Wedding Sermon - The Song of Divine Love

A sermon given at the marriage of Scott Westoby and Shani Cantor at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Thursday 26th September 2024. Scott manages The Phoenix Arts Club, a drag and cabaret bar next to the church. Shani is a fantastic performer and sings at the club as well as in numerous productions on the West End stage. The marriage service ended with a procession behind a band down Denmark Street. The sermon draws on lyrics from songs recorded, demoed or written in Demark Street – the UK’s version of Tin Pan Alley, which is next to the church.

Who could believe that I could be happy and contented,
I used to think that happiness hadn't been invented,
But that was in the bad old days before I met you,
When I let you walk into my heart.

Congratulations and celebrations,
When I tell everyone that you're in love with me.
Congratulations and jubilations,
I want the world to know I'm happy as can be.

The frilly cuffed Sir Cliff Richard summing up the moment for us nicely with lyrics from his chart-topping Eurovision entry ‘Congratulations’. A song which started life as a demo recorded at Regent Sounds, just down the road. 

Like so many pieces of music which were written, recorded or demoed on this street - many of them rehearsed here in our churchyard - it’s a song about the power of love. 

The theme of the passage from scripture I just read, in which St Paul says that power is everything. Without love, nothing has any meaning. Without love nothing matters. We believe that love is a gift from God – a gift of himself; because God is love - a power made visible on earth in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ and which remains with us as the Holy Spirit.

Once that spirit is burning inside us, true love is like no other power we know. It never fades away. A truth which gave the Stones their first hit track, cut next door:

“I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me.
I'm gonna love you night and day…
Love, love is love and not fade away
Not fade away.

After the Stones, dozens of wannabe stars flocked here, leaving behind a musical trail of the tale of true love - in both its major and minor keys. 

These lyrics, from the first album by Genesis, laid down in the same studio by Phil Collins and his schoolmates during their summer holiday, capture the moment when that flame of love begins to kindle:

Don't get me wrong
I think I'm in love
But the feeling in the word is more
Than your crystal eyes will ever see in me…..
One day I'll capture you, and call you to my side
One day I'll take you from the boredom of our lives
One day we'll fly away to the kingdom of my dreams
One day I'll find myself, and wrap it in my love for you.

One Day Scott and Shani organised their first date - but Boris had other plans. He locked the country down before they could meet up. 

The course of true love never did run smooth. Or, as one hip-gyrating heart-throb crooned on a famous track demoed nearby:

“It's not unusual, it happens everyday
No matter what you say
You'll find it happens all the time
Love will never do what you want it to.”

The love between Scott and Shani had other plans. A period of physical separation during the start of the challenging Covid years. But the flame kept burning. As this Denmark Street ditty from Flower-Power King 'Donovan’s 1965 hit single ‘Catch the Wind’ puts it;

In the chilly hours and minutes
Of uncertainty, I want to be
In the warm hold of your loving mind
To feel you all around me……
When rain has hung the leaves with tears
I want you near, to kill my fears
To help me to leave all my blues behind
For standin' in your heart
Is where I want to be.

Thanks to some enterprising Lettings Agents and the use of video calls, Shani and Scott soon found themselves standing - virtually - in their new home.

Their first face to face meeting as a couple took place as they moved in.

For some reason, at this point in their love story, the thrusting power chords of The Kinks seminal track, which first rang out from the buildings next door, come to mind:

..you really got me going
You got me so I don't know what I'm doing
Yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can't sleep at night.

As I’m standing in a pulpit I won’t ask what happened instead of sleep.

Appropriately named for today, Brian May’s early group ‘Left Handed Marriage’ recorded three tracks nearby in 1967 which offer sanguine advice from the perspective of someone whose relationship has hit the rocks. All three songs emphasise the importance of making time to be together. To make space. To enjoy and appreciate each other’s company.  Newlyweds everywhere take note!

But that’s all for another day. It’s the words of another Denmark Street classic recorded a year earlier that sum up where it’s at for our two star turns today:  

Wild thing, you make my heart sing
You make everything groovy, wild thing

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, it’s the song of Shani and Scott’s hearts that we are feeling now in our own. The song of divine love. A song that connects us all. So powerful it transcends time and space; holding us in this moment together with all those we love but see no longer.

As they step out onto Demark Street after this marriage service, behind an amazing band of friends and family, these two groovy wild things will start to write the next verse of that song – joined together in the sight of God as a married couple.

Shani and Scott. Something tells me it’s gonna be a smash hit.

Amen.

Links : 
I am indebted to Peter Watts' excellent book 'Denmark Street : London's Street of Sound' whose excellent index helped to point me to the lyrics of the songs written/demoed/recorded on Denmark Street: Find out more at this link.