Thursday, August 20, 2020, Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church                     (today’s lectionary)
I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow …
Thus says the Lord: I will prove the holiness of my name.
Yesterday was our 41st anniversary. On the morning after Margaret and I woke up in a big Jumer’s Hotel bed in Peoria, wondering what we had got ourselves into. But we escaped for a week, into a honeymoon financed by a check from Dad at the wedding, handed to us with a wink. I know he wanted to go along.
I will take you away, gather you up, and bring you back to your own land.
We went south to Eureka Springs, Arkansas to a luxurious room high on a hill in the gigantic Crescent Hotel, where that evening we watched the moon settle into the black sky. For a few wonderful, long days we made love and visited art galleries on Main Street, paddled across Table Rock Lake and explored the forest. For breakfast we sat on the hotel veranda and ordered orange juice, fried eggs over medium, bacon, toast and coffee. We had dinner there too, and a concert harpist dressed in a formal gown played the most beautiful music on her most beautiful harp.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities.
Oh, how happy you have made me!
We found willing partners at restaurants throughout the week who helped us celebrate our wedding with desserts and music. We danced for them sometimes, and basked in their applause. (Am I making this up? I think I remember these things.) Heading to Kentucky, Margaret’s great friend and pastor Judy Holt hosted a reception for us at Grapevine Christian Church, where Margaret was baptized and grew up in her faith. Margaret’s favorite aunt, her boyfriend from Murray State, her mother and sister and niece, her friends and relatives all wished us well.
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you.
I will take your stony hearts away and give you natural hearts.
Yesterday, as we did on our wedding day, we spent time together and time apart. Yesterday, though, we kept remembering it was our 41st anniversary because we also kept forgetting it. In the afternoon we pulled 1½ inch ribeye steaks out of the freezer and followed the best way to grill them over charcoal, which took an hour or so, and then we ate them sizzling, with buttered, grilled mushrooms.
We did not save any for God.
If I offered you a burnt offering you would not accept it.
But God’s presence never left us, and as we prayed before our meal, Margaret felt God follow us backward into the history of our lives.
Our sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit, a heart humbled.
In real time, historical and immediate, kairos and chronos, we have found the wedding feast God holds for all of us for all time. If we read Jesus’ parable we know better than to turn away, and why would we want to anyway? I have bought me a cow?!?!!
The feast is ready, but those invited do not come, will not come.
So go find others, bad and good alike, and fill our hall with guests.
Put on your fancy clothes, boys and girls, and get your hair done. Makeup is waiting for everyone. Fancy shoes are polished till they shine like the sun. We will be walking by the King and Queen, bowing, smiling, learning how to be loved by them.
In our four decades plus a year Margaret and I have lived rich lives. We have been many places and done many things.
If everyone of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
You shall be my people, and I will be your God.
           (Ezekiel 36, Psalm 51, Psalm 95, Matthew 25)
#
