Sunday 25 November 2018

Worship: Intimacy (Song of Songs 2.10-13 and John 12.1-3)



Introduction

I have to admit it, I’m a bit of a nerd. That may not be news to you …no one seems to be aghast and shaking their head in wide-eyed disbelief… but I have only recently realised it’s true.

I began to have suspicions that I might be bit nerdy about two years ago, but I suppose the evidence became overwhelming whilst on holiday last June, when, instead of just enjoying a glass of wine in the sunshine, I decided to go through my entire music collection and select my all-time 100 favourite songs, then arrange them in alphabetical order first by artist, then by song title on my tablet.  

Not content with that, I then couldn’t stop myself making a second playlist of songs 101-200. It’s genuinely sad; I actually agonised for about half an hour over whether Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” should make it into the top 100 or be relegated to the b-list.

I would have real difficulty whittling down that list to a top ten, but were I to manage it, I think I would find it actually impossible pick my all-time best song ever. But alas, this the kind of utterly pointless challenge I feel I will inevitably have to rise to on my next holiday.

I mention this because the Bible tells us that King Solomon wrote many, many songs, but he wanted everyone to know which one he thought was indisputably the best.

It is the Song of Songs. This is the Hebrew way of expressing a superlative. If you want to say “the best king of all” in Hebrew you say “king of kings”. If you want to tell people about the most amazing day of your life you call it the “day of days.”

And if you want to describe “the best song ever, the song that is more beautiful, more tuneful, more moving, more enchanting that any other”, you call it the Song of Songs. This one, tucked away in our Bibles between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah, is indisputably, and forever, top of the charts.

Intriguingly, the first book of Kings says that Solomon wrote 3,000 proverbs [that’s a different saying every day for over eight years] and 1,005 songs. That’s a strangely precise number, isn’t it, but it corresponds, as far as we can tell, almost exactly to the number of women Solomon had in his life.

So some people have speculated that, because the number of songs he wrote and the number of women he loved is so similar, he may have written a love song for each of those women.

And if this theory is right (and I think it makes a lot of sense) that’s the reason right there why only one of Solomon’s 1,005 songs made it into the Bible. It’s as if God said, “that’s the only one I’m publishing, because only one woman was ever my choice for you Solomon; she’s the one - and the only one - you should have married.”

We’re going to look at just a few verses of that most excellent of songs this morning, as we draw to a close this series of six talks on worship.

So far, we’ve explored why we worship, and why it matters to do it as well as we can. We’ve seen that the heart of worship is seeking God’s presence. We’ve seen that God is breathtakingly holy and awesome so we should come before him with reverence and fear.

Last week, we saw that worship is not a performance that we passively watch; God wants us to all be involved.

The Heart

Today, we are looking at the idea of intimacy in worship. The Bible calls for a response to God that is with all our heart as well as with all our mind.

Many of you, perhaps most of you, know what heartbreak feels like. Have you ever opened your heart to someone, only to have it torn apart by disappointment and rejection? Forgive me for reminding you of that experience today; it’s one of the most crushing, devastating experiences we ever face as human beings.

I once dated a girl for about three months. I was more smitten with her than she was with me. I remember vividly the day she dumped me 38 years ago!

I remember where I was sitting, the time of day, the colour of the carpet and what I was wearing. I remember sobbing, I remember the snot running down, I remember thinking I was ugly and that I’d never love again. I can laugh at myself now, but at the time it was utterly distressing.

God experiences rejection thousands and thousands of times every day by people who spurn him, deny him, disown him, forget him, use his name as a swear word, ignore him and curse him.

And yet he still calls every person on this earth into relationship with him. Throughout the Bible, God reveals himself as having a heart; he has feelings and passions. He burns. He laughs. He gets upset. He sings for joy. He cries. He loves.

 A couple of weeks ago, Kathie went to look after the Paris grandchildren for a few days while our son and daughter-in-law attended a conference. She was gone a whole week so obviously I lived on cheese and onion crisps and tinned mushroom soup for five days. I missed her. In fact, from the moment she got on the train I couldn’t wait for her to get back home. And not just for her cooking I hasten to add.

What would you say if I went to meet Kathie at Eaglescliffe station, watched her get off the train, kept my hands in my pockets and said, “You alright then?” Or what would you think if I formally offered my hand to shake hers and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Lambert?”

Or supposing I said to her, “I love you with all my mind!” She might say to me, “What about your heart?” or she might say quite a bit more than that actually! It’s appropriate in a relationship of love to express some feelings. In fact, it’s more than just appropriate, it’s essential.

A Song of Love

The Song of Songs is a romantic and quite spicy poetic dialogue between a young bride and her husband, and it confirms - with divine approval - what we already know; that falling in love arouses the strongest and most intense emotions we ever feel. The Song fills the senses. It is sensually intoxicating and overpowering.

Listen to these verses from the different parts of the Song: “I have come into my garden, my bride, I have gathered my myrrh with my spice... Drink your fill of love... All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you... You have stolen my heart... I am faint with love.... Your mouth is sweetness itself; you are altogether lovely...

Is it just me, or is it hot in here?

Is it about worship? Or is it just about sexual attraction? Is it sort of both? What do you think?

The 3rd century Church Father Origen said, “I advise and counsel everyone who is not yet rid of vexations of the flesh and blood, and has not ceased to feel the passions of this bodily nature, to refrain from reading the [Song of Songs] and the things that will be said about it.”

Someone in this church told me a couple of years ago that it is their least favourite book in the Bible and they feel quite uncomfortable reading it.

But the Jewish commentator Rabbi Aqiba saw a purity and innocence about this Song that is unparalleled in world literature. He said, “The entire history of the world from its beginning to this very day does not outshine that day on which this book was given to Israel. All the Scriptures, indeed, are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.”

In the same vein, CH Spurgeon who led a church in London with 12,000 members, preached 59 sermons on the Song of Songs, which were later published in a book called “The Most Holy Place.”

The Song of Songs is given to us by God for two reasons; primarily it means what it looks like it means; two young lovers delighting in each other’s charms - God made us in his image, male and female, and he said it was very good.

Some disagree and say, “Oh no, it can’t be; it’s in the Bible, so it must be all about spiritual things and nothing else.” So, they say, every detail has a deeper and true meaning and what the Song appears to be all about should be ignored.

One commentator for example takes the view that when the bride says in chapter 1.12 “My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts” that this is, in fact, despite all appearances to the contrary, a picture of Christ’s appearing between the Old and New Testaments.

I just don’t think it is. When I read, “My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts,” forgive me if you’re shocked at how worldly and unspiritual your vicar is, but I don’t think about the incarnation – at all. And I don’t think Solomon had the first Christmas in mind either when he wrote those words down.

A Place for Intimacy in Worship

And yet… having said that, the Church is the bride of Christ. His beloved, radiant, resplendent bride. And marriage does point to the enduring covenant of love between Christ and his Church. This is the other, and secondary, reason God gave us this book in his Word.

Ephesians 5 in the New Testament says that there’s profound and wondrous mystery in the union of a man and a woman in marriage and that there are striking parallels between that and the relationship between Christ and his whole Church worldwide.

Does that mean we should use the racy language of physical attraction that we read in the Song of Songs in our sung worship? No, it doesn’t.

Our relationship with Jesus as individuals is not a romantic one and I think it’s really unhelpful, especially for men, to be expected to sing words like, “Let my words be few; Jesus, I am so in love with you.”

Or “I look full in your wonderful face.” Or “There’s no place I’d rather be than in your arms of love.” Or this one lifted straight from the Song of Songs addressed to Jesus: “Oh, that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth.”

Jesus is not my sweetheart. The Bible never speaks of anyone being in love with Jesus. And that song with a reference to a wet, sloppy kiss is just gross. That is the quickest way I know to empty the church of men – I think this is a tragic misunderstanding of intimacy in worship.

But there’s a passion and a longing, and a delighting and an overflow of admiration, like we find in the Song of Songs, that absolutely should fill our worship. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

In the Song of Songs, you find an overwhelming sense of anticipation; the young lovers long to be up close together.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42).

One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord. (Psalm 27).

In the Song of Songs, the lovers express their pleasure and satisfaction resting in each other’s company.

How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! We take refuge in the shadow of your wings. We feast on the abundance of your house; and drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. (Psalm 36).

In the Song of Songs, the lovers continually speak out flowing, superlative words of praise for each other.

I love you, Lord, the strength of my salvation. My rock, in whom I take refuge, my fortress and my deliverer; my shield and my stronghold. (Psalm 18).

When I was a young Christian, the song “I love you Lord, and I lift my voice” was new. There have been times when I have joined with others to sing that song, starting gently but with rising volume and a cascade of harmonies; it’s a simple song of the heart, you don’t need the words as they are few, and it is properly intimate; “Take joy my King in what you hear, let it be a sweet sound in your ear.”

In the Song of Songs chapter 2, the beloved says,

“See, the winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come…”

The beloved is first and foremost Solomon’s young bride. But she is also a foreshadowing of the one, holy and apostolic Church loved by Christ.

“The winter is past and the rains are over and gone” she sings. Springtime, when wintry cold and darkness is past, is so like the new reality of fruitfulness and abundance we have tasted and savoured in Christ.

“This is the season of singing” she says. And we are in a season of singing in the Church today, did you know that? We are living in an age where more worship songs are being written than ever before. They’re not all works of art by any means, some are truly awful, but many are inspired, and look; the heart of the Church is in the right place and that is what God sees above all.

Seven times in the Bible it says, “sing a new song to the Lord.” Interestingly, some churches should note this, there is no command anywhere in Scripture to sing an old song - though it is certainly not forbidden of course.

In times of revival and outpouring, in times when heaven touches earth, the Holy Spirit brings forth a blossoming of worship where expressions of intimacy rise to greater prominence.

The great American revivalist Charles Finney once said, looking back over his life, “In times of revival the language of the Song of Songs became as natural as breathing.”

The hymn “Here Is Love, Vast as the Ocean” was written during the Welsh revival and it speaks of that blessed season when heaven’s peace and justice kissed a guilty world in love.

Did you know that the most common New Testament word translated “worship” occurring 59 times (proskuneo) means “to bow down and kiss” and it originally carried with it the idea of subjects falling facedown before a king or kissing his feet.

Ending

Which brings us, as we come towards the end, to Mary of Bethany in John 12.

She takes about a pint of pure nard, a fabulously expensive perfume from a very rare plant that grows only in the foothills of the Himalayas. She pours it all on Jesus’ feet and wipes them dry with her hair. And the whole house fills with the fragrance of this costly aromatic fragrance.

In Jesus’ day, nard had to be transported over several months from northern India, via Persia to Roman occupied Judea. It was vanishingly rare, highly exotic, decidedly luxurious and vastly expensive. It has an incredibly clean, pure, fragrant, intense and aromatic scent. 

Verse 3 says Mary “poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair.” There is an unembarrassed intimacy about that act. Mary’s offering is profoundly personal. It is from an overflowing heart, as well as a renewed mind.

This Mary, we know from Luke 10, loved to just sit at Jesus’ feet, and bask in his presence, and allow her mind to be changed and her heart to be stirred by his words of grace, and let everything else in her life just fade into the background as she focused on him. This is the kind of intimacy in worship the Lord seeks.

And as the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume, may this house be filled with the glorious sound of our uninhibited love for the Lord. 


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25 November 2018




Sunday 11 November 2018

My Soul, Find Rest in God (Remembrance Day Sermon 2018)


Psalm 62.5-12

World War I, as we know, was mostly fought in trenches, sometimes only a few yards apart, cut into the soil along the border of France and Belgium.

I used to travel through the Somme and the Pas de Calais in northern France three or four times a year when I lived in Paris and it is remarkable that the physical impact of that conflict is still visible a century later. You can see traces of old trench networks in the fields, and there are still scars from where explosion blasts crater the land.

Two weeks ago, a pair of scuba divers plunged into the River Meuse to help remove more than 5 tonnes of unexploded shells from World War I. It is estimated that there are at least 250 to 300 tonnes more still buried in the nearby rivers and rolling hills of eastern France.

They think it will take another century at least of dangerous clearance work to finally remove all these munitions and return the landscape to the way it was before the war.

So, even though the last survivor of that war is now dead, even our grandchildren will still live in its shadow. 

As we mark the centenary today of the end of those hostilities, and sure many of you will say likewise, I confess I have been very moved by features about it in the media, especially old recordings of interviews with surviving soldiers describing, or trying to describe, what years of trench warfare were like; the cold, the mud, the rats, the smells, the fear, the becoming accustomed to death, and the sheer relentlessness of it…

And how it felt when the guns fell silent at 11am on 11 November 1918. And the fact that right up until the last minute, though it was known precisely when the end of hostilities was coming, shots were still being fired and men were still getting killed.  

And then… nothing. The first time in months that there was perfect stillness and quiet. Those who were there to experience it struggled to describe even years later how wondrous it was.

Last week, as I was driving with the radio on, some of you might relate to this, I suddenly and unexpectedly welled up as I listened to a piece on the radio about the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey.

In case you don’t know the background, in 1920 the remains of four soldiers in unmarked graves were exhumed from four different battlefields and placed in plain coffins covered by Union Flags. A senior officer closed his eyes and placed his hand on one of the coffins. The other three were taken away and reburied. The one that was selected was transported to London with great pomp and ceremony, with full honours and military salutes.

One hundred women were invited as special guests at the interment in Westminster Abbey. They were there because they had each lost their husband and all their sons in the war.

And the piece on the radio went on to say that the Ministry of Defence received hundreds of letters in the months following, all from women, all mothers who had lost their sons in the war, saying, “I had a dream, and in my dream, I learned that this unknown soldier, so grandly honoured was my boy.”

It’s this human angle, I’m sure, not so much the grandiose military monuments and mind-boggling statistics, that helps most of us to connect with a conflict none of us were alive to see.  

In order to get a better sense of what we commemorate today, I have been reading letters from the Western Front over the last few weeks. They give such a vivid insight into that appalling conflict that is estimated to have killed almost 7 million civilians and 10 million military personnel. About a third died, not from combat, but from diseases caused by the war.

The British Army Postal Service delivered around 2 billion letters during the war. In 1917 alone, over 19,000 mailbags crossed the English Channel every day, transporting letters to and from British troops on the Western Front.

I want to read some short extracts from just a few:

“Today is my 32nd day on the battlefield. The war has been at a stalemate for a few months now. Our days consist of digging trenches in fear for our lives. We could be shot at any time with a precisely aimed bullet.”

“The smell is unworldly. Illness and disease are common throughout the soldiers. Influenza, diabetes, trench foot, trench fever and malaria. The trenches are infested with rats, frogs and lice which all make the trenches filthily disgusting. The unsanitary conditions may be the reason we lose this war.”

“As write this letter, my free time is soon coming to an end. If I don't make it home just know I died a happy death fighting for my country. I hope everything is wonderful back home and hopefully I'll see you soon. So with all my love my darling Mum I now say goodbye, just in case. Try to forget my faults and to remember me only as your very loving son.”

“Dearest, if the chance should come your way for you are young and good looking and should a good man give you an offer it would please me to think you would take it, not to grieve too much for me… I should not have left you thus bringing suffering and poverty on a loving wife and children for which in time I hope you will forgive me.”

“My darling, if this should ever reach you, it will be a sure sign that I am gone under and what will become of you and the [children] I do not know but there is one above that will see to you and not let you starve. You have been the best of wives and I loved you deeply, how much you will never know.”

“If I fall in battle then I have no regrets save for my loved ones I leave behind. It is a great cause and I came out willingly to serve my King and Country. My greatest concern is that I have the courage and determination necessary to lead my platoon well. I can do no more, I give my love to you all and to Jesus Christ my Maker.”

And then this one, for a bit of light relief. “We were to have had a Brigade Ceremonial Church Parade today but fortunately it rained. I say fortunately because I don’t much care for lengthy ceremonials at Church Parade. It means usually standing about for hours and getting thoroughly bored.” (And that one was written by the son of a vicar).

British society in 1914 was very different from what it is today. About 40 per cent of people attended church at least once a month. Ninety per cent of children went to Sunday School. Just one per cent of the population called themselves atheists.

Today, the numerical strength of the Christian faith, its vibrant youthfulness and explosive growth is in Africa, Asia and South America.

But in 1914 it was in Europe and, as they lay dying, most of those we remember today will have cherished the sentiments of today’s Psalm. 


Yes, my soul, find rest in God;
my hope comes from him.
Truly, he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honour depend on God.
Trust in him at all times…
pour out your hearts to him.


And, as I end, the tomb of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey is very appropriately engraved with New Testament scriptures including these two:

“The Lord knows those who are his” (2 Timothy 2.19). And, “Unknown and yet well known, dying and yet we live on” (2 Corinthians 6.9).



Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 11 November 2018