Discussing
Kim Kardashian and Christ-centered weddings

Love this Caryn.

Yeah, struggling with this as well. Wonder if Kim goes to church

Thanks for this thoughtful post. It made me think of a post by Alise Wright from earlier this year:
http://www.alise-write.com/201...

When I really think about what it means to have a Christ-centered wedding or marriage, the term means less and less. Maybe better to say we want a Christ-honoring one.

Jesus made sure the wedding at Cana was bride and groom centered. It must have rivaled the Kardashians at least in size and scale. The guests had been served wine but the steward ran short. A lot of thirsty itinerant fishermen tend to do that. So 6 stone water jars, each holding 20 to 30 gallons (we'll split the difference and say 25) were filled to the tip top with the finest wine the steward had tasted. That is conservatively 750 bottles of expensive wine on top of the wine that had already been served. Judging from the amount of wine, that is a huge wedding party. Or even much larger if there were Southern Baptists present.

Thanks for this. 

It's easy to choke at the extravagance but it's hard not to sound like Judas kvetching about it. We have many stories of Jesus participating at banquets, and at one he did admonish the host to go counter-cultural on the benefaction tradition (invite those who can't return the favor) but we never hear him complain that the banquet was too extravagant and that the money should be given to the poor, that was Judas' idea. The sin of the rich man wasn't his partying, it was leaving Lazarus at the gate. 

There is something proleptic about weddings and parties. They point to something important Jesus doesn't want us to miss.

Beautiful comment. Love the idea of living life looking at those things Jesus doesn't want us to miss. That's great.

Not sure if this will help or further your choking: but the $17M was the amount they EARNED from the wedding. Not spent. : )

Thanks for the thoughtful article, Caryn.  As former missionaries that had to raise support, Hubby and I are certainly--gasp!--judgmental of how other people spend their money.  All while secretly coveting the lavish and beautiful things these people are able to do.

I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around spending that much for one event, when there are so very many poverty stricken people.  But this post reminded me of something I vaguely remember Paul saying, about how Christ doesn't care about the motives of Paul's opposing preachers.  He cares about the gospel and glory of God.

By the way, Kim Kardashian's wedding didn't cost s cent. The figure reported spent on the wedding was 10 million, but the wedding was a for-profit venture, and selling the right to broadcast and made 17 million, netting a tidy profit. Now If only I could have been smart enough to figure that out at ours in 1975...

I don't know about this line, Paul:

The sin of the rich man wasn't his partying, it was leaving Lazarus at the gate.

In an era that celebrates the consumption by the few, and the overall honoring of the celebrity, I would think a more modest approach could be taken. Think again: a $17 M profit for the wedding of a celebrity.

This so smells like the Spirit of the Age, the thing to be resisted.