Graft us in

 Song of Solomon 2:8-13

"Arise my love, my fair one" this Song so often is thought of as a series of verses between lovers. We often read it and wonder how we are to incorporate it into a Sunday morning, much less of preach on it. Yet, in seminary I remember reading an article on this and it being likened to God's pursuit of Israel and Israel's pursuit of God. All of the verses in Song of Solomon deal with unconsummated love. Our whole history as a people show how often we miss the point of God's love and how much we pursue and long for this connection. 

It starts with creation. God speaks with the man and woman in the garden every day. They walk together. This is amazing in any kind of literature at the time. A god did not communicate directly with humans at this point. Yet this God of the Hebrew people does. This God wants to be with us, have a relationship with us. Walk with us, daily! 

Then we go to Abram or maybe its Abraham by then. The guy who decides he can bargain with God. God can't wipe out a whole city, right? There has to be one righteous person left. So he bargains with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorah. The whole point is Abram can do this. You can sit and bargain with God. Now there are times people do this, when they are most stressed and either want themselves or a loved one to live. Back then you didn't bargain with gods, you just accepted what they told you. 

See the Bible was cutting edge for it's time. It explained things about God that other gods couldn't, wouldn't do. It tries to explain something deeper about this God than other gods. It is a relationship which is cultivated. One in which we can communicate. Today we ask that the love of God's name be grafted into our hearts. Grafting is a process which restores a tree or branch into growing either up or out. The old branch has to be cut and the new one inserted into it and sometimes taped together in order to grow. Every verse we have this morning centers on God's love and how to encourage this growth.

In the gospel reading we are looking at what encourages this love. To the Pharisees it is in keeping a bunch of rules, but Jesus knows this doesn't encourage righteousness. Because it isn't what we see on the surface, the outside, but what comes out of inside, our heart. The pursuit of the love of God leads us to new places.

Yesterday, I finished a book The Girl who Drank the Moon about a girl who was given magic by being fed by a witch from the moon. Now it has all your typical characters, dragons, monsters, an evil witch, a good witch and the confusion of which witch is good or evil. In the end there is a resolution, but not the typical one. Not the one with the knight riding in or the girl enmagiked destroying the evil witch. No, its about love and the pursuit of love. You'll have to read it to find out how it ends, but we see its story here in our gospel. The thing is we miss it. 

We tend to be like Pharisees because we think it is simpler to live by codes of right and wrong. Yet God pursues us, even the ones, especially the ones we mark as unworthy of God's love. Because these are the places Jesus walks into. These are the lessons from the beginning. Everything is good, very good. We are the ones who warp it into something God's love is not. Being grafted in hurts. It is not an easy process and we need to pursue God right back.

"Arise my love, my fair one" come to us God and help us to realize your love. Not only within us, but out in this world you created. Come and find the love of God, which is strong and true for all. Come and care for the neighbor you never knew you had. Come and learn how deep, how broad, how high God loves all of us and wants us to share and multiply this love in the world. God help us to grow grafted in your love. Amen.