(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 2, 2018, Proper 17)
Sacred Sounds
In our world, some sounds are
sacred. Voices, notes, tones that
set our hearts to leaping, that call us to self-abandonment.
The recess bell. When it rings, the school shakes
from inside. Then the door opens
and erupts with children. They run
this way and that, nearly losing it, kicking balls, playing chase, climbing the
jungle gym, running to meet their friends in the shade of tall trees—all of
them in love with life.
The dinner call. When my mom opens the back door and
calls out, “Dinner,” my brother and I grab the soccer balls and scramble
through the door and kick off our shoes still tied and run our hands through an
obligatory ten seconds of water and soap and then take our seats, where glasses
poured with cold milk and plates filled with food await us—and we are suddenly
hungrier than before.
The whistle. When its sharp ring pierces the waiting
air of the playing field, the players lose their worries and then lose their
breath—and before long, a fortunate few among them who are “in the zone” will
lose themselves completely.
The ring tone. When its familiar melody anonymously
announces a caller, the young soul awakens from the tedium of the everyday and
fumbles for the phone in anticipation, hoping against hope that the name on the
screen will match the name of their love—and when they see the name, the day is
suddenly filled with new life and possibility and adventure.
The recess bell, the dinner call,
the whistle, the ring tone—just a few sacred sounds among many. When they reach our ears, they raise
us. They move us. They fill the world with beauty and
goodness and new life. They call
us out of ourselves.
A Song of Love
The Song of Songs is a scandalous
song. Not once does it mention God
by name. Instead it sings
shamelessly about human love. How
it ever made it in the Bible is a mystery. To this day, scholars debate the reasons that the ancient
rabbis included this earthy love poem in their scriptures.
Of
course, ever since its inclusion, the rabbis and priests both have done their
best to censor this love song by making it into a metaphor. This song is really about God and
Israel, they say, or about Christ and the church. Certainly the song can be read that way. But I wonder if it’s not even stronger
if we read it simply as it is.
Perhaps it need not mention God because its story somehow is the story of God. Is that not what John said centuries
later? “God is love.” Love is how God moves in the world,
including how God moves between two human lovers.
But
is love only a matter of romance?
Today’s scripture begins with an
incomplete sentence, a sort of surprised exclamation: “The voice of my
beloved!” the woman proclaims.
Moments later, she shares with us what her beloved says: “Arise, my
love…and come away.”
Isn’t this the call of love? A call that excites us and raises us up
and entices us to abandon ourselves and to go away into the world? Isn’t this the same call as a recess
bell or a dinner call or a whistle?
Three Beautiful Places Where We Are Called
And don’t we all hear this
call? Maybe for us it’s no longer
as obvious or immediate as a particular sound that sets our hearts to leaping,
that throws us into self-abandonment, like a bell or a whistle or a ring
tone. Maybe we hear the call in
the lower, subtler registers of a particular place or a certain situation.
In the Greek, the word for
beauty, kalon, appears to have come
from the word for call, kaleo. In other words, the ancients believed
that beauty is what calls us.
(Which sounds to my ear like the truth we have already touched on, that
love is how God moves in our world.)
If we reflect for a moment on where we are drawn most deeply to in this
world, on what sets our hearts to leaping and leads us into self-abandonment, I
imagine that we might find ourselves thinking about matters of deep beauty and
joy.
Of course, it is easy to miss the
call of beauty. Caught up in our
own plans and programs, our thinking in terms of business and this-for-that and
what’s most effective, we sometimes miss the beauty right before our eyes—a
sunset, a child, a gratuitous gesture of compassion. So a couple of years ago, our church intentionally set aside
some time and space to reflect on its deepest joys. There were three places that I heard over and over again: tables,
both the worshipful one here in the sanctuary and the messy ones over in the
fellowship hall and at Deep Run Park and wherever else we might gather; small
groups, like Bible study groups and the choir who gathers every Wednesday; and
visiting with the needful, as when we sing carols with the shut-ins or take
bears to the hospital or give to the homeless.
Tables, small groups, and the
needful. Three beautiful places to
which we have been called as a church.
Here is where God’s love has moved us. Here, we have encountered a deep beauty and joy. I am not talking about the superficial
kind of excitement that we might compare romantically to a crush, which is an
excitement more often than not selfish in its nature. I am talking about a deep
and abiding joy that draws us out of ourselves, a breathless sense that we have
happened upon the most precious thing in the world, what matters most. This is the beauty of the bed-ridden
holding a teddy bear and praying tearfully with people who care. It’s the beauty of multiple voices
becoming one and singing melodies and harmonies and lyrical words that express
what no lesson or lecture ever could.
It’s the beauty of difference and disagreement gathering around the same
table in peace and love.
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
And is it any surprise? These three places are where Christ
promises us he will be. The table,
where he says “Remember me” and “I will meet you again here” (Luke 22:16-18);
small groups “where two or three are gathered” (Matt 18:20); and the needful,
for “as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me” (Matt 25:40).
Jesuit priest and poet Gerald
Manley Hopkins once wrote that “Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in
limbs, and lovely in eyes not his.”
Perhaps this is another way of saying that these three Christ-haunted
places are everywhere, that there is no limit to the ways that we hear the call
of the beautiful, “Arise, my love…and come away.”
Next week when we meet in the
fellowship hall for worship, we will pray and ponder how the call that we hear
as individuals lines up with our church’s sense of call to tables, small
groups, and the needful. I would
wager that wherever you hear the call of Christ, which is also the call of the
beautiful—that wherever you see Christ “lovely in limbs…and eyes not his”—it is
not too far from a table, or two or three others, or a person in need.
Prayer
Beautiful Christ,
Whose call to us
Raises us to new life
And draws us into the world:
As bells and whistles
Rouse the hearts and bodies
Of children,
So may your voice
Excite and entice us
To take the risk of faith—
To rise and go away
On your adventure of
love. Amen.
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