Incarnational theology: everything is holy

Sermon delivered Sunday, July 6, 2014 (Fourth Sunday After Pentecost (Year A, Proper 9)) at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.

Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25a

You may have noticed that we read a canticle instead of a psalm as one of the readings today. The word “canticle” comes from the Latin word for “song,” and means just that, a song. The canticles that we say or sing during Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary are songs from parts of the Bible other than the book of psalms.

Today’s canticle comes from the book of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, as you may have heard it called. Since we don’t often read from the Song of Solomon in our Sunday lectionary, the only place many of us hear it read is at weddings, which is certainly an appropriate place for it, since the whole book is an extended love poem between two lovers.

The Song of Solomon is one of only two books in the Bible where God is not mentioned. This fact, and the fact that its sole focus is romantic, erotic love, has led to much controversy over its inclusion in the Bible. Why is this book, which is focused exclusively on physical, earthly love and does not mention God, considered one of our sacred texts?

From a very early time, both Jewish and Christian readers of this book have argued that the text is meant to be read allegorical or metaphorically, where the two lovers in the poem are not two human beings in love, but either God and the Jewish people, or Christ and the church. When the speaker talks about “my beloved,” she is not speaking of a literal man, but of God or Christ. The message they then glean from this book is that we should direct the passions we feel for love from other people toward God, that only God can truly fulfill the desires for intimacy that we often look to be filled from our human relationships.

This interpretation is not out of keeping with other parts of the scriptures, where God’s relationship with the people of Israel is described using the metaphor of a marriage or romantic relationship, particularly the Hebrew prophets. But the thing that has made some readers of the text skeptical about that interpretation is the fact that the Song of Solomon does not clearly make that comparison, unlike other books of the Hebrew Bible that do. The book of Hosea, for example, makes a very clear and explicit comparison between an unfaithful wife and the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in their relationship to God. If you actually read the text of the Song of Solomon carefully, though, it never claims to be about God or anybody’s relationship with God, but about romantic love between two people. And for some reason, both the Jewish and Christian traditions have insisted that it must be about more than just that for it to be considered sacred.

But why must it? Why can’t we accept that this book is simply a love poem celebrating the beauty of romantic love, and that in and of itself makes it holy? As we reflected on this passage earlier this week in our Tuesday morning Bible study, someone in the group observed that even if this passage does not talk about God specifically, it is very “God-like.” They were recognizing a certain sacred quality to the text that is there even if the word “God” is not specifically mentioned, and we talked about how all kinds of things can be sacred or holy even if they do not explicitly have to do with God or church. In this conversation, perhaps without knowing it, the group was exploring the realm of incarnational theology.

What do I mean by that? Well, the school of thought known as “incarnational theology” affirms the goodness of the material world and all things in it as mediators of God’s presence to us. In contrast to a dualistic theology that sees “the material” as bad and “the spiritual” as good and the two in competition and conflict with one another, incarnational theology affirms that this world, this material place of physical stuff, is good and holy, and that we can find the spiritual in and through the material. It is called “incarnational theology” because it affirms that the material world is good because of the incarnation – God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ and experience this physical world is seen as an affirmation of the inherent goodness in this world. Incarnational theology also affirms that the incarnation was more than just God’s presence coming to dwell in the person of Jesus Christ – through the mystery of the incarnation, the whole world is infused with the presence of God, and all creation is sacred.

Although this view has always been the view of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Western Christianity, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to see “the world” as something negative or even evil, something Christians should try to avoid at all costs. We see this kind of thinking in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and today’s passage from Romans is a perfect example. In this passage, Paul writes about his struggles to do what is right, and says that it is his body, his flesh, the things of this material world, that prevent him from achieving his spiritual goals. Rather than seeing his body as a gift from God to be celebrated and appreciated, Paul calls it a “body of death”! What a contrast to the joyful celebration of the body that we find in the Song of Solomon, where every aspect of the beloved’s body is described in loving detail, with rich metaphors to the beauties of nature.

This notion of a division between the material and spiritual worlds can be found even in the meaning of the word “holy” in the Hebrew language. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the English word “holy” as “having to do with a god or religion” or “religiously and morally good,” the Hebrew definition of the word “holy” means “set apart,” something that is separate and distinguished from regular, ordinary, mundane or “secular” life. In churches that have a high view of the sacraments, as the Episcopal Church does, we tend to think in terms of that Hebrew definition of holiness. Holy water is holy because it is different from other kinds of water, and because a priest or bishop has said a blessing over it to “set it apart” for sacramental use. The bread and wine become holy after the Eucharistic prayer has been said over them and afterwards they are “set apart” from regular bread and wine and treated differently, with more reverence, than regular food. But in terms of our common usage of the word “holy,” we tend to think more in terms of the modern English definition, as something religiously or morally good, something that connects us to God in some way. In that sense, was the bread and wine not already holy in some way before we said the prayers over them? Isn’t all water in some sense holy? Incarnational theology invites us to see sacraments not only in the seven traditional forms that the church has given to us, but everywhere around us, in the most mundane and secular parts of our lives, even in the places where God is not mentioned.

There is a song by folk singer Peter Mayer that illustrates this notion perfectly, and since poetry is so often better than prose at communicating an idea, let me share the lyrics of that song with you. It goes like this:

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
Miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now

Peter Mayer was raised Catholic and eventually left the church, so in his assertion that “everything is holy now,” by “now,” he means since he left the Catholic Church and came to a broader understanding of how and where God acts and is present in the world. But he didn’t need to have left the church to come to that realization. Within Christian theology, there is strong support for just the sentiments that Mayer expresses in this song – that “everything is holy,” that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, or, as we say each week in the sanctus, the great song of the church that we sing during the Eucharistic liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”

The catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer specifically affirms that God’s activity is not limited to the seven traditional sacramental rites as defined by the church. In response to the question, “Is God’s activity limited to these rites?”, the Catechism’s answer is, “God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us” (BCP 861).

So we’re in full agreement with Mayer when he says in the concluding verses to his song,

Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now

So, from this perspective, we can read something like the Song of Solomon, a love poem that doesn’t specifically mention God, just as it is and still call it holy, without needing to spiritualize it or read into it a metaphor about the “marriage” between God and God’s people.

What things are sacraments and testaments to you in the big wide world out there? Outside of this building, where does God speak to you? What things have you experienced in life that made you want to bow your head in reverence? What are the songs or poems that you would include in your own personal “Bible” of readings that are sacred to you? This week, I invite you to notice the ways that God is present in the world around you and give thanks for them, whether they are traditional places where you expect to meet God or not. It’s all about paying attention, one of the great spiritual disciplines, and as you do so, remember the words of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expressed her own incarnational theology this way:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

Easter Message: God uses the ordinary to mediate the extraordinary

Sermon delivered Easter Day, Sunday, March 31, 2013, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin. TN. (Scripture passages: Year C: Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12)

To observe Christianity from the outside, filtered through the lens of American culture, it might seem that Christmas is a bigger deal than Easter. After all, we see decorations on homes and town squares, hear Christmas music playing in stores and restaurants, and receive Christmas cards and presents from friends and family. By contrast, the cultural celebration of Easter is much more muted. Sure, you might see a few giant Easter baskets in some neighbors’ yards, but nothing like the total light extravaganza that takes place in December. Though the greeting card companies stock the aisles with Easter cards, they just don’t seem to be as popular as that annual Christmas letter. And when was the last time you heard “Welcome, happy morning” or any other Easter hymn blaring over the loudspeaker at the grocery store? And as far as the secular mascots go, everyone knows that Santa Claus is way cooler (and usually brings way better presents) than the Easter Bunny.

But despite the message sent by our culture, Easter is actually the most important Christian holiday, even more important than Christmas. The Easter message – that Jesus was raised from the dead – is the central claim of Christianity, the core message of our faith. It is also significantly more controversial than the message of Christmas – that Jesus was born. Perhaps the wider culture prefers Christmas to Easter because it is easier to affirm that Jesus was born than to affirm that he was raised from the dead. Even people who do not acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God or the Messiah can accept the historical fact that he existed, and thus, that he was born. But our Easter faith demands something much more challenging of us than an acknowledgement of Jesus’s birth and a respect for his teachings. It demands the proclamation of an outrageous claim – that Jesus has been raised from the dead.

Jesus’s Resurrection is not accepted as historical fact in the way that his birth is because it is not universally acknowledged, nor was it universally experienced. In Peter’s famous speech to the Gentiles in Caesarea that we heard from Acts today, he tells them that “God raised [Jesus] on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses” (Acts 10:40-41, emphasis added). It certainly would have been a lot easier to “prove” that the Resurrection happened if God had allowed Jesus to appear to all the people rather than only to a select few. But as it is, the evidence for the Resurrection is limited to the experiences of a relatively small number of people, whose testimonies we are asked to accept on faith. And once we have accepted it, we are to join them in their witness, to spread the message of Jesus’s Resurrection and ask others to accept our testimony on faith as well.

So why didn’t God allow Jesus to appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection? If God is all-powerful and desires to bring all people to faith in Christ, why did God not make the Resurrection of Jesus as undeniable as the fact of his birth? Why didn’t he appear to the whole world and prove his triumph over death and the powers of sin? Why would God choose such a messy and inefficient means of delivering such an important message? Although we will never have definitive answers to these questions in this life, this humble means of spreading the news of the Resurrection does seem to be in keeping with what we know of the nature of God through the earthly life of Jesus.

Despite Jewish expectations that the Messiah would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel, Jesus arrives as a baby, born in the most humble of circumstances, in the ancient near Eastern equivalent of a rest stop, to a poor, virtually unknown family. The star of Bethlehem and the stories of the magi coming from the East notwithstanding, his birth was probably largely unnoticed in the world’s terms. When he began preaching and teaching as an adult, he did not seek fame and power, but traveled humbly on foot in the midst of a community of people from all walks of life, but primarily those who were poor. He taught his disciples that in contrast to the world’s rulers who lord their power over their subjects, it should not be so among his followers. Instead, he taught them that “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42-45). His “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem before the Passover, which we commemorated last week on Palm Sunday, was not a grand military processional led by a powerful king on a horse ready to lead a revolution against the occupying powers, but a peaceful and joyful celebration led by a peasant riding a donkey. The night before his death, he takes the role of a servant in washing his disciples feet, and he goes willingly to death on the cross, executed in a shameful manner among common criminals. He has no crown but the crown of thorns, no throne but the cross.

And yet, despite the utter humility of his life, we who call ourselves by his name – Christians – have been unable to resist the temptation to use royal and militaristic language to talk about his death and Resurrection, saying that he has “won the victory” over death, and that he now “reigns” in heaven as “king.” We talk about Jesus “conquering” death and the grave, but Jesus himself did not seem to be interested in “conquering” much of anything, but rather in transforming things through mercy, prayer, and service. Even after his Resurrection, Jesus is no more the powerful king some of his disciples wanted him to be than he was before his death.

In Luke’s account of the story, Jesus’s first appearance to the disciples after his Resurrection is on the Road to Emmaus, which comes immediately after the Gospel passage we read today. Although the angels at the tomb appeared in dazzling white clothes, Jesus appears as a regular guy walking down the street, and the disciples don’t even recognize him. It’s not until they sit down to eat together, when he reenacts the four actions of the Last Supper – taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread to them – that their eyes are opened and they recognize who he is. After his Resurrection, Jesus is not a regal king riding in as a triumphant conqueror, but a regular guy walking down the road and sharing a meal with his companions – doing the same kind of thing he had always done when he was among them before his death. In his Resurrected life, as in his earthly life, Jesus reminds us that the extraordinary is mediated to us through the ordinary.

Perhaps Jesus did not appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection because the God we know in Christ is not a God who forces himself on others through showy displays of power, but who comes among us humbly and gently, among the outcast and the lowly, in ways that make it easy for those of us expecting power and looking for “triumph” to miss him entirely. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the Resurrection was not an event that drew universal recognition beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it took place quietly and humbly, in an unmarked tomb, and was witnessed by a small group of unassuming, mostly poor people, and that the news about it spread through the messy and inefficient means of word of mouth. Because in this, we see the truth that Jesus taught us time after time in his early ministry, that God uses the ordinary to mediate the extraordinary.

God used the testimony of regular first-century people to spread the news about the Resurrection, and God continues to use regular people like you and me to spread the message of the Gospel today – because we, too, are called to be witnesses to the Resurrection. Although we were not among those who experienced Jesus in the resurrected flesh in Jerusalem, we have a continual opportunity before us to, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, meet the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we have an opportunity to encounter the presence of Christ in the elements of the bread and wine. The Resurrection is as extraordinary as the ultimate undoing of the powers of death and sin and as ordinary as bread and wine. It is as distant as an empty tomb in first-century Palestine and as near as the wafer on your tongue. And so, as we carry on the testimony of the apostles that “Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again,” we become witnesses with them to the Resurrection. As we go forth nourished from this table, our experience here enables us to join with them in proclaiming, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!"