A Love Song for the Ages

The Hartford Courant reported two weeks ago on a poll released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that shows that Connecticut (along with Rhode Island), though still home to many believers, ranks near the bottom of most indicators of religious fervor, compared with the rest of the United States. When asked how many of us are "absolutely certain" we believe in God or a universal spirit, only 57 percent responded yes. Only the folks in New Hampshire and Vermont scored lower, at 54 percent. Even the residents of Alaska, who are reported to pray less than we do and go to church less frequently, according to Pew, are more sure of God than we are, it seems. The national average for absolute belief was 71 percent.

In Mississippi, 91 percent of those polled said they are certain there is a God, 46 percent also said they have their prayers answered at least once a month. Not a bad batting average for prayers. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, on the other hand, only 23 percent of us believe in monthly responses to prayer.

Polls and surveys like these are amusing and can be revealing of the power of culture, location and heritage that influence belief. They make interesting copy for at least one news cycle.

Living in the times we do, in a diverse society and nation with many different religions and home to many with no religious beliefs at all, I would contend that many of us are quite used to the questions as framed in the survey. When belief in God becomes the central question. We might ask co-workers or friends, when we are so bold, whether they believe in God. We might even share our belief that praying for those in need of healing really does make a difference in their lives and ours.

Yet, it is a good thing to remember that this question -- whether or not we believe in God -- is not the central pursuit of the Bible we read aloud each time we gather to worship and share in the Eucharist. Let us say that in the times that the Bible was gathered together and put into written form, every one believed in a god, or the gods or in one God. It was assumed that God’s hand was present in the created world. They were not so concerned with proving God existed, as they were in framing the lives of those whose very existence and preservation depended on being in relationship with God.

Perhaps no better example of this exists than the book of the Song of Solomon, also called the Song of Songs. This short book of the Bible sandwiched between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah is intriguing, for it does not mention God once. It is a love poem written with lines, going back and forth, between a woman’s voice and a man’s voice. Its uniqueness lies in the amount of lines given to the female voice. For those who grow weary of the pictures of Jesus, as our preacher from last week described as resembling Brad Pitt more than they do a Jewish carpenter from northern Palestine, they would be heartened by the way in which the female voice describes herself in the first chapter. “I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem.” (v.5) This is a more raucous book of the Bible that we are accustomed to. The man’s voice sings in a garden with these memorable lines: “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love.” (5:1)

Both Jews and Christians have often turned these lines into an allegory, suggesting that the man’s voice is God and the female is Israel. Or the man’s voice is Christ as groom and the Church as the bride.

Listen again to the woman’s voice responding to the man: The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. 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. 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. To my ears, these verses almost sound like lines stolen from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – or perhaps the other way around.

The popularity of the Song of Solomon has ebbed and flowed over the centuries. For about a thousand years, from the 6th century on through the 16th century, Christian interpreters wrote more works on the Song of Songs than on any other individual book of the Old Testament. In the 12th century, more than thirty works were written. The mystics of the period, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, were captivated by this Song of Songs.

It is a timely reminder for our church today, where we read about the threat of schism in the Anglican Communion, fights over church property in our own diocese, reported in the media as being all about the interpretation of the meaning of the Bible. There are those today who contend to interpret the Bible literally, with no room for scientific discovery or cultural relevance. Yet, it is important for us to note that throughout history, scripture has been interpreted in more ways than its literal meaning.

Preachers have not always said: “this is what the Bible says and now fall into line.” Or the Bible says one thing about this human behavior or that group of people.
For centuries, Christians read the Bible for its literal, allegorical, moral and spiritual meaning. They possessed an expansive view of what God was revealing through the written word. W. Dennis Tucker, Jr., in his article “How Mystics Hear the Song”, summarizes that the mystics who wrote so many works about this Song during this period focused much more on the love of God than they did on faith and truth. What’s more: they put more attention to the response of human beings to God’s love than anything else. If surveyed by the Pew Forum of their day, the mystics would have answered that the God question was never in doubt. Even the nature of God was certain: the love of God for humanity and the world was assumed. The question – and the key answer -- was the response. Would a person love God in turn -- and how much? The mystics were seeking to re-direct the attention of believers back to the love of God, back to the deep waters, back to grace and generosity, and, thus, back to the source of all love.

So the mystics might read the song this way: Christ is seen as the gazelle or a young stag – standing just behind the wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. Christ is present, Christ is there, but somewhat removed, peering in from just beyond our sight and reach. Christ then speaks directly to our yearning and thirsting soul, our inner most being, not through the intermediaries but directly, and says: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” The picture being painted is irresistible. We are loved by God. The hard times are over. The flowers are in bloom, it’s time to sing, and the world is full of growth and possibilities.

This Song is one spoken to each of us. Christ is calling us to enter into a relationship that each one of us can define and shape on our own. We look to scripture for inspiration, we look to the church for community, and we look to the society and the world as the place in which our faith will either prove productive or irrelevant, but a personal relationship with a loving, generous God is ours.

Will we arise, get up and go away with Christ? And if that sounds too laden with “churchy” and “faithy” language, let me put it another way: Can we allow ourselves to get called away from what we think is most important in life – making a name for ourselves, raising and providing for a family, putting in a decent day’s work, marching to end a war, holding up a candle at a vigil to end violence in our city – all of these things fills good people’s lives – but they in of themselves are not enough.
God has more in mind for us than just a dutiful life. Are we willing, is their any room left in our well-structured lives and beliefs that we can be swept off our feet by the One who forever creates and implants love in us?

When we pray, when we list the many concerns and the people in need, pray for parts of the world torn by strife, do we leave enough space and time for an expression of love?

It is good and right to preach and work for justice and peace, and to seek after truth, but the Song of Solomon urges us to go back to the source of it all: to go back to the well and the spring of the universe and drink from that which and from whom makes the pursuit of justice, peace and truth worth our lives’ endeavor. Love for the One who makes love known to us and plants its seed deep within us so we can trust in one another. Love of God that is unfiltered, raw, passionate, without limits and within our grasp.