The Friend of the Bridegroom

Preached on Sunday 25th June 2023, kept as the Patronal Festival of the Minster Church of St John the Baptist.

Luke 1.57-66,80  

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I wonder if you can tell me what you will be doing exactly six months from today, to the minute?

 

I’ll give you a clue. It will be Christmas Day!

So, I hope your answer is that you’ll be in church, and if not, I hope it is because you will have been to the Midnight Mass!

 

Why, you might ask, is he talking about Christmas Day today, in the very middle of summer and on our Patronal Festival?

 

It is because both today and Christmas Day centre on a birth; two intimately linked births.

 

On Christmas Day the birth of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; today the birth of his cousin and the one who prepared the world for Christ’s first coming, John the Baptist, patron saint of this church.

 

Two miraculous births.

 

John’s mother, Elizabeth, was past childbearing age, yet still she was blessed with the gift of a child.

 

Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a very young woman not married, not ‘sexually active’, as we might say, yet she too became a mother.

 

Both births, heralded by the Archangel Gabriel, are of God and integral to our salvation.

 

John came to prepare the way of the Lord; Jesus Christ, the Lord, came to save us from our sins by his life-giving death and his resurrection.

 

From all we know of John in the gospels, he would want our focus today, as always, to be on Christ, and rightly so.

 

His consistent message can be summed up like this: ‘look away from me and behold Jesus Christ who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’.

 

That’s the message every Christian should promote and live out.

 

So all we say of John actually only ever leads us back to Christ.

 

In that regard John is like the other great saint of the Incarnation, the Blessed Mother, Mary herself.

 

The honour and regard we give to both Mary mother of the Lord, and to John, is always and only inasmuch as they lead and point us to Christ.

 

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As I have been pondering St John the Baptist for today – and I think about him a lot – I was struck by something in the Gospel of St John, John the Evangelist.

 

There is a really significant title that often gets overlooked: John the Baptist identifies himself as the ‘friend of the bridegroom’ (John 3.22).

 

Sometimes John comes across as harsh, austere and without joy or celebration, but he is also a friend: friendship is always a cherished relationship between two people.

 

Yes, John is a witness to Jesus, forerunner of Jesus, the one who cries out in the wilderness – all those things but he is also a friend: a relationship of joy and trust.

 

So, John is also a friend; specifically, the ‘friend of the bridegroom’.

 

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I was officiating at a wedding yesterday, and of course the best man, the friend of the bridegroom, had a particular role.

 

Nowadays the Best Man arranges the Stag do, looks after the wedding rings, gives some Dutch courage to the groom, and makes a speech at the reception and toasts the bridesmaids and the happy couple.

 

In first century Palestine the ‘friend of the bridegroom’ was responsible for the equivalent things no doubt, but also for arranging the match with the bride.

 

The friend of the Bridegroom was a sort of fixer, as well as ensuring the wedding feast went well.

 

John the Baptist is the ‘friend of the Bridegroom’, the Best Man.

 

This points us to something really important.

 

Marriage is one of the deep themes of the Bible: arguably the whole of Scripture sees the relationship between God and humanity in marital terms.

 

In the Old Testament Israel is spoken of as the bride of God (Isaiah 62.4-5; Jeremiah 2.2; Ezekiel 16.8; 23.4; Hosea 2.19-20).

 

In the Gospels the first of Jesus’ signs is set at the heart of a marriage, at Cana in Galilee (John 2.1-11).

 

The sign at Cana is of the refreshed relationship of God and his people, like bridegroom and bride, a marriage with the True Bridegroom present.

 

St Paul reflects deeply on this in his letter to the Ephesians saying that the marriage of a man and a woman, bridegroom and bride, prefigures and echoes the marriage of Christ, the bridegroom, and the Church, his bride, so that Christ and the Church are one flesh, just as husband and wife mystically become one flesh in marriage: as Paul says, ‘this mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church’ (Ephesians 5.32, cf also vv.22-33).

 

What Cana shows is that Jesus Christ brings transformation to renew the relationship between humanity and divinity through the marriage sign, reconciling two different bodies as one flesh, which is why we can say we are one body in Christ.

 

And John is the ‘friend of the bridegroom’: the one prepares the way for the union of divinity and humanity in the Incarnation; the marriage of Christ, the Bridegroom, and his Bride, the Church; of Christ offering to you in his body for you to receive in the Eucharist: ‘though we are many we are one Body, because we all share in the one bread’ (1 Corinthians 10.17).

 

We celebrate the birth of our patron saint today, John the Baptist; in sixth months’ time we celebrate the birth of the Saviour.

 

In the spirit of the ‘friend of the bridegroom’ may we, every day, rejoice in our being united with Christ in baptism.

 

The wedding at Cana points to a banquet, the banquet the Eucharist anticipates: in the words of the Revelation to John, ‘blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb’ (Revelation 19.9)

 

May each one of us, for better for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; love and cherish Christ the Bridegroom till death do us unite in heaven when we are born to eternal life with him. Amen.