I thought it was really cool the way we started our Bible study last Wednesday. Everybody seemed to be so excited about the reading from the Song of Solomon, the poetry of it all and how beautiful and touching it was. And then one of you asked a great question: Is it about Jesus?
I say it’s a great question because at first, one could say that it’s obviously not about Jesus. If we believe that the Song of Solomon (also called Song of Songs) was indeed written by King Solomon, then it was written about a thousand years before Jesus’s birth. And yet, asking if this song is about Jesus is actually a great question because throughout the centuries, many, many readers of the Bible have read the Song of Solomon as a metaphor for God’s love for Israel, and then later for Christ’s love for the church and they have even understood the song as a metaphor for Christ’s love for each individual’s soul. Now a lot of today scholars smirk at that, and assume the Song has started to be read as a metaphor because it was too passionate and even too crude to be in the Bible, and as priests and theologians didn’t want to put too much value on human affections and on human sexuality, they started to say it was about God instead. Indeed, historically, it would make sense that this song was a simple poem among so many about romantic love, it was probably written for a wedding, maybe for one of the numerous weddings of King Solomon himself. The thing is, it still does not mean it cannot be about God or about Christ. To me, when we say this song has been read as a metaphor for God’s love, it does not mean that we have started elevating human love to divine love, assuming human love would serve as a blueprint to understand God’s love, rather it is quite the opposite: God’s love is the blueprint for all human affections. It was all about God from the beginning and still today plenty of songs and poems about romantic love say something about God’s love. The thing is there is human love, human desire, humane delight in love, because there is divine love, divine desire, divine ecstasy. To be fair though, the most passionate love affair would sound quite dull compared to the love God has for us. When lovers end up separated by death or by the judge or just fighting over who’s doing the dishes, God’s love is here to last. As Bach put it so well, Jesus is indeed the joy of man’s desire, its ultimate object. In many parables, Jesus compared himself to the bridegroom and he compares eternal life to a wedding banquet, a banquet celebrating his union with humankind.
And so it should come as no surprise, and yet it is still a bit of a surprise, that the Song was written by Solomon, about whom we talked two weeks ago saying he is believed to be the author of all the wisdom literature in the Bible. King Solomon is also famous for being a lover, the husband of a thousand wives says the Bible (Let’s hope this number is symbolic). And so, if there is certainly not much wisdom in promiscuity, and Solomon will end up losing himself in the relentlessness of his love affairs, yet the editor of the Bible wants us to know that there is much wisdom in a song that tells about giving your heart away to the one you love, and if, as we have just said, human affections can’t never quite quench this thirst for love, there is a wisdom in longing for a perfect and absolute love. There is a wisdom in longing for a perfect and absolute love.
Again, if you remember from two weeks ago when we first talked about the wisdom of the Bible, we noticed that it is not your usual wisdom, the wisdom of knowing what to say and what to do and being right every time and very detached from everything. We said that rather, the wisdom of the Bible is the wisdom of being open to awe and wonders, the wisdom, as we see today, of being swept off your feet by God.
Obviously, the Pharisees don’t get that, neither them nor anyone who makes religion a set of rules to appease God instead of understanding religion as a love poem, a language to connect to the divine. Not for the first time, Jesus is shocked and grieved at the meanness and the hardness of heart of the religious people. They use the Scriptures and their tradition to assert their power, we see today that they try to shame the disciples for not following the rites, they make others feel bad about themselves so they can think better of themselves, so they make themselves believe they are the closest to God and play God’s favorites. They can’t believe God’s love is for all unconditionally. They certainly can’t believe God is this passionate lover King Solomon talk about. Their own pettiness can only fathom a God as narrow minded as they are.
Now it’s easy to see what’s wrong with the leaders of the Jews, and that’s another thing we talked about during Bible study, but we have to acknowledge that we too have this tendency to make differences between Christians. In the same way at the time Jews made difference between the good Jews (those who followed the tradition to the letter) and the bad Jews (those who didn’t), we also compare ourselves to other Christians, as when we say, as we so often do, that some Christians aren’t real Christians – as if we could nullify their baptism because they don’t seem to do what “real” Christians should do. But each time we do that, Jesus is going to call us hypocrites as he does in the Gospel today because really what makes us “true”or “good” Christians or Jews isn’t our adherence to a certain list of rules or beliefs we stick to, it’s about what’s inside our hearts. The intentions of our hearts or – in Greek the deliberations – of our hearts. Not just the passing thoughts we cannot help but our twisted reasoning and disordered longings: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
A commentary I read said that for Jesus the human heart is like a Pandora’s box, with all those demon like figures coming out of it. It’s chaotic and uncontrollable. Yet the remedy is not more codes and more rules or more reasoning, the remedy is to fall deeper in love with Christ. We cannot save ourselves from what’s in our hearts but if we turn our hearts to what’s utterly lovable, we can be healed. When we’re in love and loved in return, we’re not concerned with petty details, we see beauty all around us. When we love and are loved in return, we’re not angry at the whole world, we rather see the goodness in it. When we’re in love and loved in return, it makes us joyful and generous and forgiving. Far from accusing others, we want them to be as happy as we are. Falling in love, whether with a romantic partner, or a newborn or a new center of interest, is often compared to come to life again and this is certainly the images we have in the passage of the Song of Solomon today: Arise my love (…) and come away, for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. When we talked about this passage at Bible study, we said it’s like Christ coming to find our souls at the end of the earthly journey and indeed it’s an image that is often used in the New Testament. Again, more than once, Jesus compared himself to the bridegroom and eternal life to a wedding banquet, a banquet celebrating his union with humankind.
So maybe that’s the call for us today if we find ourselves lost in the dark deliberations of our hearts. Maybe its about the anger we feel at the brokenness of the world. Maybe it’s the bitterness of feeling useless or an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Maybe it’s jealously at the better fortune of others, who makes ends meet and enjoy good health. Who knows. One thing is sure that’s the sad state of the human heart and there is no much we can do about it, and maybe for a while it’s okay to feel what we feel because it’s just where we are. But maybe instead of turning our pain against ourselves or against others, we can ask Christ to come and meet us there so we can fall in love again with him, so we too can experience this life changing love and have a glimpse of whatever it is we’re experiencing through the lens of eternity.