“Do you love me?” Tevye asks his wife Golda. She answers: “Do I love you? For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow … After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?”
Tevye persists. Golda still evades the question, thinking it’s silly: “For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him; fought him, starved with him. Twenty-five years my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?” But Tevye wants a direct answer: “Then do you love me?” Golda finally relents: “I suppose I do.” And Tevye responds: “And I suppose I love you too.” They both finally come to a conclusion: “It doesn’t change a thing. But even so, after twenty-five years, it’s nice to know.”
They had not been verbally expressive of their love. But their commitment to each other, their mutual service … their actions disclosed that love did exist. We may say, “That is enough. Let our actions speak.” Yet, after twenty-five years, they do come to realize that “it’s nice to know.”
There’s a certain power about naming something that exists. For when it is named, its reality is purposefully recognized and is brought “front-and-center” in one’s consciousness.
My wife Grace and I do our own version of the Tevye-Golda verbal interchange. Some may find it corny. I don’t care. When we go through the routine, when we throw at each other our “complaints” about what we do for the other, it helps me to appreciate what we have. “It’s nice to know.”
I just wonder whether Jesus, in addition to the deeper theological truths he wanted to teach, also had something of this personal touch in mind when he kept asking Peter, “Do you love me?” (John 21.15-19)
I am pretty sure Jesus knew that he loved Peter. He gave his life for him, just as he did for the world. But Peter, after denying Jesus thrice and going back to his old vocation as a fisherman, may have concluded that his actions had belied his love for Jesus. It was all over for him.
Jesus’ question, it may be suggested, was not for Jesus’ sake but for Peter’s own self-discovery. As Peter is forced to declare his love for his Lord, it probably also forced him to consider how, despite the times he stumbled, he still was a follower of Jesus. When the reality dawns upon him, he will be ready to continue in the calling that he received from the Lord.
“It’s nice to know.”
—Keith Y. Jainga