Preface (partly for William): I have for months been planning on at least two long posts on “The Gospel According to Puccini”. (Remotely similar to Donald Miller’s Christian interpretation of “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare.) One interpreting “Turandot” terms of the passionate love of God (Calaf) for humanity (Turandot). Another interpreting the aria “Nessun Dorma” in terms of the Passion of Christ (the Triduum). So in a sense the first part of this sermon is little more than an “introductory sketch” – sort of like giving you cookie dough rather than finished cookies.
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“The Gospel According to Puccini”
Song of Songs 2
13th Sunday Pentecost (B) or 22nd Sunday Ordinary (B)
August 30, 2009
Church of the Nations
Richard M. Wright
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No one can perform this opera in the People’s Republic of China until 1998.
That opera is “Turandot” by the great Italian composer Giacomo Puccini.
It is long and difficult to explain the story. Set in ancient China. Anyone who wants to marry the princess Turandot must answer three riddles. If he fails then they cut off his head.
The prince of Tartary comes to Beijing. He must not let anyone know who he is because China has conquered his nation. (This is not historical.) Sees the cold cruel beautiful princess and immediately falls in love with her.
He steps forward and announces he wants to marry her. Ha ha! Foolish prince! You will fail and die!
Later at the palace she asks her riddles.
What is born each night and dies each morning? Hope.
What is red and warm but is not fire? <Sangue> Blood. The princess now is scared.
<Gelo che ti da foco> What is like ice but burns like fire? The prince thinks for a minute. Turandot!
No! The princess asks her father the emperor do not let this prince have me! But he says she must keep her promise. She must marry the prince.
And here is the mystery of the story. The part that does not make sense. Although what does not make sense is often where we will find the deeper truth.
The prince makes an offer. “You do not know my name. Bring me my name before morning – and when the sun rises I will die”.
Why does this not make sense?
Mark Lew writes that if we interpret the story literally – this is a stupid thing to do. The prince already has won. He already will marry the princess. Why give her a chance to escape?
Because he does not only want to marry her. He wants her to love him. [http://home.earthlink.net/~markdlew/comm/turandot.htm]
And that is when the prince goes through the streets of Beijing and sings:
Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Let no one sleep. Let no one sleep!
Tu pure o principessa nella tua freda stanza guardi le stelle che tremana d’amore e di’speranza. And you O princess alone in your cold room watch the stars that tremble with love and with hope.
Ma il mistero e chiuso i me. But my mystery is hidden in me. My name no one will know. No! No! Only upon your lips shall I say it when the light shines forth and my kiss breaks the silence that makes you mine.
I am not sure this opera is really about ancient China at all.
Love. Desiring love. Love that says “I want you. I want to be with you. But I do not only want to have you and be with you. I want you to love me too”. The kind of love that brings human beings together. But surely not the kind of love we expect from God or return to God.
At the back of my prayer book is something called the “Thirty Nine Articles of Religion” that are part of the Anglican tradition of the Christian movement. Article one states, “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions…” Without passions. Perhaps… without passion?
Are we sure about that? Although it is possible the English word “passion” meant something different more than four hundred years ago.
Is it possible that we receive and experience and return the love of God that is accepting love… compassionate love… sacrificial love… but even passionate and desiring love? Does God desire us? Can our relationship with God be passionate?
One of the Bible readings for this Sunday would be from the Song of Songs – and according to my research this happens only once every three years. So I wanted to take this rare opportunity to talk more about the passionate and desiring love of God that we encounter best of all in this short strange book from the Old Testament called the Song of Songs.
Listen! My lover! Look! Here he comes! Leaping across the mountains… jumping over the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young deer.
The Song of Songs looks like passionate love poetry between a man and a woman – in which sometimes other people also speak. Very physical passionate love poetry in which they describe each other in detail. How much they desire each other. Want to be together – although it does not seem to happen very much… as if there is something or someone who often keeps them from meeting together. There is not a single mention of God in the entire book. Does not sound very… religious. Why is there a short book of very physical passionate love poetry that does not mention God… here in the Bible?
In fact the Song of Songs is one of those books that almost did not get into the Bible. There was some debate about it. Fortunately one of the greatest Jewish rabbis Rabbi Akiba stood up and proclaimed, “Holy is the day God gave the Bible! But holiest of all is the day he gave us the Song of Songs”. The people of God for centuries have interpreted this book in terms of the passionate desiring love between God and his people. First – between the Lord and the people of Israel. Later – between Jesus and the Christian church. Sometimes as well – the love between God and individual human beings.
So what is it? It is human love poetry that someone put in the Bible that later people interpreted it as being about God and his people? For years that is what I believed. Robert Jenson is a scholar of the Old Testament who points out at least two things. That if this is purely human love poetry there are certain physical details missing. And that much of the language and symbolism can be found in other places in the Old Testament – as if the person who wrote it had the Old Testament and was reading it and using it as a source. Therefore Jenson concludes that this book of love poetry was and is originally about God and us. Although it also has much to say about human love as well.
Look! There he stands behind our wall… looking through the windows… watching through the screen. My lover spoke and said to me, Get up, my darling, my beautiful one and come with me.
If the beloved is us… and the lover in this book is God… then God is the one who takes the initiative. Who acts first. Who comes to us. Just like we read in the book of First John, “This is what love is. Not that we loved God but God first loved us”. God proclaims to us our beloved-ness – my darling. Proclaims to us that we are beautiful in his sight – even though yes we are broken and struggle and sin and suffer – but still each of us is unique in the universe that God has made. My beautiful one. And God invites us to let go of our fear… come out of the places where we hide behind not locked doors here but behind a window behind a screen. And come with me…
God pursues us with desire. Just as once I desired a young woman from Tennessee although she did not realize that I was in love with her. She did not realize but still I did what I had to in order to get her attention. This time I did not have to read words from a book – I baked chocolate chip cookies for her birthday. And even though I burned them! I had to give them to her. I would rather give her burned cookies that not give her anything at all. “Why is he giving me cookies? And am I really supposed to eat burned cookies?”
But that is how desiring love is. That is the true meaning of the Greek word eros – not physical love so much as desiring love that with human beings does express itself physically. And what did God do to get our attention? “This is what love is. Not that we loved God but God first loved us and gave himself as a sacrifice for us”. My favorite verse of the Bible from the book of Galatians ends, “The life I live in the body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me”. Not burned cookies – but the son of God broken and bleeding on a cross. Yes – God loves us so much that he is willing to die to break the silence that makes us his.
Do you believe that God is in love with you? That he sees you as beautiful? As precious? As someone he desires to be with? I do not fully understand the passionate desiring love of God. But the first step in knowing and experiencing something is knowing that it is there.
In his book Life of the Beloved Henri Nouwen writes that in this world we hear voices of blessing and voices of cursing – voices that tell us “you are no good… you are not good enough… ugly and a failure”. Sometimes that voice is our own. But in the Song of Songs we hear the voice of God that is a voice of blessing and of love that says we are precious as we are. He desires relationship with us. And we only need to hear that voice… get up and come with God.
