Sermon
– Come with me[1]
St.
Clare’s Church
September 2, 2018
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 17
Song
of Solomon 2:8-17 (note the 4 additional
verses plz!)
Psalm
45:1-2, 7-10
James
1:17-27 (10:00 am service only)
Mark
7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Dedication verse of prayer:
"He has made
everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart;
yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.[2]” Amen.
"Arise,
my love, my fair one,
and
come away;
for
now the winter is past,
the
rain is over and gone.
The
flowers appear on the earth;
the
time of singing has come"
Oh,
to write such words as these. …
As
some of you know I teach information science in the context of disasters and
management. It is not yet been two years at the university. I began as a young
theologian; an unlikely beginning for what followed. For 40 years, I was
immersed in the practice of technology, and the last 17 of those working for
humanitarian organizations. But for over 50 years I've also been a
writer, ever since an 8th grade English teacher said, "we are now going to
write poems,” and we were terrified.
So,
I approach the poetry of our text from a variety of perspectives, but perhaps
most as a graying poet among the faithful.
1) The call of lovers
The
Song of Solomon or Song of Songs is often read at weddings. It is foremost
about the passion of lovers, and it's in a sacred text. What's not to
like?
Since
God, religion and ethics are not mentioned, its position in the Jewish canon
was disputed for many years, until settled in the 1st century. It was then that
the religious meaning became an allegory of the love of God for his people,
Israel, that was read during Passover, in the springtime. The
Christians adopted the allegory but saw it as the love of Christ for His Church.[3]
Well,
doesn't that just get your blood pumping?
The
poet and scholar, Edward Hirsch, says this is the "greatest love poem ever
written" filled with "extravagant comparisons.” [4]
I love the richness in the phrase "extravagant comparisons."
Sometimes
we grasp at such comparisons to the world around us to speak of things
ineffable –of love and the holy. But it is also the reality that it is
familiar, it is near, woven into our reality as the God who comes to us.
The poet-writer of the Song of Songs gathers all that is within her reach to
describe the natural joy of love.
If
you ask an eight-year-old child to count the animals in the poem they may find
five, and the older child may name the five flora and the five
landscapes. There is song, and the voice of birds; the fragrance of
blossoms.
(I
want to pause here and pay homage to the tapestries that now grace and frame
the cross at St. Clare’s; here there are trees, valleys, fruit and flowers,
just as are in the poem. If ever a poem
and a work of art sang harmony, it is today’s text and these tapestries.)
The
poem is steeped in the familiar. We are immersed in the senses. It
is almost as if the author is seeking to bring all that is about, that is
before us, to the task of comparing, of metaphor,
One
of the games I'd play with my son is stretching my arms out and saying, "I
love you this much." To which he'd point to the ceiling and say,
"I love you that much" "I love you more than the whole
world," I'd expand; and he'd reply, "I love you to the moon and
back." You get the picture. Each time, we'd try to reach further to
describe how big our love is. I sometimes wonder if God was doing some of
that when, with the creative expansiveness of the universe, He said, "Let
there be light!"
The
poet speaks like this. "Come away with me," beyond all the
things you see living and not. He speaks of love in all these familiar
nouns, and more than them. Love
is at the same time the great "Other," beyond; and the One who is
familiar, near. We are called to both.
How can we speak of such things without metaphors, of things familiar?
I
often write poems in cards I give to Shirley.
They start with a painting or photo on the cover. For one of our wedding poems, the painting on
the card was by Lynn Tait, of two chairs outside an old farmhouse with blue
shutters, from a place in Greece near where we honeymooned. The chairs have
become a metaphor for how we connect with each other. Allow the common elements to speak…
Two Chairs[5]
We may look at these two chairs
that face us as empty,
sitting outside this rugged house
with the closed blue shutter
and stucco falling from the field stone,
but I see all the conversations
that have not yet happened,
the laughter that has not yet
rung out across this path,
the glance that comes
before the kiss;
what has been behind this window
tied shut with a bit of straw
has been,
and what is yet to come
cannot be kept within these walls;
come sit with me
and start a story
as if it were tomorrow,
and I will dream with you.
2) The call of God
What
if God were speaking in the Song of
Songs. "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." This is
the call of the lover that is also the call of God. How do we approach
such words?
M.
Scott Peck talks about the God who pursues us as a lover; like the famous poem
the Hound of Heaven, "He chases us with a vigor that is matched
only by the vigor with which we may flee from Him.[6]" A
God who chases us!
There
is a wonderful scene in Franco Zeffirelli 's
Jesus of Nazareth, where Jesus is calling one of the disciples to
follow him, and the reaction is not one of adulation but of frustration and
exasperation... “What does he expect me to do?[7]”
Yet still Jesus pursues him…
Again
we hear, “Come away with me.”
Is
this not His call to us also? …But here is the paradox, we are called to
action in the world. In the here and
now. This is the familiar context of the poem; Christ's love is compared
to the flowers, fig tree, vines in blossom, lilies-- all of the things
that are near to us. This is not a call to flee, but to be fully present.
My mother sends me a birthday card each year where she
underlines some words in the card, sometimes three times, with exclamation
points, to add her emphasis. I am grateful she read the card that closely. It
is a bit more personal, and I look forward to receiving it.
I
sometimes wish the Bible’s authors would underline a word or two. What does it
mean? Or are we called, like the lovers in the Song of Songs, to just let
it be, let it wash over us and simply ask what comes to me in this poem?
3) The call to home
If
this poem is about the lovers and about God's love for us, is also a call to
home. "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away"
Coming
home has many meanings, for lovers, for family reunions, for pilgrimages.
Ultimately it is about the end of time as we know it. We say "he was
called home" when a loved one dies. It’s a euphemism, indeed; but it also
reflects the deeper meaning in the poem.
A
group of my students are studying how refugees communicate and use the
Internet. We have spent much time
talking about what it must be like to be a refugee. What information we would hunger for if we
were a refugee. On a deeper level, we
may think “this could be us.” And we
would be right. We are all refugees in a
very real sense, and we long to be home.
It was Pascal who said “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of
each [of us],”[8]
one that can only be satisfied by our Creator. The One who calls us home.
All
this has hope and possibility with the art of poetry. Sometimes intended,
sometimes appropriated, but here we are; we come with the expectation that God
will call and we will hear his voice, now,
with our loved ones, and in the poetry of the words and blessings we say and
sing as we worship this day.
This
is the mystery of the Song of Songs: The One who calls us home is the One who
pursues us here and now, like a lover who yearns for her mate.
May
it be so for each of us.
The
priest, who assisted at our wedding, always ends with this blessing, which is
always a joyful reminder:
“Life
is short.
We
don't have much time to gladden the hearts
of
those who walk this way with us.
So,
be swift to love
and
make haste to be kind."[9]
Amen.
Edward G. Happ
[1] A
page of poems and writings I considered while writing this reflection, may be
found on my poetry Blog, here: http://poetryworkbook.blogspot.com/2018/09/poems-for-sundays.html
and in the footnotes of this document.
[2] Ecclesiastes
3:11, New International Version (NIV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+3%3A11&version=NIV
[3] The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on
the Bible, 1971, p. 324f
[4]
Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, and
Fall in Love with Poetry, 1999, p. 108.
[5] Lynn
Tait, "Santorini, Two Chairs", The Lynn Tait Gallery, Essex, UK,
2010; poem by EG Happ, 18 Dec 13; the artist’s photo is here: http://www.thelynntaitgallery.com/card-detailed.asp?cardid=239&RangeID=27
[6] M.
Scott Peck, Further Along the Road Less Traveled,
1993, pp. 230-231.
[7]
Franco Zeffirelli, Jesus of Nazareth, TV
Mini-Series (1977), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075520/
[9] Henri-Frederic
Amiel Quotes, https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1040289.Henri_Fr_d_ric_Amiel
and see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Amiel
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