2018 08.26 Song of Solomon 2:8-13 8 The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. 9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. 10 My beloved speaks and says to me: Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; 11 for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 13 The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. 1
God: A Love Story Last week the great American soul singer Aretha Franklin passed away at the age of 76 [SLIDE]. For her peerless vocal abilities, Franklin earned the nickname the Queen of Soul. (Interestingly, she died on August 16, the same day as Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll. ) Soul music, which combines elements of gospel and rhythm and blues, first became popular in the 1960s, in no small part due to Aretha Franklin, but her popularity spanned more than five decades. She was still performing as recently as last year. I can t say that I grew up listening to a lot of Aretha Franklin records. I was familiar with her biggest hits, like R-E-S-P-E-C-T, which became a civil rights and feminist anthem, and A Natural Woman, which I believe I first heard in a TV commercial for blue jeans. But as so often happens when popular recording artists die, interest in their catalogue suddenly grows. In the wake of Aretha Franklin s death I heard for the first time one of her early hits. The song s title, I Say a Little Prayer, suggests the convergence of the sacred and the secular that lies at the heart of soul music. The best description I ve heard of soul is that it s gospel music with secular lyrics. (It s the opposite of the music we often sing here in the English service, which is secular pop music with Christian lyrics.) I Say a Little Prayer was written by a popular songwriting team of the 1960s, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song is written from the perspective of a woman whose husband or boyfriend is off fighting in Vietnam (the song was written in 1966, as the war was reaching its peak). Despite the thousands of kilometers that separate them, the woman assures her man that he is never far from her mind. Throughout her day, from the moment she wakes up, while she s riding the bus to work, and while she is at work, she says a little prayer for him. 2
I Say a Little Prayer was originally recorded by another singer, Dionne Warwick, who had a hit with it in 1967. Franklin s version was recorded a year later. It was not quite as popular as the original, but Franklin made the song her own, imbuing it with her own unique blend of sassiness and soul. You can see them on display in a clip of the song here [VIDEO]. What does a love song from fifty years ago have to do with today s Scripture passage? A lot, actually, since the passage we read comes from a book of love poetry called the Song of Songs. Like the song I Say a Little Prayer, the Song of Songs features two lovers who are separated by distance. In each, in the pop song and in the love poem, the voice of the woman predominates. In the song, Aretha Franklin takes on the persona of a woman who closes the distance from her lover with prayer [SLIDE]: The moment I wake up Before I put on my makeup I say a little prayer for you While combing my hair now Wondering which dress I m gonna wear now I say a little prayer for you Her love is not abstract. It s concrete. Her love is expressed in the hand that applies the lipstick and holds the comb, and in the lips that sip from the coffee cup. This is part of the charm of the song. Her love is in the little things. In the Song of Songs, the female also pines to be united with her lover. They too are separated, not by a great a distance, as in the song, but, as verse 9 reveals, by a wall, a wall that symbolizes the obstacles that their love faces [SLIDE]: 3
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. So close, and yet so far. They are close enough that they can see one another. Her lover gazes at her through the windows. He looks at her through the lattice. But they can do no more than gaze at one another. Song of Songs might be one of the least read books of the Bible, certainly in church. In my forty-seven years I remember hearing just one sermon on this book, and that was earlier this year. If you care at all about the English royal family (as many Americans do) [SLIDE], you may have noticed that at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle the sermon was based on a passage from the Song of Songs. In fact, the passage was the very same as today s passage from chapter 2. Why would the Church shy away from reading from the Song of Songs? If God is love, as we Christians assert, then shouldn t we welcome reading from a book that freely celebrates love? Well, there are a couple of reasons why this book is seldom read in church. They both have to do with the language in the book. Song of Songs is love poetry [SLIDE]. It features two lovers expressing their love for one another, and their appreciation of the other s body, in rather evocative language. The language is never pornographic or even crass, but it is certainly at times suggestive. I know this sounds ironic, but I believe that the Church and when I say Church I mean all of us, both the church leadership and the general congregation are uncomfortable with some of the lush language in this book of the Bible. 4
The funny thing is, I was going to give you an example, but even I thought, No, I can t read that in church! Church is no place for that kind of language, (even though it comes from the Bible)! If the first reason that we re uncomfortable reading from this book in worship is because of the language that s there, the second reason is because of a word that s not there: God. There is no mention of God anywhere in this book. God is not mentioned even once. (If you want some Bible trivia, the only other book that doesn t mention God is Esther.) Song of Songs is filled with erotic imagery and contains no mention of God, and yet here it is in the Bible! So what are we to make of this most unusual book [SLIDE]? What Jews and Christians have traditionally done is to read it as a metaphor. For Jews, the two lovers represent God and Israel. For Christians, they are Christ and the Church, or Christ and the individual soul. More recently biblical scholars have advocated for a literal reading. Song of Songs is love poetry, they say, and should be read as such and nothing more. We don t need to, and shouldn t, make a metaphor out of what is a basic human experience and one of the things that makes us human the ability to express in words our desire for another. Let the poetry speak for itself. I think that this is a false choice. We don t need to choose between a metaphorical and a literal reading. They are not mutually exclusive. We can read this book with an appreciation for its poetry and its passion, but we can also find in that poetry and passion the word of God spoken to us, God s beloved. I know that not everyone here has had the experience of being in love. At the same time, I m sure that many of you have. Those of you who have can testify that love takes you outside yourself. Love gives you a vision for the world that is bigger than yourself. Love, by definition, makes you less self-centered. When you re in love you 5
are devoted to someone else s thoughts, feelings, and desires. Their happiness makes you happy. Their suffering makes you suffer. To be together is to know joy, while to be separated is to experience longing. You wait and wait and wait for the next occasion to meet. Like the lovers in the Song of Songs who are separated by a wall, separation instills in us a longing to be united to our beloved. I m going to share a personal story. About six weeks after I met Sandy this would be in the late summer of 1997 I planned to go backpacking around western Europe with my best friend Dave. We had planned the trip for months, at last settling on an itinerary that would take us through France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands over the course of three weeks. On the day that I was to leave, Sandy invited herself to my apartment and suggested that we have lunch together. Okay, sure! Good idea. We went to a local diner and had lunch. After lunch I was prepared to say goodbye, but then she offered to go with me to the airport, so we took a taxi to JFK Airport together. At the airport she stayed with me even after I checked my bags. She all but boarded the plane with me! When it finally came time to say goodbye because the plane was boarding, I began to get emotional. I surprised even myself. I had known this woman only six weeks, but the thought of being separated from her for the next three weeks was suddenly agonizing. My gosh, that s an eternity! That s half the time we ve known each other! We did eventually manage to say goodbye, and I boarded the plane. Dave and I visited many of the great cities of western Europe. Our first stop was Paris, the City of Light, the most romantic city in the world. On a warm September evening we visited the Eiffel Tower at dusk. We sat on a patch of grass near the bank of the Seine River looking up at the tower. The setting made me reflective. There was something 6
I felt that I needed to share with Dave, so I turned to face him, looked into his eyes and said, Dave, this is a moment I will remember for the rest of my life. The location, the light. It s almost perfect. There s just one thing if only Sandy were here with me instead of you. That became my refrain everywhere we went: Nice in the south of France, Florence, Rome, and Venice in Italy, Salzburg, Munich, and Amsterdam. If only Sandy were here with me instead of you. It s a funny story, but in all seriousness, I was longing for Sandy. In a Paris park I even commissioned a street artist to draw a picture of Sandy based on a photo that I carried in my wallet. I treated the sketch as if Michelangelo himself had drawn it. I didn t want to fold it or wrinkle it, so carrying it was awkward. I ended up buying a roll of paper towels solely for the cardboard tube, which I used as a protective case. We long to love. We long to be loved. When we experience love giving and receiving we are drawn into the life of God, for God is love. I m not speaking now solely of romantic love. Eros, the Latin word for romantic love, is wonderful, but it is just one aspect of love, and you needn t have experienced eros to know what love is. Even if you have never been in love, even if you have never been to Paris (!), I can assure you that you are no stranger to love, for you have been the object of love even before you were born [SLIDE]: For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother s womb (Ps. 139:13). God has looked on you with the eyes of a lover from the moment you were conceived. God has pursued you with the passion of a lover. That which we have longed for to know and to be known, to love and to be loved has come true. 7
Yes, on one level the Song of Songs is a book of love poetry. But it is more than that. It is love theology, for it speaks of a God who is head over heels in love with his creation. You are the object of God s love! You, as you are, not as you think you must be to earn God s love. You, as you are, not after you have done this or that, not after you have read the Bible cover to cover, or attended dawn prayer often enough, or donated your tithe to the church. It is a constant temptation for us to think that we must earn God s love in the same way that we earn a promotion at work or earn high marks at school. But love is never earned; it is given freely. There are certain key phrases that are repeated in this rather short passage [SLIDE]. They are all commands: look, arise, and come away. The passage begins with an observation. The woman hears the voice of her beloved. The mere sound of his voice sets her heart aflutter and she says to herself: Look, he comes (Sg. Sgs. 2:8). And then in the next verse, Look, there he stands (Sg. Sgs. 2:9). The passage invites us to look at the God who has come to us, who has pursued us from afar. This God is not a passive lover. He has come leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills (Sg. Sgs. 2:8). He is not silent, he speaks: My beloved speaks and says to me: Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away (Sg. Sgs. 2:10). Here in verse 10 and again in verse 13 God invites us to arise and come away. We are invited to rise into new life, to come away and experience a life transformed by the power of God s love. Come away away from selfish ambition, away from mindless busyness for busyness sake, away from the vanity of trying to prove our worth to ourselves, our society, or our God. Come away is not about going to Jesus and escaping from life on earth. It s about learning how to truly live. 8
That is what God s love does. Love enables, inspires, and empowers us to see the world differently and to live in the world in a different way. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone. Flowers appear, the turtledove sings, the fig tree bears fruit, and the vines are in blossom. God s love reveals to us who we were born to be and what we were born to do. I give you a new commandment, Jesus tells his disciples, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (Jn. 13:34-35). At its heart, the Gospel is a love story. It speaks of a God who has come leaping over the hills, pursuing us from afar. God stands before us at our window and says, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. 9