Altar
Call – Opelika-Auburn News
Walter
Albritton
March
26, 2017
The day the groom
turned and ran
Using the traditional marriage service, I
have conducted more than a thousand weddings. In each wedding I opened with the
words, “Dearly beloved,” and followed that with a brief reminder of the sacred
nature of the wedding about to take place “in the sight of God and in the
presence of these witnesses.”
Then, after reminding the bride and the
groom that with their solemn vows to each other they were entering into a holy
covenant with God, I looked into the eyes of the groom and asked him this
question:
“Will you take this woman to be your
lawfully wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Will
you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and
forsaking all other keep thee only unto her so long
as you both shall live?”
The groom is instructed to answer “I
will.” In every wedding I have performed the groom always responded with those
two words, “I will,” except on one occasion. That afternoon the wedding
abruptly ended as I was asking the groom the above question.
As I began asking the groom if he would “take
this woman,” he began shaking his head from side to side, looking down instead
of at me. And before I concluded with the somber words, “so long as you both
shall live,” the groom turned away from the bride and walked briskly out of the
chapel.
I was as stunned as everyone else in the
room. Some 75 people were looking at me, breathlessly wondering what I would
say next. I had no idea what to say or do, but the bride spoke before I did.
She looked at me and with tears staining her cheeks, said hesitantly, “Do you
think I should go after him?”
It took me only a few seconds to come up
with this answer to the embarrassed young woman, “Honey, I don’t think I would
if I were you.” Seconds later, ignoring my advice, she quickly left the room in
pursuit of the groom.
None of this, of course, was in the
marriage ritual and my years of seminary training had not prepared me to deal
with such an awkward situation. I stood in silence for two or three minutes,
looking at the door through which the bride and groom had departed.
Then I turned to the astonished
congregation and said, “Good friends, I believe the bride and the groom have
decided not to get married today, so I think the best thing we can do is to go
on our way and do our best to enjoy the rest of this day. God bless you. Amen.”
The marriage service gives a man and
woman the opportunity to make a public vow of faithfulness to each other and
allow a minister to pronounce them “husband and wife together in the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
But that can only be done after both have
willingly agreed to “take” each other as husband and wife and solemnly promised
to “live together in the holy estate of matrimony.”
Oh, by the way, on that strange Saturday
as I was walking to my car, I saw the bride pleading with the groom in the
parking lot. He was in his car; the engine was running. He had his hands on the
steering wheel.
Did they ever reconcile and get married?
I don’t know. But I have an idea that if she did manage to get him to tie the
knot, she lived to be sorry she ran after him.
The lesson in this story? Be sure you are
ready to say “I will” before you dress up and stand before the preacher. + + +