A Wedding in Grasse 1967

A Wedding in Grasse, 1967

" … in the Lord’s house we are truly one"

Hamish, a member of the Presbyterian (later United Reformed) Church, married Françoise, a French Catholic, in her parish church in Grasse, France, on 5 August 1967. Hamish’s father, the Revd James A Little, a Presbyterian minister, preached the wedding sermon, which is given below.

Some of us have come a long way and are strangers in a strange land. But not exactly. For, while France is to us a foreign country and many of its ways are strange, it is also the country we love and admire most next to our own. Nor are we strangers here in Grasse, for we have been received and treated as friends and feel that we are among friends.

But, above all, in this church we are at home, in this house of God, built as a spiritual home for the people of God. Here in the Lord’s house we are truly one with all who love and honour our Saviour. Here there is neither French nor English, neither Catholic or Protestant, but Christ is everything and in everybody. Ici il n’y a ni français ni anglais ni catholique ni protestant, mais Christ est toutes choses en tous.

How true this is for you both, our son and daughter. There is a deep spiritual foundation for the love you have for one another. True love has its tensions. It is the love of those who are for ever one but for ever different. True love, therefore, involves you both in patient consideration of one another in those differences, and in constant forbearance. Often, on the part of each of you, there must be an element of submission and compromise. You must call on your natural fund of common sense and sweet reasonableness. You must be patient with one another and submit in all things in love to one another.

You must practise self-discipline as never before, but, more than that, you must never, never forget that God made you for one another and that he will never fail to help you in all your common tasks.

God has brought you from afar that you may be near to each other. So practise your religion in all the ways you have been taught to practise it and try to live ever in the spirit of your prayers.

May God make you perfect in love in your home and in the growing interests of the world that lies ahead of you.

As you face life together, may the God of peace guard you and keep you His for ever.

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