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Love Poetry

James 1:17-27; Song of Solomon 2:8-17

Bethel 8/20/06

Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD

Well, what better way is it to put that reading than to call it “love poetry”? It’s not exactly what most people expect when they read the Bible, is it? One of Shakespeare’s love’s Sonnets a line from Romeo and Juliet, the latest Harlequin novel, a stolen glance at the Inquirer Magazine as you’re waiting in the grocery check out line, even some bathroom graffiti or adolescent initials with a plus sign carved into a tree, yes, but love poetry in the Bible? Come’ on! What does holy writ have to do with the ancient art of flirtation and romance and the old, old story of young people coming of age?

On the face of it, our text, from the Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon, or Canticles (the Latin word for Song) as it is also called, on the surface, is a Hebrew love poem. Perhaps it was, in its very first use, a sacred liturgy adapted from ancient Mesopotamian god and goddess ceremonial marriage rituals? Or, perhaps, in an early use, it was, simply secular love poetry uttered between two young people not yet betrothed, and only later adapted for a holy purpose and incorporated as scripture.

Nonetheless, how did such words find their way into the sacred record of the Hebrew faith community?

One thing’s for sure, like much of what we now have in the corpus of the Hebrew Bible, the origin of the Song of Songs is shrouded by the sands of time and obscured by many layers of oral traditions that preceded its written form. Authorship is conventionally and conveniently ascribed to King Solomon, the one whose legendary ability to speak poetically and proverbally and wisely to solve all sorts of problems, not to mention his even more legendary harem that included over 1000 wives which helped him seal many deals in foreign diplomacy – all that made him a good candidate to be the author. For King Solomon was, indeed, the archetypal wise man and lover in Israel’s religious history.

But putting these words on the lips of King Solomon is probably nothing more than tradition. There, in fact, isn’t much we can know for sure about the original setting of this collection of love poetry, squeezed as it is in the canon between Ecclesiastes and the Prophesy of Isaiah.

But we do know, that like most all forms of ancient literature, the Song of Songs was meant to be read aloud in public, or even set to music and sung. To read it aloud today, however, might make us blush, at least when we come towards the middle and end to some of its more erotic images and passages with, shall we say, sexual innuendo and implications. Having said that, maybe now everyone, for once, will rush home from church to read their Bibles to see what comes after chapter two!

Throughout the pages, or the verses, if you will, of this song, the lead voice is that of the female, which in and of itself makes it unique among ancient literary forms, since women’s voices are rarely preserved in patriarchal societies such as that of the Hebrew people. It is a hymn to carnal love, obsessive and exuberant and passionate love, not what we typically associate with biblical teachings and commandments on ethics and morality. Furthermore, this text doesn’t explicitly mention God, another surprise, given our assumption that if it’s in the Bible, it ought to have something directly to do with God.

Why, we wonder, then, is the Song of Songs in the Bible to begin with? How should we interpret and use this book of the bible? There are three responses I would make.

First, consider the long-held view that the Song of Songs is a symbolic love song sung, not between a man and woman, but by Israel to her God. From this perspective, Song of Songs is read as an allegory, that is, as a story whose characters are only symbols that point to a much larger reality. Allegory, for instance, says that there are types or figures we read about in the Old Testament that actually only find their completion or fulfillment in the New Testament. Thus, for interpreters using the allegorical method, manna in the wilderness prefigures the Lord’s Supper instituted by Christ, the temple in Jerusalem anticipates the new temple created in the sacrificial body of Christ, and even something as obscure as the “rose of Sharon” or the “lily of the valley” here at the outset in chapter two of Song of Songs was later seen by Christian interpreters as a foreshadowing or a type of Christ who was to come.

As theologians throughout much of church history have tried to read Christ back into the Hebrew scriptures, allegorical, typological, or mystical interpretations became a favorite technique to mine the depths of the Old Testament’s “real” purpose, which was always to point to the reality of Christ. The Protestant reformer Martin Luther was especially known for finding Christ hidden inside virtually every verse from the Hebrew Bible!

Allegorical method, then, would say that it is less important to view these two young lovers as historical characters than it is to see them as representations and portrayals for the kind of deep affection the covenant people have ,and are to have, for God . . . and vice versa.

I bet that it is rare that we ever hear a sermon preached from the Song of Songs today. (In fact, you can leave today and probably be confident in saying that today was the best sermon you ever heard on the Song of Songs!) But, I can tell you, it was only a couple of hundred years ago, in the pre-critical days of biblical scholarship, that this was a book of the Bible regularly the subject of Bible study and sermonizing from Protestant pulpits. Great Reformed preacher-theologians, men like John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland, and Jonathan Edwards in 18^th century New England, regularly viewed Song of Songs as book which featured lovers who were, in fact, symbols of the bride and bridegroom. Thus, for Edwards and a host of other preachers, the bride became the church and the bridegroom became the Christ. This was simply the accepted and only acceptable way to validate the presence of this love poetry in scripture – to read it as endorsing the institution of marriage and as an allegory for the church and Christ.

The problem with the allegorical method, however, is that Song of Songs isn’t allowed to stand on its own two feet. It is valid only when read in light of Christ and the Church and by setting aside its original context and actually reinterpreting its content to fit the Protestant preoccupation with human sexuality enjoyed only within the covenant of marriage.

A second way of reading Song of Songs, on the other hand, which takes utterly seriously this book’s original context and content, is to regard it as an expression of secular love poetry; it was a way to endorse the physical, even erotic, dimensions and embodied gestures of heterosexual love, even lovemaking.

These lovers, for instance, praise each other’s beauty and talk about how unique the other is; she compares her lover to a gazelle or a young stag “leaping upon the mountains,/bounding over the hills; he is like a dove “in the clefts of the rock,” whose “voice is sweet” and whose “face is lovely.”

In our own time, when the goodness and mutuality of human sexuality has been cheapened, degraded, disgraced, and debased by Hollywood and a host of other culturally destructive forces, it is good for us to be reminded through this song of the inherent loveliness of love between two lovers, when the feelings are reciprocal and genuine and endorsed by the religious community. The kind of love that is neither selfish, sadistic, nor pornographic is the love celebrated by God in scripture and through the faith community. Song of Songs declares that God is interested in love between a man and a woman and God blesses that love.

And finally, a third approach to read and appreciate the Song of Songs, which really might just be a fancy way of combining #s 1 and 2 previously mentioned, is to see this love poetry as an expression of God’s love for the beloved people of God, indeed, for the whole human creation.

If we were to respond to the question, “Who is God? What is God like?” chances are we might fall back on words like transcendent, omnipotent, sovereign, all-knowing. Or, we might think of God as if we inhabit a two-tiered universe, with God “up there” and us “down here.”

The Methodist Bishop William Willimon told about being asked by a reporter following the tsunami a few years ago, “how do you reconcile this event with your belief in an all-powerful God who is in control of everything, who has set up natural laws?”

Willimon answered not with an answer but with a question: “Who told you that we believe in that kind of God? We believe God is love, that God’s love is vulnerable to us. We believe in the kind of God who came to us in Jesus. You talk as if we think God is a lawyer! Our God is a lover!” (Pulpit Resource, 44).

If we can but banish from our minds Hollywood’s cheapened, casual view of sexual love, maybe to think of God as a lover is a much better way to think about God. Scriptures teach that both Israel and the church have had a stormy love affair with God. We fail to hold up our end of the partnership. Yahweh is a jealous God, the prophets have warned, a God who is passionately engaged with God’s people, a God who has staked everything on his beloved people, and therefore, has a great deal to lose if this relationship goes sour.

The love poetry of Song of Songs reminds us that God is so passionate about this love affair, that God has entered into the intimacy of the incarnation with the church, with humanity. Faith, then, is not a cool, calm, or rational matter of belief. It is a thing of love, of being loved by God, and of loving in return.

What is God like? In Jesus, the greatest love poem God has ever sent to his beloved, we see that God is like a shepherd who abandons the 99 sheep and goes to look for the one lost sheep, and when he finds the lost one, he puts it on his shoulders like a child and throws a party for all his friends that the lost one has been found.

God is the woman, who upon losing a coin, turns her whole house upside down and, when she at last finds that coin, shouts to her friends, “Come party with me, I have found my coin!”

God is not a cosmic bureaucrat, sitting safe in his office upstairs, saying, “If they need me, they can contact me during office hours.” No. God is much less the boss who keeps score and much more the lover who passionately pursues his beloved and desires that all enjoy the rich fruits of the whole creation.

We would do well to remember that poetry represents a wonderful and amazing aspect of the divine presence in our lives, in our world.

Perhaps you recall that powerful moment in Carl Sagan’s movie Contact, that came out 10 years or so ago, about communication between earth and intelligent beings from somewhere beyond earth, when the character played by Jody Foster, a scientist, has been sent in a spaceship to make contact with this other-worldly presence, and has entered a wormhole in space and is allowed to see what she calls a “celestial event.” The beauty and grandeur of the event stun her. Awestruck, wide-eyed, she says, whispering, “Poetry! Indescribable . . . they should have sent a poet!”

In the Song of Songs, we get not just a taste of love poetry, but behind the poetry, we know there is a poet who has come to be with us, and in the incarnation, to love us more fully than we have ever known love before. For, in the beginning was the Word, and I would say, in the beginning was poetry, the love poem of Immanuel, God with us.

So let it be. Amen.

Hymn # 85   What Wondrous Love is This