July 1, 2024

Posts Comments

Exposure in Creation

February 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Exposure in Creation
Sycamore Creek Church
Song of Songs 4:1-7
Tom Arthur
February 20, 2011

Peace, Friends!

Exposure.  That simple word has several different meanings.  Exposure can be a disclosure of something secret.  It can also mean vulnerability to the elements or being in a general state of vulnerability.  Today we continue our series on the Song of Songs called Exposure, and we’ll be exposing the Song of Songs through the lens of its second meaning: vulnerability to the elements.

Over the centuries Christians have tended to debate about the Song of Songs.  Early in history, before the sexual revolution of the 60s, Christians tended to be very uncomfortable with the eroticism of the Song of Songs.  Why is that in the Bible?  So they allegorized everything and made the book all about God’s love for God’s people.  They exposed Song of Songs through a spiritual lens.  So then came the 60s, and today commentators want to say that the Song of Songs is all about sex.  They expose the Song of Songs through a literal lens.  Which one is right?  I’m not sure this is a helpful question.

I love photography.  I studied it extensively while in college, and one of the things I came to realize is that you can take a picture and expose it three or more different ways and get multiple different images.  Which one is right?  That’s probably not the right question to be asking.  Rather, what do we see more clearly in one that we don’t see in another?  What comes to the foreground and what recedes to the background?

In the same way, Song of Songs can be exposed at least three different ways: literally, morally, and spiritually.  Through the literal lens, we learn something about sex.  That’s what we did last week.  We learned that sex is faithful, equal, emotional, physical, and spiritual.  Through the spiritual lens, which we’ll be looking through next week, we learn something about God’s love.  Today we’re going to be exposing the Song of Songs through a moral lens, and we’ll learn something about creation.  Song of Songs is definitely about sex, but it’s also about a whole lot more.

Peace with Creation

Let’s go back to the beginning of the Bible for a moment.  In Genesis we run into what is usually called The Fall.  Adam and Eve disobey God and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  There are three consequences of The Fall.  The first is that there is a brokenness between Adam and Eve and all lovers and spouses who follow them.  Then there is a brokenness in creation.  Lastly, there is a distance that forms between humanity and God.

Through each of these exposures of the Song of Songs, we find a correction and healing to the brokenness and sin of The Fall.  Through the literal exposure of Song of Songs, we see a healing in the exposure between husband and wife.  In the spiritual reading we see an intimacy and vulnerability between God and humanity.  And in the moral reading we see a delight and peace with creation.

We can see the effects of The Fall all around us in creation.  I asked Lori Miller, a member of our church who works for the City of Lansing’s Capital Area Recycling and Trash what were some of the ways that we are vulnerable to the elements of pollution in creation right here in Lansing?  She pointed out several to me.  For those who live along heavy traveled corridors like Pennsylvania and Cedar, there’s exposure to exhaust and the pollutants that get into the soil along those streets.  There’s the greenhouse gas emissions that BWL’s coal power plants create.  If you live in an older home there’s the potential for exposure to asbestos, lead paint, and radon.  Then there’s the landfills.  She told me that while landfills have improved significantly over the years, there is no 100% safe  landfill.  When we throw especially tech trash into the landfill the contaminants in our electronics and computers will eventually make their way into the environment.  Getting more specific, she pointed me to the Motor Wheel Landfill on the north side of Lansing on High Street.  This was a pre-regulated landfill that has contaminated the ground water.  She also pointed me to the Adams Plating sight on the west side on Rosemary Street which has contaminated the soil with chromium.  Chromium causes all kinds of problems with health including skin, lung, immune system, kidney, and liver problems.  It also causes cancer.  She did say that this site has been stabilized and that there are no immediate risks because the soil has been cleaned up.  But still, you walk outside your house (or stay in it), and you’re exposed to the broken and polluted elements of creation.

In contrast to this experience of creation, Song of Songs presents an image of delight and peace with creation:

Song of Songs 4:1-7 (NLT)

Young Man: “How beautiful you are, my beloved, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are like doves. Your hair falls in waves, like a flock of goats frisking down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are as white as sheep, newly shorn and washed. They are perfectly matched; not one is missing. Your lips are like a ribbon of scarlet. Oh, how beautiful your mouth! Your cheeks behind your veil are like pomegranate halves — lovely and delicious. Your neck is as stately as the tower of David, jeweled with the shields of a thousand heroes. Your breasts are like twin fawns of a gazelle, feeding among the lilies. Before the dawn comes and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. You are so beautiful, my beloved, so perfect in every part.

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

Peace with the Land

So what is this?  Isn’t it just an erotic poem?  Yes it is that.  It’s actually a very specific kind of poem.  It’s called a “wasf” and was used by many different kinds of poets in the culture of its day.  The poet attempts to connect the emotional experience of different body parts with the emotional experience of different moments in creation.  Does it sound a little strange?  It shouldn’t.  Our modern day poets do the same thing.  Consider John Denver’s song, Annie’s Song.  He sings:

You fill up my senses
like a night in the forest
like the mountains in springtime,
like a walk in the rain
like a storm in the desert,
like a sleepy blue ocean
you fill up my senses,
come fill me again.

This isn’t intended to be a literal description.  You can’t go in a room and pick out the woman that this describes.  Um…Yeah…go find the woman whose hair is like a frisky flock of goats, who fills up your senses like a night in the forest.  Doesn’t work.  Because that’s not what it was intended to do.  This kind of poem is intended to connect emotional experiences.

When we look closely at those emotional experiences in the Song of Songs we see that there is a deep delight in creation rather than creation being something that we are exposed to in a vulnerable fashion where there is no peace with the land.

Back to Genesis for a moment.  In The Fall we see no peace with the land.  God says to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground…” (Genesis 3:17, NLT).  I said this last week, but it is worth repeating again.  I don’t think this “curse” is that God is saying this is how it should be.  I think it is God saying this is how it is now that sin has entered into the story.  If we thought that this is how it should now be, then we wouldn’t allow men to use tractors.  That would be cheating them of the “benefits of the curse” on the ground.

Continuing on, we see that Adam and Eve are separated from this idyllic garden of paradise.  We read, “So the LORD God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made” (Genesis 3:23, NLT).  Here there is no peace with creation.

The Song of Songs exposes a different image than that of The Fall.  We read:

Song 2:10-13 (NRSV)
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 turtledove 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.

The winter is past.  It reminds me of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe where because of the White Witch, Narnia is stuck always in winter and never Christmas.  There is no spring.  But then one day the snow starts to melt and spring starts to come.  The Narnias know that something has happened.  Aslan, the Lion King, has come back to remake Narnia.  So too in the Song of Songs.  Winter is past.  The Fall is coming to an end and creation is remade.  We partake in this remaking through the care and service of the land.

This image of peace with the land goes quite far in the Song of Songs.  At the end of chapter one, we read about a bedroom where the ceiling is made of timbers.  It is as though the couple is so at peace with creation that they are like God’s making love on the tops of mountains.  What a beautiful image of being at peace with creation.

Peace with People

Of course creation isn’t just made up of animals and trees and flowers and mountains.  Part of creation is you and me and all the people that are creatures too.  Going back again to Genesis and The Fall we see right off the bat after being banished from the garden that peace between people disappears.  Adam and Eve’s sons have a run in with one another.  We read, “Later Cain suggested to his brother, Abel, ‘Let’s go out into the fields.’ And while they were there, Cain attacked and killed his brother” (Genesis 4:8, NLT).  Yikes!  The first murder.  It didn’t take long for humanity to lose the peace of the Garden of Eden.

Song of Songs exposes us to a different image of being at peace with people.  The groom says to his bride, “O my beloved, you are as beautiful as the lovely town of Tirzah. Yes, as beautiful as Jerusalem! You are as majestic as an army with banners!” (Song 6:4, NLT).  Unless you’re up on ancient geography, what just happened here probably passed you by.  The groom compares his bride to two cities: Tirzah and Jerusalem.  So what?  Well, he’s comparing his bride to two capitals that have been in civil war with one another.  Tirzah is the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Washington D.C., if you will, of Israel.  Jerusalem is the capital of the Southern Kingdom of Israel, the Richmond, if you will, of Israel.

Let’s make this whole thing a little more understandable.  We’re talking about the Sue Sylvesters and Will Shusters getting together (the geeks, or gleeks, and the jocks/cheerleaders).  Batman and Joker.  The USSR and the US.  North Korea and South Korea.  East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem.  The Israelis and the Palestinians.

What a comparison!  Who compares their beautiful bride to two warring cities and people groups?  Only one who thinks that peace between them is more beautiful than the current hostilities.  We keep reading and the groom takes this a step further comparing the bride to a dance between two armies: “Return, return, O Shulammite! Return, return, that we may look upon you. Why should you look upon the Shulammite, as upon a dance before two armies?” (Song 6:13, NRSV).  Whew!  How do two armies dance together?  They do so by bringing both peace and justice.

Did you notice that the bride is given another name here?  She’s called the “Shulammite.”  Umm…What’s that mean?  Well, “Shulammite” comes from the same root as the word “shalom” which means peace.  Shalom means peace, but it also means a whole lot more.

We read in Psalm 34:14, “Turn away from evil and do good. Work hard at living in peace [shalom] with others.”  Friendship.  Contentment.  Tranquility.  And of course, no war!  Shalom is all these things, and more.  We read in Psalm 72:3, “May the mountains yield prosperity [shalom] for all, and may the hills be fruitful, because the king does what is right.”  Justice.  Wellbeing.  Welfare.  Ethical living.  The word “shalom” has a kind of grand vision for the whole person—mind, body, spirit.  Care for the whole person and you’re participating in shalom.

Yes, the Song of Songs is about sex, but when you expose it a little more, you realize that it’s not just about sex.  It’s also about creation. Song of Songs exposes us to the best of the best: an image, vision, imagination of peace or shalom with all of creation—both the land and other people.  So…

Shalom, friends!

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: , , ,

Exposure in Marriage

February 14, 2011 by 1 Comment

Exposure in Marriage
Sycamore Creek Church
February 13, 2011
Song of Songs
Tom Arthur

Peace, Friends!

I used to be a photography buff.  I minored in photography in college.  I spent countless hours in the dark room, something that photographers don’t do so much anymore.  But whether you use a computer or light and trays of chemicals, there’s something amazing about photography.  You can take one image and expose it several different ways and see different things in the image.  It’s the same basic image, but many different pictures.

The Bible is a kind of image that can be exposed several different ways.  Three different ways to expose any text in the Bible is to read it literally, morally, and spiritually.  When you expose a text in this way, you start to see all kinds of things that you didn’t see before.

Today we begin a three-part series on the Song of Songs, the steamy side of the Bible.  At least that’s the literal exposure of the Song of Songs.  There’s also the moral and spiritual exposure of the Song of Songs.

The right way to expose the Song of Songs has been an argument that Christians have had for some time.  On one of the spectrum are those who say the Song of Songs is all about sex.  This is the literal reading.  Then there are those who say that the Song of Songs is really all about God’s love of God’s people.  That’s the spiritual reading of the Song of Songs.  I rarely like either/or’s, and so I tend to think that the Song of Songs is about both, and then some.  The Song of Songs is about sex most definitely and about God’s love for God’s people.  And in between I’d like to throw in that the Song of Songs is also about our and God’s love of creation.

To get a better sense of what I’m talking about, let’s go back to Genesis and take a look for a moment at what is usually called The Fall.  This takes place in Genesis chapter three.  We read in chapter three about how Adam and Eve disobey God’s commandment to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they are banned from the garden.  The results of this disobedience are three-fold.  We end up with inequality between the husband and wife, creation itself is broken, and a distance forms between humanity and God.  In the fall, exposure (not the photographic kind but the revealing kind), leads to death.  Song of Songs is an image of the recreation of all three of these broken loves where exposure leads to life, love, intimacy, and peace.  In the Song of Songs, we see a mutual equality of love between husband and wife (literal exposure), a delight in creation (moral exposure), and an intimacy with God (spiritual exposure).

We’ll be dealing with one of these exposures each week.  Today we begin with the Song of Song’s image or recreation of the love that is shared within a life-long commitment, an exposure of marriage.  Let’s dive in and see what the Song of Songs exposes for us about sex and marriage.

“Exposure” can mean the disclosure of something secret.  If sex isn’t this kind of exposure, then I don’t know what is.  When you take all your clothes off and you’re standing in front of your spouse you’re about exposed as you can get.  All the secrets that you hide beneath your clothing are out for this one person to see.

This kind of exposure can be a very scary moment, or it can be a very freeing moment.  I’m reminded of the scene in Bridget Jones Diary where Bridget is trying to decide which kind of underwear to wear out on a date.  First she holds up a lacy thong.  She then reflects that this kind of underwear is less likely to get her into bed with someone but more likely to look good if she does actually get in bed with someone.  Then she holds up a pair of those shaping underwear that look like something your grandma would wear, and she reflects that this kind of underwear is more likely to get her into bed with someone, but once she’s there they’re more likely to put out all the fires of passion.  While I’m not hip on the casual sex value in Bridget Jones Diary, we can see in this moment how sex exposes our secrets.  The Song of Songs presents an image of sex where this kind of exposure is freeing rather than demeaning.  It is freeing because in the Song of Songs sex is faithful, equal, emotional, physical and spiritual.

Faithful

When we think of sex as it is portrayed in our culture these days, we think of the playmate of the month (sex as an object for men to consume that changes every month), the hookup culture (sex is a one night stand), Sex in the City (women are “liberated” just like men to sleep around), or Desperate Housewives (wives are stuck at home wishing they had someone besides their husband).  In some sense each of these images is a reflection, and exposure, of our culture’s infatuation with constant newness, youth, novelty.  We don’t know what to do with commitment, maturity, and extended love.

In the Song of Songs we get a different image of sex.  Sex is faithful.  By faithful I mean that it is reserved for one person and one person alone.  We read in the Song, “My dove, my perfect one, is the only one…” (6:9).  Or in chapter four we read about sex and love as a locked garden, that is unlocked for one person and one person alone (4:16).

You may be wondering right now why I’m calling this the Song of Songs and not the Song of Solomon.  Well, the book itself never gives itself a title.  The first line of the Song says that it is the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s.  The title “Song of Songs” will come to make more sense on the last Sunday, but for now suffice it to say that scholars disagree on who wrote the Song.  Some think it was perhaps a woman who wrote it because it reads like a play and the woman gets more lines than the man.  Whatever the case may be for authorship, we read later in chapter eight that the man pities Solomon his many wives and is happy and content with just one.  Thus, the man in the Song can’t be Solomon.  He looks at Solomon and doesn’t like what he sees, because Solomon’s 700 political wives and 1000 concubines aren’t the faithful-to-one image of the Song of Songs.  The Song of Songs exposes sex as faithful, faithful between two people committed for a lifetime.

Equal

In Genesis we read about the effects or the curse of The Fall.  When I say “curse” I don’t mean that God cursed Adam and Eve in such a way that this had to always be this way, but rather that the curse is a description of the effects or consequences of The Fall.  And what were some of those consequences?  One was a hierarchy between the sexes.  We read in Genesis 3:16 that God said to the woman, “You will bear children with intense pain and suffering. And though your desire will be for your husband, he will be your master” (NLT).

When Adam and Eve disobey God the equality of creation is disrupted and in its place we find a hierarchy of inequality.  The husband is the “master” and the wife has desire for him.  Not coincidentally, we see something new exposed in the Song of Songs.  We read in chapter seven that “his [the man’s] desire is for me [the woman]” (7:10, NRSV).  Here we see the exact opposite of Genesis 3:16 which balances out the inequality of the consequences of The Fall and replaces it with an image of equality in sexual relationship between a husband and wife.  Sex is not just for the man (a consumer of images and pleasures) but it is for both the man and the woman.  They both enjoy the sexual relationship and all that it has to give in terms of desire.  In the Song of Songs, sex is equal.

Emotional

Our culture has been attempting for many years to divorce the emotional bonding from sex.  We are told that sex supposedly can be emotion-free.  But anyone who has had sex for the first time knows that this is a bonding experience.  Sure, you can probably have sex with so many people that you become numb to the bond/break/bond/break/bond/break of casual sex, but this is not what sex was created for.

Sex in the Song of Songs is emotional, emotional bonding.  We read in the second verse of the book, that the woman wants the man to “Kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (1:2, NRSV).  What are “the kisses of his mouth”?  Is this some kind of new French Kiss?  No.  She’s talking about words of affection and not just physical kisses.  The woman wants to hear how much he loves her, and men, if we’re honest, we too love to hear from our wives how much they love us.  We both, men and women, want to be kissed with the kisses of the mouths of our lovers.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning describes this kind of love making in her classic poem, How Do I Love Thee:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

My sense is that this kind of emotional kissing is easier at times for women than for men.  So let me ask you, men, how often do you count the ways that you love your wife?  How often do you offer touch without the expectation of sex?  How often do you tell your wife that you love her, not because she’s done anything, but just because?  Men, kiss your wives with the kisses of your mouth.  You might find that if you do this regularly without strings attached, that you will get to enjoy the next image of sex in the Song of Songs.

Physical

Sex is physical.  Sex is sensual.  Sex is pleasurable.  Yes, the Bible teaches that sex is all these things.  We read right off the bat that the woman says, “Your lovemaking is better than wine” (1:2).  What I’ve translated here “lovemaking” is usually just translated “love” but the Hebrew word is much more active than that.  It is interesting to note that lovemaking and the pleasure it brings here is exposed by the woman!  The woman gets to enjoy the lovemaking and not just the man.  This is, or course, because in the Song of Songs, sex is equal.

Not to be outdone, the man exclaims back to the woman, that she is “a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots” (1:9).  The cultural image here is lost on us moderns.  Let me fill you in.  The story is told of how a general who won a battle against Pharaoh by sending a mare in heat among the stallions of Pharoah’s charioteers.  What a brilliant move!  The stallions all went crazy after the mare and the charioteers were helpless.  So what’s the man saying here?  He’s saying, “You drive men wild!”  Wild with passion.  Wild with desire.  Wild with physical pleasure.

The physical side of sex gets a little, or a lot, explicit at times in the Song of Songs.  We read in chapter five, “I come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gather my myrrh with my spice, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love” (5:1, NRSV).  I’m reminded of John Mayer’s song, Your Body is a Wonderland:

And if you want love

We’ll make it

Swim in a deep sea

Of blankets

Take all your big plans

And break ’em
This is bound to be awhile.

Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with lovemaking!  One scholar says, “This is the only place in the Bible where the love between a man and a woman is treated without concern for childbearing or the social and political benefits of marriage” (Ellen Davis, Song of Songs, 236).  This is sexual pleasure for sexual pleasure’s sake.  It’s not sex to keep men’s lust in check.  It’s not sex to create children.  It’s simply the joy of sex.

And yet, while the image we get of sex in the Song of Songs isn’t 1800s Victorian, it’s also not 60s liberated.  There are some cautions presented.    We read in chapter two about being careful with sensuality.  Don’t wake it up until the time is right (2:7)!  Wait until it is faithful before it is physical.

Let me speak for a moment to the single people, both youth and adults, of our community.  I read recently that “in a nationally representative study of young adults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church-going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/august/16.22.html).  I don’t want to pretend that the image of sex in the Song of Songs is easy, especially in our culture that is luring you toward premarital sex everywhere you turn.  Waiting until marriage for sex is VERY HARD!  It is very hard especially as we keep pushing marriage back and back.  The average age of marriage these days is 27.  Given that puberty hits in the early or even pre-teens, you will have to wait and wrestle with your body for 13 or 14 years to not awaken sex before the time is right.

Now before all the rest of us get judgmental about the situation that our young people are in or their actions, let’s also remember our own experience.  Another survey I read said that “three surveys of single Christians conducted in the 1990s turned up a lot of premarital sex: Approximately one-third of the respondents were virgins—that means, of course, that two-thirds were not” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/may/34.28.html).  Most likely many if not most of us did not wait until marriage to have sex.  Does this mean we can ignore that God has created sex to be faithful?  No way.  So why wait?  Why wait if everyone (80 or 90% of us!) are not waiting.  Because sex is spiritual.

Spiritual

In chapter three we read that the woman calls the man the one “whom my soul loves” (3:2, NRSV).  Sex is soul work.  Sex affects your soul.  Sex isn’t something we can separate from the rest of our being.  It is foundational stuff to the rest of our life.  Sex has to do with making your soul ready for love.  Sex has to do with becoming the kind of person you would want to love.  Sex has to do with forming and reforming your deepest and truest self and being.  What you do with sex doesn’t just stay in your body, it gets into your spirit too.  It gets into your character.  Sex, either in marriage or waiting for it until marriage, forms and reforms who you are as a Child of God.  It has to do with how you love God with everything you’ve got and how you love your neighbor as yourself.  Waiting is a kind of spiritual practice, and sex in marriage is a kind of spiritual practice that transforms your life.

So when it comes to waiting until marriage, there are of course then two traps we can fall into.  One is being proud of our ability to wait.  The other is being dejected at our inability to wait.  Neither is a Christian response.  Christ can and does form and reform you in all kinds of spiritual ways.  The question is, will sex be one of those?  Sex is spiritual.  It exposes who we are.  When sex is faithful, equal, emotional, physical, and spiritual, that exposure rather than being scary is freeing.  It becomes part of God’s work in our lives.

Thank you, God!

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: ,

Exposure

February 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Exposure:
1. The disclosure of something secret…
2. Vulnerability to the elements…
3. The state of being vulnerable…

Sex exposes.  Creation exposes.  God exposes.  The Song of Songs, the steamy side of the Bible, exposes the connection between sex, creation, and God.  Sound scary?  Sound freeing?  What would it be like to be truly known and truly loved?  Come join us as we expose the best of intimacy, vulnerability, love and sex through the lens of The Song of Songs.

February 13th – Exposure in marriage
February 20th – Exposure in creation
February 27th – Exposure with God

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: ,