And My Beloved Is Mine

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And My Beloved Is Mine

Song of Songs 6: 1-3

· Community,Sermon,Love

You may wonder why I picked verses for today from the sauciest love story in the bible. And you may wonder what lilies and flowers and pastures have to do with the beloved community. But, there is this tiny snippit- 9 beautiful words- that have EVERYTHING to do with our continuing reflections on the beloved community. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. In Hebrew, it’s Ani LeDodi ve Dodi Li. This declaration of love and belonging teaches us exactly how to be in community with one another- think of it this way: We belong to the beloved community and the beloved community belongs to us.

That first part is pretty easy- we belong to the beloved community. That’s the way we understand this community thing for the most part. We belong to it—we are a part of it, we are members, and as the old American Express commercials used to say, “membership has its privileges.” I’ve gotten to be a member of some pretty great groups over the years. As a child, I was a member of a brownie troop, and a member of 4-H. In high school I was a member of the marching band, a member of the Future Homemakers of America, a member of the tennis team… and about a billion other groups too. But although I was a part of all of these organizations, and kept a very busy schedule, I never felt like I belonged.

The community we created together also belongs to us. 

You see, being a part of the beloved community is more than just about being a member. It’s about belonging. I never really understood what it felt like to truly belong until I went away to college and became a member of my sorority, Phi Mu. Finding my place among the girls in my Phi class, and then the whole chapter, gave me a sense of belonging I had never experienced. These girls were like me- they were smart, they had a strong faith background, they knew what it was like to work at McDonalds or spend a weekend doing service for others. They took very seriously the notions of Love, Honor, and Truth that guided our organization. And when I was with them, I didn’t have to be anybody other than myself. I had found a community- not just a club to be a member of, but a community where I belonged. These girls were my best friends, and twenty years later we still share a common bond that connects us. We celebrate each other’s triumphs and cry for each other’s tragedies. We proudly still say that we belong to our sorority, but over the years we have also learned that the community we created together also belongs to us.

That’s where this whole thing gets a little tricky. Not only do we belong to the beloved community, the beloved community belongs to us. When we truly belong to a community, then the responsibility of maintaining that community and serving the community’s greater good falls back on us, the ones who belong. We are responsible for the success or failure of the communities to which we belong, because those communities also belong to us.

Let’s take for example the beloved community here at Valparaiso University. We all belong to this community in one way or another—some of us as professors, some as students, some as staff, some as alumni, some as parents. But we each belong to this particular beloved community. But as this community also belongs to us, we have a responsibility to it. My favorite way this problem manifests itself is through complaints… “as a member of this tobacco free community, I don’t appreciate that people are smoking outside the building”. Well, that’s all well and good—but did you say that to the person doing the smoking or did you post it anonymously on Valpo confessions? “I wish there were more things to do on the weekend” Ok…did you plan something? Did you get a group together to go somewhere? “I hate seeing garbage on the ground- why are there so many litterbugs”. I don’t know, did you pick up the garbage you saw or did you walk right by it and complain instead? Taking responsibility for the community that belongs to us means speaking up when we see things aren’t right. It might mean confronting someone who is breaking a rule, it might mean reporting a violation of the honor code, it might mean writing a letter to the editor of the Torch, it might mean standing up for someone who can’t stand up for themselves. As members of this beloved community we bear the responsibility of ensuring the success and well-being of ALL members, not just those we like best or that look most like us or that love in the same ways we do. We are responsible for the entire community, and if something is going wrong, we only have ourselves to blame.

It's the type of love that puts others first; the type of love that seeks the good of the community over the triumph of self. 

But wait, isn’t Song of Songs a love story? Yes, this is a love story-a poem celebrating the passionate love between two people. But our story, the story of the beloved community, is a love story as well. The verse doesn’t say I belong to my partner and my partner belongs to me. It says, I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. To be someone’s beloved is to be their most important person—to be the most loved, most cherished, most cared for in their life. And in this verse, that love is reciprocal between two people. When it comes to the beloved community, it’s the type of love that puts others first; the type of love that seeks the good of the community over the triumph of self; and the type of community where justice and peace are strived for in every moment. It is our responsibility to ensure that the community we create among ourselves here at Valpo is that kind of community- a beloved community to which we can belong and a beloved community that belongs to us.