A Second Look at a Remarkable Entrance

I had heard about the wedding entrance at the Kevin Heinz-Jill Peterson wedding in Minnesota that had popped up on YouTube this past week. So, I watched it. Immediately, I thought it inappropriate. I was not familiar with the song and I thought that the dancing was a bit over the top. I thought of all of the couples that will try their own version so that they can get onto YouTube and get their fifteen minutes.
And then a strange thing happened - I watched the video again, and again and again. It was not until about the third or fourth time through that I realized what it was that kept me coming back. The sense of sheer joy that permeated the whole event is undeniable. Watch the video and look at the faces of everyone in the wedding party, the members of the congregation and even the pastor, God bless her open and welcoming heart. Several biblical images now come to mind whenever I watch that video. A few weeks ago the lectionary included a reading where David danced, half naked, before the ark. He danced with pure joy and devotion to God, for he felt that he had done a good thing by bringing to ark to Jerusalem. And today, when I watched the video and observed the section where the whole wedding party reassembled in the back of the church and came down the aisle together, in a processional that reminded me for all of the world of the biblical description of Palm Sunday, I was moved again. Follow that with a joyous bride hardly able to control her happiness as she boogies down the aisle and I ask, how could God not be smiling? The youth and vitality and sheer happiness of those involved in the dance is inspiring and will assure that the knock-offs that are bound to appear on YouTube soon will be faint copies at best. Jill and Kevin, may the joy and sheer exuberance of your wedding entrance remain a part of your married life always.

Mark 6.14-56.. John Had the Last Word

I am always amazed by the blank stares I get from students when I ask what, or who, a prophet might be. I should say that I get blank states after I tell them that, no, it's not someone who predicts the future. I like Walter Brueggemann's definition of a prophet as one who criticizes, energizes and proposes a new way. His take on this is important, because anyone can criticize. Criticism is one of our favorite pastimes: we love to moan and complain. It becomes more difficult to carry out the second criteria of prophetic speaking, energizing. We can gripe and say what is wrong, but only a few can actually get people's attention and begin to energize them with thoughts about the way things could be. Barack Obama was able to do that during the eternal election season of last year....and the year before. He captured the imagination of the American people, especially young adults, in a way that no one had for quite some time. As now President Obama is discovering, it is very difficult to carry out the third criteria of prophetic speaking, that of providing a roadmap for a new way. No matter how much we may say that we want something new, we are very attached to the old ways, and cannot escape thinking in terms that Brueggemann refers to as the "royal consciousness" which is the mindset that is determined to hold on to power at all costs. Many people don't want the changes in the tax structure and health care, to name two elements, that must happen for a new way to emerge. Vested interests are loathe to relinquish power.
John the Baptizer didn't care what it cost him to speak truth to power. The Bible portrays him as somewhat of a curious character. He lived in the desert for a while, maybe Qumran, maybe with the Essenes. He dressed in animal skins and ate honey and wild locusts which were probably the pods of the locust tree, and not the bugs. Sorry, sci-fi fans. Because John had publicly criticized the shenanigans perpetrated by Herod to get his brother's wife for himself, Herodias, said wife, was upset with John. When the opportunity came to silence him through her daughter's request to have John's head on a platter, Herodias must have thought it was a good day indeed. She was able to silence John, eternally. Or did she? John spoke of the new kingdom and the one who would bring it. In spite of John's death, a glimpse of the kingdom came with Jesus. Though the kingdom has yet to come in all of its fullness, we people of faith are supposed to be working for it and looking for it. When we speak prophetically, meeting the above-mentioned criteria, doesn't John, in fact, have the last word?