Thursday 13 July 2017

Sermon Opoho Church Sunday 9 July 2017 Pentecost 5

Readings:  Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Let us pray: Faithful and ever-loving God, may your word for us be embedded in our hearts and outpoured in our lives we pray.  Amen.

I have titled this sermon: ‘Are we an extravagant people for God?’ 
As I prepared the liturgy for today, I found it difficult to move on from the words of welcome, psalm and praise – I wanted stay in the groove of extravagant celebration, to immerse myself in the joy of God with us; the immensity of God’s love and purpose in this world.  Beautiful are you O God.  I wanted to rest awhile in the beauty and joy, in the praise of an abundant and loving God.  The sheer wonder of God with us kind of stopped me in my tracks.

We are, I suspect, in relative terms, a measured people.  We are uncomfortable with words like extravagance or passion, find it difficult to express over-the-top emotion and feel it we need to remain reasonably in control lest we make a fool of ourselves and embarrass others.  That will not be all of us but possibly enough of us to make it our expectation of proper behaviour, especially in church.

So what does it feel like when we read the superlatives, the passionate language of the Song of Songs.  Which some of us did a couple of months ago at our monthly bible book evening.  There was some squirming at the evocative wording. Why is it in the bible, we might even ask?  How many have read it through, not just the single lectionary appearance of 2:8-13?  Is it a single poem or a collection?  Is it about love between man and woman or Israel and God or Jesus and the church or the soul’s spiritual union with God?  Allegorical or literal? Sacred or profane?

This is a discussion for another time – today, reading it as Christ followers, it is helpful to see it through the lens of the church’s relationship with Jesus, our relationship with God through Jesus.  A passionate outpouring of what it means to love and be loved.

But whatever the lens, whoever is the lover and the loved, it is brim full of extravagance.  And if we read it as an allegorical tale of the relationship between God and humankind, it demands of us an enthusiasm, an excessiveness for our God, for being the body of Christ, that might not come naturally to a measured people.

Do we celebrate God?  It’s very easy to linger in the subdued reverence of a distant God, the darkness of confession, the hopelessness of an ugly world, the tiredness of traditions that no longer connect us with God.  For hundreds of years we have been suspicious of emotion, preferring instead to be a prudent, serious people of God.  In our music from early on emotion was looked upon with suspicion, in our traditional liturgy the language can be so formal as to disengage us.  We use the language of praise but sometimes it is so heavy if feels like a burden.

Have we turned the yoke of God, despite the words of promise to the contrary, to an encumbrance that is weighing us down, keeping us immobile? Too much ‘serious’ training as responsible adults has squeezed the capacity for joy and delight out of us?

Well, maybe it is time to redress the balance.  To use the language of celebration: that we are the beloved of God, that we are blessed and the world is blessed by the presence of God. 
No one does it better than Joy Cowley: Extravagant Praise.
 “We’ve been looking for a suitable word to praise you, God. Something enthusiastic but not too formal, the sort of happy shout a child gives to its mother.
We’ve tried Hallelujahs, Glorias and Hosannas, but really, what we’d like is a word from our own language, a word that is more us.
If we were a bellbird, we’d fill our throats with ecstatic song. 
Or, as a lamb, we could fling ourselves into spring dance.
As a child playing in the snow we would whoop with new delights.
As a mountain stream we would spill out inarticulate babblings of joy.
And if we were the sea, our waves would explode in a thunder of love for you
Lord, you overwhelm us with your great goodness.
Praise should not be difficult and yet we can’t find the exact word.  Perhaps it doesn’t exist, though if it does,
we’re sure that it sounds like ‘Yippee!’”

So how do we live under the yoke of Christ and see it as a reason for dancing and shouting yippee. 

I want to share a story from Friday night: I was at the folk club enjoying a wonderful night of music – and I wanted to be part of it.  I don’t sing well, don’t play an instrument, can tap my foot with the best of them but it wasn’t enough.  And I suddenly wanted to express my participation, my delight in the rhythm and the beauty of the music – and the thing that I really wanted to do is let my hands loose to dance the music. I sort of did but discreetly – maybe I should have made it more of a yippee moment!

Extravagant movement – once in Amberley we had a combined service with the Anglicans and it was decided that we would ask a woman who had been a professional dancer – with Limbs if any of you remember that – to interpret in the dance the psalm as it was read.  It was beautiful – an expression of both the word and her involvement in it.  Some people sat with eyes averted – dance in church?  I had to adjust my thinking too and I am so glad I was able to.    And I was part of a group that line-danced in church to a Christmas carol – mostly to support a young woman who felt inadequate at whatever she tried to do but this was her passion – and it felt beautiful for God.

But it is not just in words and movement that we might need to push the boundaries. 
Jesus said:  ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

Extravagant rest!  In Jesus we are promised a peace and restoration unlike any other we might know – a giving up of our burdens to one who understands the power of love to both hold us safe and to free us from the tyranny of our burdens.  Do we trust in that promise of rest?  It seems to me that we don’t altogether embrace the concept of handing all our cares and burdens over to God.  We tend to keep some of them close, preferring the burden to be ours to carry and to deal with, the failure ours to live with.  The sense of incredible peace that comes from walking with Christ instead of separate from him, from knowing you are not alone in your struggle is beyond measure.  The presence of God in our lives makes the burdens light and the joy indescribable.  Nothing measured about that.

 For it is a light yoke, this taking on of love, this learning of the way of Jesus: we are offered the chance to step out from all that wearies and dismays us into a place of celebration and hope – that we can make a difference in a world full of pain, that we are beloved no matter what, that love will conquer death, that light will shine in the darkness and the darkness will never put it out.

For is that not the extravagant promise of the cross – that in the midst of the pain and suffering, love conquers all, love remains with us and love reconciles the world to God.  How else can we respond to the crucified and risen Christ than with extravagant love to him and to each other. Amen.


Margaret Garland

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