"Beloved Ones" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | January 12, 2025
Sermon Preached: January 12, 2025 at Trinity on the Green
Baptism of our Lord, Year C : Isaiah 43:1-7 | Acts 8:14-17 | Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 | Psalm 29
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away,
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
My beloved is mine, and I am his;
he pastures his flock among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle
or a young stag on the cleft mountains.” (Song of Songs 2:10-12;16-17)
I thought I would begin my sermon today with a little bit of poetry. These words come from the Song of Songs, sometimes called the Song of Solomon. Readings from this book of the Bible don’t come up a lot in our lectionary– they certainly aren’t in today’s readings. But we do have an echo of some of this poetry in the words spoken from heaven at the Baptism of Jesus, “You are my son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” What does it mean to be beloved? Well, the Song of Songs is a bit of a masterclass about belovedness.
This book in the Bible contains 8 chapters of unabashed love poetry. Although attributed to Solomon, a king of ancient Israel renowned for his wisdom, it is more likely that these words were written a few centuries later, around the 3rd or 4th century BC. It is perhaps surprising that the Song of Songs was included in the Bible, when the Council of Rome voted on the 73-book scriptural canon in 382 AD. There is nothing in this book at all that speaks directly about God, Jesus, or the Spirit. But the Song of Songs does talk a lot about love, and about belovedness. The early Christians saw, in this love poem between two individuals, a model of the love that God has for God’s people, and ultimately for each one of us.
There are so many other fascinating things about this book that I want to mention, at least in passing. The Song of Songs is perhaps the only book in the Bible to contain a first person feminine perspective, as the lover and the beloved speak back and forth to each other in a kind of dialogue. The Song is also an important antidote to some of the racial white-washing that has occurred in Christianity over the past one thousand years, as the female narrator proudly proclaims “I am black, and I am beautiful” (Song of Solomon 1:5), words that accurately show the cultural origins of our faith in Israel and Palestine. I encourage you, in your own time, to take a look at the Song of Songs. For some people there’s far too many lilies and gazelles in the poetry itself to enjoy, and I should warn you that it is kind of a PG-13 read. Nevertheless, there is so much in the Song of Songs to unpack and explore.
“My beloved is mine and I am his,” says a voice in the Song of Songs.
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” says a voice from the heavens in the Gospel of Luke.
There is an inherent connection between baptism and belovedness. That is the connection that we celebrate here today, both in our observance of the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, and in the baptizing of William later in our service today.
People often ask, what is baptism all about? And there are many different answers to this question. Baptism is about being reborn, as we acknowledge the spiritual dimension of our lives in Christ. Baptism is about affirming a different way of living— whether that affirmation is made by a mature individual or by adults committing to raise their loved ones in the footsteps of Jesus. Baptism is about salvation, as we embrace that new way of living laid out in the Gospels and in our baptismal promises. But if I were asked what baptism is about, in only one word, I would say this: love.
Baptism is about love.
It is about recognizing our love for God, the source of our being. It is about our love for each other: as parents, godparents, and indeed a whole community that promises to support a person in their walk of faith. And it’s about recognizing our own belovedness— which, to be honest, isn’t always easy to do. We get caught up in self-doubt, anxiety and uncertainty. Even displays of pride, bravado, and egotism are really manifestations of a shattered sense of self– and let me tell you, we see a lot of that these days. Nevertheless, recognizing our own belovedness is the key to loving God, and loving others. Recognizing our own belovedness is the prerequisite to our fourth baptismal promise: to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.”
When I look back through my life, it is so clear that the times I most struggled to love God and to love my neighbor were also the times that I most struggled to love myself. These were times when I was so preoccupied with my so-called failures, so preoccupied with my perceived un-goodness, that I couldn’t see beyond myself. I was boxed in by my own shame and insecurity; stuck in a kind of spiritual short-sightedness. At one of those times in my life— and in this particular case, it was when I was a teenager— a spiritual leader in my community gave me these words to reflect on: “The Lord delights in you.” I was shocked, and almost disbelieving about this reminder of my own belovedness. How could it be that God delights in me? And yet these words were the beginning of my healing, at least at that point in my life. These words freed me to be able to love God again, and to be open and loving to the people around me.
In a service that includes baptism, there are a few things that we say aloud. We follow along with the words of the liturgy. We affirm, in unison, the words of our baptismal covenant. But beyond the words that we speak, I’d like to think that God says something back to us, too. With each baptism, I believe God says: “You are my child. You are my beloved, and with you, I am well pleased.” I hope that our annual celebration of the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord can be a reminder of this truth: “You are God’s child, a beloved one. And with you, God is well pleased.”
In our communities today, we are facing a crisis of belovedness. And when people don’t feel authentically loved, all kinds of hell breaks loose. When we doubt our own belovedness, we lash out against others. When we doubt our own belovedness, we cling to fundamentalist ideas that have little grounding in love or truth. When we doubt our own belovedness, we become incredibly selfish. When we doubt our own belovedness we forget about the sanctity of human life, and resort to all kinds of violence.
Jesus came into this world as a healer. And the most healing thing that Jesus did, throughout his ministry, was simply to remind us of our own belovedness.
When parents bring forth a child to be baptized, I can tell you one thing they are thinking. They are looking down at their child, whether they are half asleep or beatifically smiling or crying their eyes out, and they are thinking: “You are my daughter (or you are my son), the beloved. And with you I am well pleased.” How amazing it is that, in baptism, the intentions of parents are perfectly synced with God. It is an overwhelming moment of belovedness. A reminder of the love we have for each other, and the love God has for us.
May we never forget that belovedness. Whether you were baptized as an infant, or like me baptized as an adult. God’s love for us never changes; it doesn’t decrease with age. God’s love for us is the medicine that will heal our sin sick souls. God’s love for us has the power to heal the world. May we believe in it, and mirror it, and share it every day of our lives.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away,
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come.”
May it be so. Amen.