Tagged: wedding
How much wine do you want?
Many years ago, longer ago than I care to remember, I was just a couple of months into my very first post in the church after leaving college.
And there came a rather frantic knocking on my door on a Saturday night about 10 o’clock. I opened the door to a rather distressed young man. To say he was panicking is really a bit of an understatement. He had been to the vicarage, he said, and the vicarage was empty – it would be, because the vicar was away on holiday. He was getting married in a few weeks at another church, he told me, and he had completely forgotten to get his banns read. The priest who was performing the ceremony had just reminded him. Was there still time? He’d been told that without the banns being called he couldn’t get married. For those who don’t know – in England the banns have to be called in churches where people live, in case anyone knows a legal reason why they shouldn’t get married, on three Sundays before the wedding.
Well, I sat him down and calmed him down, and we worked out that there were still – just – three Sundays left before the wedding. Being new at the job I knew nothing about the legalities of banns of marriage, but I worked it out and we called the banns.
I subsequently discovered that, technically, he hadn’t given the required notice, and that I should have told him to apply to the Bishop for a special licence, but I’m really rather glad I didn’t know that at the time. I think it might have pushed him right over the edge.
Continue readingOh dear! The wine has run out!
Last Sunday we heard of the amazing miracle of the turning of water into wine – the first miracle of Jesus, according to John’s gospel, at a wedding party in Cana of Galilee
All through Advent we in the Church get ready for Christmas with a period of penitence and abstinence. I suspect we all found it very difficult, while most of the country was already in a celebratory mood, to do without such things as alcohol and meat – at least on Wednesdays and Fridays if not every day. You did fast during Advent, didn’t you? (No – it seems they didn’t given their response but that’s all right – I didn’t either!)
Continue readingI’m into something good …
The gospel for the 3rd Sunday of Epiphany this year was the wedding at Cana. Here’s the sermon preached at St John’s by Mother Anne-Marie.
I walked her home and she held my hand
I knew it couldn’t be just a one night stand
So I asked to see her next week and she told me I could
Something tells me I’m into something good!
You have to be a certain age to remember Herman’s Hermits, but that song “I’m into Something Good” gave them their first number one in 1964. The young lad in that song had read the signs. “She danced close to me like I hoped she would”, “She stuck close to me the whole night through” and “I walked her home and she held my hand”. All the signs that he was into something good! Continue reading
Come to the party!
This Sunday’s readings continued the series of parables told by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel about who will inherit the kingdom. Here’s what I said.
A little girl was attending a wedding for the first time. Seeing the bride process in on the arm of her father she whispered to her mother, “Mummy, why is the bride dressed in white?”
Her mother replied, “Because white is the colour of happiness, and today is the happiest day of her life.”
Her daughter thought about this for a moment, and then said, “So why is the groom wearing black!”
Marriage is one of those institutions that has always attracted the attention of stand-up comedians. There must be more jokes about marriage – especially if you include all the jokes about mothers-in-law – than almost any other subject. Continue reading
The Great Banquet – Proper 23
The priest I live with was preaching on the 19th October. We were then off the next day on the delights of our five-yearly diocesan clergy conference, hence the late posting of what she said. Better late than never, here is Mother Anne-Marie’s sermon on the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew.
In this morning’s gospel we have an image of the Kingdom of Heaven as a great wedding feast. A wonderful meal is awaiting the guests, the wine will flow and no doubt there’ll be music and dancing – a really good time to be had by all. It’s a wonderful image of what awaits us in God’s Kingdom. And here as the church of God, we are a microcosm of that Kingdom, we are meant to be a taste of the Kingdom to come. Here within this church people should catch a glimpse of that glorious kingdom, with its upside down values, its joy, its love, its merriment, and its embracing of life in all its fullness. But the image Jesus gives us in the Gospel reading tells us that however good it is, there will be people who don’t want to come. The King has many refusals to his invitation to the great wedding banquet which tells us that God is aware that many will refuse his invitation to be part of his Kingdom both in this world and the next. Continue reading
Liturgical dance Take Two
Posting the Youtube video of the acrobats at the Vatican brought to mind a Youtube video that a member of our congregation directed me to some time ago. It’s the entry procession at a wedding. I’m still waiting for a wedding couple to ask to do this at Saint John’s. It would be really cool, just as long as I didn’t have to join in.
View from the Valley 