Friday • 10/14/2022
Proper 23

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Song of Songs (overview); Acts 28:1-16; Luke 9:28-36

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube

Special note with regard to the Old Testament. During the next three weeks, I will be treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s choice, Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Despite the canonical status of the Song of Songs, and despite the fact that it was one of the biblical books that ancient and medieval believers (both Jewish and Christian) found most fascinating and fruitful, people in the modern era have ignored it for the most part. The Daily Office lectionary finds no place for it in the two-year cycle of Old Testament readings. Since this year’s cycle is one in which we read Song of Songs’ sister books in the wisdom tradition (Ecclesiastes and Job), I decided to dive into it. I hope you and I will be able to discover or rediscover its enchantment.

The Bible calls the book the “Song of Songs,” that is, “the best song.” This is a song about yearning for love. There’s much to yearn for in our world—it’s as though we are in an extended season of yearning. We yearn for freedom from disease and from uncertainty about public health. We yearn for the laying down of arms between nations. We yearn for civility in the public square. We yearn for liars to lay down their pens, to walk away from their keyboards, and to turn off their microphones. We yearn for racial reckoning and reconciliation. We yearn for safe streets and safe schools and safe churches and synagogues. We yearn for the end of domestic violence and drug addiction. We yearn for the realization of medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich’s promise: “all shall be well.” Above all we yearn for the return of love.

Especially during this season of yearning, I’d offer this book of the Bible as genuinely “the best song.” Song of Songs teaches us to sing, amid everything that is wrong in the world: “I’m my Beloved’s and he is mine. His banner over me is love” (Song of Songs 2:4).

Even before Christians came along, people in the Jewish community knew to read this Song at two levels. On the first level, the Song of Songs is—gloriously!—a full throated anthem in praise of conjugal, even of sensual, love between a man and a woman. Over the centuries, commentators—Jewish and Christian—have debated as to the exact scenario being depicted. By far the majority of commentators suggest we are witness to a celebration between two lovers: a Solomon-like, shepherd-king-husband and a Shulamite (probably a play on Solomon’s name), queenly wife. Coming from the God who made man and woman to come together as “one flesh,” there’s plenty to relish in a song that leads with “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.”

Beyond that, though, from Day One, readers—or singers!—of this song have sensed that there’s more at play in this “best of songs” than merely its surface meaning. In the first century AD, Rabbi Akiba said, “Whoever trills the Song of Songs in banquet halls—and treats it as a mere lyric—has no share in the world to come” (Targum Sanhedrin 12.10). Indeed, he maintains, the “whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel for all the Writings are holy and the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies” (Mishnah Yadayim 3.5).

Jewish interpreters saw a second level of meaning in the Song of Songs: a meditation on the prophets’ theme of Yahweh as husband and his people as bride (Hosea 1-3; Jeremiah 2-3; 31:32; Ezekiel 16; Isaiah 50:1; 54:5-6). They read this “best of songs” as a love song between God and his people. When they read “I am my beloved’s and he is mine,” they could not help but hear resonances of “I will be your God and you will be my people.” And in their wake, Christian interpreters heard a song in praise of the love between Christ, i.e., God-as-Groom-in-the Flesh, and his Bride, the Church (John 3:29; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:21-33; Revelation 19).

As we explore this “best of songs” together in the next three weeks, I pray for you a renewed sense that Christ, our Heavenly Bridegroom, loves you intimately, tenderly, and persistently. And I pray for you a certain “sacramental cast” to all your relationships here on earth, that they would all be consecrated to the Lord. This “best song” teaches us to guard all relationships—and especially those of intimacy—to cherish them, to preserve them, and to be wholeheartedly and unreservedly given to them.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, "#ItsLiverpool banners - Port of Liverpool Building, Mann Island & Museum of Liverpool" by ell brown is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.