An Aberdeen wedding and a wee reflection on Christian marriage

Just back from Aberdeen where I was conducting a marriage ceremony for a family I've known for many a year. The groom was 10 years old last time I saw him before he emigrated to Australia (16 years ago). Came back to Scotland to get married though - Australia doesn't have a University founded in 1495, nor a University chapel with oak carving older than the Reformation!

I still think a Christian marriage service bears witness to a way of living that at its best is a demanding critique of our throwaway, serial relationship, obsessively individualist culture. Faithfulness gives love its discipline and its joy; covenant promises have no inbuilt guarantee they won't be broken, but they are a clear and public statement of intent to which each is accountable.

Amongst the extraordinary privileges of being a minister, is being invited to turn water into wine, to take the hopes and desires and loves of two people, and through their promised faithfulness and incredible courage of trust in each other, produce that intoxicating joy of knowing, against all the odds and to their endless surpise, not only that they are loved - but that they say so in public, and bear witness to their intention to live the rest of their lives cherishing and exploring the mystery that is this other person who out of all other possibilities, said yes to them, on that day, and in front of all the people who matter most in their lives. I never cease to wonder at the sheer crazy hopefulness that informs that kind of risk taking - and thank God that still, there are those like John and Julie, who do so.

Comments

[Richard L. Floyd]

I liked this. Did hundreds of weddings in my thirty years of ministry. Gave my best to prepare and explain, and sometimes felt like it was in one ear and out the other as they thought more about the canapes and the bridesmaid's dresses. But sometimes it seemed extra-ordinarily holy, and always it seemed liked a privilege. Thanks for putting it into words.

-Rick Floyd

[Jim Gordon]

Hi Richard and thanks for dropping by to comment. I visited your own blog, for which thanks, and see you are an admirer of P T Forsyth as well - an enthusiasm I share with you. I attended the Aberdeen Colloquium out of which came the papers for Mercy the True and Only Justice, a book you previously reviewed. And your retirement location in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts sounds almost biblical in the blessedness of the land! Grace and peace Richard.

[Richard L. Floyd]

Jim,
I wish I had been to the Aberdeen Forsyth Colloquium, but didn't hear about it until after the fact. Yes, the Berkshire Hills are a beautiful place to live, but no more than many parts of Scotland, where I lived in 1995 while on sabbatical. I enjoy your blog, and am adding it to my blogroll. I found you through Jason Garoncy, the king of theology bloggers. Blessings.

-Rick Floyd