{"id":5125,"date":"2025-12-23T18:18:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T23:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5125"},"modified":"2025-12-23T18:18:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T23:18:31","slug":"an-invitation-like-no-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/23\/an-invitation-like-no-other\/","title":{"rendered":"An Invitation Like No Other"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder ways that we can ready ourselves to receive Jesus, once again, into our own hearts.<\/em>

It\u2019s so easy to rush quickly over the words of Scripture \u2013 especially when it comes to verses we think we know forwards and backwards.

In our haste, however, we sometimes miss the story behind the story.

Consider Matthew 1:18: \u201cThis is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.\u201d

There\u2019s a lot to unpack in those words. Let\u2019s take a closer look at \u201cpledged to be married.\u201d

During the first century, when a young Jewish man wanted to propose marriage to a young Jewish woman, he would gather their families\u00a0and their friends.\u00a0Everybody in the village would know what was about to happen.\u00a0People would be humming that commercial jingle, \u201cEvery kiss begins with Kay.\u201d

What followed would be a solemn but joyful ceremony. Engagement was a serious business, so serious that it took a civic and religious ceremony to kick things off.

Trembling, the young man would take a cup of wine and publicly offer it to his potential bride \u2013 a young woman\u00a0probably in her early teens.\u00a0

Here\u2019s where it would get interesting.\u00a0

Even if the parents had already arranged this wedding years before \u2013 as was often the case \u2013 and even if the girl had already told all of her friends that she thought this boy was a man of integrity who would make a fine husband and an excellent provider, she could still refuse to drink the wine.

Everyone is watching.\u00a0What will she do?

If she says yes by taking the cup and drinking it, the engagement is on.\u00a0In approximately one year, they will be married.\u00a0

Within a few days, a search will begin within the courts of the Jerusalem temple \u2013 an exploration of family genealogical records. It wouldn\u2019t be unusual for two young people from the same village to be distantly related to each other, but no one would want them to have too close a kinship tie. That was one of the reasons for the year-long engagement period. The search had to be extensive. Likewise, this time was an opportunity to confirm that the bride was morally pure.

The groom, overwhelmed with relief that his bride-to-be has welcomed the cup, gives a little speech. Everyone applauds and the\u00a0young man heads home to take his next big step toward matrimony.

He\u00a0begins a construction project.

It is now his job to build a room onto his father\u2019s house.\u00a0This will be the place where he and his new wife will live together and start building their family.

Why doesn’t he build a house\u00a0of their own?\u00a0No one had yet dreamed up\u00a0Starter Homes of Galilee. As\u00a0long as a Jewish father was alive, his sons and daughters-in-law belonged to the same household. Therefore, a young man who intended to get married needed to pay\u00a0close attention in his high school “mechanical arts” class.\u00a0

He had to build, from scratch, a new addition to his father\u2019s house. If the father had many sons, and if he lived a long time, his home would continually be sprouting new rooms.

When the work was finished, and the father had given his thumbs-up concerning the quality of his son\u2019s efforts, the final preparations for the wedding could begin. The groom would go to his bride and take her to the place he had prepared.

That was the cultural reality that provided\u00a0the backdrop for some of Jesus’ most famous words at the Last Supper.

While Jesus was sharing the Passover meal with his disciples, he\u00a0spoke plainly.\u00a0He\u00a0told them he would be with them only a little while longer. He was leaving \u2013 and for\u00a0now, at least,\u00a0it would be impossible for them to join him.

Peter was floored.\u00a0“Lord, where are you going?\u00a0And why can’t I come with you right now?”\u00a0Then he promised that he was ready to die for Jesus that very night.\u00a0Instead, his courage and faith would implode.\u00a0Three times he would tell strangers that\u00a0he didn’t even know who Jesus was.\u00a0

Jesus did not hesitate to answer\u00a0Peter’s questions:

“My father’s house has\u00a0many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.\u00a0I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).

We often hear those\u00a0words today\u00a0\u2013\u00a0at funerals. But to first century ears, what\u00a0does Jesus sound like?

He sounds a lot like a young man who is proposing marriage.

He is going away to prepare another room in his Father’s house.\u00a0And when all of the preparations are completed, he will come back.

In the Old Testament book of Exodus, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God made four promises to his people: I\u00a0will take you out of the\u00a0situation that you are in. I will rescue you. I will redeem you.\u00a0I will take you to be with me.<\/em>\u00a0It’s worth noting that in\u00a0a traditional Jewish wedding, the groom makes those same four promises to his bride.\u00a0

They echo the words that Joseph presumably spoke to Mary so many years earlier \u2013 and that Jesus, the son whom they would raise, would one day speak to his disciples as they wrestled with fear and disillusionment.

So where does that leave us this Christmas?

Jesus is making a proposal to you \u2013 one that you have no doubt heard before.\u00a0He is declaring\u00a0his love for you. He is yearning for you to enter a relationship with him.

He has no interest in your becoming a cringing subject.\u00a0

Your friends and family may not be holding their collective breath, and you may not\u00a0be handed a glass of wine.

But he is definitely waiting \u2013 with hope that goes all the way back to the foundation of the world \u2013 that you will say, \u201cYes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,1048,226],"class_list":["post-5125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-engagement","tag-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5127,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125\/revisions\/5127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}