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Love the One You See
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| 5/21/2006 |
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Jesus said to his disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:9ff
Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. I John 4:7ff
I took my daughters to the museum last week to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit. They usually don’t like the idea of going to the museum much, and complain most of the way of how bored they will be, but something about the realism of those paintings drew them right in. They liked  the painting of the jack-o-lanterns, and the painting of the spirits moving through the empty dining room grabbed them, but they looked the longest at the painting of the teenage boy running down the empty hill. “Daddy,” Hannah said, “it looks like the boy is being chased by his own shadow as he runs.” “Honey,” I replied, “the same shadow chases us all.”
The painting I stared at longest was the portrait of Wyeth’s neighbor, Karl Keurner. Karl was a neighbor and farmer in the Brandywine Valley in Delaware. For the portrait, Wyeth had Karl dress up in his German Army uniform from World War I. Karl was a German sniper in the first World War, and I must say there was something chilling about staring into his face, like looking into the man who took many a life for his country, but then carried the burden heavily in his eyes, his very soul. At that moment of looking in this man’s col d eyes, I knew that Wyeth was an artist, for not only did I fear the man, I felt a pity for him. I could see that he was both a killer and farmer, one who took life and grew life.
Somewhere, either in the headphones or a wall placard, I read that Wyeth found this face of his neighbor absolutely beautiful. Beautiful? Chilling, maybe; or creepy, or melancholy; or pensive, but not beautiful. It seemed a false statement for an artist to make.
Later in my study, I was reading the 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He’s a theologian of sorts, too. In a chapter titled, “Love the one you see,” He writes, “Suppose there were two artists, and the one said, ‘I have traveled much and seen much in the world. . . but I have found no face with such perfection of beauty I could make up my mind to paint it. In every face I have seen one or another little flaw. Therefore I seek in vain.’”
Kierkegaard imagines the second artist saying, “I do not pretend to be a very good artist; neither have I traveled very much. But remaining in the little circle closest to me, I have not found a face so insignificant or so full of faults that I still could not discern in it a more beautiful side and discover something glorious.”
Andrew Wyeth is that second sort of artist, I suppose. Andrew Wyeth knew, even though a sniper and once an enemy, Karl Kuerner’s face was not so insignificant or full of faults, that he as artist could paint a more beautiful side. I went back to look at the portrait again, and could find the beauty that the “second artist” sought. Wyeth transformed the face into beauty, though the angst and anguish still adumbrated through. Wyeth’s transformation from reality to canvas was simply an act of love.
The Gospel we hear this morning is just that simple. Jesus has revealed in his life, death and resurrection that he is that second sort of artist. In Christ’s love for us, we are transformed, full of faults and imperfections, onto a canvas of glory and life abundant. So, in return for this love, we love others. To do so is to remain in that love, to abide in God’s grace and security.
Last week, I walked down 4th Street, in a hurry, because I was late for a meeting at the Diocese. I was in my best priest suit, my best priest shirt, and my collar shone white. As I approached the bus stop at Chestnut, I could see there was some sort of commotion. Being rush hour, it was crowded, but people seemed to be moving away from someone.
Suddenly the woman they were avoiding spotted me and ran toward me, shouting, “Are you a priest?” Indeed, she was odd, and instantly created anxiety in me. A white woman, her head was wrapped in a dirty silk scarf similar to how a Muslim woman would cover her head. She wore big “Jackie O” sunglasses, and her mouth and nose was covered with a yellow surgical mask, somewhat grimy because she had been wearing it for some time. Whether an artist could find beauty in her face through the faults was unclear, as barely any part of her face could be seen. “Can you help me?” she pleaded. She rocked on her feet, and clawed at her scabby arms. “I am Allah’s widow, and I need to get home.”
I could see why people at the bus stop were jumpy. In the current tensions, it is not politic to act unstable, dress as an Arab woman does, announce that you are Allah’s widow, and then try to get on a busy bus. But I knew just enough to conclude that this woman was probably schizophrenic, not a suicide bomber. She confirmed it when she said, “Please don’t call the police; they just take me away.”
So I just started to talk to her. I suppose I was just trying to see through the faults, and find a beauty in her face. Our baptismal promise describes it better: somewhere in this anguished woman was a dignity inherent (by God’s grace) in every human being, and as a Christian (not as a priest), I was to seek it, and serve it. She ran to me because of my uniform, but in that moment she needed a Christian who would be that second sort of artist, for every Christian has been healed by the grace of Christ, our second sort of artist.
So I talked. The bus did not come. She told me her name, and then told me she was trying to get to her home a few miles away. A group home, as it turned out, where a nurse was, who had her medicine, and that would help her. She showed me her key, and slowly, she calmed down. At one point, I looked over her shoulder, and about 20 faces were staring at us. I realized in that moment, that I was making a witness to the Risen One by simply seeing a dignity in this woman. I was testifying, in a small way, to the resurrection of Christ. To go to the heart of the Gospel, I was loving this woman as Christ had loved me. Not only did I abide in Christ’s love, now this woman did, too.
I am not being self-congratulatory here. The beauty of the simple command repeated today, “Love one another as I have loved you,” is that it is so simple anyone can do it. The key is to simply love the one before us, not bother to wonder if the person before us is lovable. Kierkegaard puts it well: “It is a sad upside-down-ness, altogether too common, to talk on and on about how the object of love should be before it can be loved.” That’s what the first sort of artist does. But the Christ who calls us to be witnesses is the second sort of artist, who follows this advice: “The task is not to find the lovable object, but to find the object before you lovable—whether given or chosen—and to be able to continue find this one lovable, no matter how that person changes.”
And these words of Kierkegaard hit me like a ton of bricks: “To love is to love the person one sees. As the apostle John reminds us: ‘The one who does not love his brother or sister whom we see, cannot love God whom we cannot see.’”
I suppose all I did at that bus stop was see the woman before me. God knows that if I had my iPod earbuds in, or the cellphone to my ear, or the Blackberry in my hand, I would’ve walked right by her. But I could see her, so I loved her, as I have been loved.
And because I could see her, and love her, then those around her could see her. I am not sure they could love her, but they did not fear her. The bus finally came, the door opened, and I sensed they were making room for her to get on. I decided in that moment that I was going to get on the bus with her, just to make sure she made it home (it’s never hard to blow off a Diocesan meeting in service of the Gospel), but the woman said to me, “that’s okay. I’ll be alright.” The next man in line gave me a look that seemed to say, “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
In this season of Resurrection, I know that we all have our usual doubts about whether it really happened, that Jesus was really raised from the dead. The woman at the bus stop reminded me that the resurrection is not to be prehended into our intellect academically or philosophically, but through action. Simply we are to “practice Resurrection,” through loving each other as we have been loved by God, our second sort of artist. Our Christian faith goes astray when Resurrection is simply believed in, and not practiced. In truth, my experience is that Resurrection only becomes a bedrock belief if practiced. We don’t think our way into a new way of acting; we act our way into a new way of thinking. When we practice resurrection, the doubts seem to vanish and the belief takes hold.
So, love one another, as Christ has loved us. Turn off the iPod. Close the cellphone. Stop with the Blackberry. Turn off the TV. Get out of your car. Walk the streets as Christ did. Stand a post on the edges of the respectable places where we live, right where the darkness laps up against the light of good restaurants and organic markets, strong schools and high property values. Look, and love the one whom you see. Practice Resurrection. And abide, remain, even marinate, in God’s eternal love, and allow yourself to be painted by that Second Sort of Artist on the canvas of abundant life.
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