Being the Bridegroom’s friend

Sunrise. The bridegroom gets up and says to me, "Thus begins the day." It’s his day, his bride’s day, their wedding day. Soon there is a flurry of activity as we all get into our wedding clothes. The other young men in the bridegroom’s entourage descend on the house we’re staying in. His future brother-in-law brings breakfast. As we eat, each of us offers the bridegroom some encouraging words. We crack a few jokes. We ask if he’s feeling nervous, but he says he is confident. All that separates him from his beloved is a walk down the aisle. When the time comes, we rush in convoy across town to the chapel. The bridegroom has come.

It’s been a while since I last blogged, and Christmas, a holiday at Jeffreys Bay and much water has flowed under the bridge since our epic trip up to Harare, Zimbabwe for the wedding of two of my friends. Nevertheless, I thought I owed you, friends, an account of how it went up there. It was an amazing time.

I’ll start with the trip up. I flew up from Cape Town to Johannesburg and met Steve and Ros, two of my friends, up there. And that’s where all the fun started. Suffice it to say that entering Park Station in Johannesburg is like entering a parallel universe where African time (and African efficiency) rules. Our bus was one and a half hours late leaving from Joburg, and although the border crossing was fairly smooth, we were five and a half hours late by the time we reached Harare. And that makes 20 hours on a bus. We dubbed it ‘a wedding bus’ because most of the people on it were not in fact Zimbos going home, but South Africans going to different weddings in Zim. Obviously there are more crazy people like us than we thought. We comforted each other through the trip now and then by saying "This is an adventure!" And it was.

So we arrived in Harare at the dodgiest bus depot where you have to cling to all your luggage in case it decides to grow legs, in the rain, while many of our friends were enjoying the bride's kitchen tea and so could not pick us up. Thank God for Ros’s friend’s father who got us out of there to a place where we could sit and plan our next move. There were a few more communication mishaps and no one seemed to know where I was meant to be staying, so our friends Jess and Emma took me back to their family's home, where I slept (fairly comfortably) on the lounge floor.

The next day Ros and one of her Zim contacts came to take us to Danai Children’s Home, to deliver the supplies we had collected in South Africa for the home. That was one of the most joyful experiences of the trip. The children’s home was a normal suburban house and many of the children were away on Christmas holidays, but most of the babies and toddlers were still there. It was great to see that they all looked well-looked-after, despite all the difficulties of keeping a home afloat in Zim’s collapsed economy. Steve and I had a great time playing with the boys, and the staff were hugely grateful for all the nappies, food, clothes and medicines we brought up.

Jess had found out that I was meant to be staying in the house that Jono had borrowed for himself and some of his friends to stay in around the time of the wedding, and so in the evening he drove Steve and me there. It was great to see my old accountability partner John there.
Well, the next day dawned and it was time for the wedding. The service was at the chapel of the private school where Kath and Jess have been teaching, set among beautiful white buildings and lush, green lawns. It was brilliant to meet some old friends in the parking lot outside, people like Bryan and Phiwe. Inside, a little choir of schoolgirls was rehearsing "Take My Life and Let it Be" for the service. The music was wonderful, with our friend Anne playing the piano and two violinists accompanying her. They played "Ode to Joy" as Kath came down the aisle, looking radiant and (as we said to each other later) "very much like Kath". Of course, Jono wasn’t looking shabby either. Jono and Kath had chosen two very apt Bible verses for the ceremony, Romans 12:1-2 and 1 Peter 1:5-7. The minister, an elderly relative of Kath’s, preached a rambling sermon, but one thing stood out clearly: this was no ordinary couple, because they had chosen not to conform themselves to the pattern of this world, but instead to build their relationship around Christ.

The reception was in Kath’s parents’ huge back garden. When we arrived, everyone was standing on the lawn, talking in clumps and sipping punch while waiters walked around with trays of snacks. After a while the rain came down and chased us all under a marquee where tables had been set out for the meal. I was seated at a table with Lauren, Steve, John, and Jerry and Sarah, both of whom I hadn’t seen for a long time, as well as some others.

It was a true wedding feast: the food was so incredible that for a while we found it hard to believe we were in a starving country. For starters there were springbok carpaccio, pâtés and plenty of other things to put on bread. The main course included lamb on the spit, Zanzibar chicken and beef, and there were little brownies and pecan nut pies for dessert, as well as a range of cheeses. Interspersed with this were all the usual speeches and toasts and a litany of thanks for different relatives who had brought up different parts of the meal from South Africa with them.

One of the best things about the reception was that it was long and leisurely, starting at noon and stretching into the evening, allowing plenty of time to catch up with old friends. When many of your guests have come a long, long way for the wedding, you might as well make it last. There was a great vibe as families and friends came up and danced together, and I’m glad to report that Jerry and Steve did an excellent rendition of "The Shower" on the dance floor. Jono and Kath must have left at about 6:30pm, and we left a little later, at 7, to go back to the borrowed house minus the bridegroom and some of the groomsmen who’d been staying there.

As you might have gathered from my intro to this post, I felt many times during the trip as though I were in one of the Bible’s parables about a wedding. One scripture that I identified with a lot was John 3:29-30, where John the Baptist says "A bridegroom’s friend rejoices with him. I am the bridegroom’s friend, and I am filled with joy at his success. He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less." Of course, the bridegroom he was talking about was Jesus, and his bride is the people he has redeemed, his Church.

Now, the bottom line of this lesson is that it’s not about me. At the wedding it was my friend the bridegroom’s day, and I was there to support him and celebrate with him, not to receive any recognition for myself. I might have spent much time and money getting there and enduring such a hard journey, but I didn't need or deserve any recognition for that, because it was a privilege to be there. In the same way, when we serve God, it’s not about us. We may have sacrificed a lot of time, money and effort to serve, but that’s not the point. The point is that we have the amazing privilege of seeing what God is doing to win people to himself, and partying with him when it happens. Our egos must stay out of the picture. We must never claim any of God’s glory for ourselves.

All in all we had a valuable time in Harare. Among other things, it was good to see for myself in more detail how dire the situation in Zim is, but how people are managing to survive through God's grace alone. Let's keep praying for them! The journey back was just as arduous (and late) as the journey there, but I was back with my family for Christmas, enjoying another celebration as the Bridegroom's friend.