Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · September 24, 2006

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Lord Jesus, you come to us, you seek us, and, in love, you pursue us.  In this hour of worship, we thank you for your passionate engagement with us, and humbly ask that you keep pursuing us until we are yours and you are ours, and all is brought to union in you.  Amen.

Scripture

Song of Solomon 2:1-13

This is a conversation that takes place between a Lover and the Beloved.  They speak to each other, and they speak about each other.  It is in rather intense, sensuous language.  The first to speak in Chapter 2 is the Beloved, who says:

 “I am a Rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.” 

And the Lover speaks, “Like a lily among the thorns is my darling among the maidens.”

The Beloved responds, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men.  I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.  He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.  Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love.  His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me.  Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

Listen!  My lover!  Look!  Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills.  My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.  Look!  There he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice.  My lover spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.  See!  The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.  Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.  The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.  Arise, come my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.”

Message

A Passionate God

Rick Frost

This is a very interesting text. 

For some 20 years now, I’ve had the honor and privilege of taking folks who are fifth grade and older to the Pastor’s Class Retreat at the Rickman Center.  It’s a wonderful experience.  It’s a weekend kind of thing.  As most of you know, it’s the time and the place where we prepare our folks at Broadway for baptism.  For us at this church, this is really, really a big, big deal.  We see it as being at a place in one’s life when one is ready to make a conscious decision.  There’s a personal desire to enter into what we call a covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  For us, that’s really, really a major thing. 

Now at this retreat we have an agreement.  The deal is this.  All of us present can ask any question that we want – no holds barred.  All of us will do our best to give the best answer we can, given the resources available to us.  Every year, someone always asks, in one form or another, this particular question.  They ask, “OK, what is God really like?”

Of course, all you have to do is watch the news tonight to realize just how important the answer to that question really is, not just to fifth graders, Lord knows, but for all of us around the world, given the fact that we talk so much and hear so much about what is being done in the name of God.

It’s a big question.  It’s a huge question.  For centuries we’ve tried to come up with answers.  We’ve come up with some pretty big answers along the way.  As you might guess, it involves some rather big words.  Words like: omnipotent.

“What’s God like?  What’s God really like?”  Well… God is omnipotent.  God is almighty.  God has unlimited power, resources, influence.  God can do anything God chooses to do.  The God we believe in is omnipotent.  Well… That’s one thing. 

Of course, the Church says there are a lot more.  God is also omniscient.  God knows everything.  Now, there’s a lot we don’t know.  There’s a lot we have yet to learn.  But we believe that God knows everything, that there is nothing that God does not know.  Therefore, there are no hidden secrets from God.  With God, there are no secrets.  God is omniscient.  It’s a big word.

But more than that, God is omnipresent.  God is everywhere.  There is no place that you or anyone else can go where God is not.  You can scale the highest mountains.  You can choose to go down into the deepest pits of hell, and God is there.  In fact, God is right here, right now, in this very setting, with us this very moment.  And God is with everyone else in every other place, all at the same time.  Now, we can’t imagine how that can be, but God can do those things.  Isn’t that amazing?  Did you know that?

Add to that, God is transcendent.  God is above and beyond anything we can envision, anything we can think, or imagine, or dream.  You and I have to live in a material world, but God is not limited to time or space.  God is transcendent in the heavens, eternally.  And on it goes.

Big, huge questions.  Big, huge answers.  Big, huge words for such a big, big God.

Now, this, of course, is what many of us have been taught along the way.  There is truth in all of those things that I have just said.  But, for many people, based on what they have been taught, God is somehow distant.  God is somehow detached.  God is, somehow, way far away.  We are down here, and God is up there.  We are down here muddling around, somewhat confused, conflicted certainly, coping, surviving, doing it our particular way.  God is up there looking down on us but not really too actively involved with us.

Do you remember that song Bette Midler made popular years ago?

From a distance the world looks blue and green,

and the snow-capped mountains white.

From a distance the ocean meets the stream,

and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,

and it echoes through the land.

It’s the voice of hope, it’s the voice of peace,

it’s the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,

and no one is in need.

And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,

no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments

marching in a common band.

Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.

They’re the songs of every man.

Incredible lyrics!  Wonderful lyrics!  They were very popular, and we all remember them.  They are incredible and wonderful until we get to the chorus.  Do you remember the chorus?

God is watching us.  God is watching us.

God is watching us from a distance.

Now… God up there looking down on us, not very involved, distant, detached? The writer of that song simply wrote what she had been taught, I suggest.

Our question today: What is God really like?  What is God really, really like?

Jesus’ response is this:  God is like a shepherd.  Not detached, not distant.  God is like a shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in the pen and goes and looks for the one lost sheep.  When he finds that one lost sheep, he puts that sheep on his shoulders, like a child, and then throws a party for all his friends, because God is like a shepherd.

What is God really like?  Jesus says God is like a woman who, upon losing a coin, or to put it in modern terms, loses her purse, or a wallet, or her credit cards, and driver’s license, and Social Security card… (How many of you have done that?)  After losing these valuable things, she gets down on her hands and knees and turns that house upside down.  When at last she finds that coin, that purse, that wallet, she calls up all her friends, and she shouts for joy, “I’ve found it!”  Come on over, and let’s celebrate!”

What is God really like? 

Folks, faith is not when you finally wrap your mind around the awesomeness of God.  Faith is when you get sought and found by a passionate, emotional, intense, enthusiastic lover of a God.  Now, that is something! 

Our text today is, as you know, an ancient Hebrew love song.  From the fact that it is called “The Song of Songs,” means there aren’t any songs any better.  It’s lyrical.  As you know, it’s poetic.  It sounds a whole lot like a description of what happens when two young lovers connect.  Don’t you think? 

The scholars say that even though the word “God” is never used in the entire book that’s in your Bible, it has been placed in the Bible because it so powerfully depicts what love really is.  In all of its spontaneity, and beauty, and all of its power and exclusiveness…  In its anguish, and its energy, and its tension, and its contentment…  It is the language of love.  The imagery is sensuous.  It’s erotic.  It’s intense.  It’s intimate.

If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you go home and pull that Bible off your shelf and do so, because I can guarantee it will change the way you feel about reading Scripture.  It really will! 

Why in the world is it in the Bible?  Why is this sensuous, erotic, love story, love psalm there?  I suggest it’s there for the same reason that every other book is in the Bible.  It’s there because the scholars believe it reveals something absolutely essential about the Creator of all that is.

Folks, faith is not some cool, calm, rational set of beliefs that one accepts or rejects about a deity that somehow is detached and distant.  No!  Our God is an awesome God.  Our God is a passionate God.  Our God and our faith are about love, and that is awesome, and it’s mysterious, and it’s unexplainable.  How in the world can the Force that created this universe love people?  Wow!

What are we doing when we worship?  What are we doing when we sing songs, when we play instruments, when we come together?  What are we doing?  We are loving God – the God who loves us.  It’s a love relationship.  What are we doing when we take up the offering?  We are loving God.  We are loving the God who loves us.  If that is not the motive for reaching in your wallet, or writing that check, think about that.  What are you doing?  What are we doing when we teach Sunday School, or visit the sick, or training as a Stephen Minister, or pray for peace, and work for peace?  What are we doing when we serve a meal at the soup kitchen, and when we go on a mission trip?  What are we doing?  We are loving God – the God who loves us.

In Jesus Christ, the Creator of the universe becomes the seeking shepherd, the searching woman, the pursuing lover.  God is the one who eagerly and unswervingly, and passionately pursues, moves closer, and closer, and closer to us – to humanity.  That’s what God is really like.

What is God really like?  Let’s see if this helps.  Do you remember when you were in junior highs school?  Oh, my gosh!  Maybe it was high school.  Maybe it was even in college.  I don’t know.  Do you remember the first time you fell in love?  You do; don’t you?  Remember how you felt?  Do you remember how you felt about that person?  Do you remember how “into” that other person you were?  Do you remember how playful, how silly, how foolish you were?  Do you remember how devoted you were?  (Remind me to tell you about Phyllis sometime.  Not today.  That’s another story, but it happened.)  Well, you don’t have to have done that, and made a fool of yourself, but it sure helps.  If you are trying to understand…  If you are really trying to comprehend… If you are trying to get just a clue about the God of Israel, and the God of the Church of Jesus Christ…  Just remember what you felt that very first time.

Now, we’ve had a stormy love affair with God, folks.  I think we are having one right now.  This whole relationship, as you know, has been on-again-off-again for centuries.  The Bible says that God is a jealous God.  It says that God is passionately engaged in a relationship with God’s people.  It says that God has staked everything on this people.  God has a great deal to lose if this relationship that God wants should go bad.  Did you know that?

Sorry, if you thought God was omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, transcendent, detached, distant.  That may be somebody else’s God, but it is not the God of Scripture.  Our God is passionate, intimate, enthusiastic, engaged, on-fire, lover in the very best sense of those words.  God is a lover who loves you and wants your love in return more than anything else that God wants in the whole world.  Somehow, for some reason, God will stoop evidently to almost anything, even the death on a cross, just to get closer to you.  And that’s good news, folks.  That’s amazing news!

The dean of a seminary in this country – very well known – was asked, “What characteristic do you most hope for in your students?  What is the essential characteristic you see as the most necessary for effective ministry in this day and age?”  Interestingly enough, I think his answer is the same characteristic most of us hope will be seen in those who come to make their commitment to be a part of this community of faith.  The seminary dean said, “Do you want it in one word?  I’ll give it to you in one word.  The word is “passion.”  Passion!  Strong, intense, barely controllable emotion, beliefs and behaviors in relationship to a loving God.

Passion!  Let it be, Lord.  Let it be!

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Colorful Creator, you ignite with us many passions, each one reflecting your passion, creativity, and delight in us.  Thank you for making us in your image, for sharing with us the best and most beautiful qualities of your divine heart.  Thank you for being in love with us.  Amen.