BIG-HEARTED

Song of Songs 2:8-17
Colossians 3:12-15
John 15:9-15

St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

February 8, 2009

 

Several months ago an ad appeared on the side of buses in downtown London, England… something like, “Believe in Christ or burn in hell!” A band of atheists were offended, and decided to organize their own media campaign; they raised money, hired PR experts, and convinced the transport authorities to let them post a new set of billboards on the sides of those magnificent red double-deckers rolling through the city, posters which proclaimed:

THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD.
NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.

Caused quite a stir; got a lot of people talking; you can imagine.

Well, a couple of months ago the Freethought Society of Canada felt inspired to bring this ad campaign to Canada, and they decided to launch forth in Toronto, Calgary and Halifax. (You might take note – Halifax refused to give it the go-ahead… too offensive; not proper policy. Maybe the Freethinkers should have tried Vancouver; though maybe they were worried that folk here would just shrug, “Whatever.”) However, things caught fire in Toronto. The ads appeared; a couple of church authorities sprang forth in alarm and grievance. The United Church, however, -- good ol’ United Church…. well, folk who were part of the Emerging Spirit campaign decided that here was a golden opportunity to get a conversation going. So they took out a full page ad in the weekend Globe and Mail a week ago… see, here it is; I brought it home from Toronto, especially for you. See… in big bold letters… First statement: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” But this was immediately followed by a second statement: “There’s probably a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” And of course, each statement was preceded by a little box, inviting the reader to tick agreement, with one statement or the other; at the bottom of the page, there was an invitation to join the discussion at wondercafe.ca. Now that’s clever; and funny. However, on Friday I received an email from National Church Headquarters, asking me to encourage church folk to check out the website and vote… seems that the ‘no God’ votes are ahead, 60 per cent to 40.

When you check out the website, and follow some of the conversations, you discover that most of the arguments circle around differing understandings about just what kind of a God we’re talking about. Lots of people are saying “No” to a God who is operating from somewhere up and out in the heavens, complete with a big rule book, and a scolding finger, ready to dramatically intervene, occasionally, to save a select few, while judging and condemning nearly everyone else. No wonder you’d be worried and not enjoy your life. But what if that isn’t who and how God is? Maybe it’s important to figure out what kinds of gods you don’t believe in, and what kind you do.

Now, I don’t want to turn this sermon into a theological treatise on the nature of God --- I mean, many of you came here in good faith, ready for a sermon on Love and Marriage. So, let’s focus on just one definition, one that is offered in today’s Scripture reading… God is love. What happens if you try to understand the Holy One as Love?

For instance, take the idea of the Trinity. No, I’ll bet that’s not where you thought we’d start. But think about it… I know it’s a strange concept, one God in three persons, Father, Son and Spirit, our Maker, Lover and Keeper, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. But what about the very notion that at the centre of Godhead, there is relationship… not just a static thing, power, even person…. but three, connected, in dialogue; what a metaphor for suggesting that Divinity is relational and dynamic; that reality is a vast complex of interconnectedness and interdependence.

It almost seems as if modern science were suggesting something quite similar, with the four great forces of the universe … gravity, electro-magnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces…. how they work together to hold they bind things together, holding galaxies and atoms in balance; keeping the connections. We can measure and describe these forces, and predict outcomes, but not fully understand the why of it all. So join me at a waterfall just south of Luang Prebang in northern Lao, staring at the waters pouring over the cliff edge, tumbling into white spray, down, down into blue pools, surrounded by boulder and green jungle… and remember that what we are watching is a billion, trillion atoms of hydrogen and oxygen drawn together into water molecules that themselves cleave together, joining each to the other, to create river, falls, foam sparkling in the sunlight, reflecting clean white. Surely this is love in a strange way…. every bit of reality held together in a vast web, all connected; bound together.

And us, of course – humankind. Made of exactly those same molecules… lots of water; held together into life… and yet, at the same time star dust. Everything begins with the Big Bang, some 13, 14 billion years ago; all energy, and all matter, and all time, sprung into being, spreading out… that’s what we’re made of, the elements that exploded from stars to pollinate the universe, connected in the very stuff of our flesh to the vast web of being.

And that stardust… we keep sharing it, even among ourselves. I don’t know if it’s a consoling image or not, but you do know that everyone of us is shedding molecules left, right and centre; and breathing them out… and sharing them all. I don’t know how many molecules that were floating around on the inside of your body, have now slipped into mine; I’m not sure I want to know. And yet, there is something so visceral in recognizing the sheer physicality of our interconnectedness of It’s just what happens when you worship together in an enclosed space for an hour. Just imagine that, as we all slowly breathe in and out… and try giving thanks.

Now let me switch focus for a moment… going back to our starting point… God is love. If creation is the primary datum, and if God is love…. then the essential goodness of the universe is affirmed; that life is more gift than burden. You hear this affirmation in those opening chapters of Genesis, those ancient creation stories… “And God saw everything that God had made, and behold it was very good.” Very good, like a bell tolling… over and over. Very good. Like all those water molecules in Laos. Like… well… like those bodies in “Song of Songs.” Did you hear the sensuality at play in those verses we heard this morning? All those suggestive metaphors? And we chose one of the tame passages. You just check those middle chapters, where each of the lovers has a turn describing the gorgeous beauty of the other…. Hair, eyes, lips… and that’s just the beginning…. You just take a look at the Song of Songs… lots of footnotes that ever so politely say “Hebrew unknown”… but when you read the stuff, you know that the author was getting very racy and suggestive, albeit in an elegant way.

What comes through most clearly in the “Song of Songs” is that creation is good, and we are blessed with bodies, with their capacity for pleasure, delight and joy, even as they are simultaneously the means by which we learn of pain, loss and suffering. Our bodies are like molecules writ large, inasmuch as they gravitate towards each other, seeking relationship and connection, like the first trinity. They yearn to be connected… presence, touch, holding, making love. It’s through our bodies that we begin to learn what love means… as infants held to breast; as lovers intertwined; as the aged, arm in arm, with decades of memory, and maybe children all around. We hunger for love, for this coming together.

“Song of Songs” almost didn’t make it into the Bible. Too suggestive -- and it was said that “Young monks should not read the “Song of Songs,” lest their passions be inflamed; it is a book better read in elderly years.” Or something like that. But when those early church fathers… and yes, in those days, nothing but church fathers… when they recognized that these passages could simultaneously be read as a metaphor for our hungering relationship with God… well that’s when “Song of Songs” was declared a winner. Suddenly, sexuality became a metaphor forexpressing the depth of our spiritual longing. Our desire to be with God is as deep, disturbing, and compelling as our desire to be with our lover; to be that close, that connected, that enlivened. And then there’s the even more astounding thought, that God might be equally passionate about us. This close to Valentine’s Day does it make sense to talk about our love affair with God?

We are hungry for holiness; we can actually feel it in our bodies. St. Augustine knew that, despite his worry about sexual drives going sideways. “O God, you have made us for yourself; and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Or, “[O God] You have put salt in our mouths so that we might thirst for You.” And believe it or not, it was Augustine who said that the closest we will come to heaven in this world is in the joy of the marriage bed.

Which reminds me of marriage vows. The old-fashioned ones… the for better for worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, in joy and sorrow ones. Pretty earthy promises; and if you go back a bit further, well then, there’s this line that has always caught my imagination: “With my body I do thee worship.” Come to think of it, that would fit right into the “Song of Songs,” now, wouldn’t it? Incarnation isn’t just a metaphor; it is in and through our bodies that we will discover love.

I received an email a couple of weeks ago from a member of our congregation, Nina Winham, an article she had written for a magazine; and she talked about … well, hear her words:

…let me start in my kitchen. It’s 6:30 am. The twins are up, seven months old and happy the way only seven month old people can be. One blows bubbles. One grins and wiggles. I have just fed them gooey cereal and set them up with bottles. Now I’m making the six-year old’s lunch for school. She comes down looking for a morning hug. I can scarce describe the satisfaction that seeps through me watching these little people eat. I have to admit it… there is something about feeding my family that touches a chord deep in my soul. (from Love: a manifesto for a new world. Nina is principal of New Climate Strategies (www.newclimate.ca)

Incarnation… in the flesh; that’s where we discover what it means to love; feeding each other, sharing smiles and hugs.. That’s where we discover the mystery of God, in concrete, embodied moments of love.

It’s the ordinary stuff… ordinary bodies in ordinary days, over and over… until we recognize that’s exactly where we will find holiness; where we will learn what love is really all about….

The longly-weds know

That it isn’t about the Golden Anniversary at all,

but about all the unremarkable years

that Hallmark doesn’t even make a card for.

It’s about the 2nd anniversary when they were surprised

to find they cared for each other more than last year.

And the 4th, when both kids had chickenpox

and she threw her shoe at him for no real reason.

And the 6th when he accidentally go drunk on the way

home from work because being a husband and a father

was so damned hard.

It’s about the 11th, 12th and 13th years when

they discovered they could survive crisis.

And the 22nd anniversary when they looked

at each other across the empty nest, and found it good.

It’s about the 37th year when she finally

decided she could never change him

And the 38th when he decided

a little change wasn’t that bad.

It’s about the 46th anniversary when they both

bought cards, and forgot to give them to each other.

But most of all it’s about the end of the 49th year

when they discovered you don’t have to be old

to have your 50th anniversary

Just breathe in and out for a moment; think about the years you’ve had, the days still ahead of you. And hear the good news… God comes to us as a Word made flesh. The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (he of Zorba the Greek fame), said it well: “Within me even the most metaphysical problem takes on a warm physical body which smells of sea, soil, and human sweat. The Word, in order to touch me, must become warm flesh. Only then do I understand – when I can smell, see, and touch.” (Report to Greco)

Surely that’s what the gospels are trying to show us by telling the story of Jesus, and claiming that God comes to us in and through a human body. The theologian, Barbara Brown Taylor, stopped me short when she pointed out what was really happening in the Last Supper, Jesus’ last evening with his friends. He didn’t offer up profound theological insights, deep philosophical understandings of God that would have kept them thinking and talking for the rest of their lives; he didn’t say “Each time you believe this, remember me.” but rather, “each time you do this, remember me.” He gave them a meal… bread and wine around a table; he gave them feet to wash.

After he was gone, they would still have God’s Word, but that Word was going to need some new flesh. The disciples were going to need something warm and near that they could bump into on a regular basis, something so real that they would not be able to intellectualize it and so essentially untidy that there was no way they could ever gain control over it. So Jesus gave them things they could get their hands on, things that would require them to get close enough to touch one another. In the case of the meal, he gave them things they could smell and taste and swallow. In the case of the feet, he gave them things to wash that were attached to real human beings, so that they could not bend over them without being drawn into one another’s lives. (Barbara Brown Taylor, “Our bodies, our faith” in Christian Century, Jan. 27, 2009; excerpt from BBT’s new book An Altar in the World.)

God sends us out into the world, as lovers – seeing the holy beauty within each thing, each person; trusting that it is precisely there where God wants to meet us; will meet us. We learn to love by holding, feeding, touching, love-making, foot-washing, and having our feet washed; we learn by doing; we learn by practice. Probably there is a God – so stop worrying and enjoy your life.