“The Gospel Turned Inside Out”

June 20, 2010

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

Psalm 20

Luke 8:26-39

A while ago at the end of a long day, I was listening to music while finishing some work in my study. I was playing “Riding with the King”—the Eric Clapton/B.B. King joint venture from years ago. It goes without saying that, when it comes to blues guitar, these guys know what they’re doing. So I had the music turned up and was groovin’ away.

One of the many musicians who had been using the building walked by and paused. And then he said, quietly: “It’s nice to hear the blues in a church.”

He was right.

I told him who it was that was playing. And I shared with him the words I’d heard some time ago on a Sunday morning radio show: “The blues is just the gospel turned inside out.”

I’m not completely sure what that means, but it sounds true. “The blues is just the gospel turned inside out.”

Maybe so. Maybe so.

The blues speaks of desire. The blues sings of longing that seems like it will never be fulfilled. The blues cries out with the longing of the lover for the beloved. The blues is just the gospel turned inside out. And that is why it’s nice to hear the blues in a church.

The Song of Solomon is filled with just such deep longing. We used a section of this song as our call to worship and I read another brief passage this morning. And that’s about all of this book that can be read in polite Midwestern church company on a summer morning. While both Jewish and Christian tradition find hear the love between God and God’s people in these songs, this is a collection of poems that deal with human sexual love. One person describe this “R” rated book as “concerned with a man and a woman who, with heightened sensations of sight and smell, taste and touch, celebrate each other’s beauty just as they  praise the hills and the animals, the trees and the flowers of Israel.”[i]

This is a book about passion—a topic that we don’t talk about very much in the church. Think about it and you’ll probably agree that most congregations are more content to be the “frozen chosen” than to let desire creep into their midst. Most of our hymns are along the lines of those that ask of God, “From earth-born passions set me free,” or look forward to the time when “earthly passions turn to dust and ashes.”

But the Song of Solomon gives us an ancient poem of love that is strong as death, passion that is fierce as the grave. It is about the longing that is the rough surface of the blues that is answered by the depths of the gospel.

We’re called to consider, as the psalm put it, our “heart’s desire.” Clapton and King sang about it: “I wanna be—loved by you.”

What is the desire of your heart? Love? Money? What stirs your deepest passion?

As C.S. Lewis suggested, “God finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak; we are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and ambition and greed, when infinite joy is offered to us. We are far too easily pleased.”

We are far too easily pleased.

Then we open the Bible once more. We hear the Song of Solomon and our desires are called forth. We can no longer deny our longing. It’s the blues of the Bible.

Listen to the short sections of the Song of Solomon that we heard this morning. Or read it all the way through. You’ll notice something significant. This book is one of only two in the entire Old Testament that makes absolutely no mention of God. And yet, as one person has suggested, “The more its authors sing of love, the more they whisper of God.”[ii]

Maybe that’s true of our own lives as well.

Many people in the United Church of Christ don’t talk directly about God a lot. We talk about the need to feed hungry people, about seeking harmony and cooperation between races, between economic classes, we talk about justice; we talk about beauty; we wonder about the origins and the destiny of the universe, this earth, and humankind.

Our indirect speech troubles people who want only the straightforward, the easily understood. But it may be that when we speak loudly about the love of our neighbors or about the desire for justice, we are also whispering of God. Underneath the longing is the gospel, just turned inside out.

As we read the stories in the Gospel of Luke, we keep coming across people who are not easily pleased, people who are not satisfied with life the way it is. We keep coming across the deep longing that is the beginning of faith.

Jesus arrives in the country of the Gerasenes.

Do you hear the begging that goes on?

The crowd begs Jesus to go away.

The man who had been possessed begs Jesus that he might go with him.

Even the very demons beg Jesus for mercy.

This language is familiar to us. It is often the language of prayer—a begging, an earnest asking of God for some thing, some benefit. We call it petition, intercession. These are the words that surface from deep inside—words that speak of our longing, our desire. They are cries for health, for help, for wholeness, for salvation.

Of course, there is throughout this story a note of fear. Those who beg Jesus do so, for the most part, because in the presence of Jesus they sense an end to their current way of life—and perhaps even more, they sense the beginning of something new. If we experience a love that is stronger than death, will our living not also be changed?

The novelist Anne Lamott writes of an experience she had at a desperate time in her life:

I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner… The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there—of course, there wasn't. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.”

“And all the people asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with fear.”

Part of our deep longing is to protect what we know, what we understand—even if it is life-denying, even if it is demonic.

The gospel turns us inside out.

At the same time we hear the one person reclothed in his rightful mind begging Jesus that he might come along with him. It seems like a legitimate request.

Surprise again! Request denied.

Jesus who heals with compassion, who shows his power over the forces of death and destruction will not grant this simple request. Instead he tells this man restored to life, “Go home. Tell how much God has done for you.”

What would you beg Jesus to do?

Heal you?

Empower you?

Let you go with him?

Get out of town and out of your life?

And what would you do if Jesus said, “O.K.?”

It is nice to hear the blues in a church. And really, if we listen, we hear the blues all the time. Our words, our actions tell of our deep longings, our hope for love, our great fears.

And they are all met with gospel—good news. In fear and in courage, in life and in death, we are embraced by a love that stronger than death, a passion as fierce as the grave.