‘About time!’ were some of the opening words in the sermon that followed as part of the Eucharist in which my partner and I shared on Friday. Earlier in the morning we had gone with close family and friends to Southwark Registry Office and entered into a Civil Partnership. Then we went to church to share in God’s greatest gift to us, the love that we always celebrate in the Eucharist.
It is all about time, of course. We have been together for 36 years, but the time hadn’t been right to do this. However, as I am in the last few weeks at Southwark Cathedral this did feel like the right time. We had been faithfully living in love, living according to the expectations of the church and found in all of that rich blessings. But there is something important about entering into a public commitment and knowing that in doing that you are also given the support of family, friends and, for us, the church.
Back in February at the last Group of Sessions of the General Synod that I was a member of, we sat through the eight and a half hours of debate on ‘Living in Love and Faith’ and the response of the House of Bishops to the report and the liturgical provisions that they were proposing to authorise. We all know what the result of that Synod was. At the beginning of the week I was hopeful that the suggested provisions would be accepted, which would mean that after the ceremony at the Registry Office we could be given a blessing in church. So we were both disappointed by what happened – but not devastated and, I suppose, not surprised. The issue of the place of LGBTQI+ people in the life of the church is the issue that we can’t agree on at the moment. But we also knew that we are already blessed, by God, by friends, and the community at Southwark Cathedral and so many other places. But the greatest blessing for any Christian comes through the Eucharist, that place of feeding, that place of love and peace, and yes, that place of blessing in the divine encounter that takes place.
It was horribly ironic that whilst we were making the final preparations for our ‘Big Day’ the news emerged from Uganda of laws so deeply homophobic not just being passed by the government there but warmly welcomed by the leadership of the Anglican Church. It is not just shocking, it is appalling, and it is right that the actions of the bishops in Uganda are being condemned by so many people and not just those from the liberal, inclusive groupings from where you would expect words of condemnation to come. So our love goes out to our sisters and brothers who cannot even live as the people they were created to be, let alone come as a couple openly to church and to the sacrament.
The theme of the Eucharist in which we shared was the Trinitarian relationship that we celebrate today, the perichoresis of love, the dance, the divine rotation into which humanity is drawn. It is out of that divine love that each of us was created, it is into the divine love that we are drawn, it is filled with the divine love that we live.
At the Registry Office we were allowed a reading. We chose Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare. It too is about time, what time does to our love.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
It was a lovely day and the blessings that we received from everyone who joined was overwhelming. One day none of this will need debating in the church, it will no longer be remarkable that two people love one another and wish to commit, and no one will deny them a blessing.
This was my prayer for the day.
God of blessing, thank you for the years we have already shared, the blessings we have already received, the moments of joy and those of sorrow, and all that has brought us to this moment. May all your children live in love and faith. Amen.
LIVING GOD 
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