Sunday 12 March 2017

Lenten Devotion - March 10

March 10, 2017

(excerpted from free indeed: devotions for Lent 2017, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis)



The Tenth Commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbour's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.

What is this? or What does this mean?

We are to fear and love God, so that we do not entice, force, or steal away from our neighbours their spouses, household workers, or livestock, but instead urge them to stay and fulfill their responsibilities to our neighbours.

To Ponder:

The Wife:     I am yours to do with as you will, Peter Semyonych. ... 
                    If you want me, open your arms now and I will come to you. ... 
                    If you love me, turn your back and I will leave, and never see or speak to you again....  
                    I await your decision.
    
       - Neil Simon, "The Seduction"

Real Love:

I played The Wife.  I was a freshman in high school, and Joe, a senior, played The Seducer, Peter.  I kind of coveted Joe, to be honest.  He was beautiful.  Every night, at the end of our scene, I got to put my hand on his chest and say, "No."  And then I'd launch into the table-turning monologue, where the wife reforms the seducer by giving him a choice.

The scene has stayed with me and has taken on new meaning with time.  In the scene, Peter is both sincerely romantic and undeniably sinister.  He is a serial adulterer who claims to love the woman he seduces.  The wife, unnamed, changes everything by naming this truth: coveting someone and loving someone are two very different things.  To covet a person is to objectify them.  To love a person is to realize they are a real human being.  Not an object.  Not a prize.  Real.  When women become real to Peter, he finds he can no longer treat them as objects to be won.  He can't be The Seducer anymore.  

By the end of the play, I'd come to love my friend Joe.  I didn't covet him anymore: he was real to me.

Prayer:

God, thank you for making us real and free.  Use us to work against all coveting and objectification of your creation.  In Jesus' name. Amen.

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