You have to wonder how the Song of Songs ever made it into the Bible. Scholars of scripture have explained the inclusion of the love poetry of the Song in sacred scripture by making it an allegory of God’s love for the chosen people of the covenant, or Christ’s love for the people of the new covenant, the church. However we spiritualize it, there is no mistaking the ardour, the physicality, the intimacy of the love that is described. The poem never explicitly mentions God, but if we read it as sacred story, then we affirm and proclaim that this is God’s love for us; this is God’s love song.

That’s what I wanted to preach about this morning. Then, the night before last, there was a mass shooting outside the high school down the street. Five teenagers were hospitalized. One of them has since died. [Update: news that came out during our service time reports that a 15-year-old has been arrested for the shooting.]

God loves those children too much – God loves these children too much for us to continue to let this happen.

You remember the t-shirts we had on this lawn earlier in the summer. They each told a story. One of the stories that stayed with me was of a 17-year-old who was shot and killed after he came into Euclid to buy a gun. He had been sold the myth that he would be safer if he had a gun, and it killed him. 

If there is one overarching theme from this morning’s lessons that I can find, it is this: mind your hearts. Jesus says, you need to pay attention to your heart, to what flows from it, from what fills it. James agrees: if your heart is filled with anger and self-righteousness, it will not produce God’s righteousness. 

Every time we turn away from the love of God, the nonviolence of Jesus; every time we buy into the myth that more guns, more armed guards, more militarism, more anger, more violence will save us, we promote that myth to the children around us. Every time we act out of fear and loathing, arming ourselves against our neighbours instead of loving our enemies, we set that example for the generation of children and teens growing up around us, the first generation for whom gun violence is the leading cause of premature death.

And yet the heart of God is filled with love and turtledoves. 

We proclaim a Christ who would rather go to the cross than take up arms against his persecutors. Or are we merely hearers of the word, speakers of the Creed, and not doers?

It is a paradox. We cannot save ourselves by human ritual and tradition, rules and regulations, and yet we must create a structure in which every child of God might flourish and live, and know the love that God has for them; respect the dignity of every human being, as our baptismal covenant has it. We have to organize; but we have to do it out of the humility of love, knowing that we are but shadows of our Creator.

Mind your hearts, beloveds. Take care where they rest, and in whom they place great trust. Let them not be deceived by anger nor crushed by the burdens of the world. But let them take sing with mercy, the kindness of love, the justice of grace, the love of God, that every child of God might hear it. 

We are but fleeting shadows, and yet, see, and hear, how God loves each of God’s children (and let us, for the love of God, do likewise). 

Year B Proper 17 includes readings from the Song of Songs, James, and Jesus’ teaching on the human heart according to Mark