Thursday • 10/20/2022 • Proper 24
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1-18; Song of Songs 2:8-17; Revelation 9:1-12; Luke 10:25-37
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
For our Old Testament reading this week and the next two, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s choice, Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Together, I hope we are discovering or rediscovering some of this “Best of Song’s” enchantment. Today’s portion is Song of Songs 2:8–17.
Wedged as it is in the English Bible between the Poets and the Prophets, the Song of Songs insists that biblical faith is hopelessly romantic. That is the Song’s chief gift. Biblical faith, asserts the Song, believes in the utter enthrallment of human lovers with one another (all evidence of love’s failures to the contrary). And it believes, by analogy, in the utter mutual delight that God and we take in one another (all evidence of “religion’s” or the synagogue’s or the church’s inadequacies to the contrary).
…now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come — Song of Songs 2:12. Where love is, springtime always seems to break out. Senses become attuned not just to the sight, the sense, the sound, and the touch of the lover, but to everything else as well. In love’s presence, you notice things you had taken for granted before: stags and gazelles frolicking on the mountainside (if you are fortunate to live near majestic mountains!), doves in rock clefts, figs blossoming, the smell of a vine. The day seems to breathe, and nothing has to remain shadowed—everything is fresh, new, and innocent (2:17). You and your beloved inhabit a renewed Eden where together you discover the innocent intimacy of a perfect love.
Biblical faith stubbornly inhabits an enchanted universe. In the face of divine love—to which the gift of human love has the ability to attune us—the heart sings, “all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.”
Featured in today’s portion of the Song are two things: his exuberant arrival, and her declaration of mutual exclusive possession.
Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills — Song of Songs 2:8. Jewish commentator Michael Fishbane observes, “Just as a gazelle bounds from place to place, so has God come in successive manifestations on Israel’s behalf: to Egypt, to the Sea, and to Sinai. With this image, the people anticipate God’s immediate advent … and even beseech it….” Naturally enough, the Christian reader sees the “bounding” taking the Divine Lover all the way to Bethlehem. The Song of Songs evokes the joy that is anticipated each Advent and that breaks out every Christmas. As the Advent song of Tim Manion and the St Louis Jesuits puts it: “Leaping the mountains, bounding the hills, see how our God has come to meet us. His voice is lifted, his face is joy. Now is the season to sing our song on high.”
Hard as it is for most of us to believe, I suspect, the Bible portrays God as eager to find you and me, to love us and to care for us.
My beloved is mine and I am his — Song of Songs 2:16. Here the woman declares the mutual love between herself and her beloved. Again, from Fishbane: “This proclamation of mutuality (‘[he] is mine,’ li, and ‘[I] am his,’ lo) expresses the theological relationship between God and Israel.” In Scripture, the covenant-affirming voice is characteristically God’s: “I am your God, and you are my people” (Jeremiah 30:22; 31:1,33; Ezekiel 36:28). God as husband declares the covenant to be in effect. The prophet Hosea anticipates that when God has won his straying wife back and says to her, “You are (once again) my people,” she will (finally!) respond, “You are my God” (Hosea 2:23). Here in Song of Songs, the Bride gives voice to her unreserved commitment and her affection. No wonder this book is named “the best song”: it celebrates God and us in love with each other.
Our Good Samaritan. It is impossible to say enough about the significance of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It propels us to love our neighbor, regardless of who they are or where they come from. The astute reader realizes, however, that the Parable works its magic not so much by guilting us, as by inviting us to reflect on ourselves as having been sought out and found by the Divine Good Samaritan. The parable gets its full force when we see ourselves as half-dead on the side of the road, when our Good Samaritan is “moved with pity,” comes to us, bandages us, pours oil and wine on us (who can’t be reminded of Baptism and Eucharist?), brings us to a place of healing (who can’t think of the Church?), and makes sure that any price necessary to our healing is paid (who can’t think of the Cross?).
A hymn by Ed Clowney memorably captures the logic of this parable of parables:
You came to us, dear Jesus, in our dying,
as broken, bleeding we could make no sign.
Compassion, Lord, brought you where we were lying,
to lift us up, to pour on oil and wine.
You came to us, dear Jesus, in your dying;
your wounds poured love as blood upon the tree.
Compassion, Lord, from Calvary is crying,
“Bind up their wounds as you would do for me!”
Because of the Advent of just such a Good Samaritan, the Song of Songs—“the best song”—becomes so wonderfully ours: “Look, he comes…” and “My beloved is mine and I am his.”
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+