By Jim Nichols

Art forms can expose us to truths in unexpected ways; sometimes they can expose truths about God. DaVinci’s Last Supper stimulates understandings about Jesus and the disciples in a way that other formats miss. 

Music is one of the powerful carriers of insights into God. Occasionally, words and notes form an amazing parallel to the Bible itself. One wonders if Jesus, Tevye, and Golde knew each other.

Fiddler on the Roof was a 1964 Broadway musical (1971 film) introducing us to the milkman Tevye in early twentieth century Imperial Russia. He and his wife (Golde) have three young daughters, each of whom will marry husbands who are progressively less desirable to their father. Tevye and Golde followed “tradition” and are twenty-five years into a successful arranged marriage, but their daughters have found love as a marriage basis. This presents a life-changing challenge to Tevye; he does not understand married love.

One of the show’s pivotal songs is a discussion between Tevye and Golde about their daughter Hodel. Tevye speaks first:

“He’s a good man, Golde. I like him. And what’s more important, Hodel likes him. Hodel loves him. So, what can we do? It’s a new world . . . A new world. Love. Golde. . .Do you love me?”
(Golde) “Do I what?”
((Tevye) “Do you love me?”
(Golde) “Do I love you? With our daughters getting married and this trouble in the town. You’re upset; you’re worn out. Go inside, go lie down! Maybe it’s indigestion.”
(Tevye) “Golde, I’m asking you a question. . . Do you love me?”
(Golde) “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?”

This wonderful and show-stopping song continues as Tevye wrestles with the concept of love, even though, as Golde illustrates, they have demonstrated love all the time in their marriage.

Tevye is coming to understand that the evidence of love is a series of specific actions that demonstrate it.

In the twentieth chapter of the book of John there is a fascinating and similar exchange between Jesus and Peter. 

This is one of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Some of his disciples (including Peter), as they often do, have returned to the water to fish. It was an unsuccessful trip on the Sea of Tiberias, and they were about to give up for the night. As day was just breaking, from the boat they saw a lone (apparent) stranger on the shore who shouted that they needed to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. When they followed that suggestion, there were so many fish that they struggled to bring them into the boat. It was now that they realized that the stranger was Jesus himself.

When they got to shore, they saw that Jesus was using a charcoal fire to cook some fish which they all shared. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Scripture says this was the third time that Jesus had appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. If any of them thought that previous appearances had been a ghost of some kind, now they realized this was a live man who was eating fish.

After that meal, we read of the exchange between Jesus and Peter. It sounds quite similar to the conversation between Tevye and Golde. Jesus asks three times, “Do you love me?” Peter, with increasing frustration, keeps affirming his love verbally and Jesus replies with four different actions for Peter. “Feed my lambs.” “Tend my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.” “Follow me.” Very few wasted words according to scripture, each of them describing specific actions that would illustrate Peter’s love. 

The take home message from both the song and the scripture is that love, rather than being just a feeling, has identifiable actions. Those include, among others, patience, kindness, humility, and forgiveness. This fundamental teaching from I Corinthians 13 should not become so overly familiar to us that we miss its power.

Jim Nichols is a retired Abilene Christian University biology professor and current hospital chaplain