This is the sermon delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of the First Reformed Church of New Brunswick, NJ on Sunday, July 9, 2023, drawing from Song of Solomon 2:8-13 and Romans 7:15-25a.
So I can tell we’re all a little bit nervous, because we’ve come ‘round again to that rare, special day when Song of Solomon pops up into the lectionary. Whenever this happens, it never fails, we all start doing that thing which theologians have been doing for centuries: desperately, aggressively looking for any possible way we can understand this book without admitting that it’s about the thing we totally know it’s about. So, in the interests of avoidance, some of us like to say that it's a metaphor for the way Christ looks at the church; others prefer to think of it as a complex analogy for the communal life in Christ. I've even once heard it described as one big negative example; an entire book dedicated to highlighting what not to do.
But, of course, that's all just a nice-sized helping of puritanical evasiveness. So, in the interests of getting it over with, let me just rip that bandaid off right now.
This book is absolutely, unequivocally about sex.
Now I’ll admit, I’m one of those pastors who rides wholeheartedly for the Song of Solomon. I think that we’re usually far too quick to turn blushingly away from powerful depictions of love that we can miss the honestly divine beauty that exists when two people come together in the sharing of deep, personal, intimate connection. I mean, if love is the name of the Christian game, why world we turn away from the one nearly universal example of love in the human experience?
But even if we are to embrace that love that, even when we let our discomfort fall aside and lean into the fact that this is really truly what this book of the Bible is about, there's still something that feels a little bit…off…about it, isn't there? There’s an eagerness, an intensity, a sort of leaping-over-“mountains” energy that, for those of us who have been in loving, long-term relationships at least, seems to be strangely immature for a text in as wise a book as the Bible.
What I read here, the conduct I see being so eloquently described, most definitely has its basis in love to be sure, but it feels almost as though what’s being described isn’t actually a true, deep and abiding love, but something far steamier, yet entirely more shallow, much less mature or profound. It feels an awful lot like we’re not describing a relationship, honestly…
It feels like we’re talking about a crush.
Now this is where it gets complex, because this area where love and infatuation intersect is something our culture doesn’t really like to talk about, and, with very toxic side effects, we often don’t even agree that this exists.
As a culture, we Americans aren't at all shy when it comes to depictions of love; you only have to turn on a TV, watch a movie, or even open a book just to be inundated with lavish descriptions of love, passion, romance, and affection. Throughout my life, every show I've ever watched, even the kids stuff, always had a love subplot, every movie, every book; it seems like all media everywhere just has to touch on the subject at least once.
But every time it comes up, the descriptions of what "love" looks like, what it feels like, always seem to be more or less the same: nervous, distracted, butterflies-in-the-stomach, overwhelming sensations of tension, desire, and an almost obsessive interest. It can be awkward, and the feelings aren't always reciprocated, but that "love at first sight" mentality is at the heart of every single depiction of love I've seen, heard, or read over the last 38 years of my life.
Now the particular feelings which we see depicted, they're not made up. I've encountered it many times myself, as I'm sure many of you have too. It's been almost 30 years now for me, but I still remember the very first time I felt that particular cocktail of distracting, knock-you-on-your butt-overwhelming, endorphins that we like to advertise as "love".
I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11, in my first few weeks of middle school, just walking through the hallways just trying to figure out where exactly I needed to be. I was still new to the place, unsure and a little bit confused. The middle school I went to was divided into three, long, parallel hallways; one for each grade, and after getting turned around a few times (and running a little late for class) I had just turned to walk down the 6th grade hallway when, to my enduring shock, I was hit by school bus running at highway speeds.
No, not literally of course, but that's certainly what it felt like to my then-quickly-maturing brain. You see, as I came around the corner I caught sight of one of the girls in my grade coming down the hall in the other direction. She was your typical, unremarkable, midwestern, blonde-haired, blue-eyed preteen girl, just going about her business like everyone else. There was, in an objective sense, really nothing that could distinguish her from any other 11 year old on the planet. But for whatever act of diabolic mischievousness or divine comedy had alighted on me in that precise moment, when I turned that corner all the various hormones and other chemicals that had been quietly brewing in my prepubescent brain for years just…detonated.
It was like all the air had gone out of the world; like a passing singularity had literally pulled the atmosphere of the entire planet out into hard vacuum, but I was somehow the only one who had managed to notice. I lived entire lifetimes in that brief moment, imagined an whole life spent in pursuit of this inexplicably divine being that, until that moment, I had not even given a passing thought to. Ten seconds earlier my only concern had been making it on time into the classroom not fifteen feet from where I was standing, but if you had asked me in that moment I wouldn't have even been able to tell you what country I was in.
I realized in that moment that this must be it; this "love" thing which every piece of media I had ever seen had been telling me about. As the initial shock wore off, and at least some of my sense began to return, I was able to recognize it immediately; the combination of desire and terror, the butterflies in the stomach, the obsessive inability to think about anyone, anything else. I would do anything for this person, be anything for her. I would give anything, anything at all, just to be a part of this person's life.
"…for 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."
Yep, this was it, alright.
This was love.
Or…so I thought. So many of us think, if we're truly being honest. And while the sheer intensity of those feelings certainly gives us reason to believe it might be, despite all the waxing poetic, all the flowing endorphins, all the great and terrible want, the need that flows through the heart and the mind; despite all of that…it wasn't actually love.
Consider this: In the story I just told, I absolutely described a very real, authentic emotional experience that I had; thoughts and feelings that I still fully and vividly remember, even all these years later. The beauty, the desire I felt in that moment is as shocking to me today as it was when I was 11. But as real, and powerful as those feelings were, you may have noticed one rather glaring fact:
As I just told that story, I never said a single word about her involvement in it at all.
Everything about that emotional experience was about me, and only me. My feelings, My wants. My desires. All the endorphins and other chemicals running through my brain. While seeing this particular girl in that particular moment definitely triggered what is, in retrospect, an hilariously over-the-top emotional cascade reaction, the entire scope of her involvement in things was to act as a visual catalyst for something within me that didn't involve her whatsoever. Truth be told, from that day until today, nearly 30 years later, I have still not exchanged more than one or two words with this person. The confluence of social expectations and pre-teen biology had created, in my head, an entirely unilateral relationship; her compliance wasn't a factor.
It wasn't love; it was a crush. A type of obsession, really.
And as someone who has for the last 15 years been married to an absolutely amazing woman, someone with whom I remain deeply, truly, and most importantly equally in love, I can say now with a certainty which that poor, besotted, overwhelmed middle-schooler did not have:
These two feelings are not at all the same thing at all.
Love, as I think many of us here know, is based not on the frivolous whims of infatuation, but on a deep, abiding, supportive respect. Love is built with deliberation, refined through the fires of trial, buttressed by mutual aid and support, and reinforced with a healthy dose of open, honest, communication. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
Now compare that to any crush you've ever seen on TV, watched in a movie, read about in a book, or even had yourself. Does the jealous, objectifying, stalker-y would-be lover on TV actually demonstrate kindness, caring about the other person's wants, needs, interests and personality, lacking in envy or arrogance as they try not only to uplift the other person, but to respect them? Does dear Romeo know a blessed thing about being patient? Does anyone in the movie "Love, Actually," behave with a willingness to bear or endure anything at all, let alone the burdens that come with treating another human being as anything other than the object of a perverted form of worship?
No. As powerful as these feelings are, as crushing as they may feel (if you'll forgive the pun), they're most definitely, obviously different things. A crush is an obsession pretending to be love; it’s not the real thing at all.
So why is it that we expect our relationship with God to work any differently?
When we bring our hearts into the presence of God, when we begin the lifelong process of forming that deep and intimate relationship with our creator, what are we looking for, and how does it drive and motivate us? Do we turn our affections to God with all the intensity of a firehose, a one-way obsession based solely in the emotional whims of our own hearts and minds? Do we give everything to God, again and again, only to find ourselves growing increasingly frustrated as the divine object of our interest stubbornly refuses to respond our outpouring of attention in the way we want or expect them to? Do we worship and serve, setting aside our own self-identity entirely so that we can be whatever we think they want, only to find ourselves shocked and confused, even outraged, when the Almighty fails to respond by showering us with blessings in response?
Some of you might be familiar with a particular, violent outgrowth of our modern society; a little nazi-adjecent group of men which came to prominence a few years ago known as 'incels." These men - and I use the term loosely here - are among the worst kinds of misogynists, those who feel as though they are owed affection because of the fact that they have spent their entire lives stuck mistaking that obsession for love. Like most of us, these folks have been told their whole lives that simply having a crush must be the beginning of something wondrous, and when their obsession fails to yield that wondrous fruit they so expect, their "love" does something that that no true love ever does.
It turns into frustration, anger, hatred, and even violence. These men are responsible for a number of mass shootings, stabbings, and other violent acts in the past decade or more, all in the name of their unrequited obsessions.
Death, and destruction, as the wages of infatuation metastasized into obsession and entitlement. Despite very much thinking of themselves as the good guys, as victims even, the strength of their infatuation so metastasized into hatred that even though they claim to be the most loving, in practice they behave with the most unabashed, unashamed evil.
"I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand."
There is a confusion that comes, when we mistake obsession for love. An evil that lies close at hand, twisting us into anger when all our hearts cry out for is to do what is good. And as a church, we're no less at risk of this than we are as individuals. How often have we told ourselves, our communities, and even our children that we know what God wants? I've been told in my life that God wants a great many things; I’ve been told that God wants children to be quiet in church, that suits and ties and nice white dresses are God's preferred choice of clothing, that God wants only certain people to serve, certain people to minister, certain people to preach, and only certain people to marry, have children, or even love.
Of course, these things don't come from God at all. We invented them, and a million other things beside. We invented them because, like the middle-schooler with a crush, we got lost in our obsession for God, and started giving to the almighty a million different things that we thought God wanted, without ever coming to God in prayer, in study, or in conversation so that we might learn what God truly, actually wants of us.
When Paul mentions “another law at war with the law of my mind,” he’s describing this tension between love and obsession. The law of our minds urges us to respond to God like a preteen with a crush: by burying the other person under the weight of our misguided affections because we’re in love with how we feel about them, making them an idol without ever trying to actually know them as a person.
When we put aside our infatuated desire to shower God with giant churches, full pews, loud music, overflowing offering plates, right theology, or even an entire world built on Christian theocratic nationalism, and start to see God as a person, we realize that this a very different God than the one we had built up in our heads.
In meeting our “divine crush”, we find someone who doesn’t say a word about attracting people into the claustrophobic walls of our church building, and who’s got nothing at all to say about engaging programmatics, endowments, wealth management, complicated theology, praise bands, or ham buns. We find a divine who couldn’t care less about how we dress, whether or not we swear every other word, how we look, or who we love.
When we meet our God as a person, rather than merely an object for our spiritual obsession, we find a God who wants the hungry to be fed, the wealthy and powerful to be laid low, the oppressed to be uplifted, and the prisoner to be set free, whether or not they make it into our building first.
This, I feel, is God’s message for our church, for all of our churches, today. When we have that realization of who God is, and everything that God has done for us through Christ Jesus our Lord, it is easy to develop the mother of all religious crushes. But when we jump into blind, worshipful, obsession, we can easily become like a teenager - or an incel - who surrounds their crush with dozens of bright red roses, only to feel a great rage and anger when they are rejected, never realizing that had we tried to know them, to understand them as person rather than a shining golden idol built of our own overwhelming emotions, we might have talked to them long enough to learn that they’re allergic to roses.
In reading the Bible, we come to know a God who is very much allergic, so to speak, to our noisy gongs or clanging cymbals. We find a God who hates, who despises our festivals, and who takes no delight in our solemn assemblies. We find a God who only wants to see us let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream, who wants to work with us in bringing kindness and mercy out from behind these church walls.
We find a God who wants us to be partners in the divine expression of love, not mindless followers who worship God as an idol rather than loving God as dear and perfect friend.
So this week, throughout our own lives and in the ministry of the church, as we ask ourselves that mildly-overrated question from the 90s, “what would Jesus do?” let’s try not to respond with all the things that we could do in Jesus' name. Let's not think of louder music, better prayers, more church programs, or bigger donations. God has self-identified in the Bible; we know that God wants to join with us in doing justice, and loving kindness, in breaking chains, feeding the hungry, defending the poor and the oppressed, and giving voice to the voiceless.
So let us instead go out into the places where these things are being done, walk among the hungry and the poor, sit with the oppressed, and give ear to the voiceless, and in that space seek to truly and completely know the God who loves the least of these. And rather than showering the Lord with the worship, adoration, and obsession that our infatuated hearts suggest, let us instead grow in our relationship with Christ by walking where Jesus walked, and grow in our love for God by committing to love the true, righteous, and above all just person of God.
Arise, my love, my fair ones, and come away from the crushes of our spiritual youths, and let's get to know the God of justice, mercy, and true, abiding love.
Amen.
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