Lover and Beloved: A Homily on the Song of Songs

Preached the Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost at Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, and at Good Shepherd, Stayner, Anglican Diocese of Toronto.

Texts for this Sunday:  Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

This Sunday marks the beginning of what our Diocese calls the Season of Creation, a chance to reflect on the goodness and fragility of the world that God the Creator has entrusted to us.   You will notice an extra Collect or prayer for creation that we will use throughout the Season, from today until October 4, along with other prayers and activities to help us reflect on the world God has given us.

Today’s first lesson is an also an opportunity to reflect on the created world, what we call nature, as a blessing.   The lesson if from the Song of Solomon, one of the strangest and loveliest books of scripture.  It’s sometimes called the Song of Songs, or Canticles, or sometimes just “the Song”, as I’ll call it in this homily.  

Besides its lush natural imagery, the Song is a love poem, full of poetic and even sensual quality that sometimes seems out of place in the bible.   However, this love language becomes wonderful when we think of God wooing and pursuing us as a lover pursues the beloved, thus challenging our usual perceptions of the God of the Old Testament!

 

The Song is traditionally associated with King Solomon, the son of King David.     Thus summer we have been hearing stories about King David.  Two Sundays ago we heard about David’s death and started to hear about his son and heir, King Solomon.   While he had his faults, scripture celebrates Solomon for his great wisdom, which it describes as the one blessing he asked of God and which God granted him (“I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you” 1 Kgs 2:12).

 

Because of his reputation for wisdom, it was traditionally believed that Solomon was the author of the Book of Proverbs, which we will be hearing some of in September, and of Ecclesiastes.    There was a traditional teaching of the ancient rabbis that Solomon wrote the Song as a young man in love, Proverbs as a mature man who has traded love for wisdom, and Ecclesiastes as an old man, somewhat jaded and well aware of his mortality.    Biblical scholars tend to think that Solomon didn’t write all of these books, and that their actual authorship is much more complex.  However the fact that the Song and Proverbs are attributed to Solomon is certainly one reason why they show up on in the liturgy of the church.

 

When you read it, you might well be surprised that the Song is even in the Bible, because it doesn’t seem very, well, biblical.    The Song isn’t even a Song, really, but is best described as a kind of play in which there are two characters: the two lovers, the Man and the Woman, and then a group or chorus that comments on what is going on.     It’s not a long book, just eight chapters, so it can read in one sitting, but depending which translation you are reading, it can be difficult to follow.   The voices of the two lovers entwine, like a love duet, with expressions of desire and praise for the other’s beauty.  The Song ends, much like our first reading today, with an expression of desire and a longing to be together:

 

"Make haste, my beloved,

and be like a gazelle

or a young star

upon the mountains of spices!” (SgS 8:14)

 

In the rest of this sermon, I would like to focus on three things.   The first is how the Song reminds us of the importance of earthly, human love, something the church has not always been good at understanding.  The second is how the Song describes love not just from the man’s point of view but also from the woman’s point of view, which again is something the church hasn’t been good at.   Finally, I will talk about the importance of nature in the Song and how it connects our human world to the natural world as part of God’s creation.

 

The Song is, as I said, sensual in parts, even erotic, though the language is highly poetic in the language and images of the day.    As the man and woman praise the beauty of each other’s bodies, there are some passages that wouldn’t make the greatest pickup lines today, as when the man says to the woman “Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies” (Sg 7:2).   That might not go over too well, like the man’s praise that “Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead” (4:1).  On the other hand, verses such as “your kisses [are] like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth”, well, those work just as well now as they did then.  There are times where the Song just crackles with longing.

 

If you are wondering why the church saw fit to keep this book in the bible, that’s a good question.    For a long time, well into the middle ages, the Song was read spiritually, so that it could be interpreted along the lines of the man being Christ and the woman being the church.   However, the fact that someone would want to read the book this way, as opposed to just taking it literally as a love song, says something about the church’s long and tortured history with human sexuality, which goes right back to the story of how the nakedness of Adam and Eve in the garden was a sin, and which continued for centuries in celebrating chastity as godly and the human body as a source of temptation and evil.   In such a worldview, marriage was a necessary evil, good only for the procreation of children.

 

The Song reminds us of the artificiality of this dualistic theology which celebrates spirit at the expense of body.   It reminds us that real flesh and blood people lived in biblical times, just as they did today.  It reminds us that human desire is natural, even beautiful, and that our bodies and our sexuality are gifts that are part of God’s creation.   Our own Book of Alternative Services reminds us of this in the marriage liturgy, when it begins by describing marriage as “a gift of God” in which the partners may “know each other with delight and tenderness in acts of love” (BAS 528).   The editors of the Serendipity Bible, designed for small groups in evangelical churches, uses the Song as the basis for a bible study on marriage and intimacy.   The Song reminds us that our faith speaks to all areas of life, and that intimacy, trust, and affection can be part of our lives as Christians.

 

This realization is made more remarkable because the woman is a full and equal voice in the Song of Songs.  This makes a refreshing change from the story we heard earlier this summer of David and Bathsheba, who never gets a voice and is merely a beautiful object that David wants and gets, however immorally he does so.   In contrast, the woman in the Song is an equal partner in the duet.   She speaks with as much poetry and passion, she relishes her lover’s beauty as much as he does hers, and her longing is just as strong as his:

 

Awake, O north wind,

and come, O south wind!

Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad.

Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits.” (Sg 4:16)

 

The Song reminds us that men and women are equal and full participants in God’s creation.   

 

The final thing I would point out about the Song is the importance of nature and natural images.   In the passage from our first lesson, the woman describes her lover as being like “a gazelle or a young stag” (2:8) or elsewhere as an “apple tree”.  Likewise the man describes the woman elsewhere as being a “dove”, a “mare”, and the woman describes herself as a “rose of Sharon” and a “lilly of the valleys”.   The entire Song is full of references to animals, and one scholar has counted twenty four plant species.    Biblical scholar Elaine James calls the Song a very green poem, written at a time when humans lived much more closely to the natural world than most people do today.    The Song reminds us that the natural world, which appears to be changing and disappearing at a frightening rate, is part of God’s creation, and reminds us of our obligation as stewards of creation to care for that world.

 

So while the Song is in many ways a very sensual poem, full of natural images of the earth and of human desire, it is also a very spiritual poem.  The idea of the earth coming back to life - for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone - is also an image of redemption and salvation.   One commentator I read this week noted that today’s passage would be a great scripture reading for a wedding where one or both parties had experienced a divorce or the loss of a spouse.   Likewise, even for those of us for whom the youthful fires of love might have died down a bit, there is in the Song a powerful affirmation of human love as something that is powerful and wonderful.

 

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm

For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.   

Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. (Sg 8:6)

 

For those who carry the memory of a love and life well lived, or who nursed and cared for a loved partner through sickness and old age, the Song speaks to them as much as it speaks to young lovers.   The Song of Songs is one of the great gifts of scripture, a reminder that God is with us even in the earthiness of our lives.   

I hope that this homily has made you curious about this wonderful book of the Bible.   I hope that this final thought encourages you, that if two people can have such love and longing for one another, imagine how much more love and longing God has for you. 

 

Amen.

  

A Power We Need Not Fear: A Homily for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

 

Preached at Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Sunday, 14 July.  

Readings for this Sunday:  2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12B-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

David and all the people with him set out and went from Baale-judah, to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned on the cherubim. (2 Sam 6.2)

If I put three theological propositions to you, I’m sure you would agree with the first two.  “God is good”:  yes, I’m sure we’d all agree to that.   “God is love”:  ditto, I’m sure.  Here’s the third.  “God is powerful”.  Would you agree?  I suspect we’d have to think about that a bit, and would probably want the third proposition to be constrained by the first two, because a powerful God who is neither good nor loving would be terrifying to contemplate.  

I’m thinking about the power of God because of a powerful object from our first lesson that was made famous forty-years ago by a major Hollywood movie.   Yes, you know the one, made when Harrison Ford, like most of us, was a lot younger.   I suspect that for most of the people who watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was their first introduction to the piece of holy furniture that the ancient Hebrews called The Ark of the Covenant.

So for those of us who remember the film more vividly than we do the Hebrew Scriptures, here’s a bit of a refresher on the Ark.  When the Israelites were in the Wilderness, God told Moses to build a kind of portable chest which would contain the stone tables on which the Ten Commandments were written (Ex 25:10-22).  On top of the ark there was a kind of throne called the Mercy Seat, and the seat was flanked by the golden figures of two angels, or seraphim.  

God told Moses that when the Israelites needed instruction, God would speak to the them from above this mercy seat, and God commanded that the ark accompany the Israelites on their journey.  So, one way for us to think of the ark is as a kind of portable church which would a focus for God’s people and which would allow them to hear the word of God.

It’s one of the ironies of the film Raiders that the Nazis would want to find and posses the Ark.   They think of it as a kind of super weapon, and as one of the characters in the film says, any army that possesses the Ark of the Covenant will be unbeatable.   Perhaps the Nazis remembered the story of how the Israelites paraded with the ark around the walls of Jericho for six days, blowing trumpets, and how on the seventh day the walls fell and Jericho was captured (Josh 6:1-14).  But, as you may remember from the film, it does not end well for the Nazis!

What the Nazis in the film don’t understand is that the ark has power because it is a place where God is present.   God’s power is righteous and just, it doesn’t exist to serve human agendas.  In scripture, when bad men try to use it, like the corrupt sons of Samuel who take the Ark to use against the Philistines, they die and the Ark is captured(1 Sam 4.10-11).   Likewise it doesn’t go well for the Philistines.  They are so tormented by plagues and diseases that they send the Ark back to Israel (1 Sam 5,6).  Obviously the Philistines never saw the Indiana Jones movie.

So the Ark can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how people stand with God and whether they follow God’s will.   The Ark is full of a God’s power, like one of those electrical transformer boxes with the scary decals telling kids to stay away.  In one of the strangest stories from the bible, as David is bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, it starts wobbling on the ox cart and a poor guy named Uzzah reaches out to steady it (2 Sam 6:6-8).  Altar guilds today can be eternally grateful that the Ark of the Covenant is not a standard piece of church equipment!

Which raises the question, what happened to the Ark?  The answer is, we don’t know.   After King David placed it in the Temple in Jerusalem, it stayed there for centuries, but God’s covenant always depended on Israel wanting to be God’s people.  When the people pulled away from God, God’s protection was withdrawn, and so Jerusalem was captured by Babylon, and the Ark vanished, lost to history. 

The Temple was rebuilt, but it didn’t last either.   Jesus told his disciples that he could destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days, which got him in trouble, but as St John says, Jesus was speaking about how own  body, which predicted would be destroyed and raised again (John 2:21).  That body now exists as the church, the body of all faithful people across the centuries.  As St Paul tells us in Ephesians, we are the “living stones” out of which the church is built, with Jesus Christ as our foundation (Eph 2.22). 

Now if you look around this church, you won’t see anything like the Ark of the Covenant.   Even so, we acknowledge that there is power here.  Perhaps you know that praise song, “Sure the Presence of the Lord is in this place”.  We sing it at All Saints every Sunday after communion, and the words go like this:

“Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place, I can feel his mighty power and His grace.  I can hear the brush of angel’s wings, I see glory on each face; Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place”.   

At the conclusion of our Communion service, we give thanks for God’s “power, working in us, which can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine”.   But it’s not a scary power.    Some of us may bow to the altar as a sign of respect and piety, but the altar isn’t going to strike us down or kill us.   

After the Ark of the Covenant was lost, God decided to use God’s power differently, which is one of the ways of understanding the New Covenant.   We call this place “Prince of Peace” rather than “Prince of Power” for a reason.    

CS Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters that God refuses to use this power to overwhelm us and conform us to his will.   Good chooses instead to try to win us as if God was a suitor:  “He cannot ravish. He can only woo” (Screwtape Letters Chapter 8).  

The price of this self-constraint is that God often appears powerless, and so we wonder why God lets bad things happen.   Sometimes it seems like God lets evil triumph, as we see very clearly when we hear about the killing of John the Baptist.  John was the cousin of Jesus, he was given the Holy Spirit to preach and to baptize, he was the one who would announce the coming of the Messiah, and yet he’s murdered by a corrupt and sleazy king and his courtiers.   How could God let this happen?

Someone once said that just as John announce’s Jesus’ coming, he also predicts Jesus’ death.   And just as Herod fears that Jesus is somehow John resurrected, Jesus will, as he predicted, rise in three days.  The Spirit of God raises Jesus because it has power over death, the Temple of Christ’s body becomes the church, and the church lives on for two thousand years.

So the good news, my friends, is that we don’t need an ark of the covenant.   We don’t need to carry God around in a box, and we don’t need to fear what’s in that box.   God’s power is here, in this place, and it is the power of goodness and the power of hope.  It’s a power that comes to us gently, like a friend or a beloved’s invitation, and it promises to hold us and never let us go, so that we can be the people of God, in this life and in the next.  And for that power, we say thank you, and amen.

"Jesus the Strongman" - Sermon Video for 9 June

 Video version of last Sunday's homily, with gospel reading.