As you all know, the first services of Holy Week (after Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday) are the Bridegroom Orthros services, which we celebrate in the evenings.
But wait a minute, you’re probably saying, isn’t Orthros (a.k.a., Matins) a morning service?
It is.
During Holy Week, you’ll notice that all the services are celebrated earlier than normal. So, instead of celebrating the Tuesday morning Orthros service on Tuesday morning, for example, we celebrate it on Monday night.
When we do this, we say we are celebrating the service in anticipation. The idea is that we can’t wait to get to the Resurrection of Christ … but, back to the Bridegroom services.
It’s during the Bridegroom services that we get one of my favorite hymns of the Orthodox tradition, which begins like this:
“Behold, the Bridegroom is coming in the middle of the night; and blessed is the servant He shall find awake and watching …”
The theme for this hymn comes from the Gospel of Matthew (25:1-13). There, Jesus tells a story about 10 young girls (or virgins) who are waiting for a bridegroom to come and whisk them away to a wedding ceremony.
This sounds strange to us. Who does a midnight wedding?
But, in this time and culture, this was normal. And, apparently, it was normal for the bridegroom to get delayed on his way to his fiancée’s house. So, the bride, along with her bridal party, would have to wait up, with an oil lamp, in anticipation of the bridegroom arriving.
In the parable, there are 10 girls waiting, but only five of them have come prepared with enough oil to last through the night.
The five who weren’t prepared end up leaving to go and buy more oil. It’s while they were away that the bridegroom appeared, so they end up missing the party. They weren’t even let into the banquet when they knocked and shouted to be let in: “no soup” for them!
Now, what does this story have to do with Christ and us?
Well, firstly, it’s common for scripture to use wedding imagery to describe our relationship with God and his kingdom. The idea is that God is wedded to his people. The Old Testament often speaks of Israel as God’s bride, so when Israel started worshipping other Gods, the Bible says that Israel had committed “adultery” against God. In short, they were unfaithful.
In the parable about the 10 girls and the bridegroom, Jesus draws on this same idea: now is the time when God is coming to be wedded to his people.
The idea of God being wedded, or united, to his people is also a very Orthodox theme, and it’s how we talk about salvation (union with God). When we are baptized we are buried with Christ and rise with him precisely because we are wedded–united–to him.
And, of course, you can’t forget about communion, the sacrament in which we take the Blood and Body of Christ into ourselves so that we can become the Body of Christ.
But, this idea isn’t just important to Orthodox Christians. It’s important to Christ as well. Later, on Thursday night, we’ll hear Christ say,
“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you.” (John 17:20-21)
Wow! We are called to be one with God just as Jesus is one with God. That’s a high calling!
So, if Christ is the bridegroom, that makes us the girls waiting in the middle of the night. But, as the story tells us, not all of us are eagerly waiting for our union with God. In fact, this is the theme of the rest of the hymn,
“… unworthy is the other He shall find being lazy. So beware, O soul of mine, be not overcome by sleep, so that you not be handed over to death and be shut out from the Kingdom. Come to your senses and cry aloud: Holy, holy, holy are You our God.”
The hymn, as well as the entirety of the Bridegroom Orthros services, encourages us to stay alert … to walk the Way, as I often put it.
We are to be diligent about how we practice our Christianity, how we go about our spiritual journey.
But, being alert–and staying alert–isn’t always easy. On the night that Judas handed Jesus over, Jesus asked Peter to stay alert while he prayed, but Peter fell asleep. Yet, in the end, Peter repented and became the “rock” that we know him to be.
So, this is why these services are so important: they remind us of the need to be vigilant like the five girls who were prepared to meet the bridegroom. But, the services also remind us that it’s never too late to start walking the Way: we worship a merciful and loving God who was crucified for us so that we could be united to him.
Good strength to all of you and blessed Resurrection.