Friday • 11/8/2024 •

Proper 26

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Song of Songs 8:8-14; Revelation 17:1-18; Luke 13:31-35

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)

For our Old Testament reading the past two weeks and this week, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s Ecclesiasticus. Together, I hope we have been discovering or rediscovering some of the power of this enchanting “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 8:8–14.

Wrapping up Song of Songs. Let me explain why I inserted a study of Song of Songs into the cycle of Daily Office readings. For me, the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft added a certain sparkle to the trilogy of Old Testaments writings (Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs) when, in his little book Three Philosophies of Life, he compared them to the three sections of Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

Ecclesiastes shows us how life without God is hell on earth—the Inferno. Job shows us that the path of salvation and of suffering are one and the same—the Purgatorio. Song of Songs shows us that God made us for joyous intimacy—the Paradiso. 

It so happens that in this year’s cycle of Old Testament readings, the Daily Office has taken us through Ecclesiastes and Job, studies in seeing that life is a dead end without God, and in learning how God uses suffering to enable us to know him more deeply. I noticed, thanks to Professor Kreeft, that there was an omission in the readings: despite its historical importance to the church (not to mention the synagogue), the Song of Songs is excluded from the Daily Office. We were being deprived, I concluded, of what Paul Harvey might have called “the rest of the story,” namely, this precious “best of songs” that acknowledges what we all know—that we are desperate for love—and, what we need to learn: “the flame of Yah” will not disappoint.

As we leave our musings over this “best of songs”, I pray for you now exactly what I prayed three weeks ago when we began: 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. 

With today’s verses, our singers do their own bit of wrapping up: “Take care of the ‘little sisters’ who are coming along after you,” they say (Song of Songs 8:8-10). “Ignore distractions along the path to a love that is exclusive and therefore true,” they implore (Song of Songs 8:11-12); And finally, they urge us to be watchful and to pray, “Make haste, my beloved…” (Song of Songs 8:13-14). Maranatha! Come quickly, Lord, and save!

Revelation. Speaking of “come quickly, Lord,” we leave the Old Testament’s version of God’s Love Story, to swing into the last few days of the New Testament’s version of the Love Story. First, in Revelation 17, we must meet the story’s “other woman,” the whore of Babylon. 

Part of the Bible’s overarching story line points to two different paths to fulfilling the mandate God gives to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). One is a path of faith, and the other of faithlessness. Genesis chapter four provides the opening manifestation of the “two ways.” Enoch, son of the faithless murderer Cain, builds the first city, which he names after himself (Genesis 4:17). (Perhaps there’s a message in that fact alone.) In this line of unbelief flourish the great gifts of culture-building. of “filling the earth and subduing it”: animal husbandry, music, and manufacturing (Genesis 4:20-22). Meanwhile, in the line of the believing Seth (the murdered Abel’s replacement) flows just one gift: the ability “to invoke the name of Yahweh”—that is, to relate to God by name (Genesis 4:25). 

Two tracks—two possibilities—for human existence are hereby laid down. Israel’s mission, in the midst of faithless nations, is to incubate and nourish a redemptive vision of culture-building. That is why Yahweh calls these descendants of Seth into covenant with himself, and to “be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6). 

The 5th century AD North African theologian Augustine will name the two paths the “City of Man” and the “City of God.” In the Book of Revelation, they take the form of the “whore of Babylon” and the “bride of Christ.” By the end of the Book of Revelation, God will perfect the beautification of the Bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-10), and bring about a New Jerusalem on a new earth under new heavens (Revelation 21-22).

In the meantime, though, God must dispatch the “whore of Babylon,” the embodiment of a faithless and disobedient humanity’s project of “filling the earth and subduing it”—in a word, Augustine’s “City of Man.” Students of the Book of Revelation have struggled to identify the Babylon to which John refers. To some, the “whore” looks like literal Babylon in Assyria. To some, her seven hills suggest that Babylon is Rome (17:9). To others, the fact that Revelation refers to “the great city” as the place where Jesus was killed means that “Babylon” is Jerusalem (11:8). I think it’s most likely that John’s “Babylon” is intended to resonate with each of these cities. But in the end, the whoring “Babylon” is a spiritual reality: a composite for the entirety of the human project that has sought to build civilization without God, and has been proven to be rapine, exploitative, and blasphemous. To turn to another biblical image: Babylon, “the great whore” is a reprised—and final—Tower of Babel that must be felled. Stay tuned. 

Luke. “…as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…” — Luke 13:34. As I noted a few months ago when we encountered this image in Matthew’s gospel, it’s significant that Jesus meets his contemporaries’ rejection of him not with anger, but with sadness: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” He laments their repudiation, even while he knows its outcome will be good: the salvation of the world. And he looks to the day when the unfolding sadness will be turned to joy, when his countryfolk will confess: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Blessed, indeed, is he…

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+