Broken and Whole

Sunday afternoon, I officiated Susan and Steven’s wedding ceremony at the Dallas/Plano Marriott at Legacy Town Center, in Plano, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

The Bible tells us that when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai, carrying the Ten Commandments, he witnesses, to his dismay, that in his absence the Children of Israel have decided to engage in some, uh, extra-curricular activities.

So, while the first not one but two commandments are about worshipping the one God of Israel and not worshipping idols, here they are dancing around a golden calf they are worshipping. Moses, understandably, is a little upset, and he breaks the tablets.

God is none too happy either, but Moses convinces God to give the Children of Israel a second chance. He goes back up to the mountain, and he comes back down with a second set of tablets. The lesson here is very clear: Always make sure your tablets are covered by a good warranty.

Now, eventually, God commands Moses to build the Ark of the Covenant. Thanks to Steven Spielberg, you’ve all seen it in the first Indiana Jones movie. God commands Moses to put the tablets inside the ark.

Which tablets, you might ask? Here is where it gets interesting. You might think that it was just the second and whole set of tablets that went in there. You would be wrong. God explicitly commands Moses to put the whole tablets AND the broken tablets into the ark.

When I was younger, I really didn’t understand why. I mean who saves broken tablets. You either recycle them or give them back to Apple for a credit on your next tablets. Now that I am a little older and hopefully a little wiser, I get it. What really makes us who we are is the mixture of brokenness and wholeness that is inside all of us.

When you listen to Susan and Steven tells their life stories, each as individuals and then as they converge, you can really see this concept play out. You see it in Steven’s tremendous admiration for how his parents built a cooperative relationship after they went their separate ways. You see this in the pride Susan has in raising happy, healthy, and productive children while having experiences that she says would be worthy of a Hallmark mini-series.

And you most definitely see it in the events of late 2016 and mid-2017, when Susan went from being lucky to be alive to what she calls the “most wonderful, fantastic thing that has happened to me beside the birth of my children. When I least expected it, I found a love so true, so deep, that is such a gift.”

Finally, you see it in how they have conceived of this celebration with all of you, their family and friends, here today. As Steven says, “This wedding will signify the start of the next chapter of our lives, and hopefully for all those that attend, the beginning of the end of this dreaded pandemic, a celebration for all to embrace.”