April 24: The Divine Bride & Groom
♫ Music:
Wednesday, April 24
Christ Loves the Church
Scripture: Ephesians 5:22-33
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Poetry:
Temple on my Knees
by Lisa Russ Spaar
When this day returns to me
I will value your heart,
long hurt in long division,
over mine. Mouth above mine too —
say you love me, truth never more
meant, say you are angry.
Words, words we net with our mouths.
Soul is an old thirst but not as first
as the body’s perhaps,
though on bad nights its melancholy
eats us out, to a person.
True, time is undigressing.
Yet true is all we can be:
rhyming you, rhyming me.
THE DIVINE BRIDE & GROOM
Wives submit to your husbands. Husbands lay down your lives for your wives.
To our modern ears these words grate like fingers on a chalkboard causing deep discomfort. A young man might say, but why should I commit to any one woman in monogamy? Why should I sacrifice personal comfort and freedom for the thankless responsibility and mundanity of family life in a cul-de-sac of suburbia? A young woman might hear these words and think a startlingly un-woke invitation of returning to 1950’s domesticity has been offered her. How will this affect her personal freedom? Won’t marriage interfere with her career choices?
There is just something so medieval about the very idea of submitting or laying down one’s life that it feels almost offensive that the Bible should depict such things, never-mind that these prescriptions for marital relations should also provide us with a metaphoric analogy of Christ’s union with his Church. Such passages of scripture are quite easily skimmed over since they are difficult to understand and we often lack the appropriate hermeneutic to approach them. In our case, I do not think the proper hermeneutic necessarily involves an intimate knowledge of the biblical Greek or even a rudimentary understanding of the Ephesian culture for whom this letter was addressed. Instead, what if the appropriate lens for our postmodern time were as simple as reading these verses as if we are people who have really fallen in love?
Real love intuitively makes the things recommended in these verses almost seem like heaven on earth. If you are truly in love with another you want to be inseparably joined to them and will do anything it takes to be with them. Separation is agony and you imagine yourself making promises to God or others that you would do literally anything to be reunited. Only their particularity of person, only their unique beauties and charms will make you feel well again. There is euphoria in their presence, but unease and sentimental longing in their absence. Such is the spell we fall under when our body’s chemical cocktails tell us we have given our hearts to another. Of course, these intense, transcendent passions can only last so long in establishing a physical human relationship, but in thinking of how union in marriage might metaphorically represent the longing of Christ for His Bride and correspondingly the desire of the Church for her heavenly groom, nearly every person is equipped with experiential clues.
Naturally, experiences of love are notably diverse so while consensus on what love means is not unanimous it is somewhat remarkable that most in our culture would read love as leading toward self-fulfillment. We must pause to ask, is that the right view? The word Paul uses in this passage is the word agapao, which is a love of deep sacrifice, completely unselfish and ready to do absolutely anything required for the sake of the beloved. This is how men are to love their wives and it must be realized that such love is actually impossible without the help of the Spirit of God.
Western culture does not understand agapao, but instead gravitates toward a set of Romantic myths and misconceptions depicted in our movies and music that promise a ‘perfect someone’ just a swipe or serendipitous meeting away who will complete us and give us perfect happiness for the rest of our lives. It goes without saying that Romanticism has spelt an enormity of trouble for our ability to endure and thrive in long term relationships, for when the love of self-fulfillment ultimately fails and romantic feelings grow dim many choose to conveniently discard their lovers and move on.
The cynicism and disappointment that are inevitable swing the social imaginary of our cultural subconscious all too easily to the other extreme. Like philosopher Michel Foucault we may convince ourselves that real love does not exist, but only relationships of domination and complicated power dynamics that must be scrupulously negotiated whenever two persons pursue mutual pleasure. Worse yet, our hurt in romantic disappointment may lead us to conclusions like Sartre’s, for whom true love was such an impossibility that the closest one could ever get was a sadomasochism wherein two persons take turns objectifying one another. The average person may not know these philosopher’s names, but their writings articulate our disillusionments clearly and succinctly. If everything is truly power and domination, no wonder the biblical word for submission causes such wariness. Thus, love pursued for self-fulfillment is ultimately disappointing. As can be seen we would do well to feed our imaginations on a different form and meaning for marital love. Here the parables found in scripture provide plenty of word paintings for our nourishment, but perhaps there is none more potent and beautiful than the story of Ruth and Boaz.
The four Old Testament chapters that tell of their relationship are not without a subtle romance, but their love’s depiction is hardly a modern fairy tale. Ruth as the ancestress of King David and ultimately Jesus Christ was a poor widowed foreign woman who had immigrated to Israel to care for her mother-in-law. From the book on her love story we do not know whether she was particularly beautiful or charming in any special way. We only know that she feared God, was a hard worker, and chose to devote her life to the care of someone more helpless in social stature than herself. Boaz, the man she met in this story, was a landowner and farmer. Once again, in framing who Boaz was scripture doesn’t give us the gossipy, sappiness of television’s ‘The Bachelor.’ We are not given the sentimentality of a Valentine’s Day love story, or the sexual tension of a modern romantic comedy. It is unknown whether Boaz was handsome or particularly desirable for a mate. What the Bible does tell us is that Boaz followed God with all his heart and simply sought to show justice to someone who was without means or wealth of her own. He was a person who felt deeply responsible to protect and care for others out of his own material prosperity in accordance with God’s law. Thus, when the gentle hint of attraction begins in their romance it is because Ruth and Boaz have noticed each other’s character and acknowledged a deep respect for the other. Eventually, in knowing that Boaz is a person who follows God’s law and expressing gratitude for his unmerited provision and protection to her, Ruth comes to Boaz to symbolically lay herself at his feet in a cultural act of submission. His profound goodness has won her over and she is willing to become his wife if he will have her. Boaz, in turn, remarks aloud to himself with astonishment that Ruth has chosen him instead of one of the younger, more eligible bachelors from the town. In his response he overlooks the fact that she is from a despised people group and immediately, excitedly sets about the legalities of redeeming her as his wife.
This story is a love story to be sure, but not because of any Romantic idealism. Rather, in stark realism it foreshadows God’s redemption of His bride through his Son who gave himself up in agape though we did not deserve it. Ruth’s story has important messages for our day, a day of choosing or rejecting a mate on the basis of “chemistry” and intensity of feeling. For our simultaneously romantic, but cynical culture the self-giving love modeled as our focus for marital love and our relationship with God requires a vulnerability that is frightening to say the least. We must struggle with the metaphor of Godly marriage in learning what it means to submit to God, knowing that for millennia humankind waited for the appearance of a divine redeemer.
Through Lent and the celebration of Easter may we feel both the anticipation of longing for our lover and the joy of submitting to Him in His loving redemption of a bride that was destitute and despised, for we are that bride.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound….”
Closing Prayer - Amor De Mi Alma
I was born to love only you;
My soul has formed you to its measure;
I want you as a garment for my soul.
Your very image is written on my soul;
Such indescribable intimacy
I hide even from you.
All that I have, I owe to you;
For you I was born, for you I live,
For you I must die, and for you
I give my last breath.
~ Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536)
Jamie Bos
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Ruth and Boaz, 1855
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti
Mixed media
29.2 x 17.6 cm
Private Collection
The story of Ruth and Boaz seems appropriate to represent today’s scripture regarding the relationship between husband and wife. Rossetti has chosen to illustrate the story with this quiet private encounter between the two characters. The image seems to show them both as strong individuals joined in purpose and intention in the field where they met, which acts as a metaphor for their work and purpose together.
About the Artist:
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (1828-1882) was a British poet, illustrator, painter, and translator, brother of poet Christina Rossetti, who founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. He also inspired a second generation of artists and writers, notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats and he frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures. In 1861, Rossetti became a founding partner in the decorative arts firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. where he contributed designs for stained glass and other decorative objects. From 1833 to 1845, there was a revival of religious beliefs and practices in England. The Oxford Movement, also known as the Tractarian Movement, started to restore Christian traditions that had been lost in the Church. It is noted that the Anglo-Catholic revival very much affected Rossetti, subsequently he was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, that sought to include subjects of noble or religious disposition in their art. Their aim was to communicate a message of "moral reform" through the style of their works.
About the Music:
“Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 21, "Nordic": II. Andante teneramente, con semplicita” from the album Hanson: Complete Symphonies
About the Composer:
Howard Hanson (1896–1981) was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., a post he held until his retirement in 1964, he provided opportunities for commissioning and performing contemporary American music. In 1944, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 4 and received numerous other awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Entertainment in Music in 1946. Maestro Hanson's music has been described as part of the Neo-Romantic movement in music, which endeavored to continue the traditions of the Romantic era into the 20th century. It should be noted, however, that Hanson's compositions also incorporated experimentation with modern musical idioms. Many of the passages in his works are based upon modal scales, which call to mind Gregorian chants. It has also been noted that one of Hanson's hallmarks as a composer is his utilization of melodic lines which flow seamlessly in a manner that is almost improvisational, unpretentious, and very American.
About the Performers:
Seattle Symphony Orchestra with Gerard Schwarz (Conductor)
The Seattle Symphony is one of America’s leading symphony orchestras and is internationally acclaimed for its innovative programming and extensive recording history. Since September 2011 Music Director Ludovic Morlot has led the Symphony, and in September 2019 Principal Guest Conductor Thomas Dausgaard will become the next Music Director. The Symphony is heard from September through July by more than 500,000 people through live performances and radio broadcasts and performs in one of the finest modern concert halls in the world — the acoustically superb Benaroya Hall — in downtown Seattle. Its extensive education and community engagement programs reach over 65,000 children and adults each year. The Seattle Symphony has a deep commitment to new music, commissioning many works by living composers each season. The orchestra has made nearly 150 recordings and has received three Grammy Awards, 26 Grammy nominations, two Emmy Awards and was named Gramophone’s 2018 Orchestra of the Year. In 2014 the Symphony launched its in-house recording label, Seattle Symphony Media.
Gerard Schwarz (b. 1947) is an American conductor and trumpeter. He was the music director of the Seattle Symphony from 1985 to 2011. Schwarz is noted for his success in building the strength of the orchestra and spearheading the effort to build Seattle Symphony's new home, Benaroya Hall. Maestro Schwarz has won widespread acclaim for his recordings of orchestral works by Walter Piston, Howard Hanson, William Schuman, Alan Hovhaness, and David Diamond. His appearances as a guest conductor have brought him to several major orchestras, including the Washington Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Kirov Opera, and the Seattle Opera. His numerous awards include Musical America's Conductor of the Year in 1994, 14 Grammy nominations, and 4 Emmys for his performance of Mozart's Requiem on Live from the Lincoln Center and performances with the Seattle Symphony on PBS.
About the Poet:
Lisa Russ Spaar (b. 1956) received a BA from the University of Virginia in 1978 and an MFA in 1982. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Orexia (2017), Vanitas, Rough (2012), and Glass Town (1999). The Boston Review notes, “Lisa Russ Spaar’s intensely lyrical language—baroque, incantory, provocative—enables her to reinvigorate perennial subject matter: desire, pursuit, and absence; intoxication and ecstasy; the transience of earthly experience; the uncertainties of god and grave; the dialectic between fertility and mortality.” She is also the author of The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry (2013), a collection of poetry history and criticism, and she was a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. She has edited multiple poetry anthologies, including Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Jefferson (2016). Spaar has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry, and a Rona Jaffe Award, among other honors and awards. She is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.
About the Devotional Writer:
Jamie Bos is a friend of Biola with an M.A. in Christian Formation from Wheaton College. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Music & Worship concentrated in Vocal Performance at Campbellsville University in Kentucky.