Wounds and Claws and All

Wounds and Claws and All--April 19, 2018

"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory." [Colossians 3:1-4]

My mother had a saying I recall from my formative years.  She would say about genuine love, "Love doesn't see less--it sees more.  And because it sees more, it is willing to see less."

I always took that to be a sort of corrective to the slogan that "Love is blind."  And maybe what we really mean is that infatuation is blind--because it is certainly possible to be infatuated with someone and therefore to be totally and willfully ignorant of the glaring flaws, or rude streaks, or deep issues, someone else is dealing with.  The junior high school girl who is just smitten with the boy who has asked her to the winter dance can only see his exquisitely gel-fixed hair, or the fact that he's one of the popular kids; she doesn't notice that he is always bragging, rarely thoughtful, and doesn't listen well to her at all.  The guy eyeing the cherry-red sports car on display at the dealership can only think about how beautiful it is, how powerful its engine is, and how luxurious the leather seats are compared to his lackluster used sedan, and he becomes consumed with the desire to have it--but simply ignores the fact that it costs far more than he can reasonably budget on car payments, gets terrible mileage, and doesn't have room in the back for his kids' car seats.  The young doe-eyed couple staring longingly into each others eyes as they get engaged, each sees only the admirable, nice qualities in the other, but pretends that the irresponsibility, the short temper, the drinking habit, the penchant for lying, and whatever else just aren't there.  We do that, we human beings--we get infatuated with someone or something, and then we deliberately choose to ignore warning signs, red flags, and glaring problems.  And worst of all, our culture has a way of smiling over it all and just saying with a shrug, "Hey, what are you gonna go? Love is blind."

My mother's saying was like a set of corrective lenses for all that soft-focus schmaltz and willful ignorance.  The point, I believe, is that genuine love is able to see deeper--to see both the unpleasant things in a person, the flaws, the troubles, the weaknesses, the wounds and the claws alike--and to love the other anyway, which amounts to saying, "I am well aware of these areas in the other person, but am willing to love them nevertheless."  In that sense, as my mother would say, "Love is willing to see less--that is, to overlook the rough edges while still acknowledging that they are there--because it sees more."  So instead of the junior high girl at the winter dance only focusing on the fact that her date is one of the popular boys while ignoring that he is unbearably self-absorbed (that's the blindness of infatuation), it's more like the eighth-grade girl who goes to the dance with the kind-hearted, thoughtful boy despite the fact that she's six inches taller than he is and that his face is breaking out in acne.  She is not unaware of the pimples or height difference--she just is able to see deeper, and because of that she doesn't let the outward appearance matter.   That's what it means to see more out of love... and therefore to be willing to see less.  And that is wildly different from the willful ignorance of infatuation.

It's with that in mind that we need to hear these words from Colossians about "setting our minds on things that are above, not things that are on earth," because otherwise we are ripe for colossal misunderstanding.  See, I suspect that our brains have been trained to hear this talk of "setting your mind on things that are above" as an excuse not to care about what happens to others in this life, or permission for apathy toward the needs of others in the world.  I suspect this because for a lot of Christian history, that's exactly how those texts were used.  "Don't ruffle any feathers over the injustices around you--after all, what really matters is that one day we'll all be 'up above' there in heaven, so just pipe down about the way someone else is getting stepped on."  Or, "Just accept your lot in life, and hope that one day things will be better after you die--you know, 'up above.'"  That was the heart of the bastardized version of the Christian gospel that Southern slave-owners wanted to instill in their slaves:  "Yes, things are tough now, but just keep quiet and focus on 'the things that are above'... now, back to work."  And it was the heart of the distorted religion of the self-described "moderate" white preachers and pastors during the Civil Rights era, the ones who said to Dr. King, "Look... Christianity isn't really about doing anything now with the injustices, hatreds, and ills of the world--it's all about what will happen one day 'up above,' and you and your movement need to just wait longer."  Our own history as Christians is tangled up with this misreading of Scripture, because honestly, it feels a whole lot more comfortable to just tell someone else, "Wait, and just think about heaven," rather than finding the courage to face the police dogs... or change the system that kept people enslaved... or call out wrongs and our complicity in them in our own day.  It is really, really tempting to justify apathy with this verse from Colossians and say, "We're focusing on things that are above... you know, about how nice it will be in heaven one day... so we are ignoring the suffering or hatred around us (and within us) because we don't want to deal with it."  That's not genuine love talking--that's infatuation.  

And more to the point, it's not what Colossians is talking about.  

The early church didn't willfully ignore the sufferings or troubles of the world around them, and they didn't just say, "Let's pretend everything's fine and the room isn't on fire."  And they most certainly didn't say, "I'm so focused on the things that are 'above' that I can't be troubled to care about the needs of my neighbor here on earth."  No, not when Jesus taught his followers to pray, "Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth--the way it is already done in heaven."  See, that's just it: Jesus teaches his followers to focus on what is "above" in a sense, but not in a way that gives us permission not to care for the people around us while we just hunker down in isolation until the afterlife.  In the pattern of prayer that Jesus offers, we are called to look at how God's reign and will are already perfectly done "in heaven" (however you want to talk about picturing that), and then to ask for God to bring the same love, provision, justice, peace, and abundance here... as in, right where we are, "on earth, as it is in heaven."  Being focused "on the things that are above," then, doesn't mean that we ignore what is happening around us right now, but rather that we keep God's vision of a beloved community--where everybody gets to eat, and nobody has to live in fear--so much in front of our eyes that we cannot help but work for that kind of beloved community "on earth as it is in heaven."  And because we see deeper into God's vision of a beloved community for all, we are able to love the world, and the people in it, as it is right now--neither ignoring its brokenness nor pretending everything is fine.  It is, as my mother would say it, "seeing more," and therefore not getting hung up on the glaring troubles, aches, hurts of the world in which we live.

It's in that same sense that we have to hear Colossians' claim that we already "have died, and your lives are hidden with Christ in God."  The apostle is obviously not saying that we are ghosts, zombies, or not really "here" living this live in this present moment.  But rather it's again a "seeing more" kind of thing. Despite the fact that the world still thinks it has power over us, or can make us afraid or intimidated, Colossians reminds us--as Paul would say to the Romans as well--that we were already baptized into Christ's death, and that the worst the powers of the day can do to us has already been overcome in Jesus' resurrection.  We don't have to be ruled by fear anymore because our lives are in Christ.  So we can go ahead and give ourselves away in this life, here and now, for the sake of others' needs, because we are no longer stuck in self-preservation mode.  We are able to see more--to see that our lives are already held in Christ where not even death itself can get to them--and because of that, we can "see less," that is, no longer to be ruled by fear of the scary things out there in the world.  That's how genuine love--for, as Wittgenstein says, "It is love that believes the resurrection"--teaches us to see.  We see "more"--the reality of Christ's resurrection and our lives bound up with him--and therefore do not have to be ruled by what we see here around us--the fear, the hatred, the violence, and the brokenness of the world.  And because we see "more" of how God envisions the beloved community, we can love the world as it is right now, full of greedy and mean stinkers like us as it is, but to love it as it is enough to care about the needs and hurts in it, and to work to let God's Reign be seen among us until things are "on earth as they are in heaven."

Today, then, see more.  See "the things that are above"--see the way God's will is already done in heaven and that our lives are already hidden with the risen Christ--so that you can I can see the world around us as it really is, wounds and claws and all, and still more, to see what God has in mind to do to create the beloved community here "on earth as it is in heaven." Let us see the way love does.

Lord God, your will be done here, around me and within me, as it is already in your realm.  And let us see the way you love the world so that we can love it as it is, unafraid and with eyes wide open.