Preaching to a congregation of a thousand is a rare experience for a local preacher accustomed to the small congregations of a country circuit. The occasion was this year’s joyous annual service held by Ripon Cathedral for Gold and Diamond Anniversary couples, who had gathered from all over England to make an act of thanksgiving and to renew their vows.

The reason I was invited to preach was that last year, when my wife and I were celebrating our own Golden Wedding, I wrote and read a special poem during the service. It hit the right note to the extent that the Cathedral decided to sell the poem as a souvenir card, and also asked me to preach the sermon this year. There were 250 celebratory couples present, along with their families and friends.

I felt reasonably confident that I would be on their wavelength and could lighten a serious subject with touches of humour of the kind that only surviving married couples can fully appreciate. I took as my text the words of Jesus, who was quoting and endorsing words from the second chapter of Genesis: ‘The two shall be one flesh ‘. However, not being in the best of cardiac health I became very apprehensive as I was led by a dignified young verger to the magnificent pulpit, high and lifted up, and slowly climbed its long curving stairway to reach that dizzy height.

When I started to speak I could sense that my voice carried well throughout this vast and lofty building. But, after a few minutes, my mouth became so dry that it was physically difficult to talk. I looked round in vain for the glass of water that I had never once failed to find in a Methodist pulpit. Immediately the verger disappeared and quickly returned with a plastic beaker, which he discreetly placed on the edge of the pulpit - so discreetly that I didn’t notice it. My wife said later that I almost sent it flying with one of my sweeping gestures!

Eventually I spotted it, had a quick drink, and resumed with renewed vigour - but, to my horror, now found that my trousers were coming down!  I had, for this specialoccasion, put on a suit I rarely wore, and for some reason the waist-band was too slack. All I could do was hoist them up as I spoke. Not the ideal sermon illustration, but better than the alternative.

I need not have worried. Nobody could have seen this. Being short of stature I was almost lost in that great pulpit, and little more than my head and shoulders could be seen above the elaborate metallic front of the pulpit lectern. I must have looked as though I was ready to duck down behind my barricade as soon as the congregation started throwing things at me.

Yes, I suppose there were one or two forthright things in the sermon - about ‘partners’ being people we played tennis with in our young day, about the forbidden phrase ‘living in sin’, and so forth. How could I fail to draw the contrast between the God-given blessings of traditional matrimony and the sorry state of our disintegrating society? Then, of course, uppermost in the minds of all of us who have survived to rejoice in the golden and diamond days of Darby and Joan, is the dread, unmentionable phrase: ‘Till death us do part’. Yet even here we have the Christian hope, neatly expressed in the Charles Wesley hymn we had chosen for our own wedding:

And if our fellowship below in Jesus be so sweet,
What heights of rapture shall we know when round His throne we meet!

Well, I had my twenty minutes, and I remember tottering down those many pulpit steps, wondering if I had said the right things and whether or not I was losing my grip (on the subject as well as the trousers! Ed.). I had, after all, started preaching the year I got married, half a century ago.

As the verger was leading the way back to my pew, to my astonishment, a wave of applause rolled through the congregation. I bowed - to the altar, of course! I was so thankful that I had been able to make a contribution to this heart-warming and uplifting service. Golden and Diamond couples are fast becoming an endangered species, and Ripon Cathedral is to be congratulated on this unique opportunity for celebration and rededication which, since 1997, has triumphantly proclaimed the virtues of Christian marriage in an age when it is under threat as never before.

Dr Arnold Kellett  is a local preacher in the Knaresborough Circuit, North Yorkshire.