TOM THORPE AND SOPHIE CLARK’S WEDDING
PORTSMOUTH CATHEDRAL 13TH MAY 2006 AT 2.00 PM
When Tom and Sophie rolled up in my study a few weeks ago, we sat and pondered how it came about that the three of us were together to talk about their marriage. A long series of coincidences began to emerge. Tom joining the choir at Holy Trinity, Guildford nearly twenty years ago, on the same day as our son; my move to Pompey ten and a half years ago; the chance encounter of the pair of them in the Clapham pub, gently engineered by one of Sophie’s sisters. And the coincidences continued, with Sophie’s parents having the sense to live in Portsmouth, where Tom’s father went to PGS – where his father was a teacher. It could all go on and on, and embrace in one way or another every single person in the Cathedral this afternoon.
I know that Sophie and Tom have pondered carefully the step that they are about to make, and I won’t begin to try to elaborate on the excellent preparation provided by the Cathedral. What we are here to do this afternoon is a simple series of spoken words and symbolic actions, offering a human resolve to the blessing of God in the context of the community. For marriage is not a human right, nor even an individual choice. It’s a relationship, within a whole series of relationships, from the past, and including those that will grow, perhaps not without tensions, in the future.
My question this afternoon, is a slightly awkward one, a much more basic question, that is posed by the bible reading from 1 Corinthians 13 - that sublime hymn to love, wrung out of St Paul as he tries to sort out the awkward Christian community in Corinth, and taken up by the poem by Elizabeth Barret Browning, as well as the other poem by Wilferd Peterson. What has really brought us together here?
If it is just pure chance, then this service is no more – and no less – than a gently elegant dramatic poem that expresses society’s (sometimes convenient) quest for a vague spirituality at critical stages in the human life-cycle. It becomes a kind of public therapy, for parents to weep a bit, and for those present whose marriages are under strain, or have failed, to re-visit raw nerves. Don’t get me wrong. It is about all that. But it’s about more. And the reason is that, over and above the fact that the world happens to need accountants and aspiring lawyers, it is, I suggest, about more than pure chance. I for one cannot look at the world as I daily experience it, in sickness or in health, without seeing the influence, the love, the mercy, the coherence (in spite of all that is wrong with the world) of Something Else. That is what I dare to call Divine Providence, God. I have looked for other explanations, but can find no better one. (Bishops don’t live in ivory towers – we never have!).
This is the best explanation I can find for why I am here, why Tom and Sophie are here, why we are all here this afternoon. Love brought us here. Love will bless us all. Love, the love of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, will see us through what life brings us, now and in all eternity.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
