Romantic Faith. Excerpts from the Song of Songs. July 16, 2017

Transcription

1 1 Romantic Faith Excerpts from the Song of Songs July 16, 2017 Did you know anything like this was in the Bible? Have you ever heard a sermon on the Song of Songs before? I think I have preached on it just one other time in my nine years of weekly sermons. I mean what is the message this book is seeking to communicate? As I was preparing for today and reading and praying over the scripture I started to get nervous about who our lay reader was today as last week it was a 9 year old. Is this appropriate for worship? I mean it is straight out of the Bible and I did my best to include the most pg option from the text. But the reality is most of us are still a little uncomfortable with this part of scripture. It doesn t fit the narrative that we have constructed about what church/worship/theology is about. I remember when I was first learning about this in an Old Testament class in college. I was trying my best to be an objective learner, an engaged theologian and so would read each line with its references to the body and sexual longing as symbols for the spiritual journey which I do believe it very much is. But then a boy in the class who was I guess smitten with me started copying the text into hand written notes and passing them to me in class. Reading it that way there was no hiding from the raw words this book offers. (don t worry though he was soon told my boyfriend was a big guy and he quickly backed off!). In our consideration for today, I think both are true. This text is about symbolism but also not. Song of Songs is the most embodied text in our Bible and so I do not want to dismiss it as pure symbolism. The words are trying to draw something

2 2 different from us, connecting with us not just intellectually or emotionally but physically as well. There is a depth here, for sure. Which is the main reason I chose this text for our discussion of the enneagram number 4. Throughout the summer we are seeking God and compassion through the personality typing system called the enneagram. An ancient way of knowing ourselves and others represented on the circular image in your bulletin that makes room for nine different personality types: the peacemaker, the reformer, the helper, the achiever, the romantic, the observer, the loyalist, the adventurer and the leader. We have discussed four of these numbers already and today we move to the four, the romantic or the individualist. I was staying in a room with a four at the conference I was at last week and so happily got some extra research in paying attention to her and talking through my understandings. Fours, as I was saying a moment ago are deep. Some say they do not have emotions they are emotions. They do not draw lines that separate body mind and spirit or sacred and secular. They are attuned to the undercurrent of meaning and emotions that runs through all of life which leads fours to be known for their creativity in art, or drama, or poetry or in a myriad of other mediums. But the struggle for a four, like all numbers emerges from the same place that they draw their strength. Just as that undercurrent brings inspiration and texture to their character and way of operating in the world, it can also sweep fours away deep into themselves where emotions overwhelm them. In most description of fours there is time spent on the feeling of melancholy. This can look different to different people across the enneagram and even within the four. (Remember as Betsy described to us that each personality type is like a

3 3 color she told us that each number should be understood like we understand the color blue. Think of all the shades of blue that exist but we still understand them all to be blue. That is the same for each enneagram number, but the color that best defines the four is not blue but violet. Richard Rohr talks about the various and varying expressions of violet as he names this color as the defining color of a four. In his book The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective he reminds us that violet is the liturgical color for the holy season of Lent. He writes violet is both a symbol of the highest rapture of the soul as well as of its darkest and most painful moments In its oscillations passion comes into contact with intoxication, liberation with decay, death with resurrection, pain with redemption, disease with purification, mystical vision with madness. All of that is held within one color and the four likewise holds the tension of it all because fours do not shy away from feeling any of it or actually all of it. Fours are not afraid to go to the violet places in life. They are the people who feel and name the place of death amidst life, the injustice that so many others try to ignore by changing the channel. Fours do not let us hide in a state of naiveté or ignorant bliss. Fours will tell you of the harmful treatment of animals on the occasion of you getting a new puppy, or after you get a bee sting they will explain to the you the plight of the bees and impending doom that awaits if we do not respond. One caricature of a four appeared in a few Saturday Night Live skits a few years back with a character named Debbie Downer. Debbie appears in several skits in places filled with ease and happiness like Disney World or a birthday party. As the others are taking in all the fun around them Debbie has a quick remark that forces the entire table into silence. Like during a wedding proposal she reminds the happy couple of the loss of life sustained by the

4 4 diamond trade or when someone celebrates a sunny day she starts talking about a friend who has been diagnosed with melanoma. Now most fours are not Debbie Downer but this caricature does help us see the extreme of those who are unafraid of naming the pain of the world at any moment. We see this in our scripture. The speaker is talking about love, lust, longing. I chose just a few scriptures from the first three chapters to paint a bigger picture of what and how this book flows. It starts out sweet enough: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your love is better than wine. You can hear the romance and the bliss that lies within her description of the object of her desire. This continues your name is perfume poured out your voice is sweet your face is lovely And while we do not hear the name of her beloved or see a picture of this lovely face we understand these emotions of being enamored by another. The details this book begins with connects with not only the romantic title of the four but also the title of the individualist. Fours need to be different. They cannot live in a cookie cutter suburb or show up wearing the same discounted clothes as everyone else. This is rooted, not in pride but in that depth we already discussed. The love of fours is not general but specific. They do not say I love your eyes without knowing the color of them and probably the truths they find therein. And so the faith of a four is not the general kind of affirmation we have seen before like the one who hears God say You are Enough or the two who longs to know you are loved or the three who thrives on knowing God is with you even in failure.

5 5 The four wants specifics it is the four that swoons to hear that God knows the number of hairs on their head. The detailed specific knowing, the depth of love we expect from romance allows that river, the undercurrent to be not just emotions but to be faith, spirit, to be the divine. Fours teach us to fall in love with God, and all that that entails. Like when we pledge our love for someone and we say, you make me who I am, what if we said this about our faith? (not just on Sunday mornings). Or we longed to be near God as we do for the object of our romantic love. That is what we are hearing in our text. The author writes: I am my beloved and my beloved is mine. There is an intimacy in this relationship. A choice, a commitment, a closeness. But also a distance I sought him whom my soul loves. I sought him but found him not. I called him but he gave no answer. There is constant movement between the ecstasy and the longing of romance. Which leads to a deep engagement with the other. And it really holds profound truth about how we, all of us, not just fours, encounter God. We love who God is and how God is. But sometimes what we are in love with is the idea of God good, powerful, protective, gentle but then something happens and we see a side of God that we don t understand. Tragedy strikes and we ask, how could you God? We put our trust in God when struggling with finances and we do not instantly win the lottery. And we say, are you not even paying attention to me? Or we just feel alone and we call God, be with me, show up, let me know you are

6 6 here but the isolation continues and we lose ourselves in longing, in despair, maybe God never loved me, maybe I am on the wrong path, or what did I do wrong (all the things that fill up the middle half of any rom-com). What the four needs to hear is that it is not one way or the other. It is ok to be still, to step out of the river for a moment and stand on the bank and that God and depth and beauty can be found there as well. My friend the four said that fours needs permission, encouragement to be still and to find God in the stillness. Just in these few verses of the Song of Songs you can see the volley of emotions from celebrating love to the sadness of longing. So what the four needs to hear from all of this is a blessing on it all and being held in it all. Just the reality that this book, song of songs, is tucked away within ancient stories of love and murder and fear and reconciliation and liberation and justice and struggle and compassion I almost see the Bible holding this little book, giving it stability, groundedness in all of the emotion of life fours are reminded to be still The other question we have been asking in this series is what we need to learn from the four, what the rest of us need to hear from them and from the Song of Songs Simply I think that message is the fullness of faith - To get out of our heads - To open ourselves to the fullness of life and emotion that exists not in specific moments but always. To borrow the phrase from working women fours teach us that we all need to lean in to our emotions, lean in to our needs, to the suffering of others, lean in to the sadness of the world. I can think of too many times in my life when I was moved by the beauty or pain of a moment and felt tears welling up in my eyes and quickly told myself this is not appropriate and I

7 7 shut down my emotions, subtly wiped my eye and moved right along. But the four reminds us, the longing of the Song of Songs remind us that God is in the emotion, in the moment and when we skip over it because it is too messy, too chaotic, too physical we miss a part of life and we miss a part of God. So maybe instead of making fun of Debbie Downer, we can all open our eyes and our hearts and most importantly our spirits to the undercurrent that we do not step into but that runs through us from our creator. Let us lose ourselves in the all compassing, blissful, suffering, beautiful, chaotic, profound, broken and whole life of faith. Amen.