‘Lasting fidelity and mutual affection’

Andrew Collis
The Marriage of Shale Bronwyn Preston and Melinda Joy Kearns
Athol Hall, Mosman
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

I’m glad we have this passage from the apostle Paul …

I sometimes struggle to follow Paul’s theological arguments, copy-pasting as he does from Hebrew prophecy and apocalyptic as well as Greek mythology and magic … 

It’s helpful to hear his words about love … focussed, impassioned, poetic:

Even if I can speak in all the tongues of earth – and those of the angels too – but do not have love, I am just a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy such that I can comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, or if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own to feed those poorer than I, then hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, and it is not snobbish; it is never rude or self-seeking; it is not prone to anger, nor does it brood over injuries. Love doesn’t rejoice in what is wrong, but rejoices in the truth. There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.

Love never fails …

There are, in the end, three things that last: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

We ask a lot of this one word. 

Poetry helps. I love the poem by Christina Rossetti (“A Birthday”), which Wendy has read for us:

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

And stories help (as Melinda and Shale, two lovers of literature, can attest).

The apostle Paul never met Jesus. He persecuted early followers of the Way (of Jesus), then came to see this Way in light of equality and inclusivity; in light of liberty. 

He preached the Cross (of Jesus), which means he made crucial distinctions between aggression and grace, “power over” and “power with”. 

Whatever his failings (and whatever the failings of his acolytes), that’s how I hear his story: an experience of divine call and human response lived out in apostleship, discipleship, friendship (solidarity with the persecuted and uninvited).

And what of Shale and Melinda’s story (31 years in the making)?

Shale and Melinda, too, have received a unique call from God, a divine vocation. 

A call to freedom (Galatians 5:13), to peace (1 Corinthians 7:15), to hope (Ephesians 4:4), to sainthood (Romans 1:7), to each other … to the heart and mindfulness of Christ (Philippians 2:2) … to a certain dying and rising … 

For, in the Spirit of Jesus, every loving is a dying to egoism, a dying to “I” in order that two “I’s” become a “we” … we become most fully human and holy by way of this self-giving love.

The sacrament of marriage plays itself out over a lifetime; couples become the sacrament they have professed in a process of lasting fidelity and mutual affection – “two souls gradually, almost imperceptibly, becoming human and holy in Christ through the ministry of the other and the grace of God” (Kathleen Hughes). 

In other words, keeping promises is the way by which the old self is changed into something light and generous and good and for the other. 

Thank you, both, for inviting us … including us …

May your love story continue. May it echo love’s great themes. 

May it unfold in delightful ways. May it write you, enfold and bless you. Amen.