The Birth of the Bride

Many years ago, I was asked to sing at a wedding.  Looking back on it now, I feel very sorry for the bride.  You see, up until the day of the wedding, I had not met the young woman who was being married.  I worked with her mother, and the bride's mom had heard me singing as I went about my work.  She thought that I had a good voice, and invited me to sing at her daughter's wedding.

When we arrived at the Sanctuary that Saturday afternoon, we found that it had already been decorated for the Sunday service.  So not only did the bride not get to choose who sang at her wedding, but she did not get to place flowers, candles and other wedding frou-frou in the Sanctuary.  

No, the decorations were of balloons and streamers.  Many of the wedding guests, including members of the congregation, all wondered aloud why there would be what appeared to be birthday decorations in the church.  Then it dawned on me.  I asked, "Is tomorrow Pentecost Sunday?"  Someone said yes, and I immediately knew the answer to the puzzle.  "It is the birthday of the church!" I exclaimed.

I tell this story because tomorrow is another celebration of Pentecost Sunday.  It gets its name from the Greek word for Fifty, as it occurs fifty days after the Passover.  Ancient Jewish peoples celebrated it as the completion of the harvest.  In Palestine, the grain harvest lasted seven weeks, and it was a season of gladness.  It began with the harvest of barley, around the time of Passover, and ended with the harvest of wheat, which ripens much later.  It was a time of giving the first-fruit offerings to God, after the harvest had been fully brought in.  Pentecost was thus the concluding festival of the grain harvest.  That's why in Acts 2:1 it says, "Now when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place."

After the Jewish Exile, the Day of Pentecost became a celebration of the giving of the Torah.  Leviticus 23:11 makes reference to the priests giving a wave offering "on the morrow after the Sabbath," which would put it on a Sunday.  The Zohar (a collection of commentaries on the Torah) calls the time between the Passover and Pentecost the "courting days of the bridegroom Israel with the bride Torah."

In Ephesians 5:22-23, Paul compares the union of husband and wife to that of Christ and the Church.  As Christians, we celebrate the Day of Pentecost as the day the Holy Spirit came and indwelt believers; that's why we call it the birthday of the Church.  Revelation 21:2 describes the New Jerusalem (the Church) in this way: "Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."

Let's think about that for a moment.  At the moment of Salvation we become engaged with Jesus, the Son of God.  We talk about Him, we study His life and His words, we share our experience about Him with others.  We look forward to the day of His return, when we are "caught up together with Him in the air."  We are invited to the Wedding Supper (feast) of the Lamb (Jesus).  We are not only invited to the wedding: we are the very Bride of Christ.  The celebration on that day will be the union of God's Son with the Body known as the Church.

While we look forward to that day with great hope and anticipation, we celebrate the birthday of the Bride every year on Pentecost Sunday.  We bring our firstfruits to Him as a celebration of His blessing.  Pentecost is the culmination of what happened at Passover, when Jesus gave Himself on the cross for our sins.  He bore our pain, our persecution, our punishment so that we could present ourselves to Him unblemished and undefiled.

As an old evangelist used to say, "If that don't light your fire, your wood's wet!"