Letter from Clare

This summer has been the summer for weddings, across our three villages.  Normally one can reckon on a maximum of two per year, but this year we've surpassed ourselves with seven.  It’s been wonderful for hats, for florists, photographers, and caterers and there has been much joy shared within families and within the community.  Statistically marriage is less popular than it was, many choose not to marry but to live in a loving and responsible relationship with their partner, but yet marriage still remains and church marriages are still popular, although diminishing in number.  The new wedding service reflects that many, probably most live together before taking the step of marriage, couples can walk into church together, rather than the bride being escorted in by her father or family friend, the vicar no longer asks the question “Who gives this woman, to be married to this man?” as though it were a business transaction, though I've seen a few crestfallen Dads who feel they’ve been denied their “big moment”. 

Marriage essentially is about the giving and sharing of gifts - “God is Love and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them”, the first gift in marriage is the gift from God of life and love itself, without that gift in creation there would be no marriage to celebrate. This first gift is acknowledged in this opening phrase of the Marriage Service, it forms the context for the whole of the service and indeed for those who marry with a Christian faith the whole of their married life together. 

The second gift is the gift of love shared with each other by the bride and groom, “All that I am, I give to you and all that I have I share with you.”  I was once doing a mock wedding in a secondary school and when I got to this part of the vows, there was a pause, then the lad said “she's bloody well not having my stereo”.  It was a perfect teaching opportunity for exploring what it is that we do in marriage, we give of ourselves to another, not so that we deny and damage our own individuality, but so that our individuality is enhanced and enriched by the sharing of each others life. 

The third gift or rather gifts are those we give, often now courtesy of the John Lewis wedding dept. or other similar institutions, these are the tangible gifts, the pots and pans, dinner services and garden tools, but perhaps even more importantly are the invisible gifts that we can give. The new wedding service has a point in it at which I ask the congregation, “Will you the friends of X and Y support and uphold them in their marriage now and in the years to come?”  In a sense this is a moment of the gifting of our love, the committing of ourselves to being there for those who are being married. It isn’t a present tied up with beautiful ribbon, but it is a gift of enduring value and lasting worth, to be there for someone else. 

In marriage the invitation is issued not just to guests on the day, but to those who are being married to share life together in the spirit of Jesus Christ, the spirit of Christ is the spirit of love, love that is the gift of God to each and every human being. It is no surprise that so many choose to read the words of 1 Corinthians 13 “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things… love never ends”.  That is some gift to give, pray that we may look after it carefully

 Clare Sanders