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FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT

Love As Strong As Death

Song of Solomon

           As promised, today I am preaching on the Song of Solomon, sometimes called, the Song of Songs.  It comes right after the book of Ecclesiastes, which follows the Psalms and Proverbs.

            Someone asked me last week if I was going to preach on Ecclesiastes.  I told her, “No.”  The simple explanation is that Ecclesiastes was not included in the resource that I am using for this series, “Developing a heart for God.”  The longer explanation is that, though there are some good passages in Ecclesiastes, the book as a whole is not conducive to developing a heart for God (at least, at my present understanding of the book.)

            Of course, in Ecclesiastes 3, we read, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”  That is indeed a beautiful passage and offers a sense of equanimity while trusting in the work and will of God.  But most of Ecclesiastes basically says, “Life is tough.  Then you die.  Get used to it!”  (And if you are waiting for me to preach this Lent about the topic of suffering, just come back next week for my sermon on Job!)

            So, we’re going to skip that book for now and go straight to the Song of Solomon (and let me assure you it’s not because I believe that this will be an easier book on which to preach!)  Let’s read together 1:2:

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!

For your love is better than wine…

            I’m guessing that you’ve never said words like this in church before.  I’m guessing that maybe you’ve never heard words like this in church before, not even at a wedding. 

It’s surprising to me and to many people that the Song of Solomon made it into the Bible at all.  My own theory is that the Books of the Bible Selection Committee wanted to develop popular interest in their work, so they made it an interactive experience by allowing fans to select one book of their choosing to be included along with the other picks.  And Song of Solomon was the fans’ choice.

            How could such a book like this make the cut?  How did it get into the Bible?  It starts right away with kissing.  It celebrates romance and passion.  In other books of the Bible, you will hear warnings about passionate expressions of sexuality.  You will not find those warnings here.  It talks instead about a passion that is to be lived out in marriage and expressed in a way that honors God and it does so with a directness and intensity that is a little embarrassing, for most clergy anyway.

            But I think that this is another lesson that a heart that lives for God is a heart that places everything before God.   Remember, when I was talking about the Psalms, I quoted theologian Miraslov Wolf in reference to the extreme expression of anger and desire for revenge.  He said, “Rage belongs before God.”

            If rage belongs before God, than sexual passion also belongs before God.

            Now I realize that not everyone here is married and that not everyone who is married is married happily.  I realize that some of you are single, because you have never been or are yet to be married.  Some of you are single because even though you have been married, that marriage came to an end through divorce or death.  So, for some of you, this topic will bring you some grief. 

            But I think all of us, no matter what our relationship status, can benefit from the Song of Solomon by asking, “What does God have to teach me about married love?  And what does God have to teach me about sexual passion?”  Mostly we hear about the limits, the “no” that God says to sexual passion.  What is God’s “yes” to sexual passion?

            The Song of Solomon is love poetry.  We don’t always know exactly what it means.  We do know that there are three central characters in the Song of Solomon: there is the bride; there is the bridegroom; and there are the friends.  (The first two are sometimes also called the Beloved, the Lover, and the Chorus.)  And in the first two chapters we hear about a couple that is crazy in love.

            The bride is a country girl.  Her skin is dark, not because she spends so much time at the beach, but because she works outside.  She can’t afford to stay inside like the city girls in Jerusalem can do and protect their skin.  She is a working girl who has been forced by her brothers to work in their vineyard.  She also works with the sheep.  And this is how she must have met her lover.

            For the groom also appears to be a country boy.  He is a shepherd.  In v. 7, she says, “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon…”  Although there are places in the book where the lover is referred to as a king or even as King Solomon, I believe that Solomon is a kind of code name that reveals how the beloved sees him.  He may be just a shepherd, but in the eyes of the one who loves him, he is a king. 

            More than that, we really don’t know about them as individuals.  What we know is about their relationship.  So, let’s go to chapter 4.  Here the bridegroom speaks.  Let’s read verses one and two:

How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful!  Your eyes are doves behind your veil.  Your hair is like flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead .  Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them is bereaved.

            Every couple in love develops a certain kind of speaking, a certain kind of language between them.  It is a secret language.  It is only for the two of them and for no one else.  So, the full import of the words and images are known only to them.  The purpose of this is not for the sharing of information.  It is for the cultivation of deep intimacy.

            Now the first lesson to be drawn – for young men, at least – is that chicks dig love poetry!  But even beyond the courting stage, we still need to express our fascination, our admiration, our desire for each other.  Just as God delights in praise, so we take delight in praise.  And this delight is what fuels our passion for each other.

            Anyone who has been married more than about three weeks knows that passion is something you need to work at.  Passion doesn’t take off during courtship and never come back to earth.  It comes and goes.  It arises and passes.  So, we need to cultivate passion, in part, by the language of love.

            “I love your smile.  I love the way your eyes light up.  I love the way you laugh.”  This is the poetry of passionate relationship.

            But, of course, relationships of passion are not all sweet poetry.  Let’s turn to 5:2-6:

            I had put off my garments; how could I put them on again?  I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them? (v.3)

            Her lover knocks at the door.  He wants to come in.  She says, “I thought you were going to work late and I’m all ready for bed.”  But then she gets up.  She gets all primped and is ready for love.  She goes to the door, only to find that he is gone.  She goes out into the street to pursue him and only encounters danger.

            Every married couple knows this dance.  Even if our desires are very similar, they aren’t always in sync.  Our needs may be the same, but they don’t always run on the same clock.  But that doesn’t stop the commitment.  It doesn’t nullify the promise – As long as this heart is beating, it belongs to you.

            The Song of Solomon is very much a love story between two human beings passionately in love.  Mystics, both Jewish and Christian, have seen in this book also the love story between the individual and God.  It is not all ecstatic union.  There are the highs and there are the lows.  There is the thrill and there is the agony.  There is the closeness and there is the distance. 

            Let’s look at one more passage.  If there is a passage chosen from this book for weddings, it is most often 8:6-7:

            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…

            The woman speaks again to her lover with a radical and wonderful offer.  She asks to be her lover’s seal.  In the ancient world and later, a person’s seal was the statement and guarantee of identity.  When handwriting was rare and even great kings could not write their own name, it was not a signature that was put upon a document, but a seal.  A seal could be unique and it was closely guarded, in a purse or under outer garments, or, as in this passage, on a cord around a neck or bound to an arm.  In medieval Europe , if a messenger had to be sent with an urgent message whose origin might not be believed, the messenger might, if greatly trusted, be given the sender’s seal to carry and show.

            This woman wants to be her lover’s seal – the one who will verify who he is.  She asks him to take her as the visible mark and assurance of his own identity.  She asks to be indispensible to his being.  She offers, in other language, that they are to be “one flesh,” one identifiable person as distinct from all others.

            How is this possible?  By what power is this binding made?  It is simply the power of her love. For her “love is strong as death; passion fierce as the grave.”  Just as death is absolute, just as the grave is non-negotiable, so is her love.  It is an audacious claim, but such is the power of her love.

            As with her, so also with God.  God’s love is jealous.  God does not want to share us with any other god.  God’s love is absolute and non-negotiable.  God’s love is invincible against any power.  This also seems an audacious claim. 

            But it is a claim we trust because the seal of God’s love is Jesus.  God sent Jesus as an offering of love for us.  Jesus willingly offered is life on the cross for us.  He died and was raised by God so that we might know that there is nothing, nothing in heaven or on earth, nothing in life or in death, nothing at all that can separate us from the love of God.

            Our hearts are sealed with Jesus.  He is the sign of who we are.  This is God’s audacious offer.  This is God’s passion for us that we might be forever bound to God in love.