“Don’t let them in, don’t
let them see / Be the good girl you always have to be. // Conceal, don’t feel,
put on a show / Make one wrong move and everyone will know.” So sings Queen Elsa, hiding behind her locked
bedroom door out of fear, early on in Disney’s Frozen. Scared of opening
the door, of ungloving a hand; scared of loving. And she’s already virtuous enough that she’s
not scared of getting hurt, but she’s scared of hurting others, so she maintains
her voluntary imprisonment as long as she can.
Are the
disciples even that far along? After the
resurrection, they’ll lock themselves in a room, out of fear. And how about us? How does love scare us? Because we don’t love one another the way
Jesus told us to. We hold back in fear; we
conceal. We quench fires because we don’t
want to get burned. We don’t want to be
disappointed, let down, disquieted, grieved.
It’s easier to distance others and not feel their pain; it’s easier to
never grow so close to another that if the connection is rent so are our
hearts.
But Jesus
has better for us than easy. “Love one
another.” Not a novel commandment, it’s
right there in the Torah, but one that can truly be called ‘new’ still. A fresh commandment, a renewing commandment,
maybe. Not a commandment that comes with
a rebuttal of our fears: Jesus doesn’t tell us that love won’t ever hurt; instead
he shows us the glorious triumph of love, not evading sorrow, but through it,
past it.
Before
giving this commandment he has washed the disciples’ feet. There’s only two ways to wash someone’s feet:
you either lift them up, or lower yourself; and, in Christ, God does both for
us. Then, he consents to be lifted up
himself, to show us the limitless nature of his love on the cross. All to refresh us, to renew us, that we might
cast aside all fear, open all locked doors and “love one another.” As Augustine once put it, he goes to prepare
a dwelling place by preparing those who are to dwell there.
And if we
love, we will weep, in this world. So,
part of how God refreshes us to dare to love is through the glimpses of what
lies beyond, when all things are made new, such as we have in our reading from
Revelation. We hear tell of a world in
which every tear is wiped away, God wipes every tear away and there is no more
death or mourning, wailing or pain. It’s
a world in which the sea, that fearful source of chaos, is no more. And how poignant that part of the vision must
have been for John the Seer on the island of Patmos, separated from the
mainland churches he loved so by this choppy barrier. It will be no more. What scares us, what separates us, will be no
more; because our being separated is the outworking of our being scared. And tears will be wiped away, and pain will
pass away, and there will be no need to fear to love, and we shall love as
Jesus bids us; as Jesus loves us, we will love.
But “will
love” is a promissory note, and that doesn’t really sound like what Jesus asked
us for, what Jesus invites us to, where the charity of Christ urges us. Yes, this city that is to come is still to
come. This earth which is to be former
is still here, with its death and mourning and wailing and pain. And the New Jerusalem will come down from
heaven, we won’t build it, we won’t pull ourselves up to love by our own boot
straps. But in Christ, God has knelt
down, and raised us up, washed our feet and shown us what love looks like with
a human face, and assured us that the pain of love is not ultimate. And he’s dared us to stop concealing, and
open up that door.
Not because
we know that what’s on the other side is rosy and easy yet; but because we know what is to come there. And all should be able to see how lovingly
and longingly, faithfully, hopefully and joyfully we await that. They say that if your only tool is a hammer,
every problem looks like a nail. If you’re
always ready for a fight, then you act like it.
If you’re in fear of hurting or being hurt, you act like that. What does someone who’s ready for love act
like? Ready for tears to be wiped
away? What do the practices that express
that to others and more deeply root that in ourselves look like?
I submit
that this is one. To gather around the
table of Our Lord, to elevate a body made known in its breaking and proclaim
that it can make us whole; this is one.
The question is, what’s the next one?
“Love one
another.”
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