Reflections on the Song of Solomon

 

A Passionate Love, A Passionate Life (1)

 

“May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine; your oils have a pleasing fragrance, your name is like purified oil; therefore the maidens love you. Draw me after you and let us run together! The king has brought me into his chambers” (Song of Solomon 1:2 – 4).

 

This is how it begins – with passion, exuberance, and consummation!

 

It does not begin with backstory; not with how they first met, not with how their eyes first connected, not with a first date, not with when they first held hands, and not with an evening kiss. It rather begins with hearts and minds and souls and bodies alive and vibrant with exuberance, passion and consummation. Forget backstory – let’s open with joy and celebration!

 

The love and marriage of Ruth and Boaz has backstory, the backstory with them is much of the message; but the love of the Song of Solomon explodes with consummation and desire and celebration – Let’s kiss, let’s enjoy the fragrance, let’s run and skip and jump, and O yes! O yes! Let’s enter the king’s chambers…no wait, let’s not just enter them, let’s run into them! O yes!

 

If we approach the Song of Solomon in any way other than the way it is written, if we ask questions such as, “What is it about? Who wrote it? Who is it written to? When was it written? Who are the players?” we rob the Song of its mystery, its allurement, its fragrance, and of our visceral and holistic participation in it.

 

When you sit down to a dinner that another has prepared, whether in a home or a restaurant, do you analyze what you are about to eat? Do you wonder about the pots and pans used? Do you want to know if it was cooked on gas or electric appliances? Do you ponder the origin of the recipe? Do you question the herbs and spices used? If you do, one thing is for sure, when you finally get around to eating your meal it will be cold – and then you may blame the cook.

 

As Ezekiel and John were commanded, when we come to the Song of Solomon, we are to “eat this book.” We are to take what is set before us and put it in our mouths and enjoy it – gobble it down, drink it and become inebriated for it is better than wine, O so much better than wine! We are to run and skip and hop and jump for there ain’t nothing better than knowing love, living in love, breathing love, giving love, receiving love, and enjoying love in all its fullness.

 

In whatever way it is given to you to experience the opening of the Song, then experience it! You may experience it in more than one way – isn’t that beautiful? I think it is. If you have a pulse, then allow that pulse to quicken, allow your imagination to flow, allow the Holy Spirit to pull back the curtain on the stage – not so that you watch others act out the story as you sit in a seat, but so that you may run to the stage and play your part(s)! There are to be no spectators to the Song, all of us are to be on stage, all of us.

 

The first individual church that Jesus speaks to in Revelation is the church in Ephesus. They were commended for their good works, for their rejection of evil, and for their perseverance, but yet Jesus warns them that their deeds are not the deeds of love for they had “left their first Love.” Jesus tells them that unless they “remember from you have fallen, and repent, and do the deeds you did at first” that He will come and remove them. They must return to their first Love, Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ must once again be their only Love.

 

We are to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength; and out of that we love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to love Jesus Christ with all that we have and all that we are – forever and ever, we are to belong to Him and only to Him. We are to be in a holy and pure marriage to Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 11:1 – 3). Our central and core calling and destiny is as the Bride of Christ – we see the shadow of the marriage in Genesis; we see its consummation in Revelation 21 – 22.

 

We also experience shadows and consummation in the Song. However, the Song is not structured as the entire Bible is structured. The Bible is structured with first shadows (Genesis 2; Ephesians 5:22 – 32) and then consummation, while the Song begins with consummation and then escorts us into a dance of shadow and consummation, of consummation and shadow – of point and counterpoint. (Is this not what we can experience in marriage?)

 

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!”

 

This lady “don’t want no hug and kiss,” she wants the real deal – there ain’t no warm up needed here – she is hungry for her lover and her lover is hungry for her.

 

O dear friends, can we ask ourselves whether we are hungry for Jesus? Is the Church hungry for Jesus?

If we are hungry for Him then how can we sell ourselves to the things of this world – its entertainment, its value systems, its economic systems, its political and national systems, its worship of so-called “freedom,” its scribal and Pharisaical religious systems within what we term Christianity?

 

For us pastors and teachers and professors – have we forgotten that our calling is to join the Bride to the Bridegroom and then get out of the way (John 3:28 – 30)? We have no business in the King’s Chambers in our teaching roles, we can only be there as the Bride.

 

Play the tape, stream it, read it, again and again read the Song of Solomon 1:2 – 4. What do you see? How is Jesus coming to you? Get on the stage, start living your role.

 

Enjoy Jesus and bask in His enjoyment of you.

 

Concluding thought:

 

I grew up listening to and appreciating many genres of music, including Big Band, Show Tunes, and what I’ll call Popular Standards of previous generations (1920s – early 1950s; some of which have been recycled and “covered” over the years). Below is a Standard that I can sing to two people and only two people, one is Vickie and the Other is Jesus. Can our congregations sing this to Jesus? If we did, would it be true? We can all learn to sing it, for Jesus so very deeply desires us to live in His exuberant, passionate, and consummated love! Jesus desires us to live in Song of Solomon 1:2 – 4.

 

I Only Have Eyes For You (Harry Warren, Al Dubin)

 

Are there stars out tonight?

I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright

‘Cause I only have eyes for you, dear.

 

The moon may be high

But I can’t see a thing in the sky

‘Cause I only have eyes for you

 

I don’t know if we’re in a garden

Or on a crowded avenue

You are here, so am I

Maybe millions of people pass by

But they all disappear from view

‘Cause I only have eyes for you.

 

Do we only have eyes for Jesus?

 

Psalm 139...or My Nappy

 

A Psalm 139 Day, A Psalm 139 Life – or My Nappy

 

“O LORD, You have searched me and known me” (Psalm 139:1).

 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way” (Psalm 139:24).

 

This is my Psalm 139 Day. I typically read Psalm 139 on March 19, June 26, September 19, and December 19. I read Psalm 139 to remind me that I am not an accident looking for a place to happen, I read it to remind me that my hope is ever and always in Jesus. I read Psalm 139 to remember how much my Father cares for me…even when “I make my bed in hell.”

 

I often point others to Psalm 139 because I want them to know that they also are not accidents looking for a place to happen, but rather that their lives are in God’s hands.

 

If you have ever made your bed in hell this is a pretty good psalm. If you have ever run from God this psalm can be helpful. If you have ever known darkness so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face, this psalm is for you.

 

If you have ever looked at your life and wondered just how you could have messed up so badly, this psalm can remind you that even if you don’t understand yourself (and I don’t think any of us have much capacity along this line) that God your Father and Creator knowns all about you.

 

In our moments of arrogance and pomposity this psalm can put us in our place; we really don’t know all that much, we need our God to search us, purify us, and to lead us in “the everlasting Way.” The Way, of course, is Jesus Christ (John 14:6).

 

The psalm begins with an acknowledgment and confession that God has searched us and known us. It concludes with a plea for God to continue searching us and knowing our hearts, for Him to test us and know our thoughts, to deal with hurtful and sinful and selfish ways within us, and to lead us in the everlasting Way (see Hebrews 4:12 – 13; Psalm 19:12 – 14).

 

In a sense the psalm ends where it begins, with God searching us…but not quite, there is a difference, a significant difference.

 

In verse 1 we acknowledge that God has been searching us. In verses 23 and 24 we cry out to God that He will continue to search us, purify us, save us from toxic ways, and lead us into the Way of Jesus. In other words, in verse 1 we have the realization that God has been searching us, in verses 23 and 24 we plea with God to continue His gracious work within us.

 

We may live a long time before we arrive at the realization of verse 1. We may go our own way for many years before, by God’s mercy, it dawns on us that God has been searching our lives, our souls, our hearts and our minds – that He knows not just our every action, but our thoughts and our motives. When the light of this awareness breaks upon us we can either run and hide, or we can say, “O my! Help me dear God.”

 

If we will accept His mercy, then we will come to know that His intimate searching of us is a deep expression of His tender love for us in Jesus Christ – then we will come to know that we need His searching and trying and purifying every moment of every day, we will know that we cannot live without Him and His Presence.

 

In the Garden, Adam and Eve hid from God and from each other. In the New Jerusalem there is no hiding from God or from one another, all is transparent in that City in which God alone is Light. As Psalm 139 demonstrates, we cannot really hide from God. We may be like toddlers playing “peek-a-boo”, thinking that if we cover our eyes so that we can’t see God that God can’t see us. Isn’t that foolish?

 

Yet isn’t that the way we so often live…within and without the professing church?

 

I have often said that on my best days my heavenly Father needs to change my nappy.  This may not be an elegant conclusion to this reflection, but it is most certainly the truth.