Sep 02 | Rise up, my love: Summer 2018 Preaching Series, Part 12

Today’s citations:

Song of Songs 2:8–13

James 1:17–27

Mark 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23

 

Welcome to our final sermon in our summertime preaching series on monarchy.

What a fun journey I’ve had with you all! We traveled from the struggles of Saul through David’s ascent as God’s favoured one through his fall from grace and loss to the new glory of God’s beloved Solomon.

As exciting as this was, what we’ve really been exploring is whether or not we can reclaim the idea of monarchy for God or Jesus.

So we’ve compared and contrasted Jesus against the kings of the Hebrew Bible over the course of this series. Sometimes we’ve found areas of harmony, and sometimes we’ve seen Jesus upset the traditional role of earthly ruler through the embrace of lowliness, vulnerability, and radical generosity.

We’ll explore this more in a moment, but first let’s look at this week’s passages.

They seem quite a departure from the last few week. We’re shot out of the Gospel of John as if from a cannon and land right in the middle of the Gospel of Mark and an odd conversation about unwashed hands and food and bodily functions and heaven knows what else.

We’re especially unprepared for this after the love poetry of the Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon. It’s not strictly related to the dynasty of Solomon, but it’s such an interesting contrast to the Gospel and the Epistle that I thought we could touch on it briefly.

While the letter of James cautions against becoming too involved with the world, the Song of Songs is a whole-hearted romp through the most worldly of all experiences: romantic love. We don’t read from this book much throughout the course of the year. Ancient scholars were baffled as to its inclusion in the Scriptures, but being devout they were certain there was a reason, and so it became mythologized into a love song between God and Israel, or Christ and the Church. There is even a strain in Catholic theology that understands the garden enclosed as referring to the Virgin Mary.

This is appropriate to its use as a sacred text, but if we’re honest with ourselves we should accept that it was probably written as a secular love ballad. This in no way should tarnish it for us. Our capacity for romantic love and sexual intimacy are gifts from God to be celebrated. What better way to do that than to include this joyful text among our holy books?

We can also see it not only as a balance text to other works in the Bible that adjure us to be a people set apart. Christ did not stay in heaven raining down wisdom, but came and walked among us. We cannot be wholly outside the world, and we may delight in the world’s delights while maintaining a critical eye to earthly treasures that provide the opportunity for idolatry and obsession beyond the love of God. After all, do any of us ever truly embrace the God of love through being browbeaten or guilt-tripped? When I think of spiritual giants who have inspired me to greater depth, the faces I see in my mind’s eye are almost always laughing. When I imagine the voice of God, it always sounds vaguely amused. There is a twinkle of mirth in it.

This is the God that seduces us into the dance of resurrection, the God who looks through the lattices of insecurity and mortality and beckons us into not a forsaken world but a world made sacred. We have caught the eye of a king, one who cares nothing for our littleness or our poverty or our fragility. This king wants us to inherit all of his riches, won not through conquest or ransom but love alone.

We could end there, but I know what you’re thinking. “Okay, but what about the unwashed hands?”

Pharisees come to meet Jesus from Jerusalem, from the place of fulfillment, the endpoint of Jesus’ mission. They bring with them a shadow of what is to come. And they try to trap Jesus with criticism about the practice of washing hands before eating, but of course it’s not really about that.

It was not a universal practice among Jewish people to do this back then. It was not even a commandment of the Torah, but lived in the oral interpretations of Mosaic law, hence the reference to “the tradition of the elders.”  Now this rule had its own beauty, for such a law was officially mandated only for the priesthood. Pharisees were therefore saying, “Everyone has the ability to live good and holy lives, not just a select few spiritual athletes.”

Unfortunately they are shown up by our pesky rabbi in several verses cut from our lectionary which are helpful to understanding the gist of the story. Here’s what was left out:

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, “Honour your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban” (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.’”

What does this mean?

There was a tradition that said a person could dedicate assets to the Temple, and it had become common for folks to do so with money set aside for their parents. You could even set these funds aside in trust only to have them returned later.

So this is about straining out gnats while swallowing camels. These wealthy temple officials are fine to criticize penniless disciples and their rabbi over a non-universally observed law, but allow the rich to disinherit their own parents and thereby break the fourth commandment.

What does this mean for us, the beloved of Christ?

Perhaps it can remind us that we don’t need to feel unworthy of this incredible king who seeks to woo us.

You can put on a tux or a wedding dress and stand before the altar, but it’s not those things that truly prepare us to marry someone. What truly prepares us is the willingness to give our whole heart. And when we have that, we don’t even need those fancy things to get married! The love shared is just as true in a courthouse as in a church or a beach in Maui.

We don’t have to spend money or dress ourselves up or try to be something we’re not.

Over the last few months, we’ve discovered a king who desires our whole heart above all others, not because he is possessive but because he desires us so deeply, and walked the walk first, giving up everything – power, riches, safety, even his own life – out of love for us.

He does not call us into an easy life; living with and for someone else never is. But what he offers is not only the kind of heady infatuation that makes us do foolish things. He offers us life, life far greater than anything the world on its own can offer, a love that never grows cold, a fire that never goes out.

Some of you may still find the metaphor of monarchy entirely inappropriate for God or Jesus, since the type of leadership modeled here is so unlike any type of monarchy that has ever existed on earth, or because it holds too much baggage. That’s okay. Don’t try to squeeze yourself into a box that doesn’t fit. What’s most important is the depth of fealty to which we are called as Christian people, and while that may seem a bit frightful, it doesn’t need to be.

We are not being called to divest ourselves of our identities.

This is not a political allegiance we are making.

This is a love story, a fairy tale, in the best sense of the word.

Look – he is peeking through the lattice. He is calling.

Church, rise up and run into a world bursting with springtime abundance.

Rise up and run into the arms of the beloved.