The Invitation

Song of Songs 2: 8-13, page 480
Listen! My lover!
Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills.
My love 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.”
Sermon
Every fall feels like something new is starting, and I think that’s because as a student, in high school, and then in college, the fall meant football games, which then meant Homecoming.
And Homecoming made me nervous because it always meant I had to ask someone on a date.
Now when women think of being asked on dates, they experience something totally different from what men feel. I don’t think that women quite understand what it’s like for us. One afternoon in High School my Mom was cooking in the kitchen and I was looking in the refrigerator and she casually said, “So who are you asking to the Homecoming dance Joe?”
“I don’t know Mom. It’s like two weeks away.”
“Well you better ask soon. Those girls have to buy dresses, corsages, shoes, get their hair done… Do you have anyone in mind?”
“I might Mom.”
“All you have to do is ask Joe.”
“I know Mom.”
“You know Joe, if I had any idea how afraid 14 year old boys were of girls I would have been a much more confident 14 year old girl.”
Even now I look back on asking Sara out on our first date and I know that what I was experiencing was not joy; I was no gazelle leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. In fact, rather than leaping or bounding , my legs were jelly, my teeth were clenching, and my stomach was tightening with the true pain of being in love with someone knowing the risk involved in letting that person know how you feel.
So at some point we summon all the courage – we walk up or pick up the phone to offer the invitation.
Thank goodness you women don’t remember it this way – no – from your perspective the whole thing happens quite differently. There’s excitement, there’s confidence, and there’s that true joy of knowing that you are wanted and that you are in control.
“My lover spoke and said to me, arise my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.”
But I want you to know that’s not how it really happened. It was much more like, “Uh, Sara, I don’t know if you’re doing anything this Friday, but, I mean, if you don’t have anything going on, I understand if you do, but if you don’t, I would really like to take you to dinner and a movie this Friday night.”
Love looks like that; it’s only poetry in retrospect, because in the moment inviting someone into your heart isn’t pretty.
It’s risky, but you do it any way because you don’t have a choice, so you offer the invitation in the hope that your heart might be something desirable, that your companionship might be better than being alone, you take your feelings and you put them out there, and then you wait to see if those feelings will be returned.
And maybe you wait behind the wall, gazing through the windows and “peering through the lattice.” Too afraid to knock on the door, but you can’t go very far because once you’ve offered someone your heart even if you want to run away you can’t get very far without your heart.
Now waiting this way, trying to steal a peak at this person who you love in the hope that seeing them might reveal something about the way the feel about you is very different from what is described in today’s first scripture lesson. David rose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace, and from the roof he looked down to see a woman bathing.
The difference between the two young men, the one described by the Song of Songs and on the other hand, King David, is this: the young man who hides behind the lattice wants to give this young woman something – something very special, but very fragile. He wants to give this young woman his heart. David on the other hand looked down from his roof top and his eyes met something he wanted, and he used his power to take it.
On the one hand you have the beginnings of love, and on the other hand is something much less.
Love is initiated by an invitation, an offer that in the hands of the invitee is a choice – you say yes or you say no, you feel the same way or you don’t. There is a great risk taken in this situation, as if the answer is no then the young man walks away with a broken heart.
On the other hand, King David’s heart would not have been broken if Bathsheba had not been brought to him. For him there was no risk at all – he didn’t even have to talk to her. There was no invitation, there was no risk, and the power to initiate or end the relationship never left David’s hands.
That is not what love looks like, and so God’s love for us is not represented by King David, but by the young man who has offered this young woman his heart, invited her in the hopes that he has something to offer her, and she has the power to say yes or say no.
Just as Christ is referred to as the Bridegroom to the church in the book of Revelation, so here, God’s love is like that of a young boy in love – fragile and sacred.
The young man has something to offer us. Like a young man with a heart full of love God does not look down on us seeing something that God wants or needs, but seeing us and knowing that God might just be able to make us happy, God offers us God’s heart in the hopes that God’s love for us will be received and returned in kind.
While the invitation is something that can change our lives for the better it would not be love if we were required to accept the invitation.
Those of us who have offered our hearts to someone can feel some kinship with God, and can then look to the cross to see a love poured out for a people, and the savage marks of rejection.
But don’t be so bold as to pity God.
God doesn’t want your pity.
Just know this – that when your heart has been broken, God knows the temptation that you face. To hid your heart away and never love again.
God knows what that feels like. But three days later he came back and offered us his heart again.
The temptation is to hide our hearts away after the love we offer is rejected.
But this isn’t an alter call – it’s a call to action. To boldly offer the same invitation that God offers you.
We offer our children our hearts, and then one day that child lies to your face and breaks your heart. But a parent cannot be a parent by hiding a broken heart away, but only by putting your heart out there to be broken again and again can parents exhibit the love that parenthood requires.
To grow up means to weather relationships, some good, and some that make you stronger. But to think that you can avoid the risk by holding a part of your heart back behind a wall makes any thing real impossible. To love and to be loved demands risk, demands the kind of risk that our God is willing to take.
We are called to love each other as God has loved us, and so you must offer your heart – the risk is huge, but it is the risk you must take to inherit the joy true love offers.
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.
Here this invitation, and if you have forgotten what it means to be desired know that you are desired. Here this invitation, and if you have forgotten what it means to be loved then know that you are loved. Here this invitation and know that the one who loves you, whose heart is on the line for you, offers a new life with this invitation and this call to go and do likewise: “Arise come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.”