Redefining Relationships: Embracing Love and Reconciliation

Okay, today's reading is Song of Songs, chapters five through seven.

I am dark but beautiful, O women of Jerusalem. Dark as the tents of Kedar, dark as the curtains of Solomon's tents. Don't stare at me because I am dark; the sun has darkened my skin. My brothers were angry with me; they forced me to care for their vineyards, so I couldn't care for my own vineyard.

Tell me, my love, where are you leading your flock today? Where will you rest your sheep at noon? For why should I wander like a prostitute among your friends and their flocks?

This is the word of God. Thanks be to God.

Um, before we get going, you know, one of the things that we got to do this past winter when we were only worshiping online is we got to figure out how to regulate this building when it was cold. And you all didn't have to be here for that. The band can tell you that we had a couple of really cold mornings until we figured out how this was going on.

The sad thing is we're learning how to regulate this building now in the heat, and you'll have to be here for it. So I'm seeing the waving. I'm telling you, we're working on it. We figured it out in two or three weeks this winter; we're going to figure it out pretty soon.

So I know what's going on. It's kind of—let's just state the obvious. We can get to what's more important, but let me tell you something I do not like. All this month, I've been feeling like I need to apologize to our folks that are reading scripture because some of the things—like, okay, I don't want to say that in public, and I don't really want to say that's in the Bible.

But there's also something else that's unnerving in our lives, in my life, that I really don't like at all, and it's this: when I get a random high school Facebook friend request. You know that person that you have not talked to since 1996 or before that sends you a message, and then all of a sudden they kind of hit your inbox? For me, what that inbox hit normally is like, "Wow, never thought you'd be in ministry like your dad. What's that like?"

And then I get crazy Bible verses. It's just kind of what it is. It's even more awkward as somebody I didn't really know that well, and I'm always scared they're going to share something really embarrassing or cringey that I did.

Every now and then it pops up, but when I was in junior high, my nickname was Burger. Like, the stocky kid should never have a food nickname. And every now and then somebody's going to call me Burger, and I'll always have to—it's even more awkward now as a grown man. Yeah, I answered to Burger for a solid three years of my life.

But have you ever been in that situation where you feel like you were judged because of your past? Where you feel like people are setting an opinion of you, where something happened long ago and it continues to carry with you to where you are now?

We're talking about that. What Jessica read this morning is literally what we find in the beginning of the song, and this is actually a story we're going to end up with a handful of verses from the very last chapter of the book today as well.

But what happens when a person has to carry a reputation with them? That's what we're really going to dig into. You know, last week we talked about singularity—about what it means to understand this biblical idea of being devoted to one person, to being devoted to one thing, of being singular also in your devotion to God.

You know, we dug into Genesis chapter two; we dug into Genesis chapter three. We're actually going to read both of those verses again this morning. But about how in scripture, inside the very story of creation, what we find is a story of our own exposure and how our own exposure was part of the quality of life in the Garden of Eden.

And when sin came into this world, our exposure was changed and threatened, and the truth of who we are became a very different thing. But how that's also part of the story of Jesus and his redemption—not just of us, but over the whole world. And what does it mean for us to feel totally comfortable with ourselves?

So remember a couple of things we learned about the song last week. Number one was this: this is where some of the awkwardness comes in. We are created by God to be sexual beings, and as Christians, the way that we understand our physicality makes that a subversive thing. We don't think about our own physical way that we live in the world being subversive, but it is.

The second thing is this: that we're reading and interacting with the Song of Songs as a holy, inspired work of God that explains the power of total love—a physical love, an emotional love, a spiritual love. All of these things are the way that Jesus loves us.

And for the song, we find the woman, this main character that we keep reading about, and the way that she interacts with who she calls her beloved as a picture of the way that Jesus loves us and that we are called to love Jesus. That's how we are designed.

And so, as unnerving as some of these conversations can be, we're having them right now because we realize that the only way we can learn the most about Jesus's desire for us and his love for us is through this metaphor about a conversation of sexuality in scripture and what it means to us now.

The predominant image this week that we're really going to talk about is from that passage where that woman said, "I am dark-skinned. I am tan like the tents of Kedar." Now, Kedar was a northern Egyptian Arabian tribe. They traced their descendants back to Kedar, who is the second son of Ishmael, Abraham's son in the book of Genesis.

And I've been trying to figure out all week long how do we put what she's saying in 21st-century language, especially in North Louisiana? She's like, "I am dark and I am thick and I am strong like a Carhartt jacket."

Now, ladies, how many of y'all want to be like, "I'm dark and thick and strong like a Carhartt jacket?" You might find some guys that actually like that. But as we find this picture, she's saying, "I am here, and this is the way I am."

Now, in our culture where we live now, being skinny and tan is attractive, right? That's kind of a marker of beauty in our world. Well, in ancient cultures, being skinny and tan meant that you were a laborer and you worked outside and did not have an easy life. Attractive people were pale and plump.

Okay, so we see that. I'm not pale, but I'm plump. Does that mean I don't have to go outside and work? I get to live a life of luxury? I have access to enough food to be fat? I mean, all these kinds of things.

And so she's in this conversation with the daughters of Jerusalem where they're judging her, like, "Hey, like, she's in there." And we're going to talk about this next week—how the song tells a story about location, about belonging, and this sort of thing.

But they're saying, "Hey, listen, you know, we're from here in the city. We're pretty; we're attractive. You look like some country bumpkin that just rolled into town, and you're expecting to have this man." There's this judgment layer that's going on with her just because of the way that she looks.

But then we find it gets even a little bit rougher when she goes in to try to explain this, and she says, "Yeah, I am tan. I am strong. I am kind of leathery a little bit." And this is why it says, "My older brothers punished me because I did not protect my vineyard, so I had to go out and work."

Now, you might be thinking, "Chad, what does 'protect your vineyard' mean?" What I'm here to tell you is "protect your vineyard" means exactly what you think it might mean.

So here we have this story where this woman is saying, "I am not physically attractive, but then also I have been promiscuous in a way that caused punishment, that my brothers said I'm no longer worthy enough to be protected, to be valid."

Because you also see this dynamic going on in the ancient Near East that brothers realize their main job was to protect their younger sisters. Now, you go back in the story of Judah. It's in Genesis where they move to an area. He has a sister named Dinah. The ruler of the town finds Dinah attractive, but I think Dinah might not like him as much.

So he takes Dinah in; he ends up raping Dinah. Then Dinah's brothers find out about it, and they concoct this idea to tell all the men of this town, "Well, if you get circumcised, then we'll be able to marry and intermix, and you'll have access to our wealth and you'll have access to our town."

And so all the men of this town go get circumcised. They don't get in trouble for this, and on the third day, Judah and his brothers go in and kill all the men in the town while they're recuperating from their circumcision.

You think the Bible's boring? Then you're not reading it. Okay, so these brothers were disapproving of the way their sister decided to do so. It was like, "We are no longer going to protect you, and instead, we're going to treat you like a slave and like a hired hand."

So you see this story automatically where this woman is carrying the story of her past into her present. But the beautiful thing is the larger story that's going on inside of this song is that this is a story of redemption.

We also realize that the song is metaphorical. We're not reading this as objective, provable truth. That's not how it was designed 2,500 years ago, and that'd be a hard way to read it right now.

But we also think back—we talked about last week—that story of scripture, that larger metaphor of our sexuality is almost always about idolatry as well. Robert Jensen, in his commentary on the song, says this: "It is a refrain of the prophets. Israel has not guarded her vineyard."

It is another refrain of the prophets: "When Israel's infidelities become intolerable, she is punished. She is exiled to strange labor and is deprived of the worship and ornament and song that should make her beautiful in the eyes of the Lord."

So in some ways, what this story also is, is talking about Israel and their devotion to God and their lack of singularity. We know from scripture they were exiled, that they were sent away.

So our story inside of this condemnation of promiscuity, we find a story of singularity because this is this big story arc. You know, Saint Origen said this about the woman: this is where the story begins to turn and go into this positive. Like, we're down here at the bottom of the valley; we're about to start going up the valley.

Origen says this: "She is not yet who she will be, but she is sharing how she is being transformed. She's saying, 'I am indeed dark as my complexion goes, but should a person scrutinize my inward parts, I am beautiful.'"

She also compares herself to the tents of Solomon, this pastor saying, "Yeah, I am dark like those tents, but the tents of Solomon are beautiful, and I am like those tents as well."

You know, the song serves as a figure of a perfected world. Instead of finding Adam and Eve, you know, putting on the clothes God made for them and then being sent out of Eden, we find a man and a woman naked in a garden and without shame.

The song lays the groundwork about understanding our sexuality and our relationality and that it is a good thing, but it's also telling a bigger story of living a restored and a reconciled life.

Let's go back to the Genesis passages we talked about last week. So Genesis 2—my eyes aren't that good—2:5: "Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame."

So Genesis 2, creation—sin hasn't come in yet. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. We go fast forward to the next chapter after the fall, and we find in Genesis 3:10, "He answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'"

So Adam understood the first time sin came into the world. He expressed it in his physical shame that he knew something was wrong, and he was terrified about it. We talked about this a lot last week, but shame—we didn't talk about the mechanics of shame.

That's why I think it's really important for us this morning to think about this: is that to feel shame means to be embarrassed, to be disappointed. But we have to contrast the biblical idea of shame and our world's idea of shame.

Now, like in scripture, shame is always between two people. It happens inside of relationships. In our world, we've reduced shame to just an isolated individual emotion. And so many times, it's not necessarily that we feel shame; it's that we begin casting shame on somebody else.

We say, "Hey, you need to feel ashamed about this." The picture I can think of so much was Game of Thrones, I think season six, with Cersei, and there's the really mean nun just kept—like she was waterboarding, essentially, saying, "Shame! Shame!"

Like, that's what we think shame looks like. You know, we push it on other people. And we talked last week a little bit about what happens is shame is—we can either take two ways out of it as Christians: that we can realize that Jesus takes it away, like we're talking about this week, or we simply just try to do it so much that action is no longer shameful because it's been normalized.

You know, in the worldview of scripture, shame is a negative condition when a relational expectation is not met and someone is violated. Now, in scripture, shame is the recognition of relational sin. That's very different from what we think now, isn't it?

So we have a divergence in our culture that's going on in so many ways. I'm about to read you a quote from a book I've been reading called Strange Rights: New Religions for a Godless World. This book scares me. It talks about the way people younger than me—really that 20 to 40 age bracket—it calls them now "remixers," to where this idea of picking and choosing things that you feel to be right and creating your own individual worldview that has absolute truth attached to it.

Now, I want to read a quote in this, but what we're seeing in many ways in our world now is that there's a divergence that sex is no longer about the other person but is all about us instead.

So I'm going to just read you a couple of things from this. This is too much to put on the screen, but within remix culture, sexual desire at its core is fundamentally good and pure. Furthermore, it is about unfettered consensual expression—within a marriage, outside a marriage, in a one-night stand, within a polyamorous triad, or with multiple unfamiliar partners—but is inherently individually empowering.

An act of emotional and physical honesty, allowing your external actions to reflect your internal desires. To act on your sexual attraction isn't just acceptable within this theological system; it's a de facto act of bravery—a willful defiance of a society that mandates repression and enforces monogamy.

Furthermore, even if you and your partner do choose lifelong monogamy, it should be done not as a passive acquiescence to cultural institutional norms—the height remix culture suggests of moral laziness—but rather as a carefully negotiated discussion, at times even a formal contract—a relationship that fits the precise and particular emotional, intellectual, and sexual needs of its specific participants, valid only insofar as those individual needs are met.

So we're realizing in our world now what's becoming completely appropriate is simply just to find another person that you can make a deal with, and as long as you don't break the deal about your needs being met and their needs being met, that that is a proper and healthy relationship—that all partnership is is a mutual understanding of individual pleasures.

Does that sound right to you? Does that sound healthy? So that sounds scary. Like, that's a little—honestly, that's a little shock value right there. But I kind of want to talk about this: what a healthy and a proper relational dynamic looks like with other people.

And I think it's kind of one of the ways when we ask questions about how do we get to this point is because we have our understanding of intimacy and how intimacy grows out of whack. And this is the way that I like to explain this: does anyone else a little scared of ladders?

This is how I think this is how we get ourselves into trouble. This is how we get to that point is the fact that we've got a ladder in front of us. And you know how ladders work? Like, ladders—this thing's pretty stable on its own right now, isn't it? If I step right here, it becomes even more stable. If I step right here, it becomes even more stable.

They're designed that the further up you go, you're transferring energy and motion to cause greater stability. Okay, let me ask you a question: would you ever attempt to jump flat-footed from the ground to the top step of a ladder? Why not? Hurt? Why not? You're disrupting the whole engineering of the stability inside of it, right?

You know, in our world, when we begin seeing sexual choice as just an individual pursuit of pleasure, and I just need someone else to scratch that itch, what we do is we're jumping from the floor to the very top rung of the ladder. We're denying the fact that there are steps that are designed to get there.

And these steps are not just in the pursuit of having that one relationship, but us understanding the way that we are designed as far as relationality is concerned. You know, we all need friends, don't we? There's a healthy way that we have friends, right?

We know that we can lean on each other; we know we can trust each other, and we can follow each other. You know, when we're looking for what does that lifelong partner look like, if we don't have a really firm footing on this step as friends, it's going to automatically be unhealthy, right?

I didn't want to bring the big ladder up here this morning because it's too big and too loud, but imagine we've got two or three of these steps. You know, there's also—so you have your relational intimacy, and you need to be relationally intimate with probably a decent handful of people because you need people in your life to process these things through, to pray for you, to talk with these things through.

You also need spiritual intimacy. Okay, there's another ladder right there, especially with someone that you're wanting to live the rest of your life with, have children with, that sort of a thing. You need to have spiritual intimacy.

You know, there's a level of spiritual intimacy you're not going to have that with 50 people, are you? You know, we all need people in our lives that we can be spiritually intimate with when things are getting really, really rough, when we're finding new doors in our hearts that open up to rooms we've never given away to Jesus.

We're having to process through that. We're going through really tough patches and seasons in our life. We need to have spiritual intimacy, but also spiritual vulnerability with people. And we can't jump from the floor onto spiritual intimacy and vulnerability.

But if we're looking at having a lifelong, healthy sexual relationship with someone, we're going to need that relational intimacy step. We're going to need that spiritual intimacy step. And only then, when we've progressed that into that point, do we find it safe, healthy, vulnerable.

And this isn't like—this isn't just some biblical moral framework. This is about what's good for us because, friends, we've got 6,000 years of human history that we can talk on right now, and individualism always fails flat.

This isn't the first time our culture's been dealing with rapid onset individualism, and individualism never is healthy or safe for us. Even when we're talking completely outside of a biblical framework, then we put that on top of it and what Jesus says about singularity and about those healthy dynamics, this picture and this metaphor of these relationships we find in our life.

We realize that we have this ladder, and it's the way that God has designed things to be for our safety. And we can take this not just inside of this weird, awkward Song of Songs conversation, but ask ourselves this question: how are we relating to people?

Are we looking at every relationship we have as just meeting our needs? Do we approach acquaintances, and we collect maybe business relationships that are solely based off of the fact that that person owes me a favor, or I'm going to pursue a relationship with that person because I might need to have them because they might be good at this?

Do we try to find spiritual relationships? We're not willing to do this. Maybe we find somebody—we just always need somebody to process these things through with, and the moment they need us, we just say, "No, I don't have time for that. You're getting on my nerves."

You know, this is not just about a monogamy sexual conversation. This is the way that we work with people—how much we will be vulnerable and realize that we need each other inside of that.

So when we go back into the song, come back into our story, what we find now is a woman who clearly understands her past, but even better than that, she understands her future—that her future is redefined and is rewritten because of her relationship with her beloved.

That the sins of her past no longer exist because she has this proper understanding of a healthy relational dynamic in the present and where that's going to bring her for the future. And doesn't Jesus do that for us?

How many times or how many ways have we ended up making bad jumps on a ladder—with ourselves, with other people, with him? How many times have we wanted to bypass the healthy ways that we are able to gain a relationship because we want instant and immediate success and enjoyment?

This metaphor goes across scripture. This metaphor goes across our life. This isn't just a sex conversation; this is a way that we view how God made us and how we relate to him and how we relate to other people. Jesus is always going to be our beloved, no questions asked, no matter what.

So we come to Song of Songs, verses 8 through 10. We see the second half, the back end of the story. We see this woman now living in the present.

So the daughters of Jerusalem—remember these women who've always critiqued her, who've asked questions, this kind of back and forth—they now come to her at the end of this book, and this is what they say: "We have a little sister, and her breasts are not yet grown. What shall we do for our sister on the day she has spoken? For if she has a wall, we will build towers of silver on her. If she is a door, we will enclose her with panels of cedar."

So has she protected herself, or has she opened herself? And this is how the woman responds: "I am a wall; my breasts are like towers because I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment."

She takes on a completely different understanding of who she is now because of her relationship with her beloved. Now the daughters of Jerusalem, they've asked, they've poured, they've mocked, they've judged—all of it.

And this woman comes back to them with that statement: "I am a wall," and then a bunch of other things I don't want to say again. She has learned the power of singularity and dedication and satisfaction that's beyond this cycle of expected behavior and shame.

She's saying, like Origen said earlier, she's now saying, "I am beautiful, and I am identified by who I am now. My peace was found in my beloved, and my beloved finds his peace inside of me, and I am now defined by that relationship and nothing else."

So if we look at this big, huge metaphor that's going across the song, there's two ways we can look at it, and honestly, they're both right. But I'm going to ask you which one of these is more powerful? Which one of these is more transforming?

Okay, so the first way we can look at this is, "Oh, the song says don't have sex before you're married." But the second thing it says is this: "Let's talk about the power of a journey through an awareness of dysfunctional relationships and how, through this biblical narrative about sex, we understand that shame is healed and our lives are reconciled."

So which one of those is more powerful? Which one of those brings grace into each of our hearts? Which one of those lets us tell a story of redemption and reconciliation?

You know, the church for far too long has wanted to stay out of this conversation by just dropping the first one in there, but the first one's not accurate. It's not big enough. Jesus said, "I came for the sick, not for the healed. I came for the broken, not the whole. I came for those who need something, not those who don't think they need anything."

That second story is so much more powerful.

So let's wrap up, and I just want to do this. I want to talk about the power of reconciling and what life can look like when we properly climb this ladder in all of our relationships—with Jesus first, but with others as well.

2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 14 through 18: "For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this: that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and then gave us the ministry of reconciliation."

We are to act with others as Christ has acted with us. You know, it speaks about control, and you know, some of us, when we hear the word control, we get kind of nervous; we get kind of antsy.

But what verse 14 and 15 give us is this recognition of a controlling dynamic of those who follow Jesus: "Hey, we can act differently in this world now because we have comprehended what Jesus has done."

It's the love of Jesus that controls. This isn't what we think it is. This is a love that sustains us. This is a love that holds us together. This is a love that absorbs us, and this is different because it frees us from our need to find ourselves individually and define ourselves individually.

It frees us from having to find and take and use other people to find individual satisfaction in multiple parts of our life. But then in verse 16, we find missional change. It says, "We regard no one according to the flesh."

When we read Paul talk about the flesh, it's like Bible code for any broken secular system that's built off of just grasping to find connection and value. We regard no one as to this, that we break away from this cycle of safetyism and instead step into the space of Christ.

You know, we are people of the ladder, and we have this—we're traversing this with Christ, with him and others around us. You know, they might not have this peace that we have.

You know, the woman, when she spoke of peace in Song of Songs 8:10 and said, "I am completely defined in my beloved," you know, we're always on a journey for that peace.

But what would it look like if we realized that every single person that we're in a relationship with—no matter if it's that person that drops off our mail once at the house, it's somebody that we work with, somebody we go to school with, it might be our own spouse or somebody else living in our house—what happens if we literally realize that I am completely secure in who I am because of Christ, and you might not be yet?

But what I can give you, because I do not live according to the flesh any longer and I don't see you according to flesh, is I am now responsible for reconciliation. And whereas you might still be trying to jump up multiple rungs of the ladder at the same time, you can be safe with me, and I will treat you as though you were safe.

Think about the times in your life where you needed—you were probably at your most vulnerable, most honest, and you just needed somebody that you could be safe with. That's the ministry of reconciliation—us realizing that we are offering ourselves to others like that.

This is not just about our physicality; this is about the fact that we've been reconciled. This means that we have been exchanged by the blood of Jesus Christ out of a place of hostility and into a place of beloved belonging.

Now each one of us can say that phrase: "I am dark, but I am beautiful. I'm beautiful because I've been reconciled by grace. I have new worth. I believe in a new narrative that finds value in me because I am loved by Jesus, and I no longer have to be concerned with creating my own value."

Let's pray.

Father, you know these are conversations that some of us said we never thought we'd hear that word in church. Yeah, they're also sometimes things that come into each of our hearts and affect us in different ways, Lord, because this is just so much more about just one thing in one relationship.

But this is about the way that we feel called and the way that we understand how we're just to move throughout this world, and we were to do that as your son Jesus did. God, I think so much that the biggest story of change that we have in this world is just the power of looking at someone and letting them know they're safe with us—that we're not going to use them.

Their worth is different, even though they might not know they belong to Jesus. They might not know what the power is inside of that. Because of our relationship with you and our call to be reconcilers, we can create that emotion around them.

So God, let us see and know this in ourselves, and let us see and know this in other people. Let us step into that call as reconcilers. Let us step into people who have been freed by grace, God, whose stories have been rewritten, who we have now been redefined because of you.

Order the past; no longer dwells. The past holds no power. God, thank you for seeing each of us as beautiful.

You know, we pray. Amen.

Let's stand and sing together.