God Is in Love With You and Wants to Marry You
Devotion to God in the Integral Christian Community
Part Two
In the Jesus path, God is the ultimate lover. And yes, God is in love with you and wants to marry you. There, I said it. A bit shocking, isn’t it. It feels too sexy, too intimate. What happened to things like “holy” and “sacred”? It turns out that sex comes with both!
In my previous article, I explored how Jesus moves us away from the traditional royal court practices of devotion to God of his day to less formal and more intimate expressions of devotion. Jesus taught and modeled a relationship with God as his loving parent and taught us that God wants to love us,too, in this same paternal-maternal family way. Then there is there the intimate friendship Jesus had with his disciples, similar to what he had with his beloved Abba. There is one other metaphor or description of our relationship with God that is prominent in the Bible. That is God as lover. What does that mean? What does it look like? That sounds erotic! How can that be?
God is a lover
The incarnation of God in living, warm, erotic human flesh, in both Jesus and us, faces us with the place of erotic love in devotion. Pope Benedict XVI said that the Bible describes “God’s passion for his people using boldly erotic images.” He says that God loves us as a Bridegroom, as “a lover with all the passion of a true love.”
We see an expression of devotion combined with eros in living color in an incident in the life of Jesus. A woman learned that Jesus was eating in the Pharisee’s house. Entering the house with a jar of perfumed ointment, she bent down to the feet of Jesus, rubbing them with the lotion. Weeping, bathing his feet with her tears, and then drying them with her hair, she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Luke 7: 37-38
Charles H. Cosgrove, in The Journal of Biblical Literature, says that when the woman here “weeps on Jesus’ feet, wipes them with her hair, kisses them, and anoints them,” this is a “part of a cluster of sexually provocative gestures by the woman.” Unbound, flowing hair was regarded as sensual and almost a form of nudity. If a woman let her hair down in public, she was seen as tempting men to sin.
However, Jesus did not resist this. He did not jump up and say, “Woman, what do you think you are doing, acting in such an outrageous erotic way with me?” Instead, when one of the Pharisees complained about this sexual behavior, Jesus said to him, “I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. She has shown great love” (Italics mine. Luke 7:40-48). Jesus calls this erotic love here by a form of the Greek word agape.
Intimacy with God is like a couple making love
In the Bible’s R-rated book,the Song of Songs (or Solomon), whether its two main characters were married is not clear, illustrates passionate erotic love. These romantic lovers, held by most scholars to be a metaphor for God and us, describe a vibrant, sensual relationship and devotion to God.
In John 3:22-30, John the Baptist introduces Jesus to us as the bridegroom. There are three places in the New Testament where Jesus is pictured as a bridegroom, two in the gospels and one in the book of Revelation (21:2, 9-10 & 25). Of all the images a wedding brings up, it would be ludicrous to imagine that lovemaking is not present, and in Jesus’ culture, prominent at that, compared to today where it is assumed the bring and groom have already engaged in sexual intimacy
In Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul compares the union of husband and wife to that of Christ and the church. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his sermons on the Song of Songs, interprets the bride of Christ as the soul and the union thereof as the mystical union of the soul with Christ.
Today, we must point out that bridegroom and bride imagery was written from the male viewpoint in an entirely patriarchal setting in both the Old and New Testaments. Erotic imagery had to always be between assumed heterosexual male and female. Today we can see that metaphor as more inclusive: husband and husband, wife and wife, partner and partner, and the range of LGBT+ orientation and gender identities. I will use the contemporary inclusive “partner” in places instead of bridegroom and bride.
Seen through ancient Jewish eyes, Jesus of Nazareth was more than just a teacher, prophet, or even the Messiah. He was the husband God of Israel come in the flesh. In the early stages of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as “the Bridegroom” (John 3:29), even though Jesus has no wife.
Later on, in one of his most mysterious parables, Jesus refers to himself as “the bridegroom” and calls his disciples “the sons of the bridechamber” (Mark 2:18–19). Moreover, the first miracle Jesus performs takes place at a Jewish wedding, when he acts like a bridegroom by miraculously providing wine for the wedding party (John 2:1–11).
According to the book of Revelation, the world itself is heading for a cosmic wedding — the eternal “marriage supper of the Lamb” and the unveiling of the new Jerusalem as the Bride of Christ (Rev 19, 21).
“One flesh” is about sex
Paul writes, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh [the act of sexual intercourse]. This is a great mystery [this leaving others, uniting with one another, and sexual union], and I am applying it to Christ and the church.” (Eph 5:31-32). And there it is as bold as it could be said! The erotic one-flesh union of man and woman is a mysterious reference to Christ and the church in erotic, one-spirit union imagery.
Bernard McGinn, Roman Catholic theologian, religious historian, and scholar of spirituality, writes, “From the early third century there is evidence that Christians were interpreting the entire Song of Solomon, in the light of Ephesians 5:23-32 where Paul connects human marriage with the mystery of Christ and the Church.” He says that the “use of language drawn from sexual love - physical descriptions of the beauty of the lover, as well as images of longing and meeting, of burning and swooning, of kisses, embraces, and even of intercourse” have been “widespread in the history of Christian mysticism.”
He continues, “We should be scandalized not so much by the presence of such erotic elements as by their absence . . . . What is involved is not so much the disguising of erotic language . . . as the full and direct use of certain forms of erotic expression for a different purpose: the transformation of all human desire in terms of what the mystic believes to be its true source.”
It seems that God, in the form of Jesus, wants his followers to not merely be Jesus’ wife in name only, but to be his lover.
The Bible includes many different metaphors to express God’s love for us: God is our shepherd, our king, our father, vine-keeper, etc. But these are not on par with partnered lovemaking as the most frequent and primary scriptural metaphor. Our intimacy with God and one another is based on passionate, sexual intimacy. What makes God’s love for us really different, beyond friendship and parental love is that it is sexual. Sexual is not directly equivalent to intercourse, but a love that puts one’s self in the service of the beloved’s whole self, including the beloved’s passion and sexuality.
The lover language of Saint John of the Cross
Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591) recorded numerous ecstatic experiences while deep in prayer and meditation. Like other mystics, he used the language of erotic love to describe his relationship with Jesus. Many of his writings deal exclusively with “marriage theology,” that is, the soul’s marriage relationship with the Living Jesus.
Since Jesus was born male, Saint John’s poetry inevitably celebrates same-sex love. Christian tradition tries to make this kind of poetry into heterosexual eroticism by considering the soul and the church female while God is male. Integral Christianity follows the inclusively of Jesus and not culture’s rigid gender parameters.
The following stanza from one of John’s poems makes it evident that he recognized that each believer, regardless of their gender, is individually a spouse or marriage partner with Jesus:
The Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross
Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
Erotic imagery to express spiritual desire
Harvard art historian, Jeffrey F. Hamburger, writes of “the use of erotic imagery as a way of expressing ardent spiritual desire. Sanctified by the Song of Songs, somatic, sensual imagery was taken for granted, in male as in female monasticism.”
Carolyn Walker Bynum of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study writes, “The image of bride or lover was clearly a central metaphor for the woman [and man] mystic’s union with Christ’s humanity.”
Louise Nelstrop, Faculty of Theology and Religion University of Oxford. Writes, “Origen viewed the erotic and nuptial images of the Song of Songs as a form of divine outreach, through which God lifted souls from a worldly understanding of love to a rarefied transcendent one. The text for him demonstrates God’s love for humanity in offering an account of love in language that we can engage with, so as to progress beyond it.”
However, it seems to me that most of us have yet to engage with it, much less progress beyond it. Some degree of spiritual growth is necessary for sex to be seen as something essentially giving. If we don’t see this, then sexual imagery for God’s love for us will seem strange indeed.
The great mystics experienced something in the higher states of prayer of passionate, ecstatic intimacy with God. In trying to describe that intimacy, they fall back on the language of sexual intimacy. And their language is not just a figure of speech. Their experience in prayer is not just symbolic, but really erotic, really sexual intimacy.
Christian medieval mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg wrote:
Lord, now I am a naked soul
And you in yourself All-Glorious God.
Our mutual intercourse
Is eternal life without end.
French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil said, “To reproach mystics with loving God by means of the faculty of sexual love is as though one were to reproach a painter with making pictures by means of colors composed of material substances. We haven’t anything else with which to love.”
In an integral perspective, we can acknowledge that royal court worship metaphors and practices have meaning and value for some, perhaps many Christians. However, for many of us in the integral community, devotion to God is best expressed in these three metaphors of friendship, family, and lovers. This is devotion with closeness, touching, and intimacy, rather than the aloofness of royal court drama.
Integral Christian devotion significantly incorporates loving others as well as especially loving those who suffer in addition to nature, justice, and the earth.
God is saying to you and me, “I’m in love with you.”
God says, “I love you with the unconditional love of devoted family, best friends, and passionate lovers. I have created a universe devoted to your evolution. I am dedicated to your becoming all that you can be. I sent Jesus, who echoed my devotion to you by dedicating his life to teaching and encouraging you. He was so devoted to you that he was willing to endure crucifixion in standing up for all who are oppressed and suffering. Now, lose yourself in the depths of my love.”
The passion of eros of often expressed in body movement. Body movements are vital for communicating nonverbally, beyond words, with God.
As deep sexual intimacy is usually reserved for one person or just a few, it can be helpful to share other forms of body movements in community that express our devotion and intimacy collectively. Doing devotion in motion with others also creates a sense of unity and shared identity.
They are a visible sign of our shared goals. They signal to others our collective connection and strengthen the field that our movements create.
Participating in devotion in motion can also help us understand abstract spiritual ideas by making them more concrete.
Practice: The Three Faces of God Invocation/Benediction
WORDS FOR INDIVIDUAL USE:
Infinite God beyond me, in whom I live and move and have my being.
Intimate God beside me; you are always with me.
Inner God being me: I am the light of the world.
Infinite God beyond me, in whom I live and move and have my being.
Intimate God beside me; you are always with me.
Inner God being me: I am the light of the world.
WORDS FOR GROUP USE:
Infinite God beyond us, in whom we live and move and have our being.
Intimate God beside us; you are always with us.
Inner God being us; we are the light of the world.
Infinite God beyond us, in whom we live and move and have our being.
Intimate God beside us; you are always with us.
Inner God being us; we are the light of the world.
Here is a link to God in Three Dimensions video
Sing along with it in your devotion time. Your group can sing along (everyone’s mute on, please) with my former church congregation in the video for a gathered integral “church service” experience. (You may notice that we are doing an older hand movement of God Being Us with our hands on our hearts. We had yet to learn that our spiritual womb is the primary source of our divine identity.) Here are the words to the new hymn.
GOD IN THREE DIMENSIONS
Music by Jean Sibelius (“Finlandia”)
Words by Wanda Heatwole
Concept by Paul Smith
Infinite God, beyond our comprehension
in whom we are, and live and move.
O Divine Mystery, O vast Creator,
Infinite God, we stand in awe of you.
O Divine Mystery, O vast Creator,
Infinite God, we stand in awe of you.
Intimate God, each day you’re always with us.
Emmanuel, a God who’s always there.
Jesus, our guide, our friend, and our model,
Intimate God, we offer praise to you.
Jesus, our guide, our friend, and our model,
Intimate God, we offer praise to you.
O Inner God, within us as our true self,
energy cosmic, light divine.
We are your shining light to the whole world.
O Inner God, we now give thanks to you.
We are your shining light to the whole world.
O Inner God, we now give thanks to you.
O God, revealed in three dimensions,
as divine mystery, friend, and light.
You’re ever-present, with us as we journey,
Infinite, Intimate, and Inner God.
You’re ever-present, with us as we journey,
Infinite, Intimate, and Inner God.