Fire and Brimstone

This past weekend I went to a wedding in Chincha, a medium-sized desert town about 3 hours south of Lima. According to the invitation, the wedding should have started at 7:30. When we got there at 7:30, we discovered that according to the official wedding program, the ceremony was scheduled to start at 8:00. So naturally, everything got started at a little after 9. Such is life.

The ceremony started with a few upbeat praise songs before the pastor got up to preach a sermon. I haven't been to all that many weddings in my life, so I'm no expert, but I think it's safe to say that I witnessed the angriest, most depressing sermon/reflection/message ever delivered for a wedding. Yes, EVER. Throughout all of history (what are the chances, right?) Seriously. The pastor stands up after the praise band is done, welcomes everybody and proceeds to read one of the "classic" wedding scriptures in the bible. No, not Corinthians 13 (Love is patient, love is kind...). Nor Colossians 3 (Love binds all virtues together in perfect unity...), Genesis 2 (God makes woman to be a companion for man) or even Ephesians 5 (man leaves father and mother to become one with his wife). Nope, this particular pastor instead chose the old reliable Exodus 20:14: "You shall not commit adultery."

My jaw literally dropped. At 9:30 on a Saturday night, I had to sit through a 1/2 hour sermon railing against fornication and infidelity ... during a WEDDING! And this guy was angry too! I couldn't believe it. I've gotta say that I was actually kind of offended and saddened for the couple from Santa Isabel church getting married. Here we are at what should be the most memorable night of their lives and instead of a reflection celebrating marriage as the closest humans ever get to loving each other as God loves us, the pastor criticizes our generation for sexual promiscuity, lack of commitment, and estrangement from God. He said that Christians need to be defenders of marriage and family. You would think that a conservative/fundamentalist preacher would be the LAST person to make marriage/weddings all about sex, but that's exactly what this guy did. The sermon was all about sex, but instead of praising what he saw as the "good" kind of sex - monogamous and pure, within the commitment of a heterosexual marriage - he instead just blasted all the "bad" kinds of sex: lustful, instant gratification, outside of marriage etc. I just hope the couple was still able to enjoy the gift of the "good" kind of sex that night for the first time, because the sermon was definitely a mood-killer. To top it all off, after the sermon was over, he was explicitly clear during the vows that the husband is the head of the household and the wife must SUBMIT to him. No questions asked. To love your husband is to obey and faithfully follow him till death do ye part. And accordingly, the organist (who was actually just playing an electronic keyboard) was playing an eerie sounding, slow tune slowly crescendo-ing and building higher and higher by half steps, like during an old-fashioned horror/suspense movie right before disaster strikes. It's almost as if the message to the bride was "are you SURE you want to go through with this?" (and fundamentalist Christians wonder why people don't want to get married any more...)

The only thing that kept me sane was the conversation I had afterward with my host family and some other friends from Santa Isabel church that were in attendance. I'm not sure how quickly they would have brought it up themselves, but after the ceremony was over one of the first thing's I said was that I thought the sermon was awful and angry-sounding. Luckily, they agreed with me. I'm not sure what I would have done if they told me that such sermons were normal in Peruvian Christian weddings. They said that even though they agreed with the pastor that the state of marriage is in trouble, it was disrespectful to use an actual wedding ceremony to launch an angry diatribe against "fornication."