from The Barrel

Sunday August 28, 1994

Key Scripture—Song of Solomon 2: 8-13

They say that falling in love is wonderful, wonderful...

Some of you are still young enough to feel the blush and fire of young love. Some of us, who may not be quite that young, recall the violent fires and still glow with the warmth of maturing relationships. “Falling in love is wonderful,” indeed! Being in love makes the whole world beautiful. Living in a continuing loving relationship gives a fullness and completeness to our experience we could have in no other way.

“The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.
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.
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Anyone who has ever been in love recognizes the internal condition that bit of poetry describes. We know the excitement and anticipation we feel every time we think of the one we love. We know how thoughts of our loved one our fill hearts with day and night.

(We) know how it feels to have wings on our heels
And to fly down the street in a trance.
You fly down the street on the chance you might meet
And you meet, not really by chance.

And to quote from another musical.

Ah, yes, (we) remember it well!

For we, too, have been there.

But what if the poetry describes something else? What if the beloved in Song of Solomon is not a human creature, but God? What if I told you that the relationship of human individuals to God can be as intoxicating, as exciting, and as intense as falling in love? It can, you know! Mystics and saints in widely different traditions over ages have described the relationship with God as a love affair. Indeed, the only parallel in human experience that approaches the closeness and intimacy of the human spirit with God is the closeness and intimacy between lovers. Think of any love song you know, and substitute God for the human loved one and see how well that describes your relationship with God.

In the movie Sister Act actress Whoopie Goldberg plays the part of a night club singer whose life is threatened, and takes refuge in a convent, disguised as a nun. She eventually becomes director of the convent choir. Because her career as a night club singer leaves her more familiar with popular music than with church songs, she treats some of the popular love songs she knows as anthems of praise to God. So in the song, “I will follow him,” she sings about following her Lord wherever he goes. She sings of the devotion and faithfulness of the human lover to the divine lover, and the song “My Guy” soon expresses a relationship with God:

“Nothing in the world can take me away from my God...”

Soon the excitement and enthusiasm of that faith catches on in the convent and the nuns sing with a fervor and excitement the covenant has never known before. Although this excitement is disquieting to the Mother Superior the joy and exuberance of such a faith overflows into the street, and people come flooding into the church.

Nor is that kind of devotion fanciful or a modern phenomenon. Look into the Psalms and you see that intimacy expressed.

“As the hart pants after the water brooks
So pants my soul for thee, O God.”

Does that panting, that yearning of the human spirit for God in any way express our relationship with God? Do you find yourself longing and yearning for the time you can be alone with your lover God? Do you find yourself looking for every excuse to withdraw into the closeness of God’s embrace? When you sing words like,

“Jesus, lover of my soul
Let me to thy bosom fly...”

does it in any way express the intimacy of your relationship with God?

Kabir, the Hindu poet-saint postulates love as the basis of the human relationship with God. Paran atman or the Divine Spirit seeks a loving relationship with Jivan atman or the human spirit. Paran atman or God initiates leela, a game or play or dance which is an invitation to Jivan atman (the human spirit) to enter into relationship. It is when the human spirit (Jivan atman) responds that one enters into an intimate loving relationship with God. When in our Scriptures John the evangelist tells us,

“God so loved the world that God gave the only Son...”
that becomes for us an invitation to relationship with God.

When the basis of our relationship with God is love no more do we quake in fear of punishment from an angry God. No more do we seek to offer sacrifices to appease a vengeful and wrathful God. No longer is our relationship with the Great Spirit one of cringing in fear at the feet of a terrible and implacable God. God has initiated the dance, the leela, and invites us to join. The response of the human spirit is of a grateful and joyful engagement in relationship. And now whatever we do is not in appeasement to an angry God. Instead they are our gifts of love that we bring to our lover. We continually seek and find ways to nurture and nourish the relationship with God. The intimacy becomes closer and closer and it is sometimes difficult to tell where the lover ends and the loved one begins. Ultimately we seek complete identification with the lover, so that we are no longer two, but one.

The function of spiritual disciplines is to provide us with means and opportunity to be in loving relationship with God. We turn to God often in prayer not because we want to ask for something for ourselves, but because we want to be in contact with our lover. We spend time in meditation not to gain some kind of spiritual power, but to enter into deep communion with God. Our fasting is not some kind of penance, some kind of punishment to which we subject ourselves, but a way to deepen and enrich our communion with our beloved. Silence and solitude, worship and service are ways in which we nurture and deepen our intimacy, ways in which we strengthen our relationship with God who loves us.

Yet the relationship we have with God is not exclusive. It is not “just the two of us.” Indeed, the more intimate our relationship with God the more closely related we find ourselves to those others who are beloved of God. More than that it is our loving one another which expresses most clearly the depth and intimacy of our relationship with God. That is to say that our love for others is the surest demonstration of our love for God.

“...everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love...if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us...The commandment we have from God is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

In our lesson in the epistle James makes it clear where our affections should be. According to James, God clearly has a preference for the poor.

Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the realm that God has promised to those who love God?

Our intimate relationship with God is expressed in loving those whom God loves. So that God’s preference for the powerless, for the persecuted and dispossessed becomes our preference, too. Then James goes one step further: loving one’s neighbor is not expressed in feeling or in words, but in loving deeds.

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

The spiritual discipline that is most expressive of our relationship with God, is not the amount of time we spend in prayer each day. It is not lying on beds of nails to show our devotion. It is not preaching great sermons, or listening to more of them than anyone else. The spiritual discipline which demonstrates most effectively our relationship with God is the discipline of loving service of the “least of these.” It is the way that we love and serve the lowliest of Jesus’ brothers and sisters that expresses the depth of our devotion and intimacy of our relationship with God.

That is how Jesus chose to live out his relationship with God. It was not to stand on his prerogative or to grasp for equality with God. It was, rather, in the plight of the deprived and dispossessed that the intimacy of his relationship with God was seen. When the Syrophoenician Gentile woman came to him asking for healing for her daughter, he found in her ostracized condition a richness of faith and love he could not resist. He found a mother’s love that would not take “no” for an answer. He found a humble faith that would not be put off by human distinctions. In much the same way it was the helplessness of the deaf mute who was brought to him for healing that aroused in Jesus a compassion so deep that he could not resist. That is how he chose to express his loving relationship with God.

It is when we respond to the pain of the hurting ones, it is when we touch the leper and untouchables of our time, it is when we care for those who have nothing with which to repay, it is when we serve the needs of the powerless, when we reach out to the publicans and sinners around us today, when we embrace our brothers and sisters regardless of human distinctions, when the difference between straight and gay, between rich and poor, between black and white become opportunities to love and serve, it is then that we most clearly and unmistakably display the Christ-like spirit. It is then that we witness to having the “mind of Christ” within us. It is then that we demonstrate our intimacy with God.

“These are the ones we should serve,
These are the ones we should love...
Loving puts us on our knees,
Serving as though we are slaves,
This is the way we should live with you.”