Travel Letter . . .

A WEDDING IN TEXAS HILL COUNTRY

Ouida went with me to Texas hill country to perform a Church of Christ-Baptist wedding. I entered into this situation tangentially, from a discussion with Baptists at Baylor University. This Baptist student, to be married to a Church of Christ girl, was having a lot of problems, one being that he did not want to be married by a minister hostile to his own faith, though he was resigned to its being otherwise “Church of Christ.” That everybody was out to “convert” him he was taking pretty well. Since I loved them both and accepted them both as Christians, and since I was “Church of Christ,” I was asked to do the honors, albeit there was little hope that I would be all that popular a choice.

It was a typical little hill country town, with its rolling plains, howling wolves, fleeing deer, and crawling rattlers. And sometimes the religion gets as fierce as the rattlesnakes. There is a Methodist and a Baptist church, along with two Churches of Christ, recently divided over the cooperation issue. That is the reason given by an elder and deacon with whom I visited. But it is the same old story of hate and personalities. Two struggling churches in a town as big as your hip pocket. It is a sin against heaven! “We’re to the place now where we’ll usually speak to each other on the street,” one of them assured me. So, they’re making progress, Texas style!

We spent the night with the bride’s parents, whom I had come to know and love in my mini-meetings, a dear and impressive couple with an intelligent and beautiful family, all devoted Church of Christ people. But they were obviously shaken by their daughter marrying “out of the church,” and they were more than a little fearful that she would become a Baptist. which they sincerely believed would be her undoing, both for now and eternity.

At the dinner and the rehearsal I got acquainted with both families, along with some of the townspeople. Being fresh from unity meetings, I was caused to see how crucial our work is for all God’s people at the grassroots level. Here were two lovely, prosperous, spiritually-minded families brought together by one of life’s dramatic moments. But religion was a handicap rather than a help. It would have gone better had they all been infidels gathered at the office of a justice of the peace. That way they could have all loved and accepted each other!

I was soon in love with them all, and I would have lifted some of the burdens had it been within my power. An organ was brought into the Church of Christ building for the occasion, which was a bit awkward —placing it, wiring it, playing it. I told Ouida to get a good look, for it was a rarity seldom to be seen. Our folk do not usually allow that. The restriction was that no “religious” songs could be played, including the Lord’s prayer, which was also ruled out on the grounds that one line reads, “Thy kingdom come,” which the Baptist contingency had requested. The Baptists pray for the coming kingdom and the Church of Christ doesn’t. After all, how can you pray for what has already come! But a naive visitor like me could not be blamed for wondering if it nas yet come to that little Texas town. I was about to forget my raisin’ and my manners and pray for it to come, right then and there! And mind you, this was the liberal Church of Christ in town!

But I loved and appreciated them everyone. The groom’s father is the sheriff of the county, and all he and I needed was more time. They are teachers, coaches, business people, judges, farmers. My kind of folk —and oh, how I longed for them to find community in Jesus!

By the time the wedding began 24 hours later, I was far more emotionally involved than I should have been. The bride and groom were torn between their own sense of freedom in Christ and their sense of duty to their uneasy parents. In my quiet moments with them I urged upon them the love, peace and joy that is in Jesus, and a triumphant faith that transcends all the senseless partyism of either the Baptists or the Church of Christ, respecting their parents every step of the way.

It was all made lovely by flowers and candlelight. The mothers were poised and lovely as they were ushered to their seats, but I wondered if they might not be more weary than joyous. The attendants were all young and apparently unworried, the boys dressed as only they will be on the day of their own wedding or perhaps their funeral. The organ did its thing and followed its restrictions, though it still seemed strange in a Church of Christ. The nonreligious songs were beautifully sung and elegantly religious.

There they were before me, a divided people sitting together in one of life’s tenderest moments, but if only it could have been sweetened by the quiet peace that is in Jesus. I felt myself being drained. When the groom took his place beside me, I saw that he was doing better than I, though I knew he was haunted by the fear that he might not be really loved and accepted by his new family. I watched the bride’s mother, sitting there in simple dignity, as she looked upon her new son-to-be, standing at the altar, awaiting her daughter, and I realized that she too must be burdened with fear and uncertainty. I found myself praying, “Dear God, touch her heart with your love and cause her to accept him. Free her so that she can love him like You love him!”

By this time I was in no condition to perform a ceremony. But here came the bride, as lovely and sweet a person as you’d ever hope to meet, with her father at her side. There was something about it that was bearing down on me, and I feared I might not make it. At the very outset I beckoned the couple to prayer, which I had not planned on. I was praying for myself as much as for them. I asked God to give us the peace of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit helped me in my weakness, yea, even in my agony. From that moment on it all went well and we got them married.

The Baptist and the Church of Christ folk went their separate ways, neighbors on the streets if not brothers at the altar. The happy newlyweds, smiling and full of hope, merrily ventured toward a new home and a new life together, the pellets in the hubcaps of their car sounding as beautiful to their ears as any organ ever did.

Sometime during the night they eased the organ out of the building, not unlike pallbearers carrying their burden to its resting place. It had been a good organ as organs go, and it had had a hand in history.

Ouida and I turned the old Firebird toward home and out of the hill country. After awhile I asked her to drive, for I was too exhausted for that simple task. We didn’t say anything much. We just drove along those lonely roads, thinking. She didn’t say what she was thinking, but I was thinking about how I almost blew a wedding. And I thought about the hill country and its people. I understand why President Johnson talked about it the way he did. I thought of the rolling hills, sporting their jagged rocks as if they were diamonds, and of the wolves, moaning their cries through the night as if they might be muted calls for peace from their Creator, and of the rattlesnakes crawling beneath any old rock, fearing man more than each other.

And I thought of the Baptist and Church of Christ people, who occasionally get together in the hill country and marry their kids off to each other. It is a dubious kind of fellowship. They will surely do better than that in heaven, where at least one of their problems will be solved, for there they will neither marry nor be given in marriage! —the Editor