Proper 17b 2021

Proper 17b

August 29, 2021 St. Paul's, Monroe lectionary

(For a different take on a similar subject, this oped was published in the NY Times on the same day I delivered this sermon.

Opening

When my mother died my brother and I pretty well knew what of her things each of us siblings expected to "inherit". There wasn't anything of particular value that I expected or wanted. A few sentimental things.

Among them were several books that ended up on my bookshelves. One was the 1st ed. Jerusalem Bible I had given my mother back in ca. 1970. The other was a collection of small books of poetry that I knew to be among my step-father's favorite writings. Excerpts were read at his wedding to my mother and also at his funeral almost 40 years later.

The poetry was by James Kavanaugh. It's a name that might mean something to some of you, but I mention it because he was a poet, but also an ex-priest who wrote about the church and by extension theology.

Today we have heard from the Song of Songs (or "Solomon") in the only passage that appears in the Sunday lectionary. It is so lyrical. So poetic. It is in fact an extended love poem.

What do we make of this love poetry showing up in the Word of God?

Instead of a solemn, pious "word of God" we have:

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes,

leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

Instead of marching orders, fit for the God of the angel armies, we hear of seduction:

My beloved speaks and says to me:

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;

for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

Indeed, what are we to make of it? The rabbis of the early centuries of the common era fought over whether this was really the "Word of the Lord." The Church fathers of the same time period didn't know what to do with it.

I think that the passionate argument over the inclusion of the Song of Solomon in the Bible only calmed down when a consensus emerged that it needed to be interpreted allegorically.

The voices, the lover and beloved in the poem, could be understood to be a stand-in for God and God's people, or for Christ and the Church, or for the divine "up there" and the "soul" in here.

To interpret it allegorically made it safe. But here's the thing. From my perspective, my 70 year journey with God has felt more like a love affair than a tour with the military. Both of those metaphors have been employed throughout the centuries. But for me the metaphor that has been most effective and descriptive has been "love affair".

Scripture should be read metaphorically

The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson has seemed an evocative description of how God finds me even when I am hiding from God.

I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter...

We heard in last week's reading the metaphor of the "armor of God", and I do understand that. But for myself, God has seemed more a lover than a warrior.

Scripture is appropriately read, in my view, more in the manner of reading poetry than of a manual for fighting the enemy.

Both poetry and making war require discipline and practice. And it might be argued that "Grace" is required for both. Both sometimes employ deception. But in making war there are winners and losers. In poetry there are those who get it and those who don't.

I have not experienced God as one who picks winners and losers. I have come to believe that God weeps over those who don't "get it."

Our second reading today is a surprising and evocative illustration of that. There are those down through the centuries who have argued that the Letter of James was not worthy of being included in the Bible. Luther famously argued that it should be discarded as a "straw" gospel.

James 1: illustrating the need for figurative reading

The Letter of James provides an example of how one reads the Bible when looking for winners and losers rather than looking deeper for what God intends.

The opening of the letter, as we hear today, is in fact evocative like poetry.

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

It speaks of generosity of Spirit. That is a description of God's activity if ever there was one.

God is described as the "Father of lights". Unchanging. Source of light and life. That is an evocation of God to be sure.

And there are those beloved and lover figures again: "You must understand this, my beloved:"

And the requirement of behavior that so often seems like the opposite of what religious folk do:

Be more ready to listen than to speak ...

Be slow to anger but quick to be compassionate ...

Welcome all the life-giving truth you can find and fast from that which gets in the way of life ...

Don't just talk a good line, but do what you say, be what you proclaim.

God speaks the truth to your inner being. Pay attention to it. Don't let the alluring attractions of the counterfeit distract you.

Care for the poor, the outcast, and those who have less than yourself. Don't prance and preen like the "important ones". God has eyes to see. See with God's eyes.

These don't sound like a "straw gospel" that needs to be discarded but like the incisive truth of what God speaks to us -- in his poetry of love.

But isn't it strange that these two works in the Bible: the Song of Solomon and the Letter of James, these two works that we hear from today are precisely works that some have wanted to cast out of the Bible?

It is in the Gospel passage that I see something of an answer to that question.

Accusations against Jesus

As we return this week to Mark's gospel, after a month of hearing from John, we see Jesus in a most familiar engagement.

We hardly ever see Jesus acting in a military fashion. And though we sometimes see Jesus picking winners and losers, it is much more common for Jesus to lose patience with hypocrites. And when he is accused -- as he is in today's reading -- with associating with the "losers" of society, Jesus is ready to raise his hand and say, "Yup. Convicted!"

Jesus is accused of not doing what good religious folks are supposed to do. If fact those things have been prescribed and practiced for long enough that they have become a formal thing: "the tradition of the elders." Maybe something like what ended up in the Talmud some centuries later, Pirke Aborth, the Sayings of the Fathers.

Like the poem of the Song of Solomon and the letter of James, Jesus himself is accused of being not appropriately religious, not doing things the way they always were done.

That's when Jesus shows his colors. What upsets him is not the whole set of stuff we identify with religion; rather, it is the hypocrisy of imagining that outward acts are sufficient to set one right with God and neighbor.

Jesus is in the camp that declares that what is going on inside a person is even more important than outward acts or social approval.

Closing

Here we have the gospel, then. The good news in a world over-run with bad news.

God is not in the business of picking winners and losers, who's in and who's out. God acts like a lover of souls, writing poetry and singing songs, a regular Romeo at the balcony of our Juliet. Like an intimate, God sees through the outward disheveled appearance and sees the inner beauty, polished by repeated buffing strokes.

Our church has chosen in recent years the motto: Becoming Beloved Community. ¹

My sense is that the motto and the program that accompanies it emphasize the way in which we live in a community built on love and relationships -- not on battle and victors and vanquished. It emphasizes that we are not where we want to be, but we are on the journey together.

But there is an important truth that is missed in the title: "becoming beloved community." "Becoming beloved" seems to imply that we are slowly becoming more and more worthy of God's love. That misses the truth that we are already loved, right here and right now, just the way we are, loved more than we can possibly imagine.

We are the beloved community. We're not becoming beloved. We already are. And that's the most important thing there is. Thanks be to God, the poet lover God, the God who scandalizes as new and unusual ways to show love are revealed to us. Let us then give abundant thanks to the God who loves us.

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1. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/beloved-community/↩