Why do we have bridesmaids?

This is more of a theological justification than a historical one. 

There are four virgins standing behind the bride, all of whom have little idea why they are standing there, except that our friend wants us there. None of us know exactly what she’s getting into, we just know her and what she needs. We can pray for her, but we are praying through the fear and adrenaline and the unknown; we know as little about this as she does. Her mother and aunts and the women of the church who have cared for her in college, who love her as their own, are praying for her and praying well. But her bridesmaids are praying differently, as her maiden peers. We aren’t naive, it’s just that our understanding of what she is preparing to do is only conceptual. We are praying as unmarried women on the threshold of married life; we are on the same side of the gate. We cannot cross with her into her new country, but we can walk her to the gate that the mothers of the church have already crossed. That’s what it seems like, at least, as we walk through the kitchen and into the sanctuary in front of her. 

Our friend is going where we can’t follow her, and our task is to escort her there, strengthen her on her way (there’s a verse in the Song of Songs about “refresh me with apples for I am weak with love” and I’m pretty sure we did that. I certainly handed out a lot of apples), pray for her, and defend her from all the dozens of people who want her attention. But all these tasks are not for the married people whom she joins, and certainly not for her future husband, who is also a virgin and crossing into the same unknown country. It’s for four virgin women, whose job is so important that they are not to be distracted by menial tasks like decorating and setting tables up and fetching the cake. Even four high achieving control freaks are too busy. She legitimately needs the cloud of us surrounding her. I don’t think I object to having married bridesmaids, and if I ever get married this now-married woman will be there, but a married bridesmaid has to go home at the end of the day. We can sleep next to her. 

I don’t know exactly why it is important that we stand behind her on the stage as she gets married, but the weight we held was almost as though we were physically supporting her. If it is true, as I suspect, that spiritual things in general weigh a lot more than we tend to give them credit for, we may in fact have been supporting her whole weight, and this woman, while physically no taller than me, is a spiritual giant. She is a dancer; she can hold herself up physically. It is spiritual strength that she needed. (And physical, hence the “refresh me with apples” comment). We had been praying her her without ceasing for four days before this, and if you had walked into the apartment we all shared, you could tell. The Holy Spirit had filled that place and the angels surrounded it, and there was no ability even for us to be stressed or anxious about anything other than our friend’s impending marriage. I am rarely tempted to refer to the Holy Spirit in feminine pronouns, God is beyond gender and what pronouns I use don’t bother me, but in that apartment there were no other pronouns to use. Love Herself filled that place, laughed with us, held us all as we cried, and watched us as we slept. Whatever our personal spiritual journeys may be, they were all put on hold. Love was there, and we were Her handmaidens. She must be obeyed. 

The bride’s father handed her off, but we did too. We spent a whole day making sure he was the only man who could approach her, and sometimes the only person who could. We walked into the sanctuary before her, but before that we had preceded her into any given room to make sure the coast was clear and the space arranged. And after her father hands her away and a different father (we don’t call our pastor “father,” but that is still his job) marries her before our Father in heaven, she now belongs to her lover and her lover to her and she is no longer ours. The change is immediately palpable. We can dance with the groomsmen, make sure the party goes well, talk to other guests to ease the burden on the couple, but she’s not ours anymore. We saw her off, tore down tables, and went home together exhausted. We have not lost a friend, but in a real way she truly does not belong to the same realm she did two nights before, with seven or eight unmarried girls giggling on the floor at one am, cooing at dresses and making jokes we didn’t understand. 

She is of course always welcome there, but it will not happen easily, and never accidentally. Girls’ nights will henceforth be planned and her husband notified that she’ll be gone or back late. She has gained more than any of us can understand, but it is also obvious why the Greeks used to compare marriage to death. This is a joyous sense of the word though, one the Greeks couldn’t have understood. Marriage is like death in a way like baptism is like death, where in death she lives for Christ. In their union is the image of Christ and the Church. His delight is in her and hers in him. What she gains is something I cannot fathom, and is an image of the impending glory of the church that I will participate in then but cannot see now. Her husband stands there as the symbol of Christ. Her four staunch defenders, who have ministered to her all week, are no longer needed. We part before the altar and present our friend to the man who makes her heart sing.