A holy “unholy” love, Part I

A holy “unholy” love, Part I
Song of Solomon
 
 
In the church calendar, today is Trinity Sunday. It follows Pentecost which celebrates the arrival of the Holy Spirit last Sunday. The Holy Spirit makes the third person of the Trinity in orthodox Christian doctrine. It is also a good morning to catch us up on Gay Pride Month and anticipate Gay Pride Day on June 28. This is among the most important subjects for me, as a Christian, a minister, and a straight, white, married man.
 
I.
 
Why did I choose those love lyrics between a heterosexual couple to read on a day when I want to celebrate Gay Pride? You’ll see.
 
Do you know the French expression, Chacun a ses sexes? I remember hearing this expression for the first time on a summer trip to France as a teenager. I thought it made sense, and there is no reason at that age that I should have. Yet, I caught the freedom of its meaning, the carefreeness, and the politics implied.
 
Chacun a ses sexes. It’s a play upon the phrase, “to each his own,” but it means “to each their own gender” —chacun a ses sexes. This would have been 1962, not exactly the age of Aquarius in the United States. Well, there is nothing like getting out of the United States of America, for sure!
 
America is finally coming to realize, ever so gradually, that sexuality ranges along a wide spectrum of experience and expression. Human sexuality is wildly fungible–there is not just one channel on this tv, or just two either, but many, perhaps as many as there are people. Christian doctrine has tried to fence it in–sexual behavior, sexual orientation, sexual ethics, marriage, children, divorce. And the Church has turned out to be wrong on every score.
 
Take divorce—of course, we want marriage to last “till death do us part,” as it is intended. But before there was divorce there was mayhem, abuse, contempt, neglect, self-abnegation, hatred, self-hatred, depression, psychosis, suicide, even homicide. The “Christian sexual ethic”—no divorce, no homosexuality, no sex outside of marriage, no sex that did not have procreation for its intent (Roman Catholicism), no contraception, no abortion–is neither Christian, nor about sex, nor an ethic, and it has abused the Bible to that end. None of this is biblical, unless you regard the Bible as a blueprint for society, which it is not. The Church developed an airtight system that perpetuated woman as the property of the male.
 
II.
 
If the Church really wanted to promote satisfying, long lasting, and sexually exclusive relationships, there needed to have been a basic understanding of and respect for human sexuality, but the Church couldn’t handle it. It is hard to find such in the Bible, but there is a place to look, the Song of Solomon. The Church included this unique book in the Bible, but only grudgingly, without knowing really what to do with it.
 
It’s a short book of 8 chapters, made up of what seem to be bursts of 31 intense lyrics between two lovers, identified in some translations as the Bride and Bridegroom. This engaged couple are profoundly, almost painfully in love—they address each other in superlatives of tenderness and yearning. They are clearly in the throes of the “carnal consummation of love,” as Robert Alter put it. Yet their “unholy” love is sanctified by the presence of the Spirit.
 
Prof Renita Weems puts the poetry in focus—this is the only book of the Bible in which the female voice predominates, she is anonymous and she is black-skinned. Her speech is bold and un-self-censored, and perfectly reciprocated by her lover. This leads Prof Weems to observe that this is a counter cultural document—it honors the body, it honors woman and women’s sexual experience. Their sexual identity is outshined by the power of human love. Their gender identity pales in significance compared to their humanity. Their sexual drama reveals a snapshot of divine possibility in the human sphere—the intimate bonding of love is the incarnation of the Spirit. We know this is not confined to their orientation, because the body is the Temple of the Spirit. Spirits unite when bodies unite—this is the miracle of human loving. This is why divorce is so painful, or the dissolution of any intimate relationship. It is, however, the birthright of any two people who give themselves to each other in this way.
 
 Sex is nature’s way of leading us to God.
 
Why did I choose those love lyrics between a heterosexual couple to read on a day when I want to celebrate Gay Pride? You’ll see.
 
 To be continued next Sunday.
 
 
Rev. Richard Chrisman
June 12, 2022
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