24th January 2025 – Jonathan Rose

Wedding bells

As I write this Thought we are approaching the second Sunday of Epiphany. This year the Common Worship Lectionary states the Gospel reading for the Sunday Eucharist as John 2.1-11. The passage describes the well-known story of the wedding reception at Cana in Galilee at which Jesus and his mother were invited guests. Noteworthy is that the wedding feast goes disastrously wrong – the wine ran out! While I have attended wedding receptions where not everything has gone completely to plan, never in my experience has the wine run out. Without going into the details of the story, Jesus, somewhat reluctantly, at the bidding of his mother, miraculously replaces a lack of wine of adequate quality with a vast quantity of the very best wine available. No preaching here or healing but simply Jesus engaging in an ordinary crisis of which our lives are made.

There is perhaps something to be heeded here about our own calling upon God when testing challenges confront us to strengthen our resolve towards a solution. However, with my mind running on weddings coming up this year in the parishes where I serve, amongst all else, bells are usually requested. Many of you will be quite familiar with the frequently exacting task of gathering sufficient local ringers to ring (even when paid) for weddings when the length of time required to be available may sometimes stretch over a considerable period. I was fascinated to research that in western Europe over many centuries some churches had just a single bell reserved for weddings (making it much easier, I suggest, to recruit a ringer for the purpose) before the extended pealing we have today. The custom being that the single bell was rung before the wedding ceremony to signal to the couple the priest was ready to greet them by the door of the church, while it being as well a summons to the parish generally to come and witness the couple’s uniting in holy wedlock. The custom also was to ring the same single bell at the end of the ceremony by way of celebration and to announce to the wider community that another married couple had been added to the total. Our wedding ringing today, before and after the ceremony, is most likely derived from these historical practices.

I should add that I am very glad we don’t have to gather ringers or a ringer now to ring for the first publication of the marriage banns (referred to as the Spur Peal); or the Bride’s Peal, so called, on the morning after the wedding; or, indeed, for the more important in the community (and those who could afford the expense) of ringing for the couple as they returned from their honeymoon! Even so, if we could assemble willing ringers for such occasions, no doubt we could work out what fee-remuneration should be paid!

Jonathan Rose