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October 2007, Page 4.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(October 2007)
Mr. Rich,
Zechariah,
Question,
Song,
Ministry Review.
In our "Questions to the clergy" slot, John will try to answer any query you throw at him, without hesitation, deviation or repetition...
"I will" - a split wedding?
Q. I went to a wedding where the couple got marooned up the front in the middle of their vows while the vicar did his sermon. Is that supposed to happen?
A. It’s one of the changes to the wedding service that the new “Common Worship” book introduced, and I must confess I don’t like it and I use the alternative order.
The couple do three things in the middle of the marriage service. First they each “give their consent”: the vicar asks if they will take each other as husband and wife and love each other, and they each say “I will”. Second they join hands and exchange the vows. And third they exchange rings, also with declarations. In the old service these three used to happen one after the other, but the new service splits off the first from the other two.
The reason it does it is because of engagements. In the olden days engagement (betrothal) was a much bigger thing than it is now. It was a promise (not just an intention) to get married, and sometimes it included penalty clauses if the wedding got cancelled. And some people say that’s where the first section of the service comes from - why it’s “I will” instead of “I do”.
The people who wrote the new service book believed in “liminality”, which means that we ought to do church services to mark different stages in a “rite of passage”. So, roughly speaking, since there is no betrothal service in a church today, they thought the wedding service should first make a couple engaged, and then have a gap during which one thinks about what getting married is all about, and then have the marriage vows which make one married.
I probably haven’t described it fairly, because I think it’s daft! For two reasons. First, the couple got engaged long before they booked their wedding, and we can’t seriously think that the service will make them engaged. And second, I believe the “I will” doesn’t focus on “I will get marry him/her”, but it’s really about “I will love him/her”. You can tell that because the love is spelled out in the details of the question. It’s far more detailed than engagement: it’s about being married rather than getting married. The reason it is “I will” is because it’s a promise to act in love in the future: I can’t promise how I’ll feel, but I can promise what I’ll do.
At Eccleshill I preach before the question: we think about marriage and then we do the three things together. Like you, I think it’s very odd to “maroon” the couple, and I don’t do it.
John Hartley