‘Well! Last Monday evening, when we were down at Denver, we got a wire from Peter, which coolly said, "If you really want to see me married, try St. Cross Church, Oxford, to-morrow at two." … We went to Oxford and found the place—an obscure little church in a side-street, very gloomy and damp-looking.’  Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, 1937

This Sunday at evensong we celebrate an unusual wedding anniversary. Unusual, because it is a 90th anniversary, and unusual because it is between two fictional characters, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. As the mealy-mouthed Duchess of Denver writes in the section above, Dorothy Sayers chose St Cross Church as the setting for this wedding. This church forms part of our benefice, where we will be celebrating the feast of the Holy Cross this week, although for the most part it now forms the archive of Balliol College.

Sayers herself was a prominent Christian apologist and dramatist of the first half of the 20th century, in addition to her work as a detective novelist and translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy. She wrote especially powerfully of the process of creativity, and the way that the work of the creative mind mirrors and reveals the workings of the Trinity: as those made in the image of God, that image is revealed when we ourselves become ‘makers’. While our celebration on Sunday has much of whimsy about it, it is also a reminder of the God-given power of imagination, and the joy of human love.