While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
And he walks with me
And he talks with me
And he tells me I am his own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other can ever know.
Now, that is probably the first and the last time that the
gospel song “In the garden” will be quoted in St. Alban’s!
One of the reasons that I and perhaps you, too, was
attracted to the Episcopal Church was the music. Not only was the music of a
very high caliber, but the words of the hymns had real theological meat on
their bones.
If the hymn “In the garden” helps some in their spiritual
life, if it gives them inspiration and hope, then that’s great, but I find it
too subjective, too sweet, too personal.
Nevertheless, I want to say a good word for “In the garden.”
Compare “In the garden” with today’s reading from the Song of Solomon or Song
of Songs:
My
beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise,
my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for now the
winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The
flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the
voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
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.”
It makes
“In the garden” look main stream!
The Song
of Songs is one of the most unusual books in the Bible. It is one of two books
in the Old Testament that makes no mention of God. The other is Esther. The Song
of Songs is a collection of love poetry that was probably written only about
300 years before Christ.
No one
knows why the rabbis included this passionate love poem in the canon or
official list of books of the Old Testament.
However,
as soon as it was given the imprimatur, the theological seal of approval, and
regarded as an acceptable religious book, people began to reinterpret it. The
rabbis said that the Song of Songs was an allegory of God’s love for Israel.
And the Christian church did the same, but instead of God’s love for Israel,
Christians saw it as a story of Christ’s love for the church or God’s love for
the human soul.
The
medieval monastic reformer and mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux, preached 86
sermons, although he covered only 2 chapters and 3 verses. I suspect that 86
sermons can take the joy out of anything!
But the
Song of Songs makes us uneasy. What is this love poem doing in the Bible? What
are we to do with these images of passionate love?
“Sustain
me with raisins, refresh me with apples; for I am sick with love. O that
his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me!”
I believe
it’s some of the most wonderful love poetry in all of literature, but I
wouldn’t be comfortable quoting most of it in the pulpit!
I want to
make 2 points about the Song of Songs.
‘
The first
is this: The Song of Songs tell us that passionate love is God’s good gift.
In his
book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis reminds us that the Greek language has
four words for love:
Agape is perfect, disinterested, self-giving love. It is God’s
love for us, and it is the love we aspire to return to God and to others.
Philos
is brotherly or sisterly love, as in Philadelphia,
the city of brotherly love. It is also the love we have for our friends.
Storge
is love for inanimate objects, as in “I
love strawberries.”
And eros
is the kind of love spoken about in the Song of Songs. It is passionate
love. The Greeks believed that eros or erotic love was caused by
emptiness or need. We love passionately to fill up an emptiness in ourselves.
In other words, eros is a kind of hunger.
The
Christian faith has traditionally been uncomfortable with passionate love.
Jesus and Paul were both unmarried. Jesus urged his disciples to give up all
earthly attachments and follow him. In First Corinthians, Paul says that one
should not marry because the end of the world is near.
Furthermore,
at a fairly early point many Christians began to hold up celibacy or the
unmarried state as something to aspire to. It is central to the monastic
tradition. And around the 11th c celibacy became mandatory for
priests in the western church.
But the
mystics borrow the language of passionate love to describe God’s love for the
human soul.
Commenting on the Song of Songs, the medieval mystic Teresa
of Avila said that, “It seems to the soul it is left suspended in those divine
arms, leaning on that sacred side… It does not know how to do anything more
than rejoice, sustained by the divine milk with which its Spouse is nourishing
it and making it better…. When it awakens from that sleep and that heavenly
inebriation, it remains as though stupefied and dazed and with a holy madness.”
(Meditations
4:4)
Surely if God loves us with a passionate love, then the
passionate love we have for our husbands and wives is God’s gift, a gift given
to sustain us and fill life with joy.
Martin
Copenhaver, the pastor of Wellesley Congregational Church, writes of
discovering love letters that his grandparents wrote to each other. He says
that he was surprised to discover that they, too, had been young once and in
love. “They were real people, after all, animated by the kind of impulses and
yearnings I knew quite well. These dignified and upright people—who before my
discovery I could only imagine going to bed fully clothed—also had a love for
one another that was as hungry and tumultuous as the sea. And as their lives
demonstrated, passionate love for another person need not eclipse God, but can
enlarge a life in ways that make room for God to be manifest.” (from “Reveling
in Romance”)
Exactly.
Our passionate love for the person with whom we’ve chosen to spend our lives
does not eclipse God. Rather, it enlarges life and creates a place where we can
experience God in our love for one another.
The
second thing I want to say about the Song of Songs is that it is also a model
for our experience of God.
We
are Protestants and Protestants are more comfortable with experiencing God as
an abstraction rather than as a person.
Now,
I know that many of you would rather think of the Episcopal Church as a small “c”
catholic church. That’s true; we are catholic - liturgically catholic and even
theologically catholic to a degree. Culturally, however, we are Protestants.
We
are more like the Lutherans at Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone Lutheran
Church than like the Catholics down the road at Our Lady of Perpetual
Responsibility. We like God to stay safely at a distance and we keep our
passions carefully in check. And Western Christians, in general, and
Protestants, in particular, treat God more as an abstraction than as a person.
The
medieval theologian Alcuin prayed to God this way:
Light
eternal, shine in my heart.
Power eternal, deliver me from evil.
Wisdom eternal, scatter the darkness of my ignorance.
Might eternal, pity me.
Power eternal, deliver me from evil.
Wisdom eternal, scatter the darkness of my ignorance.
Might eternal, pity me.
Power
eternal… wisdom eternal… might eternal…and light eternal (sounds like a
theological utility company!).
20th
c theologian Paul Tillich said that God was “ultimate concern.”
And
frankly, it’s difficult to get very passionate about any of that.
The
Old Testament, on the other hand, is passionate about God.
The
Israelites argued with God. When God told Abraham that he was going to destroy
the city of Sodom, Abraham argued with God, and finally God agreed to spare
Sodom if only ten righteous people could be found there.
The
Israelites shouted at God. Psalm 18
says, “In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From
his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.”
They
got angry with God. “My God, my God! Why
have your forsaken me, and are so far from my cry and from the words of my
distress?”
We
are even told that Jacob wrestled with God.
They
fell in love with God. “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul
for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall
I come and behold the face of God?”
And
finally they gave us the Song of Songs.
Do you remember what it
was like on Valentine’s day when you were little. In grade school, you had to
bring a card for everyone. You couldn't just bring a card for Sarah Beth or
Billy Joe; you had to bring one for everyone, even for the kids you didn’t
really like.
It’s like that with God.
When God sends Valentines, God sends one to everyone. Every single one of us is treated as if he or she is the special one,
as if every single one of us is the object of God's own heart's desire.
When we love one special
person that way, we catch a glimpse of how God feels about each one of us. And
that, I think, is the biggest reason why this passionate ode to romantic love,
made it into the Bible. (The last three paragraphs are paraphrase from Martin
Copenhaver’s “Reveling in Romance.”)
