Sixth Sunday of Easter

35:17 Let us pray. Bright morning star, lamp for our journey, illumine our steps this day, shape our thoughts. In your truth, grant us freedom. In your will, gift us with peace. This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Earlier this year, the congregation of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church began a study focused on God's names.

36:26 Names recorded in scripture, names used by Christians in corporate worship and individual prayer down through the centuries. In recent months, and I think this now has got the record of the longest running sermon series here, we have considered all sorts of evocative, curious, spiritually stirring names, and we've only just scraped the surface of the 700 names for God that exist in Scripture. Today, we turn to a name that originates in the Hebrew Bible and to a book that some call Song of Solomon. Although mostly the faithful refer to this text by its Hebrew title, Song of Songs. And that may sound to your ear like a curious repetition.

37:28 So it may help to know that in Hebrew, repeated words convey emphasis. King of kings, holy of holies. Repeating a Hebrew noun is a shorthand way of saying, this is the most kingly of kings. This is the holiest of all holy places. This is the best version of this thing imaginable. Say you were to find the phrase donut of donuts, a description that I do not think appears in the good book, but I'm going to keep looking. And if you were to find such a phrase, it would imply that this donut is the purest, greatest, best example of a donut known to humankind. The donut of donuts is heaven's version of the pastry.

38:32 Today's text comes from the Song of Songs. And the implication here is that of all the songs that could be sung, this one is the purest, the best. And evidently, the best song is a love song. A poem in which two people, in this case a maiden and a shepherd, express deep and passionate love for each other. Today's passage begins with the voice of the maiden. Here she describes herself. She names herself. And then she begins to wax poetic, listing all the wonderful qualities of her beloved. She dreams of running away with him, as you heard the choir just sing, far away to a place where they might enjoy endless happy days in each other's company.

39:38 Now, what does all this have to do with God and faithful names for God? Good question. We'll get there. I promise. First, my friends, let us listen for God's word. as it echoes to us from the Song of Songs, chapter 2, beginning with the first verse.

41:32 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 turtle dove 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. And then from chapter eight. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is strong as death. Passion, fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.

42:27 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one's house, it would be utterly scorned. This is the word of God for you, the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let's begin with a little general background. Deep in the heart of the Hebrew Bible, nestled in a section that scholars call wisdom literature, Scripture has carved out a place for eight chapters of love poetry. Falling immediately on the heels of the life is hard, brutally hard council that comes from the book of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs comes as a surprise.

43:30 It's a little bit syrupy. It's a little bit racy. In other words, it's just about the most awkward thing that a middle schooler might imagine finding in the pages of the good book. On its surface, Song of Songs looks to be a correspondence between two young people who are deeply in love and who have been separated for a brief time. As such, the text reads like a series of love letters. They are, I miss you so much, and I long to be reunited with you as soon as possible letters.

44:14 There's one other basic observation that we should make about this biblical unicorn. Song of Songs does not mention God. Nowhere among these eight chapters of amorous reverie is God evoked. This fact raises at least two pointed questions. One, why is Song of Songs in the Bible? And two, why is our preacher using this text as part of a sermon series on God's names? Let's take the second question first. If Song of Songs doesn't name God, then why study it in a series that's all about God's holy name? The answer to this question is fairly simple.

45:10 While Song of Songs does not mention God, religious people have long, for centuries, seen God in the midst of these loving exchanges. Rabbi Akiva, a first century interpreter of the Hebrew Bible, called the Song of Songs the most holy part of Jewish scripture. The great rabbi went on to describe the love that the young shepherd shows toward his bride-to-be as an allegorical description of the love that God shows toward God's people. God loves us, Akiva claimed, with great passion. Christian theologians, early Christian theologians agreed with Rabbi Akiva, although they flip-flopped the roles. Curiously, they saw the love of Christ manifest in the words of the young bride.

46:09 In the first line of today's poem, the maiden names herself, I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. And Christian interpreters have long associated this flowery name with Jesus. Down through the centuries, this name appeared in all sorts of Christian writings and Christian hymns. Consider the battle hymn of the Republic. In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea. Now, wait a minute. you might be thinking. I've never, preacher, I've never heard Jesus referred to as the rose of Sharon or as the lily of the valley. Have I been missing something? Yes and no. Yes, these poetic names for Jesus are worth considering. And no, you haven't been dozing off in worship.

47:09 Well, I don't know that for certain, but I do know that chances are good that you've never heard a sermon on the Song of Songs before. Modern preachers tend to avoid the book. I've only preached from this corner of scripture at weddings. Why? Well, middle schoolers are not the only ones who get the heebie-jeebies in the face of romance. Most people are not sure what to do with romantic love in church. So when theologians start using starry-eyed terms to describe God, people scratch their heads. we're okay with the idea that God loves us like a parent. We can appreciate the possibility that God loves us like a friend.

48:09 But to speak of having a romantic attachment to the divine and vice versa strikes us as a little weird. A few years ago, I read a fascinating novel entitled Mariette in Ecstasy by a Roman Catholic novelist Ron Hanson. The book tells the story of Mariette Baptiste, a young woman who enters a cloistered convent in upstate New York in 1906. is a pious spirit, gentle, kind-hearted, liked by the other nuns. Along with all the other sisters in the convent, Mariette professes a deep love for Jesus. And yet she doesn't feel connected, really connected with Christ. Jesus is a concept that stands at a distance somewhere and not a presence in the room. And Mariette prays that this will change. She prays a lot. She prays like the young woman in Song of Songs, come my fair one and take me away. Her affection for Jesus is fierce.

49:35 She's surprised actually when the other nuns do not seem to share the same passion. After all, she entered the convent looking for spiritual connection, expecting to live her life in the loving presence of Christ. The other nuns worry, though, about Mariette. She's so intense. And then something happens, something that tears the community apart. Mariette develops stigmata. Wounds on her hands and feet in the same places where Christ was wounded on the cross. The drama surrounding this mystical occurrence divides the nuns. Some believe that Marietta is a saint. Others suspect that she is a deceitful fraud.

50:35 I found Hansen's book provocative. Marriott's faith came across as raw, uncompromising, and sometimes out of control. It was unnerving. And at the same time, it was sweet. Sweet the way that young love is sweet. I want to read the final three sentences of the novel to you because I think they capture some of the story's strange beauty. and Christ still sends me roses. We try to be formed and held and kept by him, but instead he offers us freedom.

51:30 And now when I try to know his will, his kindness floods me, his great love overwhelms me, and I hear him whisper, surprise me. when I sat down to write this sermon my first thought was people are not going to like this name for God our piety doesn't typically imagine Jesus sending us roses or whispering surprise me who pictures God like that and then I remember listening to my friend the reverend Charlene Han Powell pray. Charlene with a dose of California evangelicalism and a foundation in warm-hearted Korean spirituality has been known to start prayers by saying, Jesus, we we love you so much. I think the first time I heard her pray in that manner, my eyes popped open. What kind of spirituality was this? Over time, though, I realized that Charlene's way of praying was legit. It was grounded in her piety, which was grounded in Christian tradition.

52:49 And while I couldn't imagine myself praying in the same manner, I began to wonder if I had something to learn from the good reverend's expressions of affection for God. Was I missing something? why does the Hebrew Bible call this book the song of songs the best song of all human songs St. Bernard lived in the 1100s. He was the abbot of the Cistercian Monastery of Clairvaux. Bernard was so enamored of the Song of Songs that he wrote 86 sermons based on passages from the book over the last 20 years of his life.

53:47 He went through the text line by line. In these sermons, Bernard argued that the Song of Songs was the most important text in all of Scripture because its focus was on love. Its focus was on God's passionate, all-consuming love for us, which in turn calls us to embrace a passionate, all-consuming love for God. According to Bernard, Christ longs to be with us, to know us, and to be known by us. And put that way, we may start to feel the pull of this text. Who among us does not want to be known by God, embraced by God, invited to the banquet table by God?

54:53 The text expresses these heartfelt emotions. The lovers in this passage long to be in each other's presence. They yearn to lean shoulder against shoulder, popping grapes into each other's mouths, all while smiling delirious gobsmacked smiles. Sustain me with raisins, croons the maiden. Refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love. These two are utterly taken with each other. They gift each other with their presence, their attention, their total focus. We sense the strength of their emotions, and maybe that's why we step back from them. Their fervor scares us a bit.

55:52 And we conclude this won't last. This sort of love cannot be sustained. this sort of love, it isn't even real. And St. Bernard, he knew this about us. The old monk knew that people became, over the course of their lives, suspicious of love. He knew that we'd been so burnt by love and bruised by life that we no longer believe in and cannot risk imagining the possibility that the sort of love portrayed in the Song of Songs awaits us.

56:36 And yet, Bernard kept right on preaching from this poetry. He kept preaching from these sonnets because he believed that they reflect in ways that our hearts can understand the persistent ways of God. God pursues us, Bernard declared. God has an unpretentious, mysterious regard for us. God's love has the power to overcome our cynicism and our brokenness. Is that true? A few months ago, Amy and I watched the movie Song Sung Blue with Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman. All right, who's seen it?

57:29 You all have a big assignment. Like, that was like maybe 5%. Get busy. Come on. Pop culture. The film tells the true story of two hard luck singers from Milwaukee who form a Neil Diamond tribute band named Lightning and Thunder. It sounds like the setup for a gauzy rom-com, but trust me, it is not. Spoiler alert, Song Sung Blue deals with drug and alcohol addiction, broken families, mental illness, brutal injuries, and people who are on the edge of losing hope. Sounds like a winner, right?

58:22 But actually, it is. In telling the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina, a real-life couple who performed Neil Diamond covers all over Wisconsin from 1989 to 2006, it becomes clear that the thing that structures these two people's lives, the thing that instills them with hope, the thing that gets them back on stage after knock after hard knock is the love that they have for each other, a love that amplifies the love they have for Neil Diamond's music, a love that they share with their base of Wisconsin Beer Hall Diamond loving fans. And then of course there's the moment in the film when they sing Diamond's platinum recorded song, Holly Holy.

59:23 A song full of spiritual illusions and biblical themes. Go home and listen to it. Themes that come from Diamond's Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn. A song which contains the chorus sing a song. Sing a song of songs. Sing it out. Sing it strong. so why is song of songs in the bible why is song sung blue such a heart grabber maybe it's because deep inside of us you know part of us that the world tries to lock away there is someone who yearns to be found appreciated and loved loved by others loved by a community loved by God to this part of us song of songs says fear not God overflows with passion for you God is waiting for you down by the riverbank with a tin of raisins friends I invite you to stand in body or in spirit and to add your voices to today's prayer for the day.

1:00:52 The text can be found printed in your bulletins and on your screens. Rose of Sharon, God who loves us, God who seeks us out when we are lost, find us, wrap us up. Be a seal on our heart, a seal that even death cannot break. Sustain us with raisins and apples and all that leads to life. Amen.