Bride

Excerpt from Body, Bride, Boat

When my religion professor’s phone rang during office hours, he’d always hang up and announce, ​“That was my bride.” His words made me smile because I knew they had been married for decades. There’s a newness,
a sense of possibility and excitement, even tenderness, about the word ​“bride” that is not always conveyed in the word ​“wife.”

Despite these positive connotations, the image of the Church as Bride may feel awkward and uncomfortable to many of us. Maybe it feels too feminine. Or, conversely, too patriarchal. But in the Bible, the Bride metaphor is used in a communal rather than individual sense. The Bride is not you or I; it is the Church. Together we have been chosen and called. Together we learn to love the Lord our God and stay faithful only to him. Together we long for union with Christ. Together we will rejoice when he returns.

The Church as Bride evokes a feeling of being chosen, a sense of being cared for, a promise of union and fulfillment, and an atmosphere of celebration, but perhaps most of all, it is an image of love — the love the Bridegroom has for his beloved over all else. We find this image in the Bible everywhere from Hosea and Jeremiah to the Song of Songs and Revelation, not to mention the words of Jesus and the letters of Paul.

We, the Church, have been chosen by God for this special love relationship. We belong to God, and only to God. The Creator of the Universe loves us and desires our love in return! It is a promise from God that we are to answer, joyfully and freely, with corresponding holiness and faithfulness. It is a promise for the future. God says of Israel in Hosea, ​“And I will take you for my wife forever… and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:19 – 20, emphasis added).

As we see from this quotation, part of the Church’s role as Bride is to answer this magnificent invitation to know the Lord. ​“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6, echoed in Matthew 9:13). God longs for us to know him fully. We cultivate our relationship with God by seeking this knowledge in an ongoing process of mutual self-revelation.

This love relationship between the Church and God has another, deeper layer: the promise of union. Just as two married people somehow become ​“one flesh” (Mark 10:7 – 8), in what Paul refers to as ​“a great mystery” (Ephesians 5:32), Christ wants to be joined to us, as he is joined to the Father. Again, here we see that the Bride is the whole Church. In John 17, Jesus prays that we will be one with each other, that we have unity within the Church, as well as being one with him and the Father. Is it possible that knowing and loving God fully comes only after we seek to know and love one another?

This profound connection Jesus describes is something our souls crave — a longing Blaise Pascal describes as an ​“infinite abyss [that] can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.”¹ Therefore, such a promise, to be one as Jesus and his Father are one, such a commitment, is something to joyfully anticipate and celebrate, as we see in the wedding feast language in Revelation. Our longings will be fulfilled. As C.S. Lewis says, our ​“thirst shall be quenched.”

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Questions to Ponder

• How does mutual self-revelation strengthen a relationship? How can this be applied to Christ and his Bride?
• Teresa of Ávila describes our union with God as two candle flames joining or rain falling into a river and becoming part of it. How would you describe the union in your own words?
• What makes it hard to be unified as a local congregation, or as many congregations forming one Christian Church? Have you seen glimmers of unity in the Church that give you hope for the Bride’s unified love for Christ?