Address at the Marriage of Kate Ground and Tom Lingard, St Mary and All Saints, Dunsfold, Saturday 3rd June, 2005, 4.30 p.m.
My passport duly stamped by the Bishop of Guildford, it is good to be back across the border again, for the marriage of Kate and Tom. At a wedding like this, there is so much music and poetry, that a few dull words of pedestrian prose almost seem out of place. And yet they aren’t – because when the celebrations are over, it is dull pedestrian prose that will be the normal means of communication between Kate and Tom: ‘did you remember to buy the coffee beans?’ or ‘when are we going to the gym?’
My dull, pedestrian prose has the dual purpose of helping us – all of us – to stand back for a few moments from the celebration, and then to ask the difficult question, ‘what is love?’ The answer, in fact, is to be found between the lines of the passage just read from St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. He was not writing from an ivory tower; the Corinthians were, not to put too fine a point on it, an awkward bunch of spiritual know-alls, who didn’t like Paul very much; he came from somewhere they’d never heard of, and they wanted things their way. That ‘hymn to love’, as it’s sometimes called, was written in order to bring them down to earth, to bring some realism into their lives, and to help them see something of the divine, the God-like, not locked up in the convenient and safe distance of the sanctuary, but in such day-day questions as, ‘have you remembered to buy the coffee beans?’, and ‘when are we going to the gym?’
So what is love? Too often it is judged – misjudged – by intensity, or sincerity, or articulateness – as Naomi Long Madgett’s poem just read to us indicates. In other words, by how deeply we feel about each other at a given moment; or by how aware we think we are of each other at a given moment; or by how eloquently we can express it all at a given moment – including the gestures, or even the easily-forgotten anniversary gift. On their own, intensity, sincerity and articulateness are not enough. They are peripheral aspects – which may only mask an empty shell. Love is quite different: it is of another order, that defeats our feelings, our awareness, our capacity to put it into words – precisely because it is between two persons, two human beings, and not between one person and something else, that is to be used, abused, or exploited. Consumerism, therefore, is not just an experience at the Sainsbury’s checkout point. It can also be a profoundly unattractive way of treating other people: like all those e-mails that end, in their subtly bullying manner, with the words, ‘I look forward to hearing from you soon’ – a sure way of earning a place right at the bottom of my in-tray!
Well, it is time to find a full-stop. In any case, Tom will have heard me preach often enough, from his vantage-point of the Holy Trinity Guildford choir-stalls, front or back row. Under the surface of this wonderful, colourful gathering, in an historic church with pews as old as the vows Kate and Tom have just made, are ordinary human beings, fragile people. It is our fragile, human nature, and not as would-be machines, that God can help us discover the many guises of his supreme gift of love: in patience, kindness, forgiveness, endurance, and picking up the pieces of our fragmented lives. Love, says St Paul, is even higher and deeper than faith and hope. That is a bold claim. And he has already given the reason in three words: LOVE NEVER ENDS.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
