IT’S FEBRUARY: we’re looking towards Spring and the card shops are full of Valentine’s Day cards. You could say love is in the air. This year, I am looking forward to marrying three couples at St Barnabas: we tend not to have many weddings, so this is an above-average year for us!
As I mused over the preparation for these couples, the words of an old song came to mind: ‘Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage.’ What struck me was how out of date it sounded. It may have been the most natural thing to say when Frank Sinatra first sang it in 1955, but to say ‘Love and marriage … you can’t have one without the other’: who would write those lyrics today?
It’s remarkable how our attitudes have changed. Now 70 years is a long time, and we imagine marriage to be one of those unchanging things in society, yet many people have responded by choosing not to marry. Marriage without love is a bad idea. But love without marriage has become commonplace. Even the introduction of civil partnerships and same-sex marriage has not reversed the trend: a few years ago, we passed the point at which less than 50% of people in the UK are married and many predict the downward trend will continue.
The Christian idea of marriage is that we seek to emulate God’s love for us: in other words, within marriage we support and encourage unending, unconditional love. We can never do this perfectly, but we try hard because it’s valuable. In the marriage service, a couple underline this by making solemn vows that they will love each other, come what may, until their lives’ end. The congregation witness this: for their part, they are asked to promise to support the couple in those vows.
All this may seem anachronistic to some, yet this sense of constancy and commitment is strangely life giving. If taken seriously by both parties, it helps us hold together through tough times: loving and forgiving, so that everyone comes out stronger. It is a sound basis for family life, giving children a stable bedrock, helping young fragile lives to grow healthy and strong.
Love seems as popular as ever it was; marriage less so. I wonder what difference it makes?
Rev’d Kevin Lovell, Vicar of St Barnabas, Emmer Green and Caversham Park
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