Readings: Song of Songs 2, 8-13; James 1, 17-27, Mark 7, 1-8, 14-15, 21-23.
I wonder what your favourite Beatles song is: I wanna hold your hand? She loves you? Yesterday? Paul McCartney is a great song writer. Do you know the name Stephen Foster? He was the 19th century American song writer: The Camptown Races, Beautiful Dreamer, I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair. Do you know any songs of Leonard Cohen? Alleluia, Dance Me to the End of Love. Maybe some of us know the songs of classical composers like Puccini`s Nessun Dorma or the Italian Santa Lucia, or O Sole Mio. These are all great songs but do you know the Song of Songs? This song is in the Bible. Do you know the lyrics? Cover me with the kisses of your mouth. Your love is better than wine. These are not the words of Mick Jagger – they are part of the inspired Word of God.

Today, the reading is called A Springtime Rhapsody. I`m delighted the Uniting Church placed this passage in the lectionary for the first day of Spring – today. The Catholic Liturgy puts the passage on 21 December – four days before the birthday, not of Spring, but of Jesus Christ himself. Do you see the symbolism?

Today`s passage is one of the most appealing in the Bible. It`s perhaps a soliloquy on the part of the woman – the words of the man may be what the woman imagines. The passage is full of life-energy – `leaping`, `bounding`. There is a play on the Hebrew word sebi which means both `gazelle` and `beauty` – `Come then my gazelle/lovely one, come.

The season is the beginning of Spring – winter is past, flowers appear, freshness abounds, new colours, new sounds – all this has its effects on humans. He calls her out of her home which may be seen now as her confinement. So this is Spring – newness, new hope, new faith, new love. The birth of the earth and birth of God on the earth come together. The eternal return - There lies the dearest freshness deep down things. (Gerard Manly Hopkins)

And now down to practical matters. The Letter of James is the clearest example in the New Testament of Wisdom writing such as the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. The chief contents of James are respect for and inclusion of the poor, control of the tongue, perseverance and prayer. `We`ve received the Word of God,` James says. `Now let`s put it into practice.` James wants practical religion. James refers to the Law – the `perfect law of freedom`. James probably included Torah-observant Jewish Christians as well as Gentile Christians. The following of Jesus, submission to the Word implanted in us, that is, the teaching of Jesus, is what James points to. True religion means controlling the tongue, care for the orphan and the widow and keeping oneself on the straight and narrow – eyes on the prize, uncontaminated by the world (in the negative sense).

`Uncontaminated.` We now move to Mark Chapter 7. What does contaminate us? What defiles? Well, the big boys from Jerusalem, Scribes and Pharisees, were aware of the large crowds Jesus and his disciples had attracted. The Scribes and Pharisees saw that the disciples `ate with unwashed hands`. Jewish Law imposed many ritual washings on the people. Moreover, Jesus` mob rubbed shoulders with `sinners and tax collectors`. Unwashed hands and mixing with grubby sinners was a double jeopardy when it came to purity – the disciples were religiously contaminated. Here Jesus cuts to the chase – don`t impose on people burdens beyond the requirements of Scripture itself. Quoting Isaiah, Jesus says, `. . . your people simply honour God with lip service, while their hearts are far from me.` Don`t put aside the commandments of God to cling to human traditions and customs. What is unclean? Nothing that comes from outside a person. What is unclean is `what comes out of a person`. It is from within, from our hearts, that evil intentions emerge. Purify your hearts!

So we`ve looked at today`s readings – Song of Songs, James and Mark and three things emerge – the joy of love, the duty of living a good and Christian life and the peace of purity of heart. Religious people, maybe more than others, have the special obligation to practise what they preach.<>
I want to conclude by quoting a great witness to a good, no, a really good Christian life. Last week, 28 August, was the feast day of St Augustine. He was born in 354AD to a Christian mother, Monica, and a non-Christian father, Patricius. Monica prayed for both father and son – Patricius and Augustine. Patricius received baptism on his deathbed and Augustine received baptism aged 33 after a gigantic struggle with the ideas and philosophies of his day. Both Augustine`s theology and his life story, told in his `Confessions`, reverberate with light even today.

Augustine`s `Confessions` – Book 7 (Excerpts):
`Being admonished to return to myself I entered into my own depths, with you as guide; I was able to do this because you were my helper. I entered and with the eye of my soul, I saw your unchangeable light shining over my soul and my mind. It was not the light of every day . . . you light was altogether other. The one who knows the truth knows that light, and the one who knows that light knows eternity. Love knows it.

O eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity, you are my God. I sigh for you day and night. When I first knew you, you lifted me up so that I might see that there was something to see. But I was not yet the man to see it. And you beat back the weakness of my gaze. It blazed upon me too strongly and I was shaken with love and fear, and I knew that I was far from you; so far as if I heard your voice from a long way off: `I am the food of grown men, grow and you shall eat me. And when you eat me, you shall not change me into yourself, but into me you shall be changed.`

So I set about finding a way to gain the strength necessary for enjoying you. And I could not find it until I embraced the man Jesus, the mediator between God and Man, who is over all things; the one calling to me saying, `I am the way, the truth and the life`; the one who brought into union with our human nature that food which I lacked the strength to take . . .

Late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new. Late have I loved you. For you were within me and I outside. And I sought you outside, and in my ugliness fell upon those lovely things you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called, you cried to me, you broke open my deafness. You sent out you beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrance upon me and I drew in my breath and now I pant for you; I tasted you and now I hunger and thirst for you; your touched me and now I burn for your peace.