Tuesday • 10/22/2024 •

Proper 24

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Song of Songs 1:9-17; Revelation 7:9-17; Luke 10:1-16

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

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 can discover or rediscover some of this “Best of Song’s” enchantment. Today’s portion is Song of Songs 1:9–17.

Love has its own reasons. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots — Song of Songs 1:9. Some images in the Song are impenetrable to us nearly 3,000 years after the fact. This one, however, seems to be identifiable. Egyptian charioteers would make sure that all of their horses were stallions—that is, male horses. The danger of mixing in mares (female horses) is that, if perchance a mare came into season, chaos would ensue. In the song, the beloved (the male lover) says that he is so strongly attracted to the woman that his feelings are virtually uncontrollable. Her beauty is irresistible to him. 

For her part, her lover’s very scent (which she likens to nard, myrrh, and henna) takes her to a garden spot—to an oasis (which is what En-Gedi is) in the wilderness, she says, or to a forest of pungent pines and cedars. It’s as though, when they are together, Eden has been recreated. They can explore a rediscovered innocence and delight in each other. 

Jewish and Christian interpreters were convinced that this bracing paean to human love is in the Bible because it bears meaning for divine love as well. Believing that the Temple’s sights and smells (cedar and incense) were designed as a sensory recalling of the Garden of Eden, these interpreters (and I think with good reason) ask us to imagine the place of worship as a place in which the Lord and his people express their “takenness” with each other. 

Odd as it may sound at first, there’s something about the Lord’s love for his people that is beyond rational calculation and covenantal obligation. In Deuteronomy, the only accounting that Yahweh is able to give for his fondness for his people is: “I love you because I love you” (Deuteronomy 7:8). In terms of the Song, the Lord is like the stallion who discovers a mare among the chariots. Conversely, what is to be called up from us, his people, involves, of course, discipline of will and formation of mind—but at bottom, it is “love,” something that is more visceral, something that is irresistibly attracted to what the psalmist calls “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9). That’s something that strikes me every time I walk into the Cathedral where it is my privilege to worship, and breathe in the incense-laden air from decades of worship there. 

The glory of worship. Amen! Blessing and honor and glory…! Amen! — Revelation 7:12. The Book of Revelation is brutally honest about the devastation and suffering that Planet Earth suffers on the way to its final, complete, redemption. But it is terribly important to remember all along that the story line is moving toward consummation: toward the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19) and toward a New Jerusalem under New Heavens and on a New Earth (Revelation 21-22). It is equally important to remember that all along the way to that consummation, the people of the Lamb anticipate it with exuberant, lavish, loving praise, as in today’s reading from Revelation. We worship as though that which is “not yet” (the end of death and decay and suffering) were “already.” 

Revelation’s perspective is precisely that of the Song of Songs, where the consummation of love is both longed for (from tomorrow’s reading: “do not stir or awaken love until it is ready”—2:8) and already experienced (again, from tomorrow’s reading: “he brought me to the banqueting house”—2:4). 

Herein lies the glory of worship. Because our Shepherd-Husband will one day “guide us to the springs of the water of life” (Revelation 7:17), we submit in the “now” to the waters of baptismal cleansing. Because one day we “will hunger no more, and thirst no more” (Revelation 7:16), we taste already the Bread and the Wine. And because in the day of the great settling of accounts “God will wipe away every tear from our eyes,” even our funeral services become forward-looking celebrations of resurrection. As the Prayer Book says, “Yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+