I am back at St Gabriel’s Church in Popley this Sunday, to celebrate communion and the love that God has for us, but also to mark a Golden Wedding Anniversary.

The Old Testament passage set for today is the story of David and Bathsheba. I once heard their relationship described as one of the greatest love stories. Perhaps on the surface it might seem like that, a King willing to give up everything for the love of the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, a man willing to do anything to gain her love, even kill the one who stands between them. If we look at the story more closely we see that David lusted and leered after Bathsheba, a royal peeping tom who spied on her as she bathed, stopping at nothing to possess her, even murdering her husband, his friend and closest ally. This doesn’t sound like a love story, more like a horror story, where a woman is widowed, is raped, is taken into the king’s harem without even a by your leave.

However, today we are not just celebrating Holy Communion, God’s love for us, we are celebrating a Golden Wedding Anniversary with a renewal of vows and it was suggested that we might have something a bit more ‘weddingy’ which made me think of St Paul’s Hymn to Love in 1 Corinthians 13, this after all is a passage often chosen for weddings. The familiarity of it for a vicar who has had to preach on it on numerous occasions over each wedding season has brewed in me a love-hate relationship with the passage; but there’s something else too. The passage may sound beautiful, indeed it is. It describes the perfection of love, and all that we might hope for our own marriages, but it is impossible. There is no way any couple can live out this perfection of love throughout their marriage. How can anyone be so forgiving when the cap is left off the toothpaste for the eleventy-billionth time? Maybe our loving couple who celebrate their golden wedding anniversary with us today can give us some tips.

When I spoke to our couple about which Bible passage they might like to have, it was suggested Psalm 139. Perfect! The psalm which reminds us that we are made in God’s image and under God’s loving eye, the Psalm that reminds us that no matter what we do or say, no matter how far we try to tun away or hide, God is with us. This is something which David had forgotten when his eyes turned to Bathsheba, and he was punished because of his actions. Psalm 139 also gives us the key to 1 Corinthians 13, because although we might not be perfectly able to love, we might struggle not to keep a record of wrongs, we might struggle to be patient, or to keep persevering when we hit those bumpy patches, God’s love for us is perfect.

God hems us in like a shepherd protecting the sheep, like a parent tucking their child into bed at night; God watches over our going out and our coming back in again, God goes before us whether it is over the seas, or into the mountains; God knows every precious word on our lips (and the not so precious) before we have had a chance to utter them. Perhaps the longer we are faithfully married the more like God we become. Perhaps we ‘just know’ what the other is thinking, perhaps we finish each other’s sentences, perhaps we would travel to the end of the world to make sure they are safe, to make sure they know they are loved.

The more time we spend in each other’s presence, the more experiences we have together, the better we know and trust each other, the deeper our love becomes; and it is the same with God. If we want to become more like this amazing couple before us today, we need to spend more time with God.