“I have married more than a thousand times,” tells author and Pastor Robert Fulghum. Though he’s officiated at plenty more weddings than I have, there are some observations he has made about weddings in general that most pastors notice right off. He notes that most of them are comedies, even though they aren’t intended as such. He explains it this way, “…since weddings are high state occasions involving amateurs under pressure, everything NEVER goes right. Weddings seem to be magnets for mishap and for whatever craziness lurks in family closets. In more ways than one, weddings bring out the ding-dong in everybody involved.”

Nothing could be more true. I’ve seen my share at least enough to know that much. During the very first wedding I did as a pastor, the mother of the bride stood at the door and cursed at nearly all of the guests. I’ve also made a ding-dong of myself at weddings on more than one occasion, as a friend, as a family member, and most assuredly as the pastor. I remember owing a very, very long apology for the time I forgot to have the bride and groom kiss before they left the sanctuary.

But Fulghum’s wedding story in his collection It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It is even better. The central figure in his tale is the Mother of the Bride. You may know from your own wedding experiences, that wedding tales many times revolve around someone other than the couple getting married. Pastors are somewhere down below caterers on the list of important guests, and the reason the men wear all the same tuxes is that if the groom passes out or doesn’t show, you can simply move the line over one and keep going. But in this case, this particular Mother of the Bride left no detail untouched – she wanted “a royal wedding for her princess bride.” She was in the pastor’s office weekly discussing details for the wedding. She had hired an eighteen piece brass band. She bought, not rented, bought tuxedoes, and sent the engagement ring back to get a bigger stone, subsidized of course from her own bank account.

The big day finally came, the music softened, the bridesmaids glided down the aisle, and the bridal march began. However the bride had been nervously waiting in the church foyer sampling pink, and yellow, and green mints. She ate the nuts and pecans, which she followed with a cheese ball or two, some black olives, a handful of glazed almonds, a little sausage with the frilly toothpick stuck in it, shrimp wrapped in bacon, and to wash it all down, her father offered her a glass of pink champagne. The “hungry caterpillar” couldn’t have eaten any more than she.

Fulghum says, “What you noticed as the bride stood in the doorway was not her dress, but her face. White. For what was coming down the aisle was a living grenade with the pin pulled out. The bride threw up…. Just as she walked by her mother.”

He continues in graphic detail saying, “And by threw up, I don’t mean a polite little urp into her handkerchief. She puked. There’s no nice word for it. I mean, she hosed the front of the chancel…” And all of this was captured of course on videotape, three camera’s worth. “The Mother of the Bride had thought of everything.”

After this, he said, “Only two people were seen smiling. One was the mother of the groom and the other was the father of the bride.” Fortunately, after some clean up the wedding resumed, with the groom tenderly holding the bride in his arms throughout the whole service. When he said, “for better or worse,” the whole crowd knew he meant it. Fulghum adds, if what people want is their wedding to be memorable – well this was it.

But the reason he tells the story is not for the wedding itself, but because of the party that happened 10 years following. All the wedding guests were invited, and three TV’s were set up to show all three videotapes of the dreaded event – complete with some pretty disgusting stop frame action. But he says the best part of this story is not that they had the party, but who hosted the party. It was the Mother of the Bride – the same person who went berserk trying to control the whole event. This family was fortunate, for she not only forgave everyone else for their part in the disaster, she forgave herself. He concludes his story saying, “There’s a word for what she has. Grace. And that’s why the same grinning man has been married to her for forty years. And why her daughter loves her still.”

Weddings, they do bring out the kooky in us. Jesus saw that too. In fact, Luke tells us that when he was at a different sort of gathering he noticed how people were choosing their places of honor, and he told a wedding story of his own. He told how some will choose the best place at the wedding banquet for themselves and may have to be asked to step down, and how some others may choose a less prominent seat and be moved up as a friend. Anyone who’s been involved in coordinating a wedding knows that little has changed since in this pecking order since Jesus’ day. The wedding party has important seats, including close family and papa’s business connections while Cousin Ethel three times removed and the paperboy might have seats closer to the back. At a social gathering like a wedding banquet, people have places of d istinction, and we are known by our relationships for better or for worse.

But I suspect we have a hard time reckoning the scripture passages about God’s steadfast love for everyone with this one that tells us that we also need to know our place in the heavenly kingdom. We may want to glance around the room a bit and see who’s sitting where, but deep down, we really don’t want to know how God might rank us. If God does have favorites, we don’t really want to know about it – unless of course – we’re high on the guest list.

What I like about Fulghum’s wedding story is that it reminds us that our social celebrations are always full of surprises, and from Jesus’ story we are reminded that how we act in our relationships is always noticed by the eye of God. So many things could’ve happened in the story of the bride that blew. That’s one of those occasions that some families would chose not to talk about –ever. Instead this family chose to allow their humble side to be what the guests would remember. They let their love shine even brighter through the imperfections than through all the many things that were designed to go “right.”

In trying to understand Jesus’ parable, I don’t think he’s arguing for a rigid hierarchy of social place in which God determines the who’s who list. I do think he’s reminding us that we can set ourselves up for either good or bad consequences in our social circles. We can think too grandly of ourselves and get put in our place, or we can be humble in heart and allow God’s grace to be the star of the show. I think God is less concerned about how much we spend, or how great we look, or what prominence we have in the community, and is more concerned about how we treat our family and friends with love and respect – giving places of honor to each and every person we care about.

And if you’re not fond of this particular story, there are plenty of other dinner party stories in scripture for your edification. In most, if not all of them, welcome is emphasized over and over again. Invite anyone you can to the party. God always makes the invitation broad. That’s the theme that plays out. It’s a reminder that God’s great banquet is always open to everyone regardless of our place in the human pecking order. The “royal wedding” that the Mother of the Bride wanted and the wedding that happened were two very different things. What actually happened probably taught them more about love as a family than if everything had gone perfectly.

Our stories can have comedic endings and still be inspired stories, great stories in fact of God’s divine love and sense of humor. In telling this parable, Jesus let the Pharisees, the guardians of “right” behavior, know that their place wasn’t guaranteed by virtue of their community status. What matters is that the gracious host not only invites you but then can say to you, “Friend, move up higher and be honored.” Learn to do what was difficult for the Pharisees. Be willing to value God’s little twists of plot and plan. In fact, if you want to hear God’s laughter, make plans, then find a humble place in the outcome. When we have the eyes to see them, God’s plans are almost always more delightful than our own.

Amen.