by Ruth Harley, curate of Watling Valley Ecumenical Partnership in the Diocese of Oxford, and co-author of ‘Being Interrupted: re-imagining the church’s mission from the outside, in’.
“The Blessing of a Civil Marriage of a couple… is a theological nonsense, but sometimes a pastoral necessity, while the Church’s marriage discipline is in such confusion. Theologically, we should have to say that, if a… marriage is possible and valid, the Church should be willing to celebrate it for its members. If it is not possible or valid, the Church has no business blessing it.”(1)
This could almost have been a commentary on the proposals made in GS2289 Living in Love and Faith: a response from the Bishops of the Church of England, released on Friday ahead of General Synod. But it is not. It is the late, great Michael Perham, writing in 1984 in about the blessing of the civil marriage of couples in which one person (or both) is divorced with a former spouse still living.
He is right, I think, to say that blessing a marriage which we will not celebrate puts the church in a position of “theological nonsense”. That was true when he wrote it almost 40 years ago about the remarriage of divorcees, and it is true now about the marriage of same-sex couples. As Perham goes on to observe, “the principal function of the priest in a marriage is to bless”. It makes little liturgical or theological sense to permit the blessing of a marriage but not the solemnisation of the marriage itself, the principal function of which is, after all, blessing.
And yet, here we are – in the territory of “theological nonsense”. The proposals for blessing same-sex relationships are a step forward, but still a far cry from the fullness of what we hoped for, and will continue to work for: full marriage equality irrespective of the genders of the couple.
But blessing is in itself a powerful and weighty thing. I remember the first time I raised my hand to bless someone as a priest – to pronounce God’s blessing with the authority of the church – being taken by surprise by the physicality of that weightiness.
Blessing is more than ‘saying a prayer’. To pray a blessing is to do something more than “to reflect the blessing of God in all creation”, as the bishops’ response to LLF puts it (2). A blessing, as spoken liturgically in the context of divine worship by a priest, has a particularity about it. To bless is to ask and declare God’s blessing on these people and, in the case of the blessing of a marriage, this relationship. To bless is to recognise and respond to God’s presence and purpose in this specific moment and person(s) and place.
We bless people not because they are good, but because they are God’s – and so is the blessing we proclaim. We bless in the midst of the world’s brokenness, and blessing and breaking are closely entwined in the liturgical imagination, as day by day we offer the blessed and broken body of Christ in the eucharist, and live as the blessed and broken body of Christ in the world. To bless is not to say ‘this is perfect’, but rather ‘God is in this’. To bless a loving relationship – whether that is a civil partnership or a marriage (or indeed a covenanted friendship) – is to reflect the truth that “whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in them” (1 John 4.16).
Blessing is a significant step in the right direction in terms of the church’s response to same-sex couples. But it is a step which leads us to not into the satisfaction and relief of resolving the situation, but rather into the turmoil and discomfort of “theological nonsense”. So just what kind of progress is this?
Significant change – change which is paradigm-shifting – often requires the old paradigm to be destabilised before a new paradigm can be established. It is out of the destabilising “theological nonsense” in which we now find ourselves that a way forward will emerge. That is how it was with the remarriage of divorcees. As Michael Perham observed, to say that a marriage can be blessed but not solemnised by the church is an untenable position. And so a way forward was found for divorcees to marry in church.
There are some parallels here with women’s ordination too. To say that a woman can be ordained priest but not ordained bishop is also “theological nonsense”. But it was only out of a time of living with that untenable position that the move to ordain women to all orders of ministry eventually emerged.
We long for a conclusion, a resolution, for the theological and pastoral good sense of full equality for all, irrespective of sexuality or gender identity. This week it may feel like we are still so far from that goal. The proposals before Synod are like a discordant note, still awaiting the final, resolving, chord. But we should not underestimate the power of blessing. It is a significant thing, both in its own right, and as a means of showing up the “theological nonsense” of denying equal marriage to same-sex couples for what it is.
Dwelling in this in-between time, this now-and-not-yet in which the “theological nonsense” of the status quo is revealed but not yet resolved, will be hard and painful for many of us. We are blessed, and yet still wrestling for a blessing. The church will emerge from this wrestling, this time of “theological nonsense”, both broken and blessed, as the body of Christ always is. For now, we limp on together.
(1) Michael Perham, Liturgy Pastoral and Parochial (SPCK, 1984), p. 104.
(2) GS2289 Living in Love and Faith: a response from the Bishops of the Church of England, p. 6.
Any thoughts?