It’s Holy Week and so Jesus says, again, during his last supper with his disciples: “love one another” (John 13.34). I think he’s saying it to us, too, looking us straight in the eye: “Love one another, now. I mean it.”
We might say, “But Jesus, have you ever been locked in with your family for weeks at a time, with nowhere to go, with spotty Wifi, with no new Saturday Night Live, with people dying and jobs ending and no end in sight?”
Jesus doesn’t say “Love one another when they’re not on your last nerve.” He tells us to love “as I have loved you,”
Drat.
It’s like those wedding vows where we got all dressed up and smiled while we made promises that are nothing short of outrageous. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health.
Did we hear ourselves?
Somebody knew what they were doing when they crafted those vows, centuries ago. They careen right into the highs and lows that will confront every relationship. Poverty, sickness, worse. That writer couldn’t have foreseen our current troubles, but those words absolutely are wide enough to cover a pandemic and all the ways it affects our lives.
Dang.
Just like Jesus’ disciples, I need to be reminded that love is the plan. Love is non-negotiable. Love is a practice we have to do again and again. And then apologize, and love again. And then it will still come as a surprise when we get reminded of that commandment. Love one another. Oh, yeah!
It’s never easy. (And I know for some, it’s downright dangerous, and for that I am lamenting and praying and longing for a better day.)
But maybe this is a good time to practice. Right now, we can practice loving the people we’re blessed to be cooped up with. (And I know for some of you, there aren’t any, which is a whole other challenge.) We practice with them, and with others close to our hearts.
And with colleagues and relatives and delivery people and medical staff and others with whom we come in cautious contact.
And as our distancing diminishes and toilet paper abounds in the months ahead, won’t we all be ready to love better the people hidden from us right now?
Two points – one is that love is not a feeling, but action. When we make that shift in our thinking it should move us to doing for one another – especially those we live with. That thought helped me tremendously in my marriage – particularly the last 4 years.
And second, I want to stand up and shout – “You don’t know what you are saying” when the bride and groom say “in sickness and in health” ! Because until you’ve lived it, you don’t have any comprehension of what it entails.
Great blog!!
Thanks, Sharon. Right on both counts. None of us know what “sick” and “worse” and “poorer” will take to get through, until we’re there.