Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent
One of my most favorite hymns is a Quaker song we sing at mass sometimes, with a refrain that goes: "No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I'm clinging! Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?" This song has been one on my mind in times when I've had doubts about my faith, or times when I've felt more than a little beaten down by some of the hard things in life. The image of clinging to a rock, a rock that is Love and Lord of all, is exactly what I feel sometimes about my faith and life. But even more important is the message that the end of this refrain gives: "How can I keep from singing?" The song reminds me not only that God keeps me, but that my response, no matter what, is to be one of song.
It is this refrain that I thought of immediately when I read today's readings, too, for today's readings are all about God's call to us to surrender ourselves to God's all-encompassing extravagant love, which becomes a rock for us. The Song of Songs passage (2:8-14) has been interpreted by many, including Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, as a description of the awesome love that God has for us. God is alternately stag and dove, and God even gives us love names as well (we are, at some points in this passage, also the dove). This passage is not often read in Bible studies, and indeed in some centuries, Christians have prohibited themselves from reading it, because it has seemed a bit too racy, perhaps even a bit too "close-to-God-for-comfort". People are familiar with the God-as-Father idea; but they are much less familiar with or comfortable with the idea of God as lover. This is not meant to be a sexy love, though; it is meant to describe exactly how close a relationship God wants to have with us: VERY close.
At the end of this passage, we arrive at what God wants to be our response: the author describes a dove in the "secret recesses of the cliffs" and implores that we will seek God's lovely voice and loveliness. God is all love - will we seek out that love and that close relationship? The cliffs remind me of the "rock" in the song I mentioned above: will we respond to God's love with our own love and cling only to him?
In this time of preparation for Christmas, when we will celebrate God-with-us, who became so close to us that he became one flesh with us, the perhaps shocking words of the Song of Songs ought to help us reflect on the immense love God has for us humans, that he would become flesh like one of us. God may indeed seem "too-close-for-comfort" but that is also the good news of Christmas.
Today's gospel reflects the kind of response God hopes for from his people, but in a less poetic and more historical way: Elizabeth finds that Mary is pregnant. Her response to Mary is no mundane response we might give a pregnant teenage mother these days: No "How could you ruin your life this way?" Rather, Elizabeth's response is a song - a Holy Spirit-filled song of acceptance that this, Mary's pregnancy with Jesus, is what God intends.
As we move to the final days of preparation before Christmas, let us reflect on the ways we can respond to God's powerful love. Hollywood's Christmas makes it out to be one of peace and joy for everyone, but we know that Christmas is a tough holiday for many people, and maybe all the more so this year in economic tough times. That's when it's especially important to reflect on the main point: the immensity of God's love, so much so that God became one of us. Getting the right presents, the perfect Christmas dinner, the best decorations, all pale in comparison to the question God asks of us this time of year: will our response to God be like Elizabeth's? Will we allow ourselves to get close enough to God?
- Jana M. Bennett