Song of Solomon: Talking Sex in Church (August 30 2015)

Homily Yr B Proper 22, August 30 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  James 1.17-27; Mark 7; Song of Solomon

We don’t get to read that in church very often!

The Song of Songs, sometimes called the Song of Solomon, is one of the most surprising books of the Bible.  We don’t hear it read very often, in fact, the Song of Songs only shows up once in our three year cycle of Sunday readings.  So I thought we should seize the opportunity to take a closer look at it this morning.

The Song of Songs is a collection of love poetry.  It is in fact a poem in which a man and a woman who are deeply in love call back and forth to one another, somewhat like the way we read it together this morning.  “The voice of my beloved!” calls the woman, “Look he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.  My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.”  And her male lover responds, “Arise, my love, my fair one and come away.”

The poetry is beautiful and sensual.  It overflows with sexual imagery, so much so that among the Hebrew people, young boys weren’t allowed to read the Song of Songs, because the images were considered to be too intense.  As we read it together this morning, some of you might have been wondering to yourselves what in the world this piece of erotic love poetry is doing in our Bible.  There is no other book of the Bible quite like it.  But I truly believe that this book, this poem, is a gift, a gift from God.  And in a culture like ours where sex is so often separated from loving relationships and even used as a marketing tool to sell more stuff, the perspective of the Song of Songs is something that we need to hear.

Now we weren’t able to read all of the Song of Songs together this morning, but if you were to go home and read the whole poem, it would give you a series of pictures of the relationship between two people, images which reveal not just the joy, but also the struggles, the longing, the heart-break and the complexity of this relationship which we call love.  Three times in the text, the woman warns her female companions not to awaken or arouse love until it’s ready.  Love is sacred, beautiful and mysterious, but it’s not to be treated lightly or frivolously.

As part of my reading on the Song of Songs I came across an article by a man named Nickolas Hiemstra, and he made the point that we don’t always get this sense of the sacred and spiritual nature of love in our everyday conversations. In the English language especially, we’re pretty cavalier with the way we use the word love.  I love my school, I love my new shirt, I love my wife and I love to eat hamburgers.  You see how the word love can lose some of its meaning by the way we use it so freely.

But in the Hebrew language in which the Song of Songs was written over 2000 years ago, in the language of Jesus, the language of Paul, there are three different words for love that are used in the poem.  The first of these is “raya” the Hebrew word which denotes friend or companion, even soul-mate.  “You are altogether beautiful my love, my raya,” says the man’s voice, “there is no flaw in you.”  The love between the man and the woman is first of all an expression of raya, of companionship, of wanting to be together.  Friendship is at the core of their relationship.

But their relationship blossoms beyond friendship into another Hebrew word for love which is “ahavah”.   Ahavah is the love of deep affection where both your mind and your heart yearn to be with the other.  It is loving with all your heart, with all your soul all your mind and all your strength.  It is the love of the will, a passion which becomes a commitment which becomes a decision to join your life to the life of another.  The root word in Hebrew of ahavah is the word for “I give”.  Ahavah then is love as giving, as a mutual giving of one’s self to the other.  In the Song of Songs, ahavah is portrayed as strength and endurance:  “Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.  Many waters cannot quench ahavah, neither can floods drown it.”

But we’re not finished.  There is still a third Hebrew word which we translate as love, and that is “dod”.  Dod is the physical, sexual element of a relationship.  “Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth!” proclaims the young woman, “For your dod, your love, is better than wine.” 

So here we have the threefold meaning of love which is expressed in the poetry of the Song of Songs:  raya, the love of friendship and companionship, the desire to be together which is at the core of the relationship;  ahavah, the willful love, the commitment, the joining of one’s life to another; and dod, the passion and intimacy of sexual relations, the physical embodiment of the love that two people have for each other. 

Now all three of these, raya, ahavah and dod, all of these are good.  All three are gifts from God.  God is the one who created us with the capacity and desire for friendship, commitment and sexual intimacy.   And the book of Genesis tells us that when God had created us this way, he blessed us and saw that it was very good.  Picture each of these loves, if you like, as a flame, the flame of friendship, the flame of commitment and the flame of sexual intimacy.  The message of the Song of Songs is that when two people can put all three of these flames together, that’s when you get a roaring fire.  This, I think, is what Jesus meant when he talks about marriage as the two becoming one flesh.  The lovers who join themselves together sexually are giving physical expression to their spiritual union which is based on the giving of themselves to each other in companionship and commitment.  Our sexual acts become spiritual acts, the expression of and participation in that sacred, beautiful and mysterious reality that we call love.  It has something to do with the way we were created by a loving God, in the image of a God who is love.

Now this loving thing isn’t always going to be easy.  At one point the woman in Song of Songs turns in longing to her beloved, but he’s not there, and her heart aches.  Love isn’t always easy.  We know that.

Perhaps that’s why we often try to take shortcuts.  Maybe that’s why sometimes we try to have relationships based on only one of the three flames of love.  Anyone ever heard of Ashley Madison? 

When you have affairs or one night stands you may have the flame of dod, the sexual relationship, but the flames of raya and ahavah aren’t there.  No companionship, no commitment.  No wonder that people are often left feeling empty and unfulfilled.  No wonder that people get hurt.

Or we have friends with benefits, a relationship which tries to capture the flames of friendship and sexual intimacy, but at the same time puts up strict barriers to prevent the flame of commitment, because that seems to be the risky part.

Or, perhaps there’s a marriage where there’s still commitment, both the husband and wife are going to stick it out for the long haul, but the friendship’s gone, and they haven’t had sex for years.  Commitment is good; but there’s not much fire in that relationship, and there won’t be until the flames of raya and dod are rekindled.

Love ain’t easy.  Loving in a messy world that is at times beautiful and at times broken can be complicated.  Loving people who are at times saints and at times sinners can leave us vulnerable.  Our yearning for intimacy finds expression in many different ways, some of which are healthy and some of which are not.  But love at its best, the way God intended it to be, is sacred, beautiful and mysterious, a deeply spiritual way of knowing and being known, of relating to each other. God has given us the gift of love, love as friendship, love as commitment, love as sexual intimacy, love as a roaring fire when we can put all three flames together.  May we honour the way God created us in the ways that we love each other.

Amen. 

Did David Get Off Too Easily? Justice and Mercy (August 2, 2015)

Homily:  Yr B P18, August 2 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Sam 11.26-12.13; Ps 51; Eph 4.1-16; Jn 6.24-35

On Thursday night, I witnessed a murder.  I went to see the 9^th Hour Theatre Company production of Arthur Miller’s The Creation of the World and Other Business, directed by our own Jonathan Harris.  It is the story of Adam and Eve, and their children Cain and Abel, an old, old story as retold by Arthur Miller.  And the climatic act of the play, as in chapter four of the book of Genesis, is the murder of Abel by his brother Cain.  This gruesome act raises questions of justice.  How should Cain be punished?  Who is to blame?  Is God to blame for creating a world in which such things can happen?  What are the consequences of sin and evil?

The play doesn’t answer these questions.  It simply ends there, with a dark acknowledgement of the shadow side of the human condition, and a plea for mercy.  The story from the book of Genesis does continue however, and it continues with an unraveling.  That first act of violence leads to more acts of violence, generation after generation until by the days of Noah, the Lord looks upon the earth and sees that the earth is filled with violence, and that the wickedness of humankind is great, and so he sends a flood to wipe humanity off the face of the earth, saving only a remnant with which to begin again.

Even in the world of the story, the great flood was, alas, only a temporary reprieve.  We were reminded of that last Sunday when we heard the story of David and Bathsheba.  How King David abuses his power by committing adultery with another man’s wife, against her will.  How he lies and tries to cover it up unsuccessfully.  How he then murders the other man, Uriah, by arranging to have him killed in battle, causing others to die with him.

I think that Zack in his preaching last week was particularly effective in conveying our collective disgust and disappointment at these repulsive acts performed by someone who until that point in the story we had regarded as a hero. 

Today, we take up the story again, and we begin with judgement:

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, because he had done what was evil in his sight.

And here are raised some of the same questions which were raised in the play I saw on Thursday.  What will be the consequences?  How will justice be served, if at all?  Has God left the building, have we been left on our own to figure this out?

No.  At least not completely.  In the face of injustice, God speaks to us through prophets.  The Lord sent Nathan to David.  Not, on the face of it, a great assignment for Nathan, let’s just say it was a bit risky.  So he comes at the king sideways, with a story. 

“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had brought.  He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him.  Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.”

Which of us when we hear that story can fail to know what is right and what is wrong?  As humans we have an innate moral sense, an innate sense of justice.  We know what is right and what is wrong.  Sometimes, especially in our own day, there are people who try to tell us that everything is relative.  That justice and morality are merely human inventions and social conventions.  And while we can acknowledge that some ethical decisions get complicated, and sometimes there are grey areas, and sometimes we need to consider context and culture, we also need to assert that moral relativism in its absolute form is just plain wrong.  When we hear Nathan’s story, we know what is right and what is wrong.  Somehow God has given us the knowledge and the ability to make that ethical judgment across cultures and across the generations.

Even David gets this one right.  Freed from his own subjectivity and self-interest by Nathan’s third-person narrative, untainted by personal desire and the corrupting influence of power in this particular case, he is rightly angered at the rich man who takes the poor man’s lamb.  But his anger is soon turned inward.

“You are the man!”

It’s one of those moments when the light bulb suddenly goes on.  Have you had one of those, either a good one, or a bad one like the one David just experienced?  A sudden insight about who you really are as a person?  That’s what David is having.  It’s a moment of great insight, and it’s a moment of great fear.

And Nathan doesn’t let him off the hook, at least not just yet.  He doesn’t say, “You are the man, but everything is going to be alright.”  No, he tells him that this is going to be the turning point in his life and that it’s all downhill from here.  There will be consequences.  There are always consequences to sin.  Sin has a terrible destructive and unraveling power.  Read on in the book of second Samuel.  David’s family is divided and destroyed.  His son rapes his brother’s sister.  The brother kills the perpetrator.  David’s wives are abused by another son, as part of a deliberate campaign to overthrow his father.  The kingdom of David degenerates into a series of violent plots and civil warfare.  Again, none of this should surprise us.  We know what happens to a family when there is a breach of trust, when violence and abuse erupts.  The negative effects can last for generations, claiming both innocent and guilty in their wake.

So there are consequences to sin.  There is a sort of justice that plays out, though I hesitate to call it God’s justice, or the form of justice that we might want.

Confronted by Nathan, David recognizes his sin.  He repents.  He confesses. “I have sinned against the Lord.”  The long version of that confession is in your booklets, it is the Psalm that we heard read together this morning.

In response, Nathan says to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.”  Nathan absolves David of his sin.  There will still be consequences, but there is absolution.  Forgiveness.

Does David get off too easily?

In the panel discussion after the play on Thursday night we talked about justice.  And mercy.  And how the pursuit of justice without mercy will be a hard road to follow.  And we also talked about how, maybe, the principal problem in the human condition as illustrated by the play is not simply injustice, but the bigger problem of alienation in our relationship with God and alienation in our relationships with each other, in which sin and injustice certainly play their part.  If the problem is alienation, then can the pursuit of justice alone lead to reconciliation?  Love, repentance, forgiveness, mercy – surely all of these also have a role to play.

And so what is the relationship between justice and mercy, how do we balance the two?

David repents, confesses his sin and receives mercy, while the blood of his victim Uriah still cries out from the ground for justice.

Did David get off too easily?

Amen.

More Than Bread: Taking it to the next level (August 9, 2015)

Homily.  Yr B P19, August 9 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Sam 18.5-9,15,31-33; Ps 130; Eph 4.25-5.2; John 6.35,41-51

“I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

In the gospel of John, Jesus never does miracles.  The great acts of power that he performs are called signs, not miracles.  And like any sign, they are meant to point us to something beyond the sign itself, to point us to a greater reality, a bigger truth.  A truth so big in fact that it may take us a long time to get there. 

And that will raise questions.  Indeed, we see in John’s gospel that whenever Jesus performs a sign, the sign provokes questions on the part of the disciples and the crowds, questions which Jesus sometimes answers, but more often he uses as a spring-board to get to the next level, to point us to the greater truth.

We have spent the last few Sundays in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, which begins with Jesus going up the mountain, followed by a large crowd.  And there he takes five loaves and two fish, and he feeds the hungry crowd of more than 5000 people.  It is a sign – but to what is it pointing?

We know what it means to be hungry.  Perhaps not as well as the crowds of poor peasants who were fed by Jesus, but we know what it feels like to crave food, the gnawing in the stomach, the need to be fed.  And we know what it is like to satisfy that hunger, the relief, the pleasure, even sometimes the urgency of eating.

And so it’s not surprising that the people who have been fed search for Jesus the next day, hoping to once more receive their fill of bread.  And this is where Jesus takes it to the next level.  Because the sign which has been done with ordinary bread is not about ordinary bread.

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

Sure, eating bread will keep your heart beating.  Maybe even for many years.  But there’s more than that to life.   Jesus points to a bigger understanding of what we mean by life.  We hunger for much more than bread.  We want much more than beating hearts.  We were made for more than that.  The crowd gets it.  And we get it too.  When we read Psalm 130 together this morning, when we heard that plaintive voice calling “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” we know instinctively, we know from experience, that this is a cry which hungers for more than loaves of bread.

But what do we do about that sort of hunger?  When our stomach groans, we know how to feed ourselves.  When there is a groaning in the depth of our soul, how then do we go about getting the food we need?  Or do we simply try to pretend that this deeper groaning isn’t really there?

Earlier this week I met with a university student who was wrestling with this very question.  If I want to deal with my physical health, she told me, I know what to do.  I can go to a doctor or a health professional who can assess my physical health, and can tell me what I need to do to improve my health, what to eat, how to exercise, how to treat any illness that I have. 

And it’s much the same for mental health, there are people who can analyze my mental health, and diagnose any illness or other concerns and then prescribe a variety of things I can do to be healthier mentally.  But it’s just not the same for my spiritual health.  I don’t know who can help me understand where I am spiritually and what I need to do to be healthy.

The crowd asks Jesus the same question.  “What must we do to have this food that endures for eternal life?”

Perhaps the crowd was expecting the same sort of answer that I gave the university student.  Practice spiritual disciplines.  Pray.  Meditate.  Engage in reflection.  Serve others.  Practice generosity.  Study the scriptures.  Be part of a community of compassion, love and forgiveness. Open yourself up to what the Spirit of God is doing in your life.

That’s how I answered.  But that’s not how Jesus answers.

Jesus takes it up another level.

“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent”

“And who has he sent?  Are you claiming to be the one?  Are you claiming to be greater than Moses, who gave us manna to eat in the wilderness?  How are you going to prove that?”

“I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

This is, first of all, a huge promise.  It is the promise of abundant life, of eternal life.  It is the promise that all of our deepest desires will be fulfilled, that all our spiritual hunger will be satisfied the same way that a piece of bread can calm the churning in our stomachs.

But it is also an audacious claim.  For Jesus is claiming for himself the name of God, claiming for himself a divine origin, and he’s promising us that by trusting him, by following him, by entering into relationship with him, by believing in him, we will receive life in its fullest, a life so full that even the bonds of death, time and space cannot contain it.

Are you surprised that the crowd is offended by this?  I’m not.  It’s too much.  It goes beyond their understanding of who God is.  It certainly doesn’t square with their knowledge of who Jesus is, Mary’s son, raised in Nazareth.

I mean, imagine if my response to the spiritual yearning of the student I met this week had been to say that all she had to do to satisfy her spiritual hunger was to believe in me, because I am the one sent from heaven.  I hope that if I ever make a claim like that to any one of you that you’ll turn and run from me as fast as you can!

C.S. Lewis once made the point that it is impossible to be lukewarm about Jesus, to simply regard him as a good man, or even a great teacher.  And it is claims like this one in the gospel of John that he uses to make his point.  When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life that came down from heaven,” we are faced with a choice:   either profess him as the Son of God or run away from him as fast as we can.

Jesus’ claim to be the answer to their deepest longings and needs offends the crowd.  It is an audacious claim, an offensive claim.  It still has the power to offend today.  And I suppose it only gets worse when Jesus carries on and claims that “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”.

Now we’ve gone up another level.  Here is the claim that the answer to our deepest spiritual needs and longings, the need to love and to be loved, for belonging, for hope, for dignity, for meaning and purpose in our lives, for joy and hope, the way to all of these passes through the cross of Jesus.

And at this point, I am quite willing to admit that it’s all a bit beyond me.  Despite my work, despite my theological education, I have not got this all figured out. 

But there is something about Jesus that I can’t let go of.  Despite the audacity of the claims, they seem to have a ring of truth about them.  I like what all this is pointing to.  Jesus too seems to have a ring of truth about him.  And just as I don’t need to understand everything about how bread works to satisfy my physical hunger in order to eat, I don’t need to have everything all figured out in order to follow Jesus.   And so, I follow.  I trust.  I have faith.  And on that journey of faith, I experience life, that abundant life that Jesus talks about, not always, but often enough to keep me going.

Many in the crowd leave however.  So Jesus asks the twelve, his closest friends, “Do you also wish to go away?”  Simon Peter answers, “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Today Nathan will stand with Simon Peter and countless others throughout the ages who have made the decision to follow Jesus.  We haven’t got it all figured out.  We recognize the immensity and audacity of what we profess.  But we come to Jesus.  We trust.  We follow.  And we believe.

“I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Amen.