Overflowing of Love

Friday evening, Reverend Rob Bowsher and I co-officiated Sam and Tyler’s wedding ceremony at the Stone Crest Venue, in McKinney, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

The origin story of these high school sweethearts is the stuff of romance novels with a dash of mystery, subterfuge, and humor at the very beginning. 

They met freshman year of high school, became friends in sophomore year, when they had a couple of classes together. Why do I say mystery? Because, Sam says, “I am not really sure what it was about him I liked so much, I think we just clicked.” 

Why do I say subterfuge? Because Sam continues, “I used a project in English as an excuse to get his number and partner with him on it. We started to talk a little bit more, and I had told two of my friends I had a crush on Tyler, and they helped me create a plan for all of us to hang out and go bowling.”

I think I’ve covered humor already, but Tyler drives the point home. Why did Sam have to resort to this derring-do elaborate plan? “This was an excuse for her to get my number as I was playing hard to get.” In the novels, it is usually the other way around, but truth is stranger than fiction.

There is a theme that recurs in the lives of Sam and Tyler that might sound a little too obvious and simplistic, at first blush, but I don’t think it really is: Love.

It was love at that tender age that brought these two together. Now many high school romances don’t last, but the love they shared matured with them. This was the real deal, and eventually they wanted to make it official. 

Reaching back farther before they met each other, both Sam and Tyler each showed a love for their respective faiths. They each loved to learn about their faiths and continue to take great pride in their traditions, that pride being reflected in this very ceremony. 

In our tradition one of the most common explanations for breaking a glass at a wedding is to place it in a category of other acts we do to commemorate the destruction of Herod’s Temple, then the global center of our faith, and with it a short lived independent Jewish state, 1,951 years ago. The Ancient Rabbis tell us that the Temple was destroyed because there was an overflowing of hate among our people.

The late Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, was once asked what it would take to rebuild the Temple and the Jewish commonwealth. He said that since it was destroyed due to an overflowing of hate, the only way it would be rebuilt would be through an overflowing of love. 

Incidentally, this was the implicit if not explicit message in the way that Sam’s late teacher, a man I was honored to call a friend, Rabbi Jeff Leynor, lived his life. His overflowing love for our faith and for all people was something to witness. 

It is this overflowing of love that Tyler speaks of that brought us here today: “Halfway through college we decided the first thing we wanted to do once we graduated was to get married on our anniversary, October 15th. I planned to graduate in the Fall of 2020, so I went and picked out an engagement ring, Spring of 2020. Well, when nothing went according to plan, I popped the question August 9th, 2020. I just couldn’t take not marrying her for another year and I just wanted her to be my wife.”

Sam and Tyler, marriage will have its ups and downs. That is the nature of the world. Cherish this moment and the overflowing mutual love in your hearts. That will not only get you through the downs but make the ups even sweeter.