A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on Sept. 3, 2006, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            There’s a legend about the early days of married life in the household of Queen Victoria and her beloved Albert.  Seems that shortly after they were married, they had an argument, and Albert huffed off to his room and locked the door.  Victoria hammered furiously on the door.  “Who’s there?” asked Albert. “The Queen of England and she demands to be admitted!” There was no response, and when she tried the door it remained locked.  Again, she pounded and commanded.  Again no answer, and the door stayed locked.  After much furious and fruitless pounding and commanding, finally there was a long pause.  Then a gentle tap, and the seductive sound of fingernails teasing at the door.  “Who’s there?” Albert asked. “Your wife, darling,” the queen replied, “And I miss you very much.” The prince opened the door at once.

            There is no substitute for love in all its vulnerable yearning.  That’s the theme of our readings this morning.  On first glance, we’ve got three disparate Bible passages: the Old Testament love poem the Song of Solomon which depicts the adolescent longing of two lovers; the textbook passage from the Book of James which got Martin Luther to try to demote the whole book out of the canon of the New Testament because it suggested that good works were the most important thing in the spiritual life; and finally an argument between Jesus and the Pharisees in which Jesus says that there are more important things in life than keeping the religious rules. What these three passages have in common is that they all cry out for involvement in the life of faith. The Song of Solomon depicts religion as a matter of passionate longing.  The Epistle of James says that if we are caught up in our beliefs, we’ll do something about it—actually do something caring for our fellow human beings.  The Gospel finds Jesus asking his hearers to get passionate about their beliefs and not to settle for just being rule keepers.  All of them ask us to get involved—to love God and to love each other with a vulnerable yearning and to try to make a difference in the world.

            The trouble with this call to involvement is that it sometimes feels like an imposition—we feel a lot like Prince Albert must have felt when the Queen was pounding on his door demanding to be let in: threatened and harassed. I suspect that’s the way a lot of us in churches will feel this fall with the start of the program year.  Our lives are already overfilled with demands: kids, jobs, family, houses—all of them with a thousand things that must be done.  Then we go to church looking for a little comfort and the strength to carry on.  And what we get is announcement after announcement about things that need doing, groups we ought to join, things we ought to learn about and especially jobs we ought to volunteer for.  If this is God calling us to get involved, it is a little overwhelming.  I made the mistake the other day of coming home from a really full day, sitting down in front of the television, and watching Spike Lee’s television special about New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina.  I was moved to tears by the needs of the people whose lives were devastated, but far from being stirred to action, I found myself getting tired and depressed.  If that was God calling me open my heart, hands and wallet, God was doing a very bad job of it.

            The good news is that God has other ways of calling.  I think God does call us to roll up our sleeves and get involved.  It is the job of churches to provide people with ways of acting out their faith.  We need choirs and classes and causes to get involved with.  It is the job of social prophets like Spike Lee to move us to tears and call us to get involved.  But God has other ways of calling, too.

            Our first reading this morning probably says it best.  The relationship between God and us is like the relationship between the lover and the beloved.  The Song of Solomon doesn’t demand that we force ourselves to be passionate in our approach to God, it points out that the relationship between God and us begins with God’s longing for us.  The relationship begins with God being passionately involved with us—lovingly creating us, believing in us, strengthening us to grow and become the gorgeous people God has always thought we were.  The history of our faith is the history of a God who will not let us go: who forgives when we fail and who never stops tapping at the doors of our hearts when we have locked ourselves in our rooms.

            God isn’t JUST calling us to roll up our sleeves and get to work.  God is also calling us to love ourselves as we are loved: to spend some time in rest and refreshment, to believe in ourselves, to believe that our needs and our hopes and our dreams are important.  God is not JUST calling us to take care of the needs of the wider world. God is also calling us to be passionately involved in the lives of those we love and those who are closest to us.  Sometimes we don’t hear God most clearly in the thunderous demands of life, but in the subtle, seductive tapping at our hearts that says that we and those we love are deeply and passionately beloved of the Almighty.

            In all the demands of the fall, I hope we can hear that.  I hope that we can learn to listen for the quiet call of the God who loves us and will not let us go.

                                                                                                AMEN