When Graham and Alyssa asked me to perform the ceremony, I took it as a compliment, even though it also was a cost-cutting decision. They probably thought I would use my 10 minutes to talk about love. Ministers love talking about love. We enjoy waxing poetic, accompanied by Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
We want to quote Princess Bride: “This is true love. You think this happens every day?”
We love sounding like Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle: “I knew it the first time I touched her. It was like coming home, only to no home I’d ever known. I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car, and I knew it. It was like magic.”
Brett Younger
We like referencing St. Paul’s contribution to 27 Dresses: “Love is patient, love is kind, love means slowly losing your mind.”
The magic of love is why 1 Corinthians 13 is read at so many Christian weddings. It sounds like Paul wrote it for a wedding: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love never gives up. Love cares more for the other. … Love never dies.”
The last verse, “faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love” makes St. Paul sound single, because while love is where it starts, when you are at the end of your rope, hope is the knot in the rope you hold on to.
Jürgen Moltmann often is described as the most important theologian of the last 50 years. More than anything else, he writes about hope. Moltmann argues Paul was right for the first century when he said, “The greatest of these is love,” but that if Paul were writing today, the greatest would be hope.
The idea of love so saturates Western culture that it has lost some of its power. Love still gets the poems but noted financier Andy Dufresne said: “Remember. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
“Love at first sight is easy to explain. Love after 10 years is the miracle.”
Falling in love is great, but scientists tell us what we call “falling in love” can be attributed to the presence in the body of a drug called phenylethylamine, a natural amphetamine. The problem is we build up a tolerance for this chemical in two to four years. What we call love can be a tentative, partial or momentary attraction. Love at first sight is easy to explain. Love after 10 years is the miracle.
So I offered, but was told not to quote, Ryan Gosling in The Notebook: “So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be really hard, and we’re gonna have to work at this every day. But I wanna do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever. You and me. Every day.”
The happy couple passed on Good Will Hunting: “It doesn’t matter if the guy is perfect or the girl is perfect. As long as they’re perfect for each other.”
They vetoed Juno: “In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find someone who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you.”
If asked, “What are the three most important words in a relationship?” “I love you” would be a fine choice with which to start, but there are other three-word combinations couples need:
- “I am sorry.”
- “You were right.”
- “I was wrong.”
- “Help me understand.”
- “Tell me again.”
- “Let’s eat out.”
- “Let’s eat in.”
- “Let’s sleep late.”
- “Let me help.”
- “I’ll do dishes.”
- “Let’s go walk.”
- “You can pick.”
- “You look great.”
- “Are you OK?”
- “We’ll be OK.”
“I love you” doesn’t mean as much without the other day-to-day words that lead to hope. Hope keeps love working every day. Hope lightens what’s heavy, gets us through the rough patches and leads us beyond selfishness. Hope bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Hope never ends.
Some evening 10 years from now, Alyssa and Graham will come home after a long day, amazed at how they could work so hard and get so little done. They will have had a disagreement over money, over time or over what the disagreement is about. Their hearts will not be racing at the sight of one another. They will not look as good as they did on their wedding day. No one will stand as a sign of respect when they walk into the room.
But then, for just a moment, without expecting it, they will look past their pasta and see their beloved. They will remember the love that brought them together and how that love pales in comparison to the love they feel as the years pass. The first love will get them to hope, and then hope leads to a second love that’s greater than the first. Hope leads to love beyond magic. The hope at any wedding is that their marriage will grow given to God.
Finally, like Julia Roberts almost said in Notting Hill, I had to admit, “I’m just a minister, standing in front of a boy and a girl asking them to love each other.”
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.