The Enchanting Word of God
A sermon by Rev Andrew Colman on Song of Solomon 2:8-13 and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
The Scripture, the Bible, is a wonderful book. In that, it is full of wonder.
Its stories plumb the depths of the human experience in ways that have kept authors and songwriters coming back for two thousand years. It is this inexhaustible well of wisdom, goodness, and healing that refreshes itself year after year, day after day.
Not only does it contain some of the greatest literature ever written, but that literature, these stories make a point of making comments on themselves.
The books and characters in the Bible, these 66 books written at different times in different places, create a web of references that ever more enhance and enrich its words.
Our Gospel reading tonight reveals this in plain sight. The Pharisees challenge Jesus and his disciples, and Jesus responds with a verse from the Prophet Isaiah.
Like the same Isaiah we have today, you can look up the very same verse on your phones or in your Bibles that Jesus was thinking about back then: Isaiah 29:13
The Lord says:
"These people come near to me with their mouth
and honour me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
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But then it also invites another kind of dialogue within itself—one of our own making, born out of our creativity, guided by the whimsy of the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes, seemingly unrelated parts of scripture are set down beside each other, and when we knock them together like flint, we get sparks. Depending on the day, sometimes they die right out, and sometimes we get a big, beautiful bonfire.
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Tonight, we heard the voice of Solomon in his Song.
"The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
And we also heard the voice of the Pharisees asking a question: "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?”
It’s well known that there can be in life, places of stages, that have felt oppressive and contricting. Where conformity was expected. Where the Tradition of the Elders ruled. And if you didn’t conform damage would happen in one form or another. It could take the form of something like subtle peer pressure from a friend group or corpral punishment at a residential school.
We know that this has happens some times in church where the tradition of the elders pushes people away from a supportive community or even worshipping God because the expectations were ridiculous, wrong.
Imagine, if you will, Jesus standing with one of those people, whether it was a church, or any community that claims to be loving for that matter, when they chose to stop going because of that tradition of the elders, imagine what he might say.
Well, we don't have to try too hard because, in tonight's reading, we hear that Jesus "said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.' You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."
It’s heart breaking.
Ok, let's knock that up against our reading from the Song of Solomon.
This book can be interpreted in at least two ways. One is that the dialogue is an intimate conversation between two people who are in love. It can very well be interpreted as a text brimming with Eros.
In the Daily Audio Bible, which I highly recommend, readings Brian Harding, who reads through the Bible in a year NT OT PS PV daily, actually invites his wife Jil to read the partners' parts when they get to the Song of Solomon. It can get... racey…
Another way it can be read is through the lens of Agape, Divine Love, where the author is using our understanding of these deep and profound statements of love to help us get a glimpse at the incomprehensible ways that God loves us. Divine Language.
For now, let's go with the latter interpretation here - though I think they both have their merit.
"The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
God, through Solomon, is calling to God's beloved - each of us.
We are seen as leaping upon mountains. That is how God sees us.
And then Arise, my fair one, come away.
But hear what is happening in this statement:
The author repeatedly tells the reader how their beloved is giving them an imperative—a command if you will, two commandments—aise, come away.
This is so far from the response, "Don't tell me what to do!"
They are responding to these commandments from a place of complete trust, that the one who is calling has only their best intetion at heart.
It's like a kind of blessed enchantment.
In that when we are enchanted we are under a kind of spell. Where we do as the enchanter bids us, not out of a feeling of obligation but with a longing to fulfil the hopes of the enchanter.
Now, at it's worse we have seen wicked warlocks and witches enchanting people for ill. But this is a divine enchantment. Where the enchanter is God.
When we hear about falling in love with the Law and scripture, this is what we are talking about.
Of course, the difference is one of our free will. God does not enchant against our free will, but rather, we take on the enchantment ourselves by Reading and taking in the words and Word of God and being enchanted by them.
When we talk about living out the ten commandments of the Law and the two great commandments from Jesus - fulfilling our vocations, duties, and works from God.
Whether they be as a banker, or contractor or as a, chef or a sculptor,
maybe the best way of doing them is from a place of enchantment by the Word of God.
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Now, hopefully, comes the spark off the flint.
In our gospel reading tonight, we heard the words of the Pharisee: "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?"
These were the religious leaders of the day. The ones who had been called to bring people closer to their Enchanting God.
They are supposed to be the ones who help interpret the Law as the movement of love toward a people and the blessing to the world that it is supposed to be.
Instead, patronizing condescension, shame, guilt, misinterpretation.
Is it any wonder that Jesus reacted the way he did?
Maybe the Pharisees were approaching Jesus expecting a little rabbinical debate, where Jesus said, "And where in the law did you find that command?"
Knowing it's not in the Law itself, but later interpreted from purity cleansing laws to which they would have had a witty response prepared.
But it was not directed at Jesus; it was shot at his disciples: "Why do /your/ disciples not live according to the tradition?"
Too much, too far! They've gone from debating the Law to personal attacks that are not even addressed directly but treating them as objects to be used as a religion lesson right in front of them.
No, too far.
So Jesus takes them down a peg or 3 or 5 or 10.
He knows the will of the Father, the intent of the Law. It has never been there to guilt and shame us into doing "the right thing."
The Theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar even speaks to this kind understanding and employment of the Word of God as Lethal; it destroys the one who is weak... which on any given day could be any one of us.
No, the Word is a gift for us to study, interpret, integrate, and follow by Divine Enchantment, by the Holy Spirit.
It is meant to bring life to those who engage and all of those around them!
So may we hear the Word as such—as God's gift, God's opt-in enchantment, where some of the greatest literature of all time is collected and interweaved to tell us we are God's beloved; The Word telling us we as seen as leaping over mountains; and calling us to rise to the work of the Gospel in all its infinite ways. Arise, my beloved, hear my Word, follow my commandments, that we might bless the world - together.
Amen.