This past weekend I attended a wedding.
My step-brother, recently converted to the Orthodox faith, got married in a Lebanese Orthodox church in Halifax.
Curiously, for all my travels and education in things religious, I have never before attended an Orthodox Christian service.
It was fascinatingly interesting to see your own faith from another perspective.
Here is a quick primer on church history.
Things went downhill from the point that Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
It used to be that all of us looked back at that as the beginning of the glory days, but that was the point where the religious movement dreamt up by those followers of Jesus suddenly became more political than social.
Rome had so much political intrigue throughout its life that you almost could not help but get caught up in it.
And here is where church echoed state.
There were, in essence, two capitals. In the early fourth century, having just made Christianity the religion of state, and having just united a divided Roman Empire, Constantine rebuilt the Greek city of Byzantium, named it after himself and tried to make it the capital of the empire . . . and thus the church.
Five hundred years of bickering among the bishops of rival cities eventually led to further and further division and the church of empire divided into two churches, East and West, Roman and Orthodox.
The Eastern Orthodox Church of today has over 225 million members and traces its roots and theology back to Paul, the author of most of the books of the New Testament.
In fact, most of the churches founded by Paul are now clearly orthodox, in orthodox countries.
From all accounts, it just might be us westerners who broke away from the true church and went off on some tangents.
But back to the wedding; it was both familiar and unfamiliar. Some of the readings and prayers were in Arabic and some were in English.
The stories from the Bible were pretty much the same ones you have always heard read at weddings.
There were three stunning differences to me.
First, the biblical stories were connected so concretely to present life.
For example, it was pointed out that he couple getting married were just like Abraham and Sarah getting married, and God would continue to be faithful to the promises which were made to that couple -- lots of children and long life.
The married couple was compared to Isaac and Rebecca; the celebration was compared to the marriage feast at Cana where Jesus first performed miracles. It just all tied together.
Secondly, there was a confidence that this was the right thing to do and that God was present in the moment.
No wishy-washy 'God will be with you as you journey through life;' more like 'God is here right now watching and God says, honour each other or else!'
And lastly, there was such a concrete connection between family, church, friends and God.
These two people were not getting married in a church and then running off on a honeymoon and that would be the end of it.
They stood there as part of a 2,000-year-old tradition.
The community was agreeing to see them as man and wife, to treat them this was from now on and to help them be a family.
God was really present within the church, the family and the community and always would be.
There was no individualism here, it was all part of a larger whole.
I think all three of these things were once part of our religious heritage as well.
As little as 30 years ago it would have seemed much more familiar.
But individualism has crept into our church culture as well.
The modern way of thinking of everything as having to do with 'me' has separated us from the larger whole.
I for one am going to try and figure out how liberal Protestantism can reclaim some of what it has thrown away with the bathwater.
We have perhaps forgotten our roots and our traditions. Sometimes it takes seeing the way someone else does it to realize you can do better.
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