Psalm 77; Song of Songs 2; 1 Peter 4:7-16
Our scripture readings this morning invite us to reflect on the reality of lives lived in the presence, and the absence, of love.
Song of Songs chapter 2 is a dialogue of love, as the lovers reflect on the tenderness and desire of the love between a man and a woman. Their names for each other are ‘beloved’ and ‘my love’, and their language is of longing and yearning, of blossom and of joy. Thoughts, hearts and bodies are offered in the service of love. Unity is found in loving relationship: ‘my beloved is mine and I am his’.
1 Peter 4:7-12 widens the perspective and introduces us to the presence and exercise of love in community. Writing to what was probably a mixed early Christian community – of Jew and Gentile – the apostle Peter exhorts them, ‘above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.’ One senses the undercurrent of tension in such a statement, but Peter goes on to argue that love should change everything in community living, from the hospitality offered and received, to the service and the words spoken. Love puts others first, builds up community, and seeks the welfare of others.
Those echoes of 1 Corinthians 13, for I am sure you heard them, remind us that any language of love in scripture reflects a deeper reality of divine love offered and received. The romantic and sexual love of Song of Songs and the practical love of 1 Peter 4 are echoes of a deeper love, the love that comes from and is found in the God who is love. While neither passage mentions God, the love they describe flows from the well of love which is found in God. Scripture never asks us to choose between human love and divine love; rather, human love at its best becomes a sign of the love from which all love comes.
Our psalm this morning, Psalm 77, introduces us, however, into a very different perspective on love. While the other two passages reflect the presence of love – in a loving couple and a loving community – Psalm 77 points to the absence of love as experienced in the life of one person.
The scene is at night-time and the psalmist is reflecting on their lived experience of God. ‘I call to remembrance my song: and in the night I commune with mine own heart and search out my spirits. Will the Lord absent himself for ever: and he will be no more intreated? Is his mercy clean gone for ever: and is his promise come utterly to an end for evermore?’ As someone said to me once, the world looks a horrible place from 3 o’clock in the morning.
And then comes the haunting question: ‘hath God forgotten to be gracious: and will he shut up his loving-kindness in displeasure?’
This is the language not of presence but of absence. God’s love is spoken of, but as a memory not a reality. The psalmist is in a place of desolation, repeating familiar words – mercy, promise, loving-kindness – but without them meaning what they once meant. God is absent in the watches of the night, and with him the assurance and presence of his love.
The Ignatian spiritual tradition invites us to pay significant attention to our experience of desolation. It invites us never to waste a spiritual crisis, but instead to find in our own sense of abandonment or desolation a hint, a pointer to what we are looking for. In other words, what are we missing? Even a narration of what we don’t have can be an expression of our desire through which God speaks and moves and brings life.
The fact that the psalmist takes time to name what he is missing and longing for is a grace that can help orientate him as he lives through physical fragility and emotional challenge. And indeed, in our psalm today it helps him move from the inward spiral of lament to recalling the faithfulness of God seen in his works of mercy throughout the story of God’s people. In other words, the psalmist does not reason himself out of despair; he remembers himself into hope. He recalls not simply how he feels about God, but what God has done.
I can’t say I ever welcome feelings of desolation or spiritual abandonment. I much prefer to be in a place like Song of Songs 2 or 1 Peter 4: sensing God’s love in the love of another or in the love of a community. But the reality is that this is not always so. Times of anxiety, stress or loss, for myself or for others, mean that God’s love can feel distant and sometimes even just a memory, and this can be especially true in the small hours of the night.
At times like these, and I think every person of faith has them at one time or another, the psalms can be a tremendous comfort and an agent of grace. For they give us the words with which we can narrate our own desolation, and voice the desire which is sometimes a very flickering flame. And the key thing they can do is take away any sense of shame that says ‘we should not be thinking like this.’ In my experience it is bad enough feeling like God is absent without then thinking it is all my fault.
Indeed, if we move on from guilt and feelings of despair, we can find ourselves naming what we are missing and longing for, and can over time experience a level of reorientation as a result. ‘What is your desire?’, my spiritual director often asks, and sometimes the lament of Psalm 77 is enough. It helps me voice the love I am missing, and that invites me into a space of being open to God’s love in new and surprising ways.
For whatever our experience of love, from an individual or within a community, there is deeper love to which we can attend, a love revealed in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. A love which will not let us go, even in the watches of the night, and a love which fans even the most flickering of flames. A love felt in its absence, but whose presence is as sure as the morning sun. For the Lord has not forgotten to be gracious. His loving-kindness has not come to an end. And therefore, even in the watches of the night, we may wait for the morning.
Let us pray
God of love and faithfulness,
whose grace is known in the joy of human love, the care of Christian community, and even in the longing of hearts that seek you in the night:
when your presence seems near, keep us thankful;
when your face seems hidden, keep us steadfast;
and by the love revealed in Jesus Christ, kindle hope within us until the morning comes.
For you have not forgotten to be gracious, and your loving-kindness never fails; and for this we praise you through the inestimable gift of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.