Preached on the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17B), September 1, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Kevin Montgomery at 5pm Mass.
The Song of Solomon is by far the most sensual book of the Bible, glorying in vibrant imagery and metaphors that delight the eyes, the ears, even our touch and smell and taste. “Song of Solomon” is actually a misnomer. The better title is “Song of Songs,” meaning the greatest of songs. The great 2nd century Rabbi Akiva likened it to the “Holy of Holies,” the locus of God’s presence among the chosen people.
At the heart of this collection of poems is the power of desire, the kind of love that yearns for another. It’s not just emotional but visceral. It’s not general but particular. You might even say it’s scandalous in its particularity. At the surface level here, we have two lovers delighting in each other when together and yearning when apart. Each one speaks to or about the other (with the woman perhaps speaking more). She hears the voice of her beloved as he approaches. He calls to her to pass beyond the walls that enclose her and be with him.
Imagine ourselves in this as if God is calling to us as his beloved. God does not stand far off waiting for us but bounds across the landscape to us. "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” In Hebrew it’s the same word used when God told Abram to leave his home and travel to a new one. Except that here it’s not to an unknown place where there ends up being conflict, hunger, wandering. Instead, it’s a world of life abundant with flowers and birdsong and fresh fruit. A world not of violent dominance but mutual love and affection.
What’s amazing here is not that God calls to us as a lover. What’s amazing is that in this song we respond wholeheartedly to that call. We long to hear that voice with every fiber of our being. Without our beloved we feel something missing in ourselves. The chambers of our heart resonate with the voice in that divine song. We know without a doubt that our deepest longings are fulfilled in him. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you,” writes St. Augustine.
But if only that were the case in our lives. Who among us can say that we fully long for God? Who among us totally trusts the voice that calls us and then follows it? At some level we feel something is missing. Instead of turning outward toward the voice, we curl in ourselves and perhaps even cease to hear it altogether. Yet we still yearn for . . . something? Perhaps we think more stuff will fill the lack. Or we seek fame or social favor, believing the adulations of others will satisfy our need for love. Most of us, I think, want to do good, to be good; but what is the good? Even when we do the right thing, the reasons almost always have at least some bit of not so right mixed in there. Maybe we do hear the voice, but it’s muffled and incomplete.
"Arise, my love, my . . .”
For whatever reason, something within the heart just seems off. I might also compare it to trying to grow flowers, but they don’t seem to bloom just right. Or perhaps grape vines that produce fruit that’s always just a little bit sour. Well, it pains me to say it, but I alone can’t fix it. In the collect for today, we asked God to graft in our hearts the love of his Name. Well, maybe it’s in accepting that graft that we can begin to turn that desire toward what, or rather who, will ultimately satisfy it. We didn’t hear the Epistle reading tonight, but in it James tells us to welcome the word implanted into us. And that word is the voice of our beloved. As we learn to listen to it more and more, we begin to do more than just hear it but to actually follow it. It becomes more and more a part of us, and we even join in the song ourselves. And singing with joy, we see the garden of delight around us, growing the fruit that nourishes us. We ourselves even become the fruit that nourishes others. So let us accept the love that God grafts in our hearts that we may more fully hear and heed the voice that calls, “Arise, my love, my fair one.” Then let us pass beyond the walls that enclose us and come away with our beloved.