Friday, January 04, 2008
The Gospel of Jesus: Why William Shakespeare was a prophet
The following extract is taken from 'Searching for God knows what' by Donald Miller. Beware: Very extremely long entry ahead, with somewhat more difficult language at times.
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Do you know where I found what I believe is the most beautiful explanation for the gospel of Jesus ever presented? It's been under our noses for hundreds of years, right there in the most famous scene in all of English literature. You've probably rented the movie, and you studied it in high school. You may even have some of the lines memorized, or you might have played a character in its performance onstage. The greatest art I've ever seen that explains how beautiful it is to cast our hope for redemption upon Christ is the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. ....
... In this scene, Juliet may be considered the Bard's Christ figure, and Romeo the embodiment of the church, thus presenting Shakespeare's opinion of a Christian conversion experience. I realise it sounds far-fetched, and that I may be reading theology into a play that is simply a love story, but upon closer examination we see Shakespeare borrowing exclusively from the themes of Christ's love for the church, even going so far as to leave his own story, that of Romeo's wanting of Juliet, to enter completely into the unique complexities of Christ's interaction with the church. .....
..... Reading the balcony scene through the lens of an Elizabethan audience reveals what I think is a powerful double entendre, one that suggests not only a sort of negotiation of love between Juliet and Romeo, but a kind of invitation from Christ to the church, to you and me, walking us, as it were, on the heart path a person would need to traffic in order to know Christ and be saved from his broken nature. Without question, the precepts Juliet presents Romeo may be broken down as identical matches of the theology John Calvin penned not too many years before Shakespeare wrote the play. And it is these principles set in the context of a dramatic love story that truly bring the implications of the gospel of Jesus to life.
The Gospel of Jesus
Again, Romeo is standing beneath Juliet's balcony, having wished for her to step onto her perch above the courtyard, bright as the sun, putting an end to the moon, when his wish is granted. Juliet slips out the doors of her bedroom, looks out on the evening with a sigh, and leans her gentle frame against the railing. Romeo is silent beneath her beauty when Juliet speaks:
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
In these lines Juliet is expressing her love for Romeo, but also stating her understanding that the two shall never be one as long as he is called a Montague and she is called a Capulet. In a monologue Juliet would soon deliver, asking, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," the playwright borrows from the trouble of man's nature and the duality of his goodness and his brokenness, one being compatible for a relationship with God, and the other set in enmity, unable to mingle with the pure nature of God. Juliet asks Romeo to doff, or to disavow, his name, and if he won't, then swear his love, and she will no longer be a Capulet. This means the two of them will have to meet within some other name, and for allegorical purposes (though questionable whether Shakespeare intended this much), within some other nature. In the context of the story of Romeo and Juliet, this idea makes complete sense. The two want to be together, but their names keep them apart, so Juliet asks Romeo to throw off his name so the two may unite.
It struck me as I read these lines, however, that no less of a proposition would be made by Christ in the Gospel of Luke:
Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. (14:25-26 NKJV)
I used to read this passage and think of Jesus as difficult and strict and, to be honest, I didn't like Him for saying it. But when I saw it in the context of the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet, the same ideas being expressed in an effort for two people to unite, it became something different, and I confess, I wouldn't want the language to be any less strict. Language less strict might suggest love less pure. True love, love in its highest form, must cost the participants everything. Both parties would have to be willing to give up everything in order to have each other.
In exchange for what Scripture calls repentance, by renouncing our nature, by admitting our own brokenness, we may take all of Christ, identifying ourselves with His righteousness. We see this beautifully portrayed in the words of Juliet, who, after musing about Romeo's dual nature, delivers the thrust of her invitation:
Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
Should Romeo take Juliet up on her proposition, he will not gain love for love's sake, but rather Juliet herself. This idea is all biblical but the stuff of poets. The playwright understood that Christ's invitation was not an offer of heaven or mansions or money; it was, rather, Himself. In multiple contexts Jesus claims we shall be one with Him even as He and the disciples are one and the Trinity before them are One. Just as, if a wife travels away from her family on business, the family feels her absence in their hearts, so we are to have this kind of oneness with Christ. And just as a sheep knows the voice of its shepherd, so are we to know the voice of Christ, and just as a lost child in a store feels fear and pain in his parent's absence, so are we to feel disoriented in the absence of God, and comfort in our relationship with Jesus. This, I believe, is what the Bible means when it speaks of our oneness: It isn't a technicality, it is an actual relationship.
Romeo hears these words from Juliet and understands the implications of her invitation. He believes that if he denies his name, she shall deliver herself and the two shall become one. And this is where Shakespeare leaves the parallel elements of love story and picks up the pen of Calvin. Romeo, speaking to Juliet, says:
I take thee at thy word.
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz'd;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
Here Romeo indicates he believes what Juliet is saying is true. This confession of belief is crucial to Shakespeare's understanding of the proper recipient of love. There can be no doubting, no mistrust; one must have complete faith in the other that nothing is being held back. In our spirituality, we see nothing different. No less than two hundred times Scripture speaks of the importance of belief. "I take thee at thy word," Romeo says, meaning he believes Juliet's invitation, that she will do what she says she will do. Anything less than this complete trust from Romeo would not be love, anything less than pure trust would be a kind of careful negotiation. And careful negotiation isn't love. A person must be willing to be dashed on the rocks or made the fool in exchange for a relationship in order for pure love to take place. And in our spirituality, anything less indicates a question of God's character.
These ideas played out in the pages of Scripture would have Christ asking that we "follow" Him, a term that in the Greek would also indicate a clinging to Him or imitation of Him. Christ, in short, asks us to give everything, all our false redemption in the lifeboat, all our false ideas about who God is, all our trust in something other than God to redeem us. In so doing, we die to our broken natures in exchange for His perfect nature, and find a unification with Him that will allow God to see us as one, just as a husband is one with a wife.
And great attention must be given to Roemo's response to Juliet. Romeo does not say yes, that he will change his name; rather, he understands that he has no power to change his nature, and he looks to Juliet and submits all power to her. Romeo says: "Call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz'd." If Romeo is to be made new, if his name is to be changed, ... it will be on the whim and wish of Juliet. If she calls him love, then he will be called love, both his name and his nature changed, made new. Indeed, a few lines later Juliet would call to Romeo, and Romeo would remind his muse that his name has been changed, and he will no longer answer to Romeo.
In our spirituality the idea is no less critical. Paul would indicate we have no ability to do good on our own. Now certainly we have the ability to do good things, to do nice things for people and even for God, but Paul spoke of a problem at the very core of our nature, that even our desire to submit to God, a good desire indeed, would have to be stimulated by God Himself. ... In this way, Romeo, as well as the whore that it the church of God, bends itself before its muse in complete submission, asking only God, who has given Himself, to invite her into this dramatic story of love, passion, and union. The strength is all His, and the gift is all ours.
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... And yet the poet is not finished. The agreement has been made between Romeo and Juliet, but they are far from unified. In any other story, the credits would roll, but Shakespeare has more to teach us, and the true beauty is yet to come.
Unity in death
In the pages of Scripture the desire for the afterlife does not involve gaining a kind of euphoria over troubles, exactly, but rather the opportunity to be with God. The euphoria over troubles comes as an afterthought, but it isn't the aim. The writers of the Bible seem to want to go and be with Christ the way the most intimate and passionate lovers, when separated, desire their reunion.
In this way, Christ is our Juliet. What we feel for Him now is but a shadow of what we will feel for Him in His glory. If you can imagine the greatest love of your life, multiplied by millions, speaking affirmation into your soul, you will have in your mind the awareness of Christ and the community of the Trinity. All the self-awareness that occured to us in God's absence will dissolve as Christ's love tells us who we are. In His presence we will not hate ourselves, second-guess ourselves, or compare ourselves to others; but rather, our lives will be filled with the gratitude of His presence, and we will know for the first time the glory of being human. Just as each member of the Trinity is thankful for the other, just as it was in the Garden between man and his Maker, it will be between you and me, and between us and the Godhead.
As such, there is still great trouble between Romeo and Juliet. While their love has been expressed, a certain poetic agreement has been made: The two cannot be unified because of the enduring strife between their families. They are still, for allegorical purposes, sludging their way through a fallen system. In this way, you and I must be unified with Christ in His death, and only in our actual deaths will we go and be with Him.
Our spirituality would indicate that when man sinned against God, the wages of sin was death because, as has been said, no life can exist outside God, as He is the author and giver of life. Scripture indicates Christ took the sin of the world upon Himself and was crucified on a cross to satisfy God's necessary wrath toward that which is evil. He did this, Scripture says, because He loves us. As we die to ourselves, doff our names, we find He gives Himself to us just as Juliet to Romeo and we become one with Him, so that, like a couple newly married, God looks at us and sees one Being, His Son, united, as it were, with His bride, alive in His purity, just as Romeo was made new by Juliet. Christ's death, again, was not a technicality by which we are covered by grace, but rather a passionate and inconceivable act of kindness and altruism and love stemming from God's desire to be reunited with His creation.
In keeping with the biblical narrative, Shakespeare painfully demands the couple's ultimate unity take place in their deaths. The two have tried at length to be together, but the rage between the families only intensifies as the play carries on toward its tragic end. A trick is planned: Juliet will fake her death, and the two will run off together. But Romeo is fooled by the seemingly dead body of his love, drinks from a poison himself, asking death to be the guide that leads him to his love. ...
In Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film Romeo and Juliet, ... ...Their painful struggle is at an end as the two are thought to be united in heaven, where there is a wedding in waiting. The camera then lifts upward from the bodies to reveal Romeo and Juliet's tender limbs gently folded in an embrace, their forms laid amid a thousand burning candles that, as the camera lifts farther, reveal the image of a cross, the two lovers, finally together in peace, one purifying the other, now enjoying the beauty of their companionship uninterrupted by the enmity that once ripped them apart.
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The last time I watched this dramatic scene unfold I was preparing a series of lectures on the theological implications of the play, considering all of this in academic terms. And yet as I did this, late in the evening and alone in my room, I was suddenly struck with the power of Paul's words in his letter to the Romans. I confess I was moved to tears at the implications of his statements, set in the context of a love story to explain all love stories. Paul would passionately present to the Romans these beautiful ideas:
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! (5:9 NIV)
For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (5:10 NIV)
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. (6:5 NIV)
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. (6:8 NIV)
-I had known in my head that these principles we understand, these beautiful theological ideas, were plot twists in a story of love, a story of God reaching out to mankind, but I don't think it was until I watched that final scene of Romeo and Juliet, with Paul's letter to the Romans open on my desk, that our spirituality was in fact a love story for me. This letter was God whispering in my ear that I no longer had to perform in a circus, I no longer had to defend myself in the sinking lifeboat, that God had come to earth, made Himself human, taken the world's sin upon Himself, and was crucified for me, so that His glory could shine through me, and I could be made whole.
And I go back to Eden, in my mind, to imagine what it is going to be like for you and me in heaven. I suppose it will be a new and marvelous paradise, where love will exist in its purest form, where the beauty of diversity will be understood for the first time, where self-hatred will fade into an agreement with God about the splendour of His creation, where physical beauty will no longer be used as a commodity, where you and I will feel free in our sincere love for others, ourselves, and God. And I supposed it will be in heaven that you and I actually understand each other, all the drama of the lifeboat a distant memory, all the arguments we had seeming so inconsequential, and the glory of God before us in all His majesty, shining like sunlight through our souls. This will be a good thing, my friend.
... We can trust our fate to a jury of peers in the lifeboat, we can work to accumulate wealth, buy beauty under a surgeon's knife, panic for our identities under the fickle friendship of culture, and still die in separation from the one voice we really needed to hear.
To me, it is more beautiful to trust Christ, deny our fathers and refuse our names, die to ourselves and live again in Him, raised up in the wave of His resurrection, baptized and made new in the purity of His righteousness. I hope you will join me in clinging to Him.
Time, which was God's friend, is now His enemy, and you and I are going to end with it soon. If you will lift a glass of wine with me, I would like to remember Him: Here is to Christ for making us, to Christ for rescuing us, and to Christ, who gives hope for tomorrow.
O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick.
Unknown at 8:49 pm
God is perfect, we are sinful, so there is a great gap between us. We may try to feel better through work, relationships, sport or religion. But all our attempts fail, because we have ignored the real problem - turning our back on God.
Jesus took the consequences of our self-centredness by giving up his life on the cross. He proved he had broken sin's destructive power by rising from the dead. Jesus offers us freedom from guilt and a bridge back to God.
