away by the meek act of Jesus bending down and scrubbing us clean. Next, Jesus offered His Bride the cup and bread of his own blood and body in exchange for her cup. On Mandy Thursday, God and I swapped cups.

First century Jewish marriage customs in the land of Israel history lesson of the day—a traditional Jewish proposal would consist of a young man’s father taking a bottle of wine and pour a cup of wine to hand to his son. The son would then turn to the young women who makes his heart “sparkle” and with all the seriousness of an oath before God, would take the cup of wine and say “This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which I offer to you.” 21st Century Translation: “I am deeply in love with you. I promise to be your faithful husband. Will you be my bride?”

This traditional Jewish proposal of handing a cup of wine to a young woman was a way of offering (metaphorically) your very blood as the outrageous and inflated price for your Beloved’s hand in marriage. A young Jewish man would see it as offering the cup of his heart. And if the young women took the cup and drank from it, she accepted his life and offered him her cup of wine, thus confirming the betrothal. A love commitment sealed by lips to a cup.

I wonder if the early Christians would have understood the parallels between the Last Supper and a traditional Jewish proposal? It seems painfully obvious to me. Every communion we experience as Christians is a powerful call to say yes to the proposal of Christ.

So as we have discovered in Jewish tradition, the bride and groom-to-be exchange and drink from each other’s cups. Here is the dilemma: Jesus cup is the cup of righteousness, the cup of a right, beautiful, and sin-free relationship with God. A cup of eternal life—life to the FULLEST, inexpressible joy and overflowing peace. This is the cup that only Jesus deserves to drink from. Yet Jesus, in an act of thanksgiving, willing hands over His cup in exchange for ours, His Beloved. Our cup is completely unlike Jesus’. Our cup is overflowing with sin, suffering, pain, brokenness, and separation from God and filled with the just wrath of God. Yikes! This must ruin the mood of the proposal. And in a way it does.

After Jesus, the Bridegroom, exchanges cups with His future Bride and realizes what is in His Beloved’s cup retreats to the garden of Gethsemane to pray. Begging God to take this new proposal cup from Him--the weight of His future Brides faithlessness and sin pressed upon Him and He begins to sweat BLOOD! The Bridegroom surrenders Himself to the will of God and His “foolish” love for His Bride. This proposal story takes a turn for the worst….

Jesus is betrayed by His own fiancé. He walks the road of Calvary only to have His Beloved beat Him, mock Him, spit on Him, reject Him over and over again. And like the old hymn that says, “Were you there when you crucified my Lord?” I can honestly answer, “Yes, I was there.”

Because in horror and trembling, I can hear my own voice among the crowd yelling,“CRUCIFY HIM”. I can feel my hands reaching for the crown of glory and honor from Jesus head and replacing it with a crown of thorns. I can hear the sound of the hammer against the head of the nail as I drive it deep into His hand. I can see my own wounds heal as I shamefully whip the bareback of Creations last hope of saving grace. I can smell the repulsing aroma of the crucifixion and the sour wine that I offered Him as my stone hard, sin-filled heart sucked the life right out of Him. I can remember the eyes that burned with love as the bruised and broken body of my Bridegroom hung on that tree. I can hear the sound of His voice as He said, “It is FININSHED”. And I can see the temple curtain tear in two and know with all my heart that I just murdered the Son of God, the only person who as ever loved me. The one who took upon him the wrath of God, the wrath of Himself, which was solely meant for me.

What kind of King would choose to to wear a crown that bleeds and scars to win my heart?

Through the cross, Jesus takes the cup of wrath that He pleads in the garden for the Father to take from Him—because He doesn’t want YOU, the church, His Beloved Bride, taken from Him. He takes this incomprehensible cup that leads him to a cross because He can’t fathom not taking His Bride. Echoing the feet washing on Thursday: Jesus on Friday washes us spiritually; cleansing us of our messy stained hearts with His own blood. The proposal is officially finished. But the story is far from over.

As Jesus breathed His last, His Bride believed for it to be over. His disciples and faithful women followers thought this was the end. I wonder what Saturday was like for them. The empty hopelessness of that day. But the silence that filled Saturday had a faint ring of hope in the air. God would get the last word. The Bride in agony over what she had done would be reunited with her Bridegroom on Sunday. It is one of the reasons it is so powerful for me that Mary Magdalene is the first one to see the resurrected Lord, the resurrected Bridegroom. Not even death could swallow the love of the Bridegroom. Aw, Easter is the happy ending we all long for.

If I was completely honest this proposal makes me feel awkward and I secretly want more distance from a God who offers me this kind of love. Just as I try to distance myself and scorn the idea of “Ring by Spring” at SPU—I ironically come face to face this spring with the most outlandish proposal and I am forced to act and make a decision.

Do I say yes to this Jesus, this Bridegroom? To say yes is considered foolish and unwise by the world. Do I take the cup of communion and drink from it entering into the most sacred covenant? Or do I walk away too proud to let myself be mocked by the world? Why would I willing choose to betroth myself to a Bridegroom who died a death that was reserved for the scum of the earth? Why would I become a Princess to a Prince who wears a crown of thorns? Why would I chose to enter into an upside down Kingdom where the least are considered the greatest and the King is murdered in order to gain compete power? Why would I betroth myself to a Bridegroom who asks me to deny myself, pick up a cross and follow Him?

Love. That’s I why. I do it because Jesus loves me. I choose to drink from the communion cup. I choose to say yes. I choose Jesus even though it is foolishness to the world. Love is laying down plans, agendas, and self. Love is always the act of laying down. Love lays down it’s own wants to lift up the will of another. Love let’s go of its plans—to hold on to a person. Jesus’ proposal and His Passion reiterates Romans 8:38-39…

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Love wins. Jesus will stop at nothing to win my heart. I will say yes to this proposal. I will say yes to this “Cup by Spring”. Perfect loves drives out fear. 

And as I continue to roll my eyes as I walk through campus and hear those three dreaded words everywhere I go. And as the stack of my various friends “Save the Date” cards grows every week on my desk, I contemplate every Sunday at the Communion table the proposal I have said yes to. I may not have a Pintrest account of ideas of my heavenly wedding but I have read Revelation and the stunning wedding vision it paints of the Bridegroom and Bride coming together. I am reminded this Holy Week of the whole point of earthly relationships and marriage—to be a living picture pointing to an even greater relationship.

Remember me Lord, as you enter into your Kingdom….