Rector's Blog: Magnificent and Complicated

It made me very uncomfortable.

I feel bad now even writing that, but it’s the truth. I remember thinking to myself, “Why do they keep mentioning the sad thing in the midst of this happy occasion?”

It was my first Jewish wedding, and I, a young Gentile, wondered to myself if maybe this was something Jews did that Christians didn’t – I wasn’t sure which things were different because of our religious or cultural variance, and which were simply different because people tend to do what they want at their own wedding.

To this day I do not know the answer and I am ok not knowing, and here’s why: Since then, I’ve become a priest and I’ve been involved in and overseen dozens of weddings, and now I know why my friends made room for sadness. Now I know why, in the midst of this celebration of life, they loved the dead. They did so out of wisdom. Because there is no happiness in this life that exists unencumbered by grief. We do not get to feel only one simple thing at a time. We are alive, which means our hearts are full of many things at once.

Weddings are endlessly fascinating. They carry with them immense baggage – not just the hope of perfection, but the expectation of it. Unmitigated joy is assumed as the default feeling at a wedding even though no such thing has ever happened. We have never in our adult lives felt uncomplicated happiness, and yet we saddle weddings with this burden.

I had a mentor who would say that, as a pastor, funerals were easier than weddings. He said that at funerals people were allowed to feel anything, were allowed to have complicated, strange, hard, sad feelings, were allowed to laugh and cry and love and mourn and grieve and hope all at once. And I remember him saying at a funeral there is usually a coffin or an urn or a picture where we can focus all the complexity of our emotions in that moment.

But, he said, at a wedding, everyone was supposed only to be happy. Never mind if they’d recently been divorced or widowed, if they’d loved and lost, or if they wanted to be married but weren’t. Never mind if they couldn’t find clothes that fit, or if they weren’t sure what they thought about the institution of marriage or if they were uncomfortable in this church: Pure happiness is what they should feel. And they should focus that perfect happiness on that perfect couple in their perfect outfits up there at the altar, those two people who had been told since they were children that this would be the happiest day of their lives. “I’ll take the funeral,” he’d conclude, “where at least people are allowed to be a mess.”

In recent years I have been scandalized by the tone of the narratives that describe Christianity’s great celebrations. I’m talking, of course, about Christmas and Easter, and the stories that are told about them in our Bible. Christmas is about the Incarnation, the joining of God and humanity forever in the person of Jesus, of the birth of hope and the promise of reconciliation. Its beauty and joy is clear to us, as it should be. Likewise, Easter is the story of Love’s great victory: The Resurrection of Jesus proving that
God’s love is stronger even than death, and that we are destined for an endlessly beautiful life eternally connected to God and one another.

There is no greater cause for joy than these two magnificent events. They are beautiful and perfect. The Bible portrays them as beautiful and perfect. And the people who experience the first Christmas and Easter are shown as filled with fear and uncertainty, desperation and discomfort, joy and sorrow. Mary and Joseph, the disciples and friends – all those affected by Jesus – they know excitement and hope. They also know trauma and terror. These things are not neatly compartmentalized. They are all piled together in the humanity of those who love Jesus, who love life, who experience the beauty and perfection of God’s presence.

This Easter at Redeemer was magnificent. You had to scoop me up off the floor at the end of the day, I was so overwhelmed by the joy of our church community celebrating its first Resurrection Day in the sanctuary in three years. It was perfect and beautiful. And my feelings were so complicated I could hardly stand them. How great it was to see so many of you in one place, to sing with you and smile and laugh and clap and pray with you. So many new faces, and so many people how had returned to their beloved building for the first time since 2020. And at the same time, I knew who wasn’t there. I remembered the people who had died during the pandemic and weren’t sitting in their pew for this reunion. I thought of those who still were not ready to be back in the space with us out of caution for their health and safety. I thought of those who decided we weren’t the right church for them anymore, those who aren’t sure what part church is meant to play in their lives moving forward, those who are still very much sorting through what they believe and where to believe it.

To be clear, I was not mad or resentful. I was every feeling all at once – including grateful, deeply and endlessly grateful – to God, to the staff and leadership of the Church of the Redeemer, and to every single person in my heart and mind and vision that perfect, beautiful day. But I want you to know that at first I felt guilty about having complicated feelings. I wanted only to feel unmitigated happiness on this most joyous of days – this day of Love’s victory.

How dare I feel anything but happy?

And then it hit me: My complicated feelings didn’t make the day any less magnificent. Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, and my messy joyful sad heart doesn’t make him any less risen. My sadness and grief didn’t make the joy and hope any less joyous or hopeful. God’s love doesn’t work like that. I can be me, actually me, and know the power of God.

And you: You are magnificent. You are magnificent, not despite your complicated feelings and messy life, but in the midst of it. God sees you and knows you and loves you. You are magnificent even when your happiness is mingled with grief, and you don’t know how to feel. Christmas and Easter are both still true. You are loved even when you are complicated. Actually, you will never not be complicated. And you will never not be loved. Thank God.