Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. William Shakespeare
NO, IT’S NOT SCRIPTURE, but it’s close enough. In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, suitors from all over the world come to Belmont to seek the hand of fair Portia. These men cross continents and great seas for the beautiful rich prize that she is. That, and the mint her dead father left behind. Each of them is also put to a test to see who is worthy of her love. They must choose correctly between three small mystery boxes. One of the boxes has her picture in it. Whoever chooses this box gets to marry her and be master of her great estate.
One box is made of gold, another silver, and the third is made of lead. On each box is an inscription. On the gold box it reads, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.” On the silver box, “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.” The lead box bears more of a warning than it does a promise. It reads, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” Predictably, most of the suitors choose either gold or silver. Only one chooses wisely, a young dreamer from Venice named Bassanio. He seems to understand something about the true nature of love.
He chooses the lead box, with all its dullness, all its lack of beauty and ornament, and all its foreboding. He waxes long and wise about the “outward show”, about things that have a rich appearance outside but hide something false within, things that have the appearance of beauty but are of little substance. “The world is still deceived with ornament,” he says. At last, he turns to the lead box and says,
Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; And here choose I; joy be the consequence! —Act III, ii, 106-107
In love, Christ told us plainly what to expect. He too showed us how to choose. He showed us the depth of investment that had to be made. In language plainer and more eloquent than a thousand Shakespeares, and with the same resonance perhaps as the inscription on Portia’s lead box (including the Elizabethan English), Christ revealed the nature and severity of true love when he said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Joy be the consequence!
Even as God does, love reduces, or distills to essences. It has the power to reduce me to my lowest common denominator, to the very essence of who I am. It is in this reduction, this negation of the imaginary self, that my life truly begins. Washed clean of all counterfeit and pretension, I am lifted out of my own obscurity. I can love my neighbor as myself, because love has dominion in me at last, and the more I love, the more present God becomes. The more present God becomes, the greater my joy. I can love my neighbor purely, because I know myself purely. My neighbor and I are drawn together in the great magnetism of God’s love. We enter by way of community into the pleasure of the Lord, the Eden prepared for us. Choose wisely.
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