“Echoes of Love”

Song of Songs 2:8-13 and James 1:17-25

Sunday, September 2, 2018
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

Phone calls in the middle of the night are rarely a good thing. In the wee hours of a Saturday morning in November of 2009, I was awoken from a deep sleep by the sound of my phone. The caller ID showed an unknown number but I picked up anyway. It was the sister of one of my best friends - a woman I had only met a handful of times. Through my sleepy haze I understood her to say that my dear friend’s wife had died from suicide earlier in the evening.

The next few weeks and months were a haze of walking with my friend through her trauma and loss. We were both in seminary together and were graduating very soon. I sat with her at her wife’s funeral. I sat with her over coffee. I texted in the wee hours of the morning. I prayed unceasingly. I worried with her when she went through the ordination and search-and-call process in her denomination - where being an out lesbian was still a liability. She was a private person and had previously not been super public about her sexual orientation in certain circles...but the need for extending deadlines in the ordination process and a large, public funeral made my friend’s personal life less private than she preferred.

Eventually, my friend made in through those terrible first months of grief and shock and anger. She graduated. She got ordained. And she took a call far away - halfway across the country, in fact. She left for a new life. To start over. I missed her, even as I knew this was exactly what she needed.

Fast forward to August of 2015. I had also moved halfway across the country and was now getting on a plane to go to my friend’s wedding. She had met and fallen in love with a wonderful woman. I was excited to meet this person who had captured my friend’s heart.

It was one of those weddings where I didn’t know anyone except the bride and a few people in her family. So as I sat by myself at the wedding and watched these two beautiful brides walk down the aisle towards each other, I looked around the room at all these people who were strangers to me but kin to them. And I realized that the vast majority of the people there had no idea that my friend had lost her previous partner to suicide. They had no idea that what they were witnessing was a miracle - a miracle of new life springing from death and pain and destruction. God making a way when we had previously lost hope. We were watching Resurrection at its very finest. And, really, God was just showing off it was so beautiful.

So I watched my friend’s joy and smiled a quiet smile with a few tears leaking out of my eyes. And I gave thanks for the love that ties human beings to each other - the love of friends, the love of those we’ve lost who are never really gone, the love of second-chances and new beginnings. The echoes of God’s love for us, found in all these mysterious and marvelous places.

In this morning’s passage from the Song of Songs, the woman praises her beloved and remembers his sweet and tender words to her, “Arise, my love, and come away. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the time of spring has come.”

New beginnings. New love. New life springing forward from what came before.

Love - in all its varied forms - calls us outside of ourselves. The love that God has for us echoes through our lives, binding us to friends, family, lovers, and even those we’ve never met. What an incredible gift.

When I marry couples, I almost always include this question for the couple as we gather at the altar: “Do you promise to share the love you have found together in order to be instruments of healing  and hope for the world around you?”

Marriage - when it’s done right - turns us outward and makes us better. Family - when it’s done right - does the same. The relationships that we nurture with other humans, when grounded in God’s love, should help us grow in maturity and wisdom. Love begets more love.

You know, Christians have long struggled over what to do with the Song of Songs. God is not even mentioned in this book of the Bible and - let’s face it - it’s basically just very adult poetry that celebrates romantic and sexual love. The Church, by and large, has not done a great job of appreciating the Song of Songs. I’d be willing to bet most of us haven’t heard very many sermons on it and this short passage is the only one that appears in the entire three-year lectionary cycle.

Our Jewish kindred are better acquainted with the text. In fact, when you go to a Shabbat service, you’re likely to sing a song called Lekhah Dodi, which means “Come, my beloved….” a direct quote of this passage from the Song. Jews sing this song to greet the Sabbath each week. In the Jewish tradition, Sabbath is sometimes referred to as “the Bride of Israel” - a palace in time. A day to put aside work and worldly concerns. A day to love and be loved by God.

There is an ancient Jewish midrash that explains how the Sabbath came to be called the Bride of Israel. It is said that when God created the world, each day had a partner. Monday had Tuesday, Wednesday had Thursday and so on. Only the seventh day, the Sabbath, was left without a partner. The Sabbath complained to God and Yahweh told the Sabbath Day that Israel would be its partner. 蜉

Medieval Rabbi Eza Ben Solomon of Gerona says that the Song is the best of all Songs because God sings it each and every day to humanity.蜉

I love that image of God singing a love song to us each day. Just regarding us as good and complete and beautiful and whole - simply loving us exactly as we are today. That’s the kind of love that reverberates through our being and causes us to reach out in love to other humans we encounter.

We feel these echoes of God’s love reverberating in our souls when we gather for worship. When we gather to sing love songs back to the Holy One - when we come together to pray for one another - when we make time to sit in stillness or smile at a child who is learning to be in worship.

We come to worship for so many reasons - out of habit, out of duty, out of curiosity, out of a deep desire to connect with God and with other humans. It is my hope and prayer that when we gather for worship, it is a time when we can all be reminded that we are God’s beloved. That God is singing a love song to us - even though we are imperfect and still very much “works in progress.” We come to worship to be reminded that we are loved and we come to worship to be reminded of all the ways we can show that love to others. For as the author of the book of James says, we must be doers of God’s love, not just receivers. All perfect and generous gifts come from the Holy and they are all meant to be shared.

We come to the table as one family - imperfect yet striving, flawed yet forgiven. We come hearing and feeling the echoes of God’s love that reverberate in our souls. We come to be gathered in and to be sent out. We come seeking love and we depart ready to love others. Thanks be to God for the way the love of the Holy One echoes in each of our lives.