Sermon

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Passionate Spirituality

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Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Passionate Spirituality

The Rev. Charles Hoffacker

Our first reading comes from a book of the Bible largely neglected in the Church today, namely the Song of Solomon. This brief document is also known as the Song of Songs, or in other words, the best song of them all.

This book from the Old Testament was not always neglected.

• Origen, one of the most fertile minds of the ancient Church, wrote a commentary on it.

• Monastic authors throughout the Middle Ages, including Bernard of Clairvaux, reflected upon it in numerous sermons.

• John of the Cross, the outstanding Spanish mystic, based extraordinary poetry on Solomon’s Song, which became the foundation for his insightful prose.

• But it was the celebrated first century rabbi Akiba who voiced the strongest praise for this book. “The whole world,” he said, “is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holiest of the holy.”

The Song of Songs stands out from all other books in the Bible. For this brief document is a collection of love poems, not pale, sentimental ones, but strong and graphic compositions that revel in the delightful, mysterious passion binding together a woman and a man.

Both synagogue and church have understood these poems as pointing beyond human eros to a union even more sublime: the one between the Lord and Israel, God and the Church, Christ and the soul. The question then arises whether the true subject of the Song of Solomon is love human or love divine.

The answer, I believe, must be that it refers to both. By celebrating the union between woman and man, these poems suggest the mystery of God’s enormous love for us and our response.

I said that the Song of Songs is a book of the Bible neglected in today’s Church. Concurrently there is also a neglect in today’s Church regarding what the Song of Songs so elegantly points to: passionate spirituality.

Passionate spirituality. It may seem strange to link these two words. But if human lovers feel so deeply for one another, and if love takes Christ even to a cross of shame and death, then is not divine love for us passionate, and deserving of passionate human response?

The life of faith exceeds our careful calculation. It is a leap across a chasm, a leap across a chasm with our eyes closed, but with our heart already resident on the opposite side.

Faith is the donation of ourselves, body and soul and spirit, to the one tremendous Lover who never leaves us or forsakes us, the one to whom we belong, whether we live or we die.

Often, however, faith is housebroken, drained of every risk or passion. Faith is rationalized, sentimentalized, made bloodless and disembodied and dull. This degradation is more than wrong. It is blasphemy.

Even those enemies who plotted against him and brought about his shameful execution never had the audacity to dismiss Jesus as dull. They regarded him as someone subversive: a burning coal they could never contain in their hands even for a moment. They put that burning coal inside the walls of a tomb, thinking to reduce it to ashes forever. They did not succeed.

Faith is by nature dangerous. And in the last analysis, passionate spirituality is the only kind there is.

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It is not hard to find passionate people today. Go to a football game. Go to a rock concert. At these events people are passionate.

What happens in a Christian community when people are passionate may be less blatant, but no less outrageous, for the passionate Christian is not contained within the limits of conventionality. The passionate Christian is not content to be counted among the cheerful personnel with desolate hearts.

Here are characteristics of passionate spirituality as it can be observed in some churches today:

• People recognize the primacy of relationships: with Jesus Christ, with one another, with those to whom they minister.

• People are convinced that God acts in powerful ways in the world and in their lives from day to day.

• People view prayer, personal use of the Bible, and other spiritual practices as inspiring and sustaining experiences.

These are characteristics of passionate spirituality. They are patterns of the love which unites God and his people.

At the same time, passionate spirituality and legalism of any kind appear mutually exclusive. An obsession with right doctrine, correct morals, or liturgical details is sure to drive out passionate spirituality.

It is not that these matters are unimportant, but simply that they make sense only in the context of what is far greater: a love stronger than death, a joy that exceeds every sorrow.

• Passionate spirituality conceives and brings to birth effective ministry. It does so as naturally as fire communicates warmth. This ministry is built not on a sense of obligation or a desire for control, but on a generous and engaging vision that is shared and adapted and clarified.

• Ministry based on passionate spirituality understands obstacles as opportunities and turns defeat into victories. It remains confident in its union with the Christ who reigns now and always.

How playful are those words we heard from Solomon’s Song! Listen again to this divine playfulness.

“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.'”

Who is it who stands, gazes, looks? Who is it who speaks? It is Christ the bridegroom.

To whom does he speak? To each of us.

When does he speak? Now and always. There is no moment when he does not entice us, woo us, draw us to himself.

He speaks to us from the cross. He speaks to us in the garden. He is a most insistent lover.

Faith declares that beneath everything else, Christ is our bridegroom, the world is our wedding, and this table is our marriage feast.

When you come to it, approach with a glad heart, for your beloved calls you “fair one” and awaits you eagerly.

Copyright 2010, Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission.