LOVE SONGS

A sermon by George R. Pasley

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

James 1:17-27

In the movie “The Secret Life of Bees,” the teenage girl Lily (played by Dakota Fanning) asked August, her mothers one-time black nanny (played by Queen Latifa), “Did you love my mother?"

August took one thoughtful moment and then responded, “It’s complicated.”

“Your grandparents PAID me to take care of your mother," she continued. "I’m black and they were white and I did what I was hired to do. Yes, I loved your mother, but in this world there is no such thing as pure love.”

Martin Luther defined pure love in this way: “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.”

Then Luther defined human love in this way: “The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.”

God loves before there is something to love- in fact, God’s love creates all that is eventually loved by God.

But human love needs something to love before it can exist.

We need someone (or something) beautiful, or good, or generous, or strong, or vulnerable, before our love comes into being and therefore our acts of love toward whoever or whatever are not pure- in at least some small way, they are unavoidably selfish. (Miroslav Volf, “Free of Charge”)

The impurity, or the selfishness, of whatever we love we share, can make huge differences. Love indeed can be possessive, controlling, frightening and horrible. But a little selfishness can sometimes be a good thing, when it comes to love.

Consider one of the loves of Chris Rashka.

When Chris and his wife Lydie moved to New York City, Chris fell in love with the city’s Soldiers and Sailors monument, a structure that commemorates men who died in the Civil War.

The monument’s grand scale, its sweeping view of the Hudson River, and its formal paved terraces, attracted Chris and invited him to sit on its stone walls and read or sketch for hours at a time. It was a place of beauty that inspired Chris.

But sometimes the grand old place is not so beautiful. It is also a hangout for vagrants and skateboarders. Broken bottles, crack vials, newspapers and litter accumulate on its terraces and settle into all of its nooks and crannies.

So sometimes Chris takes with him not a book or a sketch pad, but a broom, and quietly sweeps up the litter. He likes seeing the place kept beautiful, so the act of sweeping is a tiny bit selfish. But I suspect the grand old place really doesn’t mind. (Lydie Rashka, Christian Century, August 11, 2009)

Now consider the first of the biblical books we read from this morning.

Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, is a love song. Its passages are spoken a by a lover and by a beloved, with a few verses spoken by their friends.

The verse we read is spoken by the Beloved, but she recounts for us some of the words of her Lover.

My lover spoke and said to me, "Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me."

Yes, they do sound as if they can hardly keep their hands of each other- so in that sense each one, lover and beloved, are selfish. But neither cares- in fact, they rejoice, and there is a beauty in their joy that overflows into the reader’s imagination.

We hear cooing of doves

We see the young green figs

We smell the roses.

Okay, we say. Human love is not perfect and it is not pure, but we wouldn’t want to live without it.

But something else we must say about love: Love motivates.

The lover in Song of Songs leaps, bounds, gazes and sings.

He writes poetry and paints pictures,

He IMAGINES their life together

He invites the Beloved on a journey to create and experience what he has imagined.

Forest Gump made famous the phrase, “Stupid is as Stupid does, but even truer are the words, “Love is as love does.”

If the lover doesn’t do something it’s not love- its just infatuation.

That’s why James is one of my favorite books. The word love is used only three times in its pages, and not at all in the passage we read this morning, but it leaps from the pages in all of the action that James describes and invites:

Every good and perfect gift is from above,

coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,

who does not change like shifting shadows.

He chose to give us birth through the word of truth,

that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. 

That’s a love song, folks, describing God’s love for us- and it makes me think of a hundred splashing waterfalls that are quite visible along parts of Tongass Highway this morning.

God’s love pours out into life, onto us, over us, into us and through us and it is beautiful!

Our love may not be pure, but God’s love is, and we are the lucky beloved.

We are the lucky beloved.

This may be something we take for granted

But it ought to be something we take to heart.

We are the lucky beloved.

This may be something we cannot believe

But it ought to be something we cherish.

We are the lucky beloved.

This may be something we deny

But it ought to be something we affirm with a loud AMEN.

We are the lucky beloved.

God’s love FOR US is central to our faith.

We were given birth in love

Love sent Jesus looking for us

Love led Jesus to the cross for us.

God loves us, a statement, a fact, that gives birth

To every other belief of our faith.

But love does not end with being loved.

James says that God desires a righteous life from us. That may lead us to believe that God’s live is as impure and selfish as ours, but I argue that’s not the case because God’s desire for us is a blessing for us when it happens.

Righteousness may be a demanding lifestyle, but in the long run righteousness is more joyful and more fulfilling than its alternatives.

No, God chose to give us birth that we might become first fruits.

If you’ve done any gardening, you know that a flower is a beautiful thing. But you also know that not every flower becomes a fruit- or a tomato, or a pea.

Some flowers fall to the ground and never become anything.

Some flowers start out towards becoming something sweet and delicious, only to dry up and whither away, or to become soft and rotten.

But those flowers that reach their potential are a blessing to the garden, to the gardener, and to the gardener’s neighbors!

That’s the way it is with us. But to reach the potential of the love that God extends to us, we need to do two things, and those two things are in the manner of love this way: the less time lovers spend together, the greater the jeopardy to that love.

So James urges that we cast aside those things that shove aside the love of God: irrational anger, filth, and evil, to name a few.

But not to stop there, for we have seen that love is not a passive thing.

Love is a doing thing, and James uses that word DO a number of times.

A word here. James sums up the invitation from God to love as “look after orphans and widows in their distress.”

In the Jewish world, “orphans and widows” were code words for “whoever is the most vulnerable in your community.”

Who is most vulnerable?

Is it the poor?

Is it the addict?

Is it the abused?

Is it the uneducated?

Is it the single mother?

Is it the unemployed?

Is it the one who works two jobs, or even three, because they cannot get one good job?

Whoever it is, the love that God extends to you is also extended to them, and you may be the one God is asking to do the extending!

No- we ARE the ones that God is asking to do the extension of love.

The quote from Mother Teresa that we keep on the back of our bulletin says it perfectly- let’s take it out and read it together:

We are all pencils in the hand of a writing God, who is sending love letters to the world . (Mother Teresa)

Yes, we are the pencils. So look around, and begin to write some love sonnets. 

It may be difficult, and it may be awkward. But rejoice- for this is a love song, not a reprimand.

Yesterday, during the funeral service for Senator Kennedy, his son Teddy Jr., spoke from the pulpit

Teddy Jr. recalled the day years ago, shortly after losing a leg to cancer, that he slipped walking up an icy driveway as he headed out to go sledding. "I started to cry and I said, 'I'll never be able to climb up that hill.'"

"And he lifted me up in his strong, gentle arms and said something I will never forget. He said, 'I know you can do it. There is nothing that you can't do.'"

God is singing to us, and if we hear God’s wonderful tune we may just learn to dance!

So listen, and know that you ARE LOVED.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.